Merry Mushroom Kitchen

My mother bought my grandmother on my father's side a set of Merry Mushroom containers from Sears when she was working there back in the late 70s. I have a lot of pleasant childhood memories surrounding my Nana baking and using ingredients from those containers. She passed away while I was in college, and when my mother asked me if there was anything I wanted, the Merry Mushroom containers immediately came to mind.

I've decided to theme my kitchen around the Merry Mushroom set.

I haven't decided for sure on a paint color yet, but I'm leaning toward an earthy paler green -- nothing that can be mistaken for lime green. I'm not a fan of that color at all. I have a few colors saved on Behr's website that I'll probably order samples of from Home Depot and do some test swatches before I make my final decision.

In addition to the container set and a spoon rest that I already own, I ordered a pair of cast iron trivets from the Merry Mushroom line.

My other planned purchases are a wall clock, some replica outlet and switch covers, a valance if I don't get outbid (only a single one was for sale on eBay or Etsy) and some of the spice containers to put on a vintage spice rack that I have yet to acquire.

Edited to add:
I won the valance on eBay!

We're viewing four homes tomorrow and have a definite favorite among the four from the pictures and how much it would cost to live in the area with taxes, HOA fees and the mortgage payment. We'll talk to the realtor about when we can make an offer, but we'd like to do it as soon as possible. I'll know more tomorrow.

Grenadine Dreams

We own a black faux leather loveseat and sofa, which I adore. My husband has good taste. 

Back in early 2012, I bought some cityscape throw pillows from Walmart on clearance for around $6 each to replace the lime green atrocities I got on clearance at Target for $3 each in 2010 when I was looking for something cheap and quick. We were moving into our first apartment and literally needed everything so I was cutting corners where I could.

We've decided to build on the cityscape theme for our living room, with monochrome colors and red.

I ordered some poster prints to match the theme.

I plan on adding probably another print or two when I find something else fitting, depending on wall space.

We picked out or paint color -- Grenadine from Behr.

The Story So Far

We knew we'd be renting for the first part of our marriage. My husband was in the military, and we weren't sure where he'd find a civilian job after his ETS date. Life was a big question mark for 3 months after he came back from his last deployment and started out processing. 

After a lot of job interviews, and more than a bit of panicking, he found a job in Houston. We spent hours looking over apartment complexes in the area. 

Although we would have preferred a 6 month lease, just long enough to make sure his job was stable and go house hunting, we took a 12 month one because it was significantly less each month in rent. Plus, I figured it'd give us more time to get to know the area before we went house hunting.

We started looking into the VA loan in January 2013. Our lease was up in May. We were both rather crushed to learn my husband didn't have enough credit history to qualify while I did. After weighing our options, we signed a 6 month lease extension.

The lender made some recommendations to give him more credit history, which we followed to the letter and waited anxiously for several months. It was a stressful week when we reapplied, but we were finally approved for the VA loan in June! I may or may not have done a happy dance.

We're currently in the process of looking through home listings online and linking our realtor to them. That sadly has not been going well. Apparently a good portion of the homes on the market in our price range aren't eligible for the VA loan because of being HUD homes that are sold as is. 

I personally don't understand the big deal about having minor things to fix, like a tear in linoleum or a small unfinished area of tiling, especially if it cuts down the cost of the home. They're easy projects. I don't consider either of those to be a "safety concern." I mean I guess you could trip and fall, but I trip and fall over my cats all the time. They're definitely not "safety concerns."

Unless you're a bug.

Anyway, for our November 1 move in date, we were told we needed to start making offers in roughly 2 weeks. We haven't even found a house we can potentially make an offer on that we like. Eek!

I sadly get to miss most of the paperwork festivities because I'm going out of town for several weeks to visit family in about a week. I'll come back just in time to pack a whole lot of boxes.

After that, we'll move in and start the point of this blog -- making our first house into a home.