Quick Photo of Table Rock Lake

I didn't want anyone to think I fell off the planet since I started posting here more frequently.  When I came across this nice shot of Table Rock Lake I saw for a property listing on Murney, I wanted to share it as it's such a lovely shot.  I'll be talking more about the lake, you can count on that.

Vintage Butternut Delivery Truck

I don't know the year of this old Butternut Truck.  I saw it on my grocery trip to Walmart in Branson West this afternoon.  I just had to take a picture.

If anyone knows the year or more about this truck, let us know.  Also, there seems to be a total lack of history on Butternut.  I didn't even know whether it still existed or not.  I guess it's part of Hostess and does exist, but other than that, I couldn't locate any cool history on the brand.  If anyone has anything to share about Butternut in the past or has any fun Butternut stories to tell, please do.

A-Frame Paradise

I don't know how many A-Frames I have posted about, but I like them so much, I'll always be putting them here when they come on the market.  I'm going to have to go back and do a count of my A-Frame posts because now I'm curious how many I have.

I particularly like this one.  It has a very good feeling and I like the look of it.  It appears that a coat of interior paint would do the trick.  I wouldn't be surprised one bit if I end up living in an A-Frame when I go to buy my home.  I'm starting to wonder if it's fate with the amount of A-Frames I've come across.  It sure is nice to return to my habit of posting on real estate, especially now that I'm down here and up close and personal.  It makes it so much more real that I'll be owning a home in the Ozarks someday.

Is that countertop in the kitchen not to die for.  I love it!  It is so long, you could do so much prep for cooking and baking on it.  That is fantastic.  I like the outside too being nestled in the forest as it is.

I found this via BidSelect, which is a HUD site.  I don't typically find rural properties there as they tend to offer more city properties.  It is 663 square feet, which is the ideal size for me, and two bedrooms with one bath for a mere $27,000.  It is located near Lake Taneycomo in Merriam Woods Village which is right next to Rockaway Beach, not far from Branson.

Here's the listing broker's contact information:

RE/MAX Associated Brokers
109 North 6th Street
Branson, MO  65616
Phone: (417) 334-1374
Fax: (417) 334-5959
Email: Kelly Grisham

As usual, if you buy it, invite me over.

A Typical Family Scene

Here's what life looks like when nearly all the dogs decide to show up downstairs.

 

This is Sarah and she's very sweet.  This is the first time she's jumped up on the couch.  Luckily, I'm prepared because I have my Ozarks Crescent Mural blanket covering it up.  Gee, everything looks so cluttered and I promise it's not.  I'm pretty minimalist.  I only keep the things I love and use.  You can see the recliner I sit in with my sweater sitting there and my laptop.  I grab the laptop and set it on the arm of the chair and get my work done.

 

This is my dog, Kansas.  She is also very sweet.  You can see a birthday present on the coffee table.  The girl owner has a birthday coming up.  I do need to come up with names for both of the people I rent from, since I won't divulge their actual names here.  I just need to create some cute pseudonyms for them.

This is Samson, the little guy.  He is so cute.  I love his walk and the fur that sticks up on the end of his paws.  He loves road trips, so any excuse to hop in the car and go for a ride and he'll be right there.

You saw Maguire in the last post and he's here in the room too.  So only one dog is missing and that's Weezer, a girl.  I have my Saint Bernard and the owners' four dogs include two boys and two girls.  There's also four cats of theirs, but they are all older, so they never venture downstairs.  I am currently cat-free.

They're a fun bunch and make life a joy.

Early Morning Pictures

I'm a night owl, so I'm up all night.  I work at home, so I just have the TV on in the background and I get my work done.  This morning, I noticed a lot of pretty pink in the sky, so I grabbed my Handycam and took some shots.  I need to learn how to adjust the settings on it because it sure didn't capture the pinks and oranges in the sky.

In the last one, you can see part of the house.  I took these from the lower porch, since that's right out the door of where I live.  I did have one shot that captured the pink better than any of the others, but unfortunately it's too blurry to post.  I'm looking into getting a tripod.

