Finally

After more than 2 years of living in our apartment, saving as much money as possible (close to my salary), and driving me pretty much out of my ever-loving mind, I am proud to say that we have BOUGHT A HOUSE!!

What? What just happened?

That's right!! We have been saving so much pretty much since we got married so that we could have a home that we really wanted, and wanted to stay in for a long time. Neither one of us were interested in the small "starter home," so we decided to save and go BIG. We have sacrificed date nights, vacations, shopping (seriously- I haven't been shopping in over a year) and many other fun things for a 20% down payment on a house and it looks like it's finally becoming a reality.

Our plan was to save until February, then get a mortgage, realtor, and start looking for a house. Back in August I was out shopping at Metropolis (outdoor mall in Plainfield) and saw this cute little community and decided to pop in. It's a Centex community, building custom homes at a price. A BIG price, mind you. I went in, talked to the salesman, and brought Mike back the next day. The guy spent several hours with us, walking through the various options, what they would cost, etc.... and the total came to WAY more than we expected to pay. We left a little deflated, and tossed the idea of building a house out the window....

... until the first week of January. Mike felt that the Lord was leading him to reopen the discussion about building a house. He looked online and found that because Pulte Homes acquired Centex, then the base price of the homes had dropped $20K! Wow! It's within our reach now! So in a matter of about 8 days we picked out the options again, found the lot, looked at an existing home, and signed the contract! Whew!

The home we will be building is a Sizemore model. You can check it out on the Centex site... we are going to be in The Settlement subdivision in Avon/Plainfield. I say "Avon/Plainfield" because we will have a Plainfield address, but we will be in Avon schools and pay Avon taxes. Silly postmaster. The neighborhood is really quiet, and it's far enough away from all the city lights so that we can see the stars on a clear night. Yay!

So Lord willing, at the end of June, we will be moving out of our apartment into our very own house! I will try to post pictures here and on facebook of the building process, as this will be very exciting for us. I am extremely pumped about this.... we have so much stuffed packed to the walls in this apartment. Partially due to my packrat husband, and also due to the fact that we just don't have enough room for everything. Just to give you an idea, we'll be able to fit pretty much our entire apartment in the basement of our new house. OMG. I have surrendered to the fact that our apartment will never truly be clean until we move out, because there just isn't room to get around. It's bad, people.

AND when we got married, we didn't get anything new (big stuff like furniture, bed, etc) so we'll finally be able to have some nice things!

Below are some pictures of our lot and a home that is similar to what ours will look like. Ours will have the garage on the other side of the house, and be a different color siding, brick and shutters. Enjoy!!

our muddy lot...