so much to do, so little time…

i told myself i wouldn’t think or worry much about all that needed to be done before The Big Move back to california until after the new year. so from mid-march until december 31st, i lived in a state of general blissfulness with only the teeniest, tiniest seed of concern buried back in the furthest corner of my mind.

on new year’s day, the teeny, tiny seed of concern bloomed into a full-grown oak tree of worry. all in one day!

it is now january 14th (!), and i’ve been busy making lists, selling stuff on craigslist, looking into moving companies, and deciding how to downsize all our stuff so that we can move from our current home into a place roughly half its size (for double the monthly payment– why are we moving again?!).

unfortunately for us here, the housing market has slowed down to a crawl. there are three other places for sale in our small complex and we’ll be the fourth. the most i’ve ever seen before have been two for sale at a time. ours will go up for sale next month.

so, in an effort to make our place more appealing, we’ve been doing fix-it projects, touching up paint, and last week, bought brand new appliances for the kitchen! i’m happy to be able to use the new stuff for a few months at least- especially the new, smooth-top stove. the two big burners decided to stop working on my old stove (making it tricky and frustrating trying to cook dinner!), so having all the burners function properly is wonderful. not to mention the easy cleanup of the smooth cook-top. no more crusty drip pans- hooray!

here are the old appliances- they don’t look so bad in the pictures, but definitely weren’t working too well with everyday use:

and here are the lovely new appliances:

to ‘break in’ the brand new oven, mikey helped me bake cookies!

in other, unrelated news, my friend lorie and i went to get haircuts last thursday night. here’s my new ‘do (i didn’t like how any of the pics of the front of my hair looked, but love this shot of allie-girl!):