It's OFFICIALLY mine

Well, I got the house on Thursday! I put the offer in on December 14th, so needless to say it has been a process!
Buying a house by yourself is probably the scariest thing in the world I do have to say. My parents actually ended up having to co-sign because I am self-employed and the banks are crazy weird now, but they were out of town on Thursday so I went to closing by myself with a Power of Attorney...which I assumed meant that that covered their signatures....wrong. What it did mean was that I now had the right to sign for them, which essentially meant that out of the 100 pages of house closing documents you have to sign- I got to sign them with 5 signatures. My signature, my dads signature (followed by mine), my moms signature (followed by mine), and then "attorney in fact" after each of those!! It was kinda insane, time consuming and hand cramping. BUT it is officially mine! Whooooohooooooo!
So not much else happened on Thursday, I went and opened up the house windows since it hadn't breathed for awhile and then went and picked up the kids and we came back and ate large ice cream cones on the front porch. We also got to meet a few of our new neighbors and I think they were not only glad that the house was finally going to be fixed up but also because we were so cool...hahaha. I am also thinking that Lucas running circles in the front yard from his ice cream sugar high might have scared off the other neighbors from venturing over....hmmmm.

The Last 7 months

So, just to catch everyone up whether they missed my blogging for the past 7 months or whether you just want to catch up on the chaos of my life here it is in a synopsis:

Last summer we got the old house ready to sell and put it on the market "For Sale by Owner" in September. Got a couple bids, but nothing went through. So the last week of October we put the house up with This fabulous lady Trish Cutsinger and we had one Open House and two more offers and it sold for over asking price. We closed on December 4th and I moved into my Grandmas house on the South side.

Now I have always loved the South side, its familiar to me from always coming to visit when we were younger, it has alot of character because it is alot of older homes. My parents grew up on the South side (actually in the house I am currently living in!). After looking around at different areas it seemed you could get a little more for your money when buying a house. I has started looking for houses back in October and found a few I liked. There are alot of older neighborhoods that have alot of character to them and I even looked at some great old ranches with wood floors. I did find a few that I loved, and even put a few offers in but none of them worked out.

I looked at the "repo" house (as we will refer to it so I don't get stalkers) once in the midst of all the other houses, but the price was high for the amount of work it needed. After my other offers fell through, the price on the Loretta house was reduced and I found out about a type of loan where you can roll the renovation cost into your home loan. I looked into this and decided to make an offer. There were multiple offers so I went highest and best and got it! After pricing everything out it is going to take about $36,000 to bring it up to par, but even once you add that onto the mortgage the house still appraises at $8000 more than my loan amount. And that appraisal is based on me just fixing what is needed, not an unbelievable home renovation like I am planning!! It is also a really great neighborhood which is part of a Historic District of Indianapolis and is very desireable.

So the goal is to not only make it liveable but to bring back some character, add some color, restore some life, and make it my own. Let's get started!

Sometimes its hard

Wow, I could write for days and days about the months and months that I waited to get this house....but all in God's timing right?? Right?? And I could bitch and complain about my mortgage guy and the banks and everything that seemed to go wrong...but its honestly not worth it.
Sometimes it's hard to be patient.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes it's hard to let go and move forward.
Sometimes it's hard to go with your gut and not listen to others.
Sometimes it's hard to know that you are doing the right thing even if it is so painfully hard to do.

Sometimes it's hard to make decisions by yourself.

Sometimes it's just hard to be by yourself.

Sometimes it's hard to understand how you even got to this place.

Sometimes it's hard to not let the bitterness and anger take over your life.

And sometimes it's hard to put your trust in GOD and know that He is leading you in the right direction and that He will provide for you, care for you, and never forsake you.
And once you can do that life gets a little bit easier every day.

And who knows...you might just end up with a beautiful house (or at least one you can make beautiful!)