oh to be creative

Blessings

We've been saving for the house for a while now. We were very excited to have the low interest rates as well.  We felt luck to be able to get a 3.75% loan but just yesterday we were able to lock in at 3.50%. I was soooo happy that we were able to get that rate.  So much better than we even planned and we felt soooo extremely blessed.  Our goal was to have our house payments about the same as our rent payments give or take.  So lucky are we because with the new interest rate our house payment will be even less than our rent payments ! So blessed and I am not even sure why sometimes.

It finally happened!!

As I am sure you already heard from fbook...we got the house!! yahoo!! Super excited. Here are a few pictures from the posting so you can see the inside/yard. So we really are blessed to get this house and it is really cool how things have fallen into place for us and how all the times that things seemed to go wrong on our house hunt turned out to be in our favor in the end.

For example.  We went through three agents and couldn't find one so we just decided to do the work ourselves out of frustration.  That made the selling agent really want to work with us and get our offer in because he makes a better profit.

We called on just the right day.  There was already an offer the bank had accepted but the guy who made the offer couldn't get the financing so the house was on the market again. We called on the house the next day and made our offer the same so that we could avoid going through the entire process again and pretty much just pickup where the last guy left off. This made our short sale about a month long process rather than 4-6 months.

Getting finanacing was a pain and we had to completely start over at square one when we didn't find a house withing the first few months. But we acutally ended up using anther finance company and ended up getting a better rate because of it!

(Please note this kitchen has a dishwasher...big improvement from my last one!)

From Jan to April we practiced living off just my paycheck and putting ALL of Richaels into savings.  This helped us budget out better and we were able to save more for our downpayment and afford a nicer home. And wouldn't you know that Richael is currently out of work but we are not even worried because we planned for hard times and we know that we can live off my income for now because we have been doing it for months.  

 The house has an unfinshed basement so we only have what we need now and it leaves room for us to grow.  Currently 2bed 2bath but can grow into a 4bed  3 bath. And lucky for us, Richael has done remodeling and sheetrock before. So we should be able to finish our basement at a fraction of the price.

Our goal was to have our house payment  about the same as our current rent payment and we were able to do that with this house.  Such a blessing .

CONVERSATION

We were about to say our night prayers on Monday night this was the conversation

Richael: Your turn to pray. And this time can you do it with the same amount of faith that I put into my prayers?

Ronnie: What is that supposed to mean?

Richael: Well on Sunday night I prayed that the bank would get back to us and on Monday and that is exactly what happened. That is called faith.

Ronnie: Oh BLAH!

And of course the most exciting part of it all is that I MIGHT be able to get a garden in in time and I most CERTAINLY WILL get my hammock up.

Textured wall paper

My sister called and wanted me to buy a house so we could split the cost on wallpaper. I thanked her for the kind rudeness of her reminder of my lack of home. Then I was totally offended that she would think I would EVER consider wallpaper. Then she told me about 20 min worth of why this wallpaper was worth it. I probably listened for half the time and then said...ah NO THANKS.

But today I googled it and WOW! She had told me it was painted to look like the real thing...but she did not mention it was TEXTURED. I am a TEXTURE FREAK!!! So ya..its TEXTURED wallpaper to mimick beadboard or whatever. Good ol martha stewart collection. Anyhow just had to share. (not sure if above pic is marthas work but the below is)

The combination of the possibilities and the affordability are KILLING ME!! If only I could have a place to do this for myself.

A whole lotta nothing

Feel like I should blog. Not that I have much to say but here is a little update on my whole lotta nothing. Long story short...put offer on house. Agent tells us that price is already pre approved so it should move throught very quickly... "by next week" and then a week goes by. "By next week" another week goes by. "In a couple of days" another week goes by. And here we stand ...still in our little rat cave. Our current place is not that bad at all, but since we have seen what we could have and we have tasted the sweet we tend to think of it as bitter. I am chompin at the bit to have a yard, to plant a garden, to plant flowers, to put up my hammock. (I know the story gets sadder and sadder). Have I mentioned how much I want a dishwasher or to have actual sunlight penetrate my windows instead of looking out to see asphalt driveway above me? But on a good note...Richael has finished another semester of school! Yahoo! Only 4 more years to go. I know that seems long but in the grand scheme of things it is a beautiful thing! We are really hoping that by next summer he can have an intership in his field. I am just realizing that as I type this information the heading that this is all typed under is entitled "A Whole lotta nothing." and i just want to emphasize that that does not pertain to Richael and his current schooling status. Poor Richaels school status just happened to follow my recent rambling post.