Life is good, God is good :-)

Hi! I know it's been a few weeks since I've posted, and I'm sorry for that. I have lots of pictures on my camera to download and post, maybe I'll get to that in the next few days.
First of all, God is so good. :-) So, we got all of our tax refund deposited last week and we couldn't feel more blessed. As of Friday, April 17, we are debt free! (except for the house debt) All credit cards are now balance free and it feels so good! We didn't think that at our age, and just having bought a house, that we would be in this position. The best part is, we still have quite a bit left over from our refund so that we can start the big projets at the house. This week we will be ordering our wood flooring, buying our slider for the dining room to go out to the backyard, and start more seriously picking out what granite we want for our kitchen. I can't wait!
We painted our living room, hallway and guest bathroom a little over a week ago. We didnt realize how "peachy" the original color was until we painted over it! Our condo had browns, reds and gold colors and we are going totally different this time around. We picked a very light grey (almost white) and a darker grey for our living room. We used the dark grey on 2 smaller walls as an accent color. Our guest bathroom was baby blue and now it's a cool yellow. Yesterday we went to SLO and bought curtains for our living room, some sheer light blue/grey. That will make a big difference one we hang those up and get our new white wood blinds. It's all coming together little by little and we are having a blast.
My garden/yard is thriving, I'm proud to say. I haven't killed anything yet! :) The previous owners had everything in such great condition I was worried about upkeep. My tomatoes are getting tall and I can't wait to have some fresh tomatoes! I have already used my chives, mint, cilantro and dill - I love having fresh herbs right in my backyard. My blackberry plants are growing like crazy - I have a feeling I'll have more blackberries than I know what to do with - so watch out I'll be giving them away! Yesterday I picked about 5 heads of lettuce worth and a big bundle of green onions, and there is still plenty in the garden. I'm loving it. :)
Caleb's dad was able to come down from Sacramento and visit us this last weekend. It is always nice to have company in our new home. Caleb is very close with his dad and brothers so any time he gets to see them is great. :) On Saturday I went to Riverside (there & back in one day) with my mom & grandma for a joint baby shower for my aunts, so Caleb and his dad had the whole day (with this GORGEOUS weather!) to go to Avila Beach and hang out together. Everything worked out nice.
So that is life lately, like I said I'll try to get some pictures soon.

Home Improvements

We have already almost completed our first change to the house and that is to put in canned lighting in the kitchen. Here are some shots of the work in progress :)

Jim working on the wiring

Jim laughing at Caleb trying to do it

Almost there....

Closer.....

There! Now we have to patch and paint and put some molding around the outside.

Settling In, Improvements, and my Garden

So we have been in our house for 3 weeks now and we are mostly settled. The only things that are left to unpack are obviously the things that we don't need. Random stuff that gets put in a box in a closet anyways. So we'll get to those things soon and either have a garage sale or throw a lot of junk away. We've already given 3 huge boxes of clothes to the shelters!

I have been loving my garden and my flowers. I planted tomatoes, chives, basil, cilantro, and dill and previously existing were carrots, spinach, lettuce and green onions. The lettuce is delicious I picked a bunch last weekend and used it all week. I don't want to buy produce anymore! Here are some shots of my carrots I picked tonight - look at all of them! And the rose is the first rose from my garden, it is so beautiful and smells just as good as it looks! I can't wait 'till the rest bloom.

Blackberries are growing so fast!

Some of the herbs I planted and my tomatoes

Look at those carrots!

I gave them a haircut and a bath. That's better!

Check out the top left carrot, it split into two :)

My beautiful first rose!

All Moved In!

Well, Friday we closed Escrow. Thank God it was so smooth with no kinks in the process. We got the keys Friday at 9am! Saturday was our main moving day. Thanks to the help of great friends, we got everything done in 1 trip. It took a U-Haul, and 4 of our friend's trucks. We are so blessed to have great people in our lives to help! 9:30am Saturday we started loading trucks, and by 12 everything was over to the new house. By Saturday night we had a completely put together kitchen, dining room, living room, guest room, and guest bathroom. The office is partially done and so is our master room. We still have to unpack all our clothes! We got so much done that I already can fit my car in the garage. A few more days and we'll get Caleb's in there. On Saturday, we also got other ammenities hooked up to make it feel instantly like home. Caleb's step dad fully hooked up our washer/dryer, and we had Dish Network set up our TV and Comcast took care of our internet.
It already feels like home, and thankfully our first night sleeping there wasn't too weird. It felt natural!
Here are some pictures of the place. We haven't hung anything on any walls yet because we are going to paint soon. But you can get the idea.

on our front porch

Back Patio

View from our front porch

Living room. Set up, though kind of bare for now.

