Tomorrow is the big day! Michael did the final walk-through of our new home with the realtor this morning and everything looks great! We close on the house tomorrow morning at 10am! I can't wait!

I have some wonderful friends (thanks a million Angie, Amy, and The Rex's!) and family who are helping us move and have given us a lawn mower and have given us a great deal on a used washer and dryer, and are helping us to move all of our stuff!

Now, I need some help. Now, with all of the new costs of living in our own house, I'm going to need some super tips on how we can be frugal and still save money each month even with all of our new expenses. If you have any great tips on how your family saves money every month (in ANY area, groceries, utilities, decorations, etc...)

We'll move the appliances and lots of boxes into the house this weekend. Next weekend we'll officially move our big stuff like beds and bookshelves and furniture and be permanently at our new address! It will be a long week of anticipation!!

I can't wait for all of us this to come together tomorrow and we'll actually have the keys!  I look forward to hearing your great frugal money-saving tips!! ;-)

Sincerely,
Carrie

PS.. check out Max our new kitten! We seem to acquire a new animal every time we move!! He's really cute and super sweet!!

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Well, we've done it! The house appraised in the amount we needed it to for our loan and we're pretty much set! We've been packing for over a week, and still have a bunch to pack and there are boxes ALL over our tiny little apartment, but we're getting there!

The sellers have dragged their feet in getting some repairs done, so we are finally getting the home inspection done tomorrow. I'm excited, nervous, happy, scared, and joyful all at the same time!

The cats don't seem to know what to think of all the boxes. Mitten, our deaf male white cat, seems to think it's his job to jump into all of the boxes that we bring in the house. He must inspect them before we can use them! haha!

I think overall we've done this as frugally as we've known how. If I did it all over again, I would have put a MUCH lower bid on the house to begin with, but that's old news now. You live you learn! We've found used appliances, except for the fridge, which we really wanted new. We shopped around for homeowner's insurance, and while we didn't go with the cheapest company, we did find one that was cheaper than most and our house will be very well protected with the coverage.

We will have to find ways to decorate very cheaply for right now. Our final costs will come next week at closing. The seller is taking care of the majority of closing costs, but we will be responsible for some of the costs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, that it won't be much!!

Now, I just can't wait to move and get going!

My favorite frugal find this week is a website I just discovered, thanks to another thrifyfun.com reader/poster is www.paperbackswap.com you get books for free! Go check it out! I'm a book-a-holic, so I'm not sure why I've never found this site before, because I love books for a bargain! This is an awesome site! It will help you de-clutter your book collection and get new ones for free!

Have a great day!

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Michael and I are going to Florida this week to see my good friend Jodi! Michael has never flown and this will be our first trip to Florida together! I can't wait to show him everything!! My friend Jodi and her  husband Eric had a son last year named Ryan and I have yet to see him! So I will meet him this weekend!! We are also going to visit Kennedy Space Center and spend lots of time at the beach! I can't wait!! Rita's Gelatti's are definitely on the list too!!

Last night we had a break from doing anything house-related, which was really nice!! We spent two hours decorating my classroom at church for vacation bible school next week! To be totally honest, I was really dreading this (AND dreading next week) but we had a blast decorating that room! Michael is an awesome artist and drew a big sign for me (I'll have to add a picture later! HE did an Awesome job!! He is so creative!!) with the logo to our vacation bible school  - which is  SONFORCE SPECIAL AGENTS!!  I think it will be really cool!! We hung this huge metallic blue fringe in the front of the room so all the kids will have to walk through it to enter into the mission control center! (Well, I thought it was cool anyway!) I sure hope the kids think it will be! Then of course we hung a lot of theme decorations throughout the room! It was so much fun!

I guess as adults we forget to be creative occasionally (especially those of us without kids) so it was really fun to be creative and figure out how to do all that room!! I really enjoyed doing it!!

Well I guess that's enough of my ramblings for now! Have a wonderful weekend! Florida here I come!!!

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Well house buying has certainly been an experience!

 The negotiating was certainly fun (if you think I'm being serious, you've never had to negotiate an offer on a house) and now we're still talking with the bank, and going back and forth with the realtor, who I can say, has not been the most helpful. I will never again go through the home buying process with a realtor who listed the house.

NEVER use a dual agent! I was warned and didn't take the advice, and now I understand why you should not use an agent like this. But even despite that fact, our agent has been less than helpful. I have talked to friends and relatives about how their house-buying experiences have been and they just praised how helpful their realtor was. The realtor took care of everything for them and their mortgage company was more than helpful and made sure to lock them in at a low interest rate.  Our realtor gave us a piece of paper with a list of home inspectors that they had used in the past along with a list of termite inspectors. He also suggested that we find a lawyer. All of our friends stated that their realtor did many of these tasks for them and even made the appropriate appointments. I feel like this realtor has not done a thing for us but fill out the offer. Has anyone gone through something like this?? This has not given me a good impression of how to buy a home.

Well, I can tell you we should have done our homework a little bit more thoroughly and checked out a few places other than just our bank. Our bank has been very helpful for the most part, but I'm disappointed that they did not intentionally lock us in at a low rate last week when we were talking with them. After speaking with them this week, they did lock us in at the current rate, but it's a half point higher than it was when we originally talked. This is very disappointing to me.

Anyways, I guess I just needed somewhere to vent. My husband is determined to go through with the whole process because he likes the house so much, but I feel like we've been stepped on, and I will never go through this again with a dual agent.

Maybe I could write a really good guide for first-time home buyers, there needs to be a good one out there to guide them through the stressful process!!!

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Well, we've made our first offer on a house!

We've received the counter offer and are now making another counter! What a stressful time this has been! It's constantly a struggle between being thrilled to pieces at the thought of our very own house, yet at the same time, frustrating because the owner of the house (who is actually a company that upgrades and renovates HUD houses) is continually trying to up the sell price beyond what we feel comfortable with. 

We've decided that this 3rd offer (or second counter) of ours will be the last and final offer. I am praying that they will take the offer. Please say a prayer for us that either way this works out we will be peaceful with the decision. We know that God knows best and has the best  things in store for us... but sometimes it's hard to trust!

I have been amazed through this process at how ridiculously expensive houses are these days. This house we are making an offer on is a small house, but very nice. From the 70's, in an established older neighborhood. It's the only house we've found that was as nice as it is in our price range. I sure hope this works out.

I wish I weren't so emotional over big decisions like this!!

Anybody had a similar experience? Did it turn out well and to your advantage?

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