The Delicious Smell of Freshly Baked Homemade Bread...

(apologies for the many edits!)
... that's what permeated our first house in 2004 on the day it went on the market and we had the first showings scheduled. This turned out to be the day we sold it too -- we had two offers that very evening!

The three big loaves of whole wheat bread had been baked by my mother and mother-in-law, who were at our home at the time, awaiting my son Linton's imminent birth (poor MIL and FIL missed the birth just because Linton decided to arrive on the very day they were to fly to Texas to my BIL's wedding). When we got back home that evening, after accepting the first offer, we took a photo of the two mothers, triumphantly holding the loaves of bread. Of course it was not the smell of bread that "sold" the house to the potential buyers,* but my mom was just so happy that they had made the effort of bake that batch of bread (we'd read somewhere that this would help to sell the house) that she had to celebrate. (I looked for the photo, but it was taken on my dad's "real film" camera, so I'd have to scan it. maybe later).
Nothing of the sort happened with our second house in 07. I was even away in Brazil when it was sold. It was still an incredible sale, a newly millionaire daughter buying the house for her dad and paying in cash (with the full price on escrow). Something like that "never" happens, but it did.

Well, this time around, I'm trying to "help out" a bit, so whenever I can, I bake something just before we have a showing. Last week it was only biscuits and then croissants, from refrigerated cans. Today, though, I made pizza dough from scratch. The smell was delicious for the first showing at 4 pm, but I guess it got weaker for the 6 and the 7:30 pm showings. Let's see if this little trick helps at all ;-).

I hope the house sells. It wasn't meant to sell last year because we really needed to live on it one more year. Now, I just hope there are no showings tomorrow since the temperature will spike into the 90s! We have no central air conditioning and haven't yet installed the window units. The bedrooms upstairs, with the low ceilings, are a veritable oven in the summer. But hush! Don't tell the prospective buyers!

P.S. Oh, and just a note regarding those nasty comments from a month ago. We'll pay every single penny we owe on this here house. The renegotiation was not finalized (and most certainly won't be since these things just go so slow and now the bank knows we're selling), so no tax payer money will come into our rescue. I just hope we break even or, better case scenario, can take at least enough to pay for the new roof, which we still haven't finished paying for.

* BTW, the lady who bought our first house was so captivated by our home decor (living room, I think) that she took pictures of everything intending to be inspired by it in her future decoration. Wow. I just felt like Dooce for a moment there ;-).