Dining room, same thing, a bit bare but this room will be completely different with dark hard wood floors and paint on the wall. Oh yeah and nix that weird white & gold ceiling fan.

Another view of the front

Backyard, 2 veggie planters. Blackberries are on the left side against the fence.

More backyard, lemon tree and aloe vera plant

Rose bushes line the house

We are just so excited and blessed. We can't wait to do even more to make this house custom to our taste. We'll post our progress!

Signed our life away

Well, everyone, we did it. Last night we signed our loan docs which is basically an hour of "sign this" "sign this" "sign this" and POOF! As my dad likes to say, we are now a quarter of a million dollars in debt.
Regardless of how you look at it, we are super excited and this week is torture for me. All I want to do is to be at the condo to finish packing and then go put it all in the new house! I have Friday off work which makes it nice, but I wish I had tomorrow off too. Oh well.....Caleb has tomorrow off and is going to go shampoo the carpets so they have a day to dry before we move everything.
Thanks in advance to everyone who is going to be helping us over the weekend and to everyone who has helped us so far. We consider ourselves so blessed to have such great friends and family surrounding us during this time.
2 days.....!!!

Countdown Begins.....

Next Friday (the 13th!) we should be getting our keys......1 week from today! Let the countdown begin.....we are getting so excited and can't wait to be in our new place.

Pray that nothing goes wrong in the next week!!

Packing, Moving and Cleaning....Oh my!

Well move day is fast approaching, faster than I thought! We found out that our closing date should be March 10th which is just about 3 weeks away. Oh man, so much to do! We have TONS of boxes in our house right now but only about 5 of them are actually packed. I didn't know where to start. The only other time I've moved in my adult life was from my room at my parents house to the condo I'm in now when I got married almost 4 years ago. I've never had to pack up a whole house. So, I thought I'd start with my guest room closet because that has stuff that we never use but can't throw away. I got through about 2 boxes then was overwhelmed. So, the last two nights I took everything off the walls and packed up all the pictures. NOW it's starting to look like we are moving. I hate bare walls but I know it'll be fun putting everything up in our new place.


I know I haven't put any pictures up of our house, I keep forgetting to put them on my computer and put them on the blog. But thanks to Google Maps, Street View....I have this image of the front of the house. It's a bit grainy but you can still see how cute it is. =)



I also realized that I need to clean.....REALLY clean our place. New renters will be moving in and I have to have our place perfect in the next few weeks. That is daunting in itself to think of! Thankfully my dad is my landlord, that comes in handy. =)

I know it will all come together, I'm just anxious for it to get here and be done!

