I'm going to play show-and-tell today... or join me on the roller coaster

First, the as promised pictures of the newly painted Folly. Not a bad change, huh? Our lesson here is that even if it is not perfect and exactly how I would fix a room, a coat of paint is always better than just living with ugliness.

Look! No horrible painted stripes on the ceiling!

Here's what you don't see in the above photos.

It's not what you would call clean, I know. This is because our wonderful realtor called us a week ago Sunday and said the possible offer was so strong, and they were planning on stating those glorious words, 'as is' in the contract, that we were told to put all work involving time and money on hold. So that's what we did... for an entire week. 

It was a long week. 

In the meantime, I decided that maybe actually looking at other potential homes would be a wise idea. This explains why posting was done at odd times and with only vaguely engaging content. Well, we found a house that we loved and would work perfectly, except that we didn't have an offer.

The past twenty-four hours have been stressful to say the least. First, late yesterday afternoon, we received a contract on our Evanston house. It's a good offer and will allow us to do what we need to do. Of course, this was when we still thought we had some time to figure out how we would make the money work and then make an offer on the other house, which I have been increasingly enamored with.

But....

Literally as I was writing this, I received a phone call from our realtor out there who said the sellers of the other house just were handed a contract from another potential buyer. 

Wah! Wah! Wah! Wah!

We are now hastily trying to get all of our ducks in a row and will try to submit our offer for the house this afternoon. 

It would be a significant understatement to say that my stress level is currently off the charts. Please, please, please pray that everything works out. 

Please?