a few things I've learned

It's official! The house is officially "on the market" and now I'm just sitting here waiting for somebody to come view the house and want to buy it (and can). It's crazy. I'm emotional and stressed--although on the road to de-stressing. Getting the house ready to sell was so much more work than I ever thought it would be.

So here are a few things I've learned recently.

1) I have absolutely no desire to ever try out to be "HGTV's Design Star" or "Get it Sold" or "Designed to Sell" or any other HGTV hosting/design show gig. I don't have what it takes.

Kiddo "helping" us get the last of the last landscaping projects done.

2) I am a control-freak. When I feel like I'm losing control, I don't do well. I already had an inkling about this in general when the house starts to get a wee bit overrun with clutter. These last couple of weeks has really shown me a few things about myself that I need to work on. When things start to get crazy and time gets crunched (such as of recent), I don't exactly handle it as well as I wished I did.

Another lesson I can learn from the kiddo...you can play in the dirt, be pretty in froggy rain boots, a pink tutu, and falling out pig tails, and really just enjoy God's creation.

3) When the house went up "for sale" I checked out our listing and was soooo not thrilled with the pictures. Realtor with crutches + lots of stairs in our house + inexperienced dude behind the camera instead of realtor = bad combination. Add in to the mix me (the control freak, perfectionist, and artistic minded) and my dad (who has a love for photography), and a few hours to play and come up with a few better pictures. As a result, both my dad and I learned a ton about staging and taking pics for real estate.

I'm not claiming to be an expert (in photography or real estate), or that I know a whole lot about the ins-and-outs of selling real estate. But I do know what I'm looking for in terms of information when I'm viewing houses in AK (or in past searches) and I can most definitely identify what does not work well. Seriously, a major key is to remember the purpose of the picture. Yeah, of course, you want to take a pretty, eye-catching picture, but it needs to relay information about the house, the space, etc.--not, for example how pretty your bedspread is.

That's what I have for my "lessons learned" post. At least so far. I have a suspicion there will be a lot to learn in the coming months with this move and hopefully, sale. For now, I'm saying goodnight, going to eat some chocolate chip cookies with milk, veg a bit, and then go to bed. Need some serious sleep.