Or at least a scale 3D model of it, courtesy of a wonderful shareware program called Sweet Home 3D that I found. It's really easy to use and OMGSOMUCHFUN. X3 I spent entirely too much time gleefully measuring out walls and sizing and rearranging furniture, though I really doubt that comes as a shock to anyone who knows me well at all.

Originally I was going install this fancy little Java applet that comes with the program that lets you view the virtual tour and spin around in the 3D model from your own website, but for whatever reason I couldn't get it to work so we're stuck with screenshots, ladies and gents.


Full model, two different angles, complete with lawn and driveway~! The program doesn't let you make multiple floors and stack them so I had to settle for just sitting the lower basement level beside the upstairs one.


The first floor. 1) Front entry way (stairs to basement are directly across from front door); 2) bunny room with small sofa and television (sofa and TV mostly for me, though maybe I can get Toby hooked on What Not to Wear); 3) spare room, probably will store golf clubs, laundry drying rack, and miscellaneous random what-not; 4) master bathroom; 5) master bedroom; 6) living room, mostly for display though I will play piano in there; 7) kitchen and dining room; 8) backyard deck; 9) enormous backyard complete with firepit! 10) double oversized garage.


The second floor. 1) Stairs; 2) main living room with sofas and television (lots of empty room still in this area, not sure what we're going to do with it yet); 3) furnace and freezer room; 4) second bathroom; 5) office; 6) storage room.

Getting everything insured is currently under way. We're going to try to set it for Shaw to go in the day before we move to transfer all of our cable/interwebs/phone lines over, and I'm still trying to track down an affordable cleaning service to come in to give the place a good scrub from top to bottom. While all that's going on, we're beginning to go through our current place to purge and clean.

Ugh, still more than month to go. D: It seems like such a long time, and yet I still have so much to do and it seems very stressful and busy. I think I've had more headaches in the past two weeks than I did all of last month. Can it just be squealy happy moving day now, please?

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: 33

I'm not going to lie, I spent most of the evening stressing that the new house that we've grown so in love with was going to fall through when this afternoon during the house inspection, the nice man found something called vermiculite in our soon-to-be attic that could be ASBESTOS. SCARY, HEALTH-THREATENING, STUPIDLY-EXPENSIVE-TO-FIX ASBESTOS.

D:

Immediately after the inspection, we ran a sample of the stuff over to a lab tech to have it tested. There was a horrible, preemptive fake out when later in the evening we finally got the results back -- which were good -- but turned out to not be ours. We were accidentally sent someone else's results, so we had a brief five-minute celebratory dance only to have the horrible truth come crashing down on us and plunging us into another hour of nervous, anxious dread. Thankfully when the actual results did come back, it was also nothing but good news! X3

The rest of the inspection went really well. (Okay... well there was some tense moments where we thought that we'd accidentally lost the seller's cat when we left the front door open... *Sweatdrop*) There's a few areas in and around the house we'll need to patch up like drainage and a support beam outside for the roof awning, but they're all things we can do ourselves and won't cost that much. And that, ladies and gentlemen, along with our confirmed financing (finally... oh god what a stressful last two days) means our two closing conditions have been met and we are officially getting the house! La la la la laaa~

Gaah! I completely forgot to take any more pictures of the house while I was there today though! *Angst* I was too busy measuring rooms and worrying about deadly asbestos. Now I must start making to-scale grid diagrams of each room and laying out tiny paper furniture~ :B

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: 42

Ingredients:

1 half of a broken slinky
1 bunny

Directions:

1. Take slinky half and thread one end of it around ceiling wire of cage, just enough so it's secure but leaving most of slinky dangling in air.


2. Take bunny and place him by dangling slinky. Dance slinky around a bit to get bunny's attention.


3. Wait as bunny curiously pokes at slinky, pushes it around and stretches it out. Slinky will inevitably spring back abruptly and swing wildly around like a rubber punching bag and almost bean bunny in the head.


4. Watch bunny freak out and binky around in hyperactive joy.


5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until laughing hurts too much to breathe (or until bunny comes to a complete stop and is simply too tuckered out to move anymore.)

Hilarious.