Here's a cool one I got of the treetops in the sky.

Then Maguire came around.  He's hilarious and he's one of the four dogs that belongs to the owners.  He kept moving around so much that I got these shots and a bunch of ones with just various body parts or blur.

The shot right before he decides to stroll off and do his own thing is reminiscent of his night.  The story is that his sweet owner said he got her up in the middle of the night to go outside.  He had heard or sensed some deer because he immediately took off running after them.  Maguire looks like he's still sensing something in that particular picture, but apparently not.  He hangs around and his slow mosey a few moments later means not much is up.

Branson Pic

I took a quick spin through Branson today with the woman who lives upstairs that I rent from.  I saw the quaint downtown and I will definitely be doing some pictures there later.  I jumped out long enough to grab a few shots of the waterfront.

Branson is situated on Lake Taneycomo.  It is about 20 miles east of where I live.  Today I used my Sony Handycam, which takes much better photos than my iPad 2.  It looks a bit fuzzy, but that's probably because the sun was shining so bright, I couldn't see what I was shooting.

I want to offer a bit of background on why I was spending so much time with my series of property posts.  I was helping my Mom out in Kansas, so I wasn't in the Ozarks to be up close and personal to do any photos myself or to talk about life here.  Plus, since I'm sincerely looking for a home, it just made sense.  It kept me connected to the area and that felt good.

My Mom doesn't drive anymore and so she needs someone to pick up groceries for her.  I also enjoyed cooking for her and doing household chores.  She's not in any medical need and she can do everything herself, but she likes being pampered as much as I like doing it, so it worked out.  But being an adult, of course, I wanted to get back to my life and so here I am.  Another sibling is doing her shopping and looking out for her now.

I just felt the need to put a perspective on why all of my posts may have seemed like they were long-distance.  It's because they were!  After I left my place in Douglas County, Missouri, I went to Kansas.

Branson today was a sweet reminder of my lovely parents who honeymooned there in the late 1940s.  My dear Father who I love very, very much passed on in 1990 and I know my Mom misses me a great deal since I've come back here.  I miss her too.  I am very blessed with wonderful parents and I am grateful for everything they do and have done.

Here's Home

I love my new home.  This is where I will be for the next few years.  As you can see from my ticker at the bottom, I'm still in the savings process for my own house.  I want to buy outright, so I'll incur no debt, which means I have to save every penny.  That's no problem.  There's a lot of satisfaction in buying things that way.  That's what I did with my New Beetle Sport and my car means so much to me because of doing that.

So I know I said initially I'd be staying in a resort, but it turned out someone responded to my ad on Craigslist and now I live in the lower level of a beautiful home.  The folks upstairs who own the house are super sweet and I get on with them just fine.  I love the layout downstairs and it's not a basement at all as the house is built on a slope, so I'm actually very far off the ground.  All of my things look so pretty here and I know my Saint Bernard is thrilled to return to her typical life.

Here's some photos of the little bit of Table Rock Lake that peers out between the trees.  I hear in the wintertime that the lake is so clearly visible that it's like being right next to it.  We aren't far at all from it, just up on the hill above it.

So the first three views are from the deck out toward the lake showing the transition from late afternoon to dusk to sunset.  The pretty pink in the sky is nice.  The last two are of the deck and you can see part of the house and how pretty it is.  You'll have to excuse the quality of the photos.  I used my iPad 2 because it is so easy to take pictures with it and I enjoy it.  Unfortunately, the iPad doesn't have a great reputation for quality photos, but it gets the job done.

An Additional A-Frame

I'd be amiss if I didn't cover this A-Frame before I left.  It is in Merriam Woods, which is right next to Rockaway Beach and very close to Lake Taneycomo.  All just minutes from Branson.

The listing agent is Gerken & Associates Realtors and it's being sold for a price that is a bit higher than I typically talk about on here, but it's still affordable at $56,500.  There's no direct URL to the listing because of the way they do their searches through the IDX, but it is MLS #334480.

