Christmas cards vs. Our new address vards?

I always have such high aspirations of being this Martha Stewart-Betty Crocker-Ty Pennington wife, but I can never quite get there. I work long days in a city that's about a 40 minute drive from where we live and by the time I get home and either cook dinner or eat dinner with The Husband, I have no energy and it's pretty much bedtime. I subscribe to Better Homes & Gardens, I read tons of blogs that give such good decorating/home improvement/cooking ideas, but the reality is, I'd rather spend those few precious hours (sometimes minutes) after work with The Husband before he falls asleep (which is usually the way it works in our household. I'm a night owl, he is not).

We got married on 12/27/08 and last year would've been the year to send out our first family christmas card with a wedding photo on it. Well...we missed that bus. Now we have moved into a new home and I'd really like to do a christmas card with pictures from all the fun stuff we did this year, as well as a photo or two of our new home. However, I haven't gotten on the ball yet (did I mention I work 10 hour days?) and now I don't know what to do. I've designed a couple and have been happy with the result, but because we are thinking about including a picture of the house with our new address, we;d have to get a folded card, not just a flat one. I've designed one I really like at Shutterfly but, while not expensive themselves, we'd need to order around 100 cards, maybe more, plus postage = more money then I'd like and money that we should really be putting toward the house.

Here are some of the cards I found at Shutterfly. We have a lot of friends/family who do not celebrate Christmas, but I still want to include them in our seasons greetings, so we prefer to stay away from the "Merry Christmas" cards.


I love the colors and style of this card.
This card is my absolute favorite. I LOVE the saying and the monogram! Plus, it has enough room for us to put pictures of all the fun things we did this past year on the front and then room for a picture (or three or four) of the new house! Plus, this song ("What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong) played while The Husband and I did our candle lighting during our wedding ceremony.

Absolutely LOVE this card. The message is so simple and the perfect way to send our friends and family joyous holiday greetings.

Again, I love the colors of this card and the message is so simple, yet is exactly what we want to say.

Some flat cards I've found that I really like, but not sure will work for including our new address (They don't give you a lot of room to add anything more than your name):
So cute! Love the colors, love the message and LOVE the picture of the two little ones. Adorable!
Super cute!
Adore this one with all the fun colors and it's a very cute way to let your family and friends know what you've been up to this year. I love it so much, I think I might have to try and make this one work for our card. I'll keep you posted!

So what do you all think? Is it better to do a holiday card with our new address...or would it be best to just send out store bough christmas cards and through in a card that has our new address? I know store bought is so not Martha Stewart of me, but with time closing in and our "house want" pile growing bigger and bigger, what's a girl to do? Or do you think we should wait until after the holidays and send out a "We've moved" postcard? What do you think?

Welcome Home!

Well...we did it! We closed on our house last Wednesday, 11/10, painted/cleaned/ripped out carpet on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and moved in on Saturday. Needless to say, it has been an exhausting, exciting, crazy and chaotic past couple of days. I returned to work this morning for the first time since last Tuesday and it was definitely weird to wake up in our new master bedroom in our new home and get ready for work. My routine was the same (pack lunch the night before, watch the news, shower, do hair, get dressed, leave) but it just felt different. Closing the garage and pulling out of the driveway definitely felt different, but it all felt different in a good way. A great way. A phenomenal way.

We got the three bedrooms painted (including all of the trim, quarter round and closets and ceilings) before moving in. The kitchen, master bedroom and second bedroom are all unpacked and organized, minus curtains (Yikes! Gotta remember to be careful getting undressed - HA!) and closet doors (that were taken off for painting).

Many filled boxes remain that I hope to get to before Thanksgiving, but we shall see. I am a Christmas fanatic (I am that person that wants Christmas music to start playing before Halloween) and I can barely stand waiting for Thanksgiving to pass before getting all my holiday decorations out. Some years I don't wait, but most of the time I do. So, I'd really like the boxes unpacked and everything put away and in its place before I get out the Christmas stuff, however I might have to settle for putting some boxes down into the basement until I can get to them. There is NO WAY I am missing out on decorating for our first Christmas in our new home.

