fuzzykitty

This is week 10 and  we have grass and faux wood blinds!  We picked final paint colors last week and hope to have the interior painted after closing next week so we can move in quickly after that.

Our house comes with all appliances except for a refrigerator.  I have been eying the stainless french door freezer on the bottom refrigerators for awhile now but the price has been crazy high.   I settled on a GE brand because I had been told that it was tougher to get the LG brand repaired if.  Yesterday Lowe’s website had the fridge that I really wanted for $500 less than I had ever seen it so I just had to go into the store to see if they would indeed honor the price.  It turns out that their appliances are 10% off, through today!  We ordered the fridge and browsed the fans, lights and lawn mowers and left.

I can not wait for everything to come together and for us to actually be living in the house!

For Easter dinner we made tuna steak, green beans, cream biscuits and chocolate pudding.  It was a very low key day.   I also made some hummus.  The hummus and cream biscuits are from my latest cookbook find “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters which I picked up at Costco for $21.49.

On Sunday we went to the Jacksonville Farmer’s Market. I am not convinced that the items sold at the market are very fresh or local, a lot of the merchandise looks like they fell off of a truck. Usually they have the normal vegetables and fruit but this time I saw something I had never seen before! It was a chocolate bell pepper.  It is pretty sweet but it doesn’t taste or smell like chocolate.  I bought three of these peppers, a bunch of green beans, sweet onions, tomatoes, zucchini and a pineapple. They also had chickens, ducks and rabbits. I wanted to take them all home as pets and save them from their fate.

I am on the lookout for a good CSA in the area so that I can take advantage of all of the great local seasonal fruits and vegetables.

 

I made these Lime Meltaway cookies which are full of lime juice and zest for Darrell’s co-workers today.  I didn’t want something dyed green with food coloring so I thought these were a nice alternative.  The recipe was very easy to follow but I still messed it up by adding two sticks of butter instead of one and half sticks.  Oh well, everything is better with butter!

I can hardly believe that we are scheduled to close on our house at the end of the month.  For the most part this whole process has been fantastic.  Our sales woman, contractor and design coordinator have been outstanding and eager to help in every aspect.  The only painful part has been wrestling with the mortgage people… and we are still wrestling.  You’d think that since we are closing at the end of this month they would have verified that we were indeed eligible to  use our VA loan credits again.  It turns out that there is some problem with our eligibility and we were  told late last week that we need some proof that we no longer owe on our previous house.  It would have been nice to know this sooner as the mortgage guy told me that we need to have everything sorted by Wednesday if we want to close on time.  Isn’t it the mortgage guy’s job to ensure that we are eligible before even attempting to get such a loan for their customer?  Ugh, this whole thing has me stressed out but I suppose we have done all that we can by contacting our previous lender to obtain a letter saying that our loan has been paid in full to give to our current mortgage company in hopes that they will electronically pass the info along to VA and change our status.  Starting next month we are playing a hefty month to month rent for our apartment so at least we will have a place to live if the closing date is pushed back until this is sorted.

We now have some trees, bark, counter tops, carpet and a garage door opener! It looks like the grass will be put in soon. I have also made another appointment to meet with our design person to help pick the perfect interior colors so we can paint soon after closing.

Darrell finally passed his kidney stone this morning! We were both very happy to see it.

This week I made an angel food cake but it did not turn out very well. It was dense and eggy. I think I might make some cookies from Martha Stewart’s new cookie book because they all look so good. It would be fun to bake my way through it but I think that I would gain way too much weight if I did that!

We were out of town this past weekend so this photo is a couple of days late. We now have a garage door, counter tops, shower, door locks and A/C! The door locks prevented me from getting the pictures I wanted of my kitchen so that I could better determine a paint color. Hopefully we will be able to get inside sometime soon.

While in San Antonio we got to see some of our family and friends and eat at a few of our favorite restaurants. We finally got to go to Le Reve and stuffed ourselves silly with all of the amazing food included in the eight course tasting menu. The rest of the time was spent at the clinic, emergency room, or in our hotel room because Darrell was in such terrible pain due to a kidney stone trying to find it’s way out. He is still in pain and has not passed the stone but is being monitored by our doctor here. He is on a steady diet of vicodin, Crystal Light (by the gallon) and rest. I will be glad once he is back to his old self. I hate seeing him in so much pain.