Front Yard

Pin It First of all I'd like to say my mom is a superstar... amazing... incredible.

She has come up to visit us (3 hour trip both ways!) the last two weekends to help us with our house. And by help, I mean really help and tell us what to do - we've never done this after all! But fist she prepared us an awesome and adorable picnic lunch.

Back to the yard... Yesterday she weed-wacked everything like a pro. This morning I woke up to her doing our very dirty dishes (thanks mama!). Then today, she masterminded, and did more than a fair share of the labor for this amazing feat (plus the backyard... which is to come later).

Yep, she is amazing... and this doesn't even show it all! And my amazing husband is a pretty great hard worker too, I think he took about 100 yards to the recycling center to haul all the yard waste... oh yea and he carried all the granite landscape rock! But can you see that stone edging... all me baby! (Even if that is pretty much all I did!)

Here is what we did, mixed in with several trips to the recycling center and the store:
1) Trimmed bushes
2) Raked around bushes
3) Pruned (lopped) off the unwanted bushes
4) Laid PREEN 25 year fabric over the ground to prevent weeds
5) Stapled in the PREEN
6) Relocated rocks to create a natural edger
7) Transplanted and watered some flowers (not in the picture) into the PREEN
8) Put 43 bags of pink granite over PREEN

And tomorrow we will go buy more... because we still aren't done, but the store was sold out of our color of stone! Steps 1-2 were last weekend and the rest we did this weekend.
I've got a hardworking husband and mom... maybe it has something to do with them sharing the same birthday? I swear they're the same... more on that strangeness later, ha!

Big News!

Pin It No dad, we aren't having a baby! But we are doing something pretty exciting... buying a house! We've run the numbers about a 1000 times and have finally jumped into making an offer on a home! (We'll give more details further in the post.)

We got a great deal on a loan from the USDA (read: perfect for a couple living on 1 modest teacher income). This is great because we need a project to work on together... something other than choosing our next movie on Netflix. We are also pretty certain living in a house will be about the same cost as apartment living plus we'll hopefully recoup some of that money.

So here are the juicy details I know you've been waiting for. The house is currently listed at $25,100 less than the appraised value because it has been on the market a year and is an estate sale. Sweet, right? Well, we happen to be looking at the top of our budget even with that schnazzy discount, so we offered $16,900 less than the listing price. That is a full $42,000 under appraisal value. Yep, that's right, we low-balled 'em stayed comfortably in budget. We also wrote a "seller love letter" saying how much we loved the house and how we could imagine ourselves and our future children (that's right dad, but focus on future). Then we waited...

We waited a full and agonizing 2 hours. They countered us... at only $1,500 more than we asked. HOLY COW! We obviously accepted and locked in the deal at $40,500 less than the appraised value. That number is huge, especially in this community where real estate is relatively inexpensive already. And the real estate agent told us our love letter to the seller was very effective. Yep - I'm that good.

We still have a slew of inspections and loan things to go through, but right now we are riding high on the fact that we are going to be homeowners on July 6! We've been told that the mixture of excitement and terror is completely normal - we hope so!

Can you see the terror in our eyes? The terrifying dreams of houses falling apart and negative balances in checking accounts? The excitement of learning new skills together and building something lasting?

I'll give details on the house itself in a later post - for now... YAY!