"Buyers Market"?...Yea Right!

I'm trying not to get discouraged, I've kept an attitude that it's okay if a few houses don't work out because no matter what we are going to end up in a house eventually and of course we're going to pick a house that we really like! Yesterday was a pretty good day of house hunting, we found two really good ones. The first one we were at needed a little work so we need that renovation loan like we would have needed for that townhouse I talked about in the previous post. Which by the way we did not end up getting, we couldn't figure out whether we can park Chance's work van there which I think is going to be the case with every townhouse because of HOA. So we are trying to only look at single family homes now. And we couldn't get the contact info to find out the interest rate on the renovation loan, which now we have and it's around 5.5 so that's not bad. But by the time we found some info out, it had 4 offers and it wasn't worth the rush.

Anyway back to yesterday....the first house needs the renovation loan but overall it's pretty good! It only has two bathrooms which I'm not too excited about, both need work. Kitchen is small and definitely needs work. It has hardwood floors though and a really cute and big backyard, already fenced in. Nice driveway, looks cute on the outside, it's brick and stone. The closets are super small though and right now we have huge closets and they're still not big enough so that would be a change. But overall we thought this would be the one.

......Until we got to the next one. We loved loved this one that we were already deciding which rooms we would use for our babies rooms, lol. This was the best house we had seen so far, we loved it so much. We walked in and it's all hardwood, pretty decent sized living room, larger dining room than the last house. Kitchen still really tiny and needs work but okay I can live with that. Two decent sized rooms on the main level with a full bath that definitely needs some updating. Basement had a huge big room with another kitchen that we would have taken out. Another two rooms, one could have been my crafty room and a storage room for chance! Then another full bath but this one was brand new. Then we went in the backyard and they built this super cute little shed and/or playhouse, it had like a little porch on it and a second level in it, so cute! It had a little patio perfect for a grill and stuff, big backyard. Then we realized we hadn't even seen the upstairs! So we went upstairs and they had split the upstairs into two large master bedrooms. And then there was another full bath up there! So in all there was 6 bedrooms in this place! But I really would only consider it 4, I wouldn't use the basement ones as bedrooms really. We were so excited about it and then two hours later found out that the 7 days it had been on the market, there were 15 offers! Boo......We will probably try to go back to the other house, but it just doesn't seem as nice anymore......

House Hunting

We've been house hunting two weekends in a row now and we've found a couple okay ones! Most of them have been a little rough though :) We found a foreclosure this weekend that's pretty great! It's in Gaithersburg... It really doesn't need (note: NEED) a whole lot done but there is some thing we would definitely want to do. Though overall it's already pretty great! It has some water damage in the basement though because the back door has a leak so that's a problem...so right now we are waiting to see if HOA will let us park his van there and if we are eligible to buy it because of the water damage....we'll see....in the meantime we are still looking just in case! Either way, whether it's this house or another house, I can't waaaait to buy a houuuuse. I want to decorate soooo bad!

Creating your signature for your blog

Go to http://www.mylivesignature.com/

*At some point I think it asks you to register, there is a button to skip registration

1. Click on 'Click on here to start'

2. Click on 'Using the Signature Creation Wizard'

3. Enter your name on Step 1, this is what will show as your signature

4. Select your font on Step 2, I'm using font #69

5. Select your font size on Step 3, I'm using Size 8

6. Step 4 allows you to choose your background color which I use transparent, that way it blends with your blog and then you can choose your font color

7. Select the angle you want your signature on Step 5

8. Finally you're done customizing, you'll want to click on 'Want to use this signature?'

9. Then it will bring you to another page and you'll want to click 'Generate an HTML code