I hope to have pictures of rooms as they get finished, so fingers crossed I actually do it!

This close...

We are thisclose to closing on the house. The husband and I are just anxious and excited to get in there and start working on it. We did some shopping this past weekend at Home Goods, Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond. We have only bought little things, like lamps, pillows, and sheets (for the guest bedroom), but we've also looked at a lot of furniture, like side tables, night stands, bookcases, chairs, foyer tables and kitchen storage. We've found quite a bit that we like, but since we aren't in the house yet, we don't have exact measurements and don't want to purchase anything that might not fit.

We are hoping to close next Wednesday, 11/10. We'd like our closing to be first thing that morning so we can head right on over and get to work. We'd like to clean the house from top to bottom (no one has lived there for almost a year so I'm sure it needs it), paint a couple rooms, replace the kitchen floor and install a shower into one of the bathrooms....all before we move in over the following weekend. Think it can be done? If The Husband has anything to say about it, it will be accomplished! He wants to pull out the air mattress and sleep there even though none of our furniture, tv, etc., will be there. That's how ready he is to FINALLY be in his own home.

The Husband and I spent Sunday going to Ikea with my Mother-in-Law and Home Goods. We found a couple of great furniture pieces that may or may not work. Once we are in the house with our furniture, we'll be able to see what we might need and where things can go. That evening, while my husband and MIL stayed home to hand out candy to the trick or treaters (all 4 of them!), I headed to another Home Goods to find a pillow that I just HAD to have. I had seen it at one Home Goods, but ended up purchasing it in another color scheme. However, once I was home and thinking about it, I realized I wanted the other one. I went back to the original Home Goods, but it was gone! Of course I continued to call other locations until I found it. I had to drive about 20 minutes one way to pick it up Sunday night, but it was totally worth it. It's going to look great. I know you ladies know what I mean and have done this yourselves at some point :)

Going back a couple posts, where I talked about getting more readers/followers, I got some great suggestions from Angela over at Sweet Tea Diaries. I've tried a few (except for that whole Google Reader thing...No idea how that works or if I even installed it properly) but nothing has really worked yet. I'm still trying, though! I hope to post more once we get into the house. We don't have internet access at home, so posting pictures can be difficult, but I will try!

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

S-U-C-C-E-S-S!

We bought a house!!! We put an offer in over two weeks ago, the inspection is done, problems have been taken care of and the appraisal has been ordered. Now we just sit and wait for a close date. We are hoping it'll be at the beginning of November, but at the lastest it will be on November 15th! We are so excited to finally be able to settle in somewhere. Compared to our previous condo, this new home is HUGE and we can't wait to spread out!

The house is older and needs some work. Okay, a lot of work. The kitchen is a complete gut (it's liveable, but I can't wait to get a new one), the 1st full bath needs to be completely redone, there are lots of walls just screaming to be repainted and carpet to be pulled out. However, the house is located in a beautiful subdivision with an elementary school, there is a wonderful fireplace, a nice covered porch, a second full bath that's been gutted and redone, a living room AND a family room, two closests in the master, two other nice sized bedrooms, and a nice yard. It's home and it has felt that way since we first saw it. I can't wait to get in there and make it our own.

It's been a very busy couple of months and now we can finally relax!

Still on the hunt

Since our last foray into buying a home, The Husband and I have seen numerous homes. Purchasing a home is a tedious, stressful and frustrating process. You find so many homes that look great on paper and in pictures, but then you see them in person....and everything is not as it seemed. So last weekend, we spent 3-4 hours looking at homes we'd found on both Saturday AND Sunday. We found 2 houses on Sunday that had great potential. One was completely updated and was in a great location (just a few houses down from the one we put an offer on the week before), but it layed out a little weird and had smaller bedrooms. The second one was gorgeous and had great spaces, but the location wasn't as desireable. Either way, we LOVED the second one and wanted to put an offer in. While we were looking, the homeowner came home from a run. She came into the house, we talked for a few and then...this is so weird...she went upstairs to TAKE A SHOWER! With strangers in her home. A little disturbing, right? Anyway, the point is, she took time to answer our questions and talk about the neighborhood and the house. After she went upstairs to shower (!!!), we left a few minutes later and told our agent to call the listing agent to find out any other information and what was going on since it was a short sale. An hour later we get a call from her telling us that the house already had an offer! Son of a...!!!

