Dear House

Dear House,

You were our first house.  You have been an important part of our lives during these past 5 years. You saw us through many ups and downs in our lives.  In your walls you witnessed our celebrations, sorrows, frustrations, and so much love.  You were the home that we brought our first child home from the hospital to.

I often contemplate how many stories you have to tell about your 90 years of standing in this spot. How many other people have called you home over the years?  How many people have brought their first child home from the hospital to you?  How many important things have happened in people's lives within your walls?

Now we have to say goodbye.  Your next owners will be here in a few short hours.  They are a young couple who are engaged to be married.  You will now become a part of their story.  You will always be a part of ours, you will always be in our hearts.  You are not just a house but a home.  Goodbye my old friend.

And then we said hello to our new house.  We were greeted with this house warming gift from the sellers.  It was so sweet and thoughtful!  I got a card and a HomeGoods gift card for the buyers of our house.  Maybe if I would of had the time and energy I would of done something cute like this ;).  We just spent our 3rd night in the new house.  Most rooms are chaos right now.  The kitchen is pretty much fully unpacked and so is the dining room.  Most of Lyla's stuff is in what will be her little sister's room so that we can paint Lyla's room first.  The living room and all of the basement are just a mess right now.  We plan to get Lyla's room ready first and then the nursery.  Once the nursery is done the living room will get painted.  I will share a house tour once things get a little less chaotic around here.

Gift Card Bouquet Grad Gift

Hello!  Today I am taking a break from packing and doing laundry to write a short post on the grad gift that I made for my sister who graduated from high school yesterday.  2 years ago I made this gift card college survival kit for my brother when he graduated from high school.

I decided to stick with the gift card theme but this time I decided to make a gift card bouquet.  I started by buying a nice tumbler from the bookstore of the college that she will be attending in the fall.  I bought a bunch of gift cards for different things that might be useful or fun during her first year of college.

I slipped a piece of floral foam inside of the tumbler.  Next I traced the gift cards onto some scrapbook paper and cut out the pieces ( I totally forgot to take a picture of the back of the bouquet so that you could see it).  I taped a bamboo skewer in between the piece of scrapbook paper and each gift card.  I then stuck the bamboo skewers into the floral foam.  For the graduation cap I used some sparkly black scrapbook paper.  Normally I would of used my Silhouette Portrait to cut it out but I assembled this at work so I just found a picture of a graduation cap on Google and printed it and traced it onto the scrapbook paper.  If I wanted to be a little more fancy I could of put something decorative over the floral foam but I was running out of time so I just left it as is.

I hope you are inspired by this simple grad gift!  We have about 2 weeks left until we move into our new house so I have been spending a lot of time packing up our house.  The appraisal on our current home went well and it appraised at the selling price without any need for repairs.  We still have about a week until the appraisal on our new house.  It will really be cutting it close with the closing only a little over a week later.  I am hoping for the best though since it took a week to get the results of the appraisal on our current home.