What Ana Does

It's big and blue and in front of an absolutely awesome house -- come and buy my house. You won't be sorry! And there's even a cute kid available for pictures and tours. Icing on the cake! VANNA WHITE, WATCH YOUR BACK! By the way ... that's what she wore for school picture day, today. Adorable, no?

Sure, we found this great house in a lovely neighborhood at the lower-than-right price. So now what do we do? It's a gamble with risks every direction we look. We don't do well with risk. Ugh. We continue to talk to the team of lenders, realtors and relocation folks we have the phone numbers for. A decision will shake out at some point. Vegas, baby!

Now that I've decided to give myself a few days off from staging/home improvements, I thought I'd gather a list of a few things I've done and saw a major difference. It's quick, painless and I think "WOW, I should have done that a year ago!" Retouch paint -- on walls and trim. I found a half-full can of yellow paint (called Mellow Yellow) in the basement and went over some frame nicks and nail holes in the dining room. I've also taken some white trim paint and fixed up areas where the turquoise trim is starting to show through again. I'm haunted by the turquoise!  Old English on the cabinets in the kitchen -- a little rubbing of that magic goo on the wood and my old cabinets are simply glowing!  Wash the windows - - huge difference. YES, I've washed my windows many times but I always forget the impact it has on the room.  Remove extraneous furniture and fixtures -- "we all live like this" as my realtor says but once you peel back a...

Doesn't matter that the day was a success, we needed wine and delicious Italian food to recover from the fatigue of seeing 9 houses! And this certainly helped ...

FANCY BROCHURES I got the house to absolutely sparkle this morning (after losing sleep from stressing) and dashed out for a playdate -- but not before receiving kudos from my realtor for job well-done.  Hooray me! MY VISITORS The playdate was a lot of fun, so I didn't think once about the parade of strangers trudging through my house, peeking into my closets and assessing the house's worth. (Though, now I am. Yikes!) When we returned there was a pile of 24 realtor business cards on my dining room table and the dining room buffet was stacked with info about my lovely house -- including a stack of glossy ads with my house on it. Fancy! Now let's hope all these realtors have clients DYING for a house just like mine and my phone rings off the hook arranging viewings for the next few weeks. Fingers crossed!

ROOM WAS CLEAN 5 MINUTES BEFORE THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN It SO goes around.... It's super important to keep the house clean for the open house tomorrow so what does my three-year-old say? "I don't like clean! I like messy!" Oh Mom, revenge is a dish best served a few decades later, no?

I spend a lot of time thinking about what a buyer would think when they walk through the house. I stop at different spots in the house, put my hands on my hips and survey my surroundings. I pretend I haven't spent the last five years in this room -- cleaning it, decorating it, chasing kids in it. And can't remember what it looked like when we first moved in (which was a 1960's disaster - see past the paint, people!). Then I make changes to the way furniture is arranged, move clutter to the basement or reorder books. If I get really desperate, I might have a future as a home stylist on HGTV. I'm getting pretty good.