Our agent was so mad, she told us she really lit into the other agent about how unfair it is of them to not tell us about the other offer and to keep showing the house and get people all excited. So...no house.

We looked at more on Sunday, all the while still thinking about the first house we'd seen the day before (great location, smaller bedrooms). Then we looked at another house in an amazing subdivision with beautiful streets and well-cared for homes. The outside of the house was just what we wanted. All brick with an attached 2-car garage, a nice porch and nice landscaping that just needed some work, a beautiful backyard with a very nice deck. The inside had some great qualities as well. Separate living and family rooms, big bedrooms, hardwood floors, a huge basement, a big main bathroom with double sinks, a big kitchen and a fireplace! The kitchen was hideous, but had lots of potential. The cupboards could be easily painted, the appliances were newer, lots of cabinet space. Plus, The Husband lays floors for a living, so we could easily (and inexpensively) replace the awful laminate flooring. Hideous kitchen and bathrooms (also outdated, but liveable) aside, we LOVED it! After looking at a few more homes, we left the agent and came back to this house and sat in the driveway looking at it (don't worry, it's a short sale and no one is living there! LOL!) and just talked about the house and what we could do with it.

I asked my husband "Which house do you like better?" He was silent for a while, really thinking about it. He finally answered "This one" and I immediately said "Me too!" I, of course, am always worried about fixing up a house. From the start, we'd both said we could handle fixing up a bathroom or two, but not a kitchen. They are so expensive and I worry we won't have the funds to make it the way we'd like. I don't need top of the line and I don't need it right away, but I still worry. But sitting there, in that driveway, we both felt it. It felt like home. So, the next morning we called our agent, ready to put an offer in. She tells me she'll meet us at her office that afternoon and that she'll place a call to the other agent to make sure there's no problems. She tells me that she'll call me back if there's anything wrong. An hour or two later, my phone rings. I whisper "please don't let it be our agent, please don't let it be our agent." It's our agent. Calling to tell me that there's already an accepted offer on the property. I was so angry, I had to get off the phone as quickly as possible. I couldn't believe our agent had taken us to another house that already had an offer on it!

I called The Husband and cried and vented and snotted all over the place. He was just as angry and called our agent. He firmly, but gently, told her that this would not happen again and that we were tired of falling in love with homes we couldn't have. He also she'd better come up with some other houses for us to look at. She came up with three more that evening (Monday) and now we are seriously debating putting an offer on one of them. It's such a hard decision, though. The location isn't as good as the other one, but it's got great potential, inside and out. It's a really great space and I think it could be a wonderful home. I guess we'll see...

First offer on a house FAIL!

I haven't blogged in a while. Partly because we've been pretty busy looking for a house and with work and partly because I haven't had much to say, or at least anything that would be interesting to the two followers I have! :) (Thanks for following ladies!)

On Sunday, The Husband and I went to the first of 5 houses we had scheduled to look at that afternoon...and we fell in love! We walked around, talked about ideas and then went outside and found the most awesome, most beautiful backyard we'd seen at any of the houses. We both knew this felt like home. We went to look at the other houses, or as our realtor put it "Let's go look at the other dumps" - HA! None of lived up to the first house and we kept comparing them all to the first one. We asked if we could go back to look one more time. Afterward, we went home with the intentions of putting in an offer in the morning.

After speaking to our mortgage guy, he told us he'd need the most current paystub from each of us. Since we are living in a temporary home at the moment, I leave all my paystubs at work...in a city that is about a 35-40 minute drive with morning traffice. First FAIL! We had to drive to my city of employment and all the way back, just to grab my paystub. You can be sure those babies will be coming home with me from now on.

