House Hunters - Lansing Edition!

Hey all!

What a fun and exciting weekend we've had! We spent last night at the U2 concert, taking tickets and then enjoying the show! The stage looked really cool, check it out!

The show wouldn't allow any sorts of containers past its gates, including purses. This woman brought her Coach purse, and then seeing that she would have to surrender it, she gave it to me! So I have a new Coach clutch, which just also happens to be in my colors! Very cool!

We spent this weekend babysitting a kitten, who we've named Oli. Video of him below.

We also went house hunting for the first time! We looked at five houses, and eliminated one right off the bat (totally outdated, single floor without a basement and weird layout).

First we went here:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4375-Willesdon-Ave-Holt-MI-48842/74056175_zpid/

It has a big back yard, which we liked. The upstairs has a great kitchen and a beautiful bay-window. The rooms weren't huge, but the basement was finished and had a lot of great storage, bedrooms and hang-out space. All in all, there were technically FIVE bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths and the price is good (89,900).

The second house was:
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/6029-Ellendale_Lansing_MI_48911_M40965-59015

This house was a quad-level, with a beautiful covered back porch and great spaces. The kitchen was great, with lots of counter space, and down the stairs was a great hang-out room that already had a bar (spurring Nate to decide that, whatever we buy, we have to have space for a bar). The draw-back to this house was that the bedrooms were TINY. The master would be fine, but the two guest-rooms were practically closets.

The third house was Nate's favorite, and getting to the online listing is complicated, so I saved the photos and will post them here:

Back Yard

Entry Way

Beautiful Kitchen!

Four-season sun porch!

There is a lot of open space in this house, and the master closet is HUGE (which I adored). The back yard was beautiful, and I loved the sun-porch. Draw-backs: there is no bathroom on the main floor, and the listing says 2 full baths, which is technically true, but the second bath is in the basement and it's more of a wash-room with random toilet and shower tacked on. The cost for this property is $114,900, but some of the listing photos were taken when there was snow on the ground, so we think they would accept a lower offer. Also, mom pointed out that the neighborhood wasn't one where kids could just play outside.

The last property had 'character,' which I loved:
http://hometour24-7.com/5114GrapeArbor/5114_Grape_Arbor,_lansing_mi_48917.htm

The house is beautiful and the neighborhood was great; there was a bouncy castle down the street and it looked like all the neighborhood kids were running around and playing. The yard is fenced and beautiful, and the house is nice and big with a great bay window! The drawbacks here were that the space inside the house was cramped feeling and a little bit awkward, with a lower-level that had a fire-place but really no other definition (office? second dining room? What are you, room?) But the porch on the back of the house was BEAUTIFUL, with space for a bonfire, grilling, and plenty of grass to play. I really liked everything about this house except for the strange room sizes.

So! Let us know what you think! We're not sure that we've found the perfect home yet, and will update you as we keep looking, but we want to hear what you like and don't like about these!

Love to all! Nate & Justine
(Ticket Takers!)

Part One - Looking Back

We wanted to take some time to look back on the last five years and figure out what it meant to us, as well as welcome a whole new batch of Richmond people to the blog. It’s easy to catch up when we are living right down the street, but now that we’re further away, we wanted to include you in our updates!

Getting things wrapped up with the house was at the same time frustrating and rewarding.  We have spent years doing things the ‘right way,’ meaning for instance that instead of just painting over previous layers of paint and wall paper like the previous owners, we would take it ALL down and then paint. We had to repair and replace so many things, it felt weird at the end doing work we came to refer to as Good Enough Work. Will the buyers really care about this? No? Then skip it. Even though we felt like we were skimping, taking a last look around the house we were very proud of everything that we had accomplished. The house also taught us a lot of things; dry walling, plumbing, how to remove wall paper, how to install laminate, and mostly not to buy a house that was built before 1950.

Nate's action shot!

