Big Announcement - I found the silverware!

Finally, while going through some boxes last night to find a few more staging items I found my silverware. I can't tell you how glad I am to not have to eat from awful plastic silverware. My staging got good reviews and I will be adding several things this afternoon. Staging is fascinating and I attended a meeting with a local interior design guru - Cathy Sorbe this week. She made several recommendations including using neutrals, and neutral does not mean all beige. I'm all for that, I am so far from a beige person I though I would die thinking I had to paint my home all beige to sell it.
Cathy also said large area rugs, large art and large foliage are good items to use. Well I have everything except the large foliage. I'm into real plants and I don't much care for faux plants, but she does have a pear tree in her shop I rather liked.
I will let everyone know what advice she gave me on adding to or pearing (pun intended :) - down my staging.

Our Home is For Sale in ALTA

Check out a few pictures of our home










This is my apology to all my readers, as most of you know we (my husband and I) have been so busy lately that we can't see straight.


Our home is for sale in Alta, we bought a building that we plan to gut and turn into our new home. Somewhere I packed the 3 sets of silverware we have, over a month ago, and I still haven't found a single one. We were greatly blessed by our Summit Chruch family and all the help they gave us in our move, we could never thank them enough!
We were living out of boxes in the lower level of our new "home" as we got our home in town ready for sale. Getting ready included exterior paint, interior paint, new garage siding, new carpet, 2 bathroom updates, refinishing the huge front porch floor, building a new staircase to the basement, mowing every other day due to rain every day, staging, not to mention all the cleaning after drywall sanding and getting it all done within 3 weeks. Can you say TIRED?

Well the house in town is done, although I have asked Cathy Sorbe of Elements located at 1701 W. Milwaukee Ave, Storm Lake 712-732-2385 (local design Guru)to fine tune it.
She is awesome!

Will a Short Sale Ruin My Credit - In a Word YES

I came across this excellent article by one of my favorite bloggers- Elizabeth Weintraub, on About.com. This is a really important and potentially dangerous type of transaction for Realtors. If you want to be up to date follow the link and tread carefully it is dangerous out there nowdays!

Our area is seeing foreclosures slowly creep up but our market is still very solid here in Storm Lake and Alta Iowa.