Sayonara - Just For A Little

2012 is here and I'm hitting the ground running. If you've been following me you know that we've had some  home issues (floors buckling, anyone?) and I'm happy that we're finally getting things squared away. We've finally gotten the adjustment back from the insurance company, and we are ready to GO! Next week we are getting brand new floors throughout our ENTIRE condo, and then two days after the floors are installed - get ready to call me crazy - we are remodeling our kitchen!

So over the course of three weeks (fingers crossed that it doesn't take longer!) we will have all new floors, an entirely new kitchen, and a bunch of grey hairs. What won't we have? Well, I won't have time blog. It's sad because there is so much I want to chat about, from recent design projects to the holidays to new things for 2012. However, home ownership is calling, and I've got to unplug (literally) my computer for a few weeks. Looks like January is going to fly by, and while you may see a few posts from me over the next month, but don't set your expectations too high. The magic isn't going to start up again until February; however, I promise there will be some blog magic when all is said and done.

In the meantime, you can follow me on twitter @believenotes for all sorts of fun real-time thoughts, and follow my pins on Pinterest to see what's keeping me inspired. Oh, and as always, you can shoot me an email at believenotes@yahoo.com.

So, everybody, I look forward to speaking again soon, and please don't comment if all of my hair turns grey. Speaking of grey, how pretty are these DIY dollar store fake fruits covered in glitter??

Source unknown - from Pinterest

Derailed by Home Ownership

I took a five day weekend and am preparing to go back to work tomorrow, which I'd love not to do, but hey, girls gotta make money. Any time I take a few days off, I always have these grand plans for how much I'll get accomplished, and then all of a sudden the time is gone, I'm back to work, and nothing really got done.

This weekend, however, I got most things done. Except for two major things, oops. Mostly, they didn't get done because I left those two things for today, and today got majorly derailed. How? Because of home ownership.

You may remember our carbon monoxide scare immediately following the honeymoon, and while that's been fixed, we're now on to the next issue. Water. Damage. From where? We don't really know.

A few months ago we noticed our new hardwood floors buckling. Within two months a three foot section of the floor totally bucked on itself and came up entirely. When we lifted the wood planks we noticed our subfloors were molded. Mold comes from water, we know that, but where is the water coming from? We don't know. Enter insurance companies. Yes, plural, since we own a condo we also have to include the insurance company for the building (since the subfloor technically belongs to the building and not us).

Here are a few pictures of the floors, which need to be replaced entirely:

Molded subflooring

part of where the floor raised completely & more mold hiding out underneath

can you see the rippling & buckling down the entire hallway?

 So on top of all the other lovely things we've got going on, we're also waiting for an engineer to come search for the leak, and once we find that bad boy - it's new floors for us! Hopefully our home won't look like a disaster for the holidays.