 Both of us came to Richmond because of Earlham, and at first were deeply surrounded by the so called "Earlham Bubble". Your inital interactions with Richmond as an Earlham student are limited to trips to the local grocery store and crossing 40. That is to say the interactions mainly involved loud cars, hoots from their drivers and the occasional thrown object. Richmond's reputation is not held in high regard among the students. However, as we moved towards graduation, and lived further from campus, we began to meet and interact with the real Richmondites. We were pleasantly surprised to find caring thoughtful families eager to welcome some outsiders into their community. We settled into the Old Richmond area and soon learned that off the beaten path of 40 and 27 there were gems to be found. Places like Little Sheba's and Joe's Pizza offered local food and RCT provided the flair.

We both found places that we felt at home - Nate started at Ray Ontko & Company/Doxpop, and loved it. It was so great to feel like part of a business family right away, and he was eager to start learning hands on skills. While college had been an excellent experience, the scope and breadth of knowledge he has gained in the last six and a half years has been fantastic. Now, as he is training a new employee who's starting out fresh like he did, he's getting a new perspective on just now much he has learned. The opportunity to expand his skills and work with such great co-workers will make Doxpop a benchmark for future employment.

Justine started at HELP the Animals before graduation, and in it found a place that she could use and develop all of her skills in an environment that she loved. She made it all the way from cleaning kennels to working as acting manager, learning and growing in each position. Unfortunately, the end of spending time at HELP the Animals went poorly, but as always was a learning experience. She made some life-long friends, and will always work in her free time to help animal rescues and TNR. Luckily, after HELP, Justine got a chance to serve on the amazing board at Richmond Civic Theatre. What an amazing group of people with an amazing group dynamic and work ethic.

Thank you all for the relationships and experiences! We have loved the time that we spent in Richmond!

Part Two - Moving Forward

Being in Michigan has been wonderful so far, we are enjoying spending time with family and friends.

Here is how our week went:

• Monday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, watched Beer Wars together on Netflix
• Tuesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, evening spent working on projects (games, websites, etc.)
• Wednesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, then square dancing in Dimondale and the Green Lantern movie (an early private viewing) with some friends
• Thursday: Dinner with Mom, then a Poker night with new friends with a $2 buy-in where Nate took the pot!
• Friday: Took the night off to relax and recharge
• Saturday: We hosted a barbecue with many of our friends, all sat around the fire and we just talked for hours

Whew! It was a great start to our new lives here, and followed by a week of sushi, game night, helping friends roof and an upcoming U2 concert Sunday.

Here is the plan for the next month or so:
Both sides of the family are coming to Torch Lake starting at the end of July. We don't want to go looking for jobs before then, because we want to be able to be there the entire time with our family, so we're putting everything on hold until we get back from the Lake mid-August. So Nate will continue working remotely at least until then, and I am spending the extra time doing some fun projects and learning HTML. We will be staying at my parents until we go to the Lake, and then (if we don't get any offers on the house between now and then) we'll start looking for a place to go.

My Mom delights in telling everyone she knows that we have moved back in with them. I have to follow up with “for a month, before we find our own place” quickly because I’m afraid that people will think that we’re bums. I think Mom is tickled that we are back (so are we!), but I want to be careful not to let people think that we are part of the Boomerang Generation – moving home to live with Mom and Dad because they have no other choice. In the past we haven't been very good about taking time to relax, so we're treating ourselves to a low stress break before diving head first into our next phase.

One of the things we were afraid of in moving to MI is that we would go to the entire other end of a spectrum – instead of having virtually nothing to do, we would find our schedule filled to overflowing and would have not times for ourselves. Luckily, we seem to have struck a good balance between time out and time at home. It is very important to use this as a growing period, and I’ve spent my mornings catching up on work and reading about future opportunities. We have done a lot of talking about what the future holds, and are considering some webdesign freelance just to see how it goes. Could be a fun experiment that'll give us some experience and (hopefully) some extra play money.

So, things are up in the air and we're just enjoying ourselves for now, but it feels like the right place to be. Family, friends and fun: it's a great combination!