Projects around the house

So, Caleb & I are so excited about our house! We're officially in escrow as of a week ago, 6 weeks to go! Our evening conversations are pretty much filled with thoughts of what we want to do to our home when we move in. We are so blessed that the home is so clean and so nice that we really can just move in and don't have to do anything. Even the paint is clean and nice, and neutral. Though, we can't just leave it as is because that'd be boring! So we have some plans.
First, there is a wall between the dining room/hallway/living room, so we are going to make it a 1/2 wall with a supporting column. We want everything to be as open as possible. Then, we are going to put in some dark cherry wood laminate "floating" wood floors. Not real wood, but they look just as good! We both LOVE dark wood floors. We're going to put them in the hallway, entry way, dining room and kitchen. Next is can lighting in the kitchen. The light in there isn't that bad but we love an updated look. We are also going to take 2 hanging cabinets out that kind of get in your way if you're in the kitchen looking into the dining room. In place of the cabinets we're going to hang 2 glass blown pendent lights. We are of course going to paint but the colors still have to be decided. Thankfully we both have very similar decorating tastes. For almost 4 years we've been living with tans,light greens,dark reds and kind of Tuscany villa type colors. We are thinking that we're going to go in a different direction this time to mix it up, but we're still looking for inspiration. The carpet in the house is really nice and neutral so we don't have to change that. We also want to update some more of the lighting and add a ceiling fan or two and also update fixtures in bathrooms. All in all though it's really not too much work. Oh! And I really want to change the kitchen counter tops. They are a light pink 4x4 tile right now. Not really my style =) Thankfully we can live with them for a bit if we need to, because they are in great condition, grout is clean and no chips anywhere. But we want to put in granite tiles. Cheaper than whole granite slabs but you still get the same look. Caleb also wants to re-stain the kitchen cabinets.
I never thought I'd get so excited about home improvements! Everything changes when it's your own home! This morning I saw that OSH was having a sale and I looked through every page! Last night Caleb & I went to Home Depot just for fun, LoL. He is so excited because in the past I've hated just looking at home stuff when we dont have a reason to buy it and now I'll go look with him. =)
One thing that we'll both have to get used to is yard work. =) The yard isn't huge but the couple kept it in GREAT condition. So, that means that the other thing on our list to buy? A Lawnmower! I'm sure Caleb is excited about that. Hehe. I'm going to have to start studying stuff on gardening (though I have my mother in law, my grandma and my dad to help me!) because the current owners of the house have tons of stuff in their yard for me to keep up. Lemon Tree, Fuji Apple Tree, Plum Tree and Lime bush! On top of that there is a beautiful trellace of a pretty flower I dont even know what it's called, and then about 6 rose bushes all in a row, pruned down perfectly and ready for spring. I want to keep it all nice!
We can't wait to do our projects in the first couple months and then host a house warming party and invite everyone to come see it!
I am such an over analyzer and over-worryer (I dont think thats a word) and if you would have asked me even 3 months ago what I thought about buying a house I would have laughed and said that we can't do that or handle that right now. I'm finding that when you give things to God it really does work out! Yes, that is such a simple thought I know, but it's funny how certain things come up in your life and you really do notice it. This whole home process so far has been easy and I'm almost holding my breath waiting for something bad to happen. To be able to buy a home that is in such great condition in such a cute neighborhood from actual people and not to have to buy it from the bank or anything is such a blessing. We have great families who are supporting us every step of the way and we are looking forward to the future! I am surprised at how calm I feel for this and we just keep praying that God will continue to guide us and that we continue to seek Him.

Well that's about it, just thought I'd put what is on my mind. I'll try to dig up some pics of the house and post them soon!
=)

Off the Market - the housing market that is!

So............last night we signed our papers and bought a house! Escrow starts today, can you beleive it!? After hearing so many horror stories about people putting in 18 offers, or looking for 8 months, I thought "we are doomed"! However, our realtor found us a really cute newer home on the north east of town by the Levy/River that an older couple was selling so they could move to a retirement community.
Tuesday morning the sellers had their caravan at the house for the agents to see it, then Tuesday at noon my dad & I saw it with our realtor, loved it, so brought Caleb back Tuesday at 4. Tuesday night we wrote an offer.....Wednesday night it was accepted by the seller! All of this happened before the house even hit the MLS market online and before a "For Sale" sign hit the front yard. We are so blessed to have scooped this up!
Escrow is set to close mid-march so we have a bit of time to get ready. Thankfully, the house is in such great condition that it is move in ready and all we have to do is things that we want to do, not need to do. Change paint colors, things like that.
We are so excited!!!!
I have some pics but they aren't that good so I'll take better ones soon and post them.
I still can't beleive how fast this happend, thank you God!

Officially In....

Well, so it's official! We went to a lender Wednesday, got pre-qualified for an amount that we are comfortable with, and tonight are meeting with our realtor to start talking about properties!
Of course Caleb & I have been hunting all over online every day for a few weeks now so we have some houses in mind but we are excited to actually talk to our realtor about these places and see what really is possible and what she suggests.
I can't beleive we are doing this.........we are just in a lot of prayer every day that God will guide us to the right house and if it takes longer than we thought or if something doesn't work out how we think it should.....that we remember that we aren't in control, God is, and HIS timing is perfect.
We have a list of things that we know we want in a house, but I also know that realistically we will have to compromise on the way. Now, what we actually do compromise on, I have no idea what that will be.
I'll keep you all posted!
=)