It might be a tad too "neighborhoody" for my tastes, but I just love A-Frames and can't pass up the opportunity to talk about one when they come on the market.  That bedroom is just wonderful and the rest of the rooms are beautiful too.  It is just the right size at 2 BR/1 BA/1100 sqft and it has a fenced-in yard, which is nice.

The good news is that I'll be leaving late Tuesday or early Wednesday to come down to live near Table Rock Lake.  I'll be taking lots of pictures and talking about my daily life, so things will be changing up around here!

My Latest Finds

I've discovered Murney Associates Realtors and I like their website, so I've been saving my favorites there.  It's a larger real estate agency in southwestern Missouri.  Everyone has their own idiosyncrasies and for some reason, Murney's interface really appeals to me.

I'm going to show you some of my favorites right now, although as you can see from the ticker at the bottom of the blog, I'm still in the savings process, but I'm doing really well with saving.

1010 Valley Road, Rockaway Beach, MO 65740
2 BR/1.5 BA/784sf
$24,900

They are listing the address as Rockaway Beach, but it's actually located in Merriam Woods, which is just behind Rockaway Beach.

This one really appeals to me because I like the way it looks from the front.  I like the two huge windows in the living room.  They almost look like sliding glass doors, and I can't really tell, but I think they are windows, but if it's a sliding glass door, even better.  I also love the deck beneath all of the trees.  There's quite a bit of paneling in this mobile home and I'm not opposed to paneling, but it's a bit much, so I'd have to do something about that.

175 Kansas, Rockaway Beach, MO 65740
2 BR/1 BA/1012sf
$19,900

I like this house right in Rockaway Beach.  The pink foundation is pretty!  It does need some work, but it's doable.  I love the quintessential street that goes right down to the waterfront and I love that it has the name Kansas in the address, since that's my home state.

370 Buttercup Drive, Branson, MO 65616
3 BR/2 BA/1056sf
$29,900

I really like this mobile home in Branson.  I just like the way it is situated.  The interior is nice too, plus it's on its own lot.  Many of the mobile homes are in parks with lot rent and there's no way I'm going to pay lot rent.  Cute street name too.

411 Shelton Drive, Hollister, MO 65672
3 BR/2 BA/1188sf
$29,900

I really like the view from this one near Hollister.  I've been reading good things about Hollister and I like the pictures I've seen and I get a good feeling about it too.  I can just see myself sitting with my Saint Bernard in this living room.  I can't complain about a spa tub either.

121 Timber Ridge Drive, Hollister, MO 65672
2 BR/1 BA/734sf
$29,900

I like this shotgun house that is also near Hollister.  It looks like a tiny house, but with the advantage of the right square footage, the ideal square footage for me.  It looks brand new inside, like no one has ever lived in it, which is a bonus.  It's very pretty inside and out and the setting is nice too.

Speaking of tiny houses, I haven't completely given up on the tiny house project I spoke of before, but my hopes have been greatly diminished.  I'm having a heck of a time finding land that has utilities and no size on building restrictions.  I thought I'd found one, but it turned out that the supposed utilities were not there.  It's very costly to do a well and septic, so it's not something I'm willing to take on.

Campground Road, Merriam Woods, MO 65740
$2,000

Here's a piece of land that claims to have utilities, so I'd have to check and ensure it does before pursuing it.  I don't know if it requires a certain house size either.  I've been constantly running into the problem in southwestern Missouri with houses needing to be at least 800 sf, 1,000 sf or 1,200 sf.  That's not something you run into in south-central Missouri where no building restrictions abound.  I have saved this land to my favorites, so I can have some hope of maybe finding something out there.

A fellow blogger, Aya Katz, who authors Notes from the Pens, has requested that I mention Orchard House, a place for lodgers in Raymondville in Texas County.  If you are looking to come to the Ozarks and would like a place to stay on nearly 5 acres, feel free to be in touch with Aya.

And I'm looking forward to being down in the Ozarks in less than two months to live in a lakeside lodge until I find a place to call home, so I can cover something other than real estate.