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: 43

Gahhh! Still forty-four days until house possession *angst* but thankfully only two days until house inspection, which will be the only time between now and then that I'll be allowed back into the shiny eventually-to-be-ours new home! I will have a mere three-ish hours to bask and take pictures and measure out rooms! D: *Grasps camera and measuring tape determinedly*

I went to the an SPCA volunteer orientation session tonight and signed up for four different possible programs to take part in~ I didn't realize what a long process applying to be a volunteer was -- I submitted my application at the end of May, just got into the orientation today, and probably won't hear back from the organizer until mid-July. I thought I would already be swimming in puppies, kitties, and piles of furry bunnies by now, but I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. Apparently since they opened the new location (omg such a nice building, the open house was awesome~) they've had an insane outpouring of new volunteer support so I have to wait my turn. It both saddens me to wait but makes me extremely happy to know so many people want to lend a hand. X3

I've recently finished two books: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, which was short and simple, but truely superb (I highly recommend this book -- it's such an easy read but has such an impact); and Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult. It was all right, though t's not one of her better books that I've read; maybe because it was an earlier work -- or maybe because the lead male character reminds me so much Edward freaking Cullen that I want to hurl it across the room. Oh look at me, I'm so perfectly perfect and gorgeous, but behind this peckish godly exterior hides an abusive, broody (and amazingly annoying) MONSTERRRRRR, arrrrr! All it needs is a little veggie vampirism thrown in and they could be a pair of most likely very dysfunctional twins.

Countdown until shiny exciting house possession: 44 (I think I may go crazy)

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

But we did! Mason and I bought a house last night! *OMGSQUEEE* We went out yesterday evening for our second night of house shopping, and during the whole afternoon beforehand I was so sad and depressed because I was told that out of the eighteen prospective properties that we originally had on our list, only six were actually available to see anymore. And yet as it turned out I had nothing to fear because the second last house of the night was just The One. I was told by a friend at work that when we found the right house, we would just know, there would be no thinking about it -- and it was. We walked out and were just like "JOYGASM".

We had the offer called in at 9:20; spent the next anxiety-ridden hour and a half phoning back and forth and signing papers at the nearest Timmies and fretting that any moment someone was going to steal our house away from us *angst*; drove back home at 11:00 stressing that we were going to have to wait until the next day to have anything happen, were getting out of the car, and then the other Realtor finally phoned and asked us to come sign the papers at the house, so we drove all the way back. By the time we got home again it was midnight, but I promptly phoned my parents anyway and woke them up to squee about the news and then proceeded to not be able to sleep at all. I've spent the last twenty-four hours or so just sort of buzzing around like a restless humming bird.

For each of the places we viewed during our two days out looking, we've nicknamed each house we've seen. I affectionately named this house simply, The Tingly House, because it made a little happy tingly sensation with each new room I walked through~ X3 It's funny because I glanced at this listing online over and over again and it didn't really excite me at all. The pictures really do not do it justice.

A few pictures I took here:

• Front of the house
• Living room when you first walk in
• Kitchen
• Coming down into the basement
• Main basement area
• Downstairs room we'll use as an office
• Downstairs bathroom
• Double garage
• Backyard
• Back deck

It's everything we were looking for. Double oversized garage, giant beautiful backyard, big finished basement with tons of storage space, all appliances are included, newer HWT and furnace, nice shingles, awesome neighborhood and location (it feels like we're still in the suburbs! And we're still close to St. Albert! YAY!), great interior layout, and we didn't even need to go outside our budget. It's just... wow. The only thing we want to really change in it at this point is eventually put some new paint and hardware on the kitchen cabinets, some new carpet in the downstairs bedroom which we'll use as our computer room, and a bit of fresh molding here and there.

(BTW, this is not the "crush" house I slathered over in my last post. Turns out that house was actually one of the worst ones we saw, hahaha. Just goes to show you can't tell bugger all from the online listings.)

We don't get possession July 30th! Oh god I think I may go crazy waiting. (In the mean time I'm sure I will be distracted when the realization of how much money we just spent and the accompanying hyperventilating begins.) Everyone keep the end of July free because you're all helping us move! *Evil laughter* We're cashing in on all of our IOU's from helping everyone else move in the past.

I am so excited!!!

...On a house I saw for sale online.

We haven't actually met yet, but boy is it dreamy in its pictures and sexy MLS listing~ With its newer hot water tank, shingles, and furnace, it's a catch for any woman; the extra big yard space and excessively large garage are practically sinful... *Blush* Obviously I don't want to rush into anything serious so fast. No, of course not -- we need to go out, have a few drinks, get to know each other first. But for now there's nothing wrong with tacking its picture on my bedroom wall just to look at every day, right? ¬_¬ *Ravages while no one is looking* <3

In all seriousness, I'll have to make sure to get our realtor to show us this one, it's sexy in all the ways a first-time house can be sexy without actually seeing it in person. And before you ask, I refuse to publicly post the listing number for crazy paranoid fear that someone also in the market will see it and buy it out from under us.

In related news, we met with our mortgage broker tonight and will have news on our official pre-approval by Thursday. We are THAT MUCH CLOSER. X3