After meeting with the mortgage guy, we booked it to our realtor's where we found out there was another offer coming in as well. We decided on our best possible offer, wrote a schmaltzy letter about us and how much we'd been looking forward to buying our first home together since meeting and how we'd fallen in love with their home and how beautifully they'd cared for it and sent them both off by fax. That was at 1:50pm. Almost exactly 2 hours and 40 minutes later, my husband got THE CALL. Turns out the other offer was a FULL CASH offer and they decided to accept it. However, the agent made sure to tell us that the sellers "really appreciated the letter and would've taken our offer if the other one hadn't been cash." Yeah, thanks. I feel SO much better now.

We are so disappointed and upset. Everything we find that we really like either already has an offer on it or it's out of our price range. The ones we are finding are outdated and not exactly the location we want. I am getting so stressed that we'll never find something we love and will want to live for years to come.

Back to the drawing board.

What about you guys? How have your house hunts gone? Any advice?

Lean with Green?

*I apologize in advance if this post is all over the place. It's kind of how my mind works sometimes.

The Husband and I have always been spenders. When we were single, we didn't have to worry about someone else or a family and now that we are married, we have a big enough income to do the fun things we enjoy doing as well as pay the bills every month. However, that was when our mortgage was low and our bills weren't too bad. Now that we are looking to purchase a home in the next few months, things need to change, but I'm afraid we won't be able to make the changes. We are so used to spending our money instead of saving.

The Husband and I don't go on extravegant trips, we don't eat at expensive restaurants, we don't go to a lot of concerts (maybe 2-3 each year), we rarely go to the theater, I don't get my nails done every week, we don't drink overpriced coffee from Starbucks, I try to go to the library for books instead of buying, I rarely buy cds and we don't go to a ton of movies. What we spend money on is shopping (clothes, bags, home decor and groceries) and going out to eat. Those are the things we enjoy spending our money on. Obviously we are enjoying it a little too much :)

Along with the cost of moving and paying to get out of condo when it sold back in June, we also had quite a few unexpected expenses over the past four or five months that ate away at the small amount of savings we'd accumulated. Now we are back to where we were four months ago, with a small savings, but I don't feel it's enough. We need to put more away each time a paycheck comes in. We are trying our best to cut back and decided to cancel our vacation to Sunset Beach, North Carolina in 2 weeks. We hate to do it, but my husband is in a line of work where he's not lucky enough to get paid vacation like me. If he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. And when you're trying to save up money, that doesn't help. At least when I take vacation and spending money, I'm making it at the same time.

Every few weeks, I get super stressed out about money. I get an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and I feel my heart start to beat harder and faster. It's not that we don't have enough money to pay the bills and also enjoy doing fun things. It's that we don't have a big enough savings. I mean, you never know when something's going to come up - like a car repair, a house repair or a sick dog (one of those unexpected expenses over the last four months). Plus, when we finally do get into a house, we're going to need things, like a lawn mower, yard supplies, and whatever else. I know we'll be able to afford a nice house in a comfortable (for us) price range. We are both very adament that we don't spend past our means and get some ridiculously huge house that we can't afford. However, affording it means cutting way back on all the fun things we enjoy doing now, such as going out to eat, movies, shopping, concerts, trips, etc.

We've definitely improved over the last few months, spending half as much and putting the other half away. I am looking into getting a second job to help as well, but I still feel like there is more we can do. I don't feel that we are giving it our best shot at putting money away. I can't help it, I still enjoy shopping and going on trips.

I am going to NYC with my mother at the beginning of November. I am lucky in that she is paying for most of the trip and we have free airline tickets to use to get there and back. All I really pay for is the extras - shopping mainly. I also have an opportunity to go to Disney World in October for a few days for a reunion with some of my sorority sisters. Again, airfare would be free (we have extra tickets to use) and since two of my sisters work at Disney, hotel rooms will be pretty inexpensive and tickets will be either free or very cheap. They've asked me to go every year, and every year I've said no. Now I have these free airline tickets and really want to go. What do I do?!?! The husband has said I can go, but I feel so guilty! He stays at home and works and I go and play?

How do we find a balance? Not just a balance, but a good balance? A balance between saving and spending, but still doing these fun things that come around? What do you do to save money? Where/how do you cut back?