Barbie Movie Day

 

Today in my life as mostly a housewife, I’ve decided to take myself to the 1pm Barbie movie and so of course I have to wear pink. 

I purchased this dress at Loft Outlet last week. It is a medium weight satin that feels of very nice quality. There are no pockets but I’m willing to live with that.  I got the earrings and necklace at the same time. 

Everyone tells me that trainers with dresses are the new style but I’m pretty uncomfortable with that so far.   Someone suggested lacy socks. Darlin, I am 47 years old. My lacy sock days are in a previous century. 

The jacket (labeled GALLERY) was thrifted many years ago and today it’s just to protect me from the air conditioning at the movie. I’m dainty.

I am going to a theater that is close to our new house. We have lived here for less than two months. 

Rather than do a decades worth of an update, I think I will just pepper in little updates as I post. 

STORYTIME

I had no intention of buying a new house in this area. The plan was always that we would retire to northern Wisconsin, which is where my husband is from. (He is eligible for retirement next Thanksgiving.) 

However, when you have kids, plans change. 

My stepdaughter is a single mom. She and our grandson moved in with us when he turned 3, after living with the other grandparents previously. It didn’t work, because the open structure of our old house did not allow my stepdaughter to really exercise any parental autonomy. My grandson kept looking to grandma and grandpa to override his mom’s choices. 

Also, she is an adult and would like to date and fall in love and that’s difficult in an open floor plan with your parents. 

So they moved out… a whole two blocks away… and we didn’t like that either. She was paying like $1200 for 700 ft.²  Like everywhere else, housing costs have far outpaced earnings.   

So we started looking for some structure that would suit us all. No easy feat.  All the duplexes are in questionable school districts.  Everything in good school districts is open floor plan or all the bedrooms clustered together. 

We even signed a build contract for a lot in our established neighborhood, but we wound up canceling that contract and buying our current home. 

It was an absolute whirlwind.  We bid 20k over asking, 2 weeks extra they could stay in it after closing, and a pass/fail inspection.  And we got it!! 

Our new house was a custom build from the 90s, and only had one owner. They built this house as multi generational housing so they could look after their aging mom. It is kind of like a duplex, even though it is zoned single-family.  

The total structure is massive, at almost 6000 ft.², of which my stepdaughter has 2400 ft.². She pays in her $1200 and we handle the rest.  We can each dog sit and trade off cooking dinner and look out for each other, but we also have space and privacy.  

This house needs a lot of repainting - you see that amazing/horrific 90s sponge paint in the picture above - and our new roof will be installed this coming weekend. But we are so very happy here. It was a crazy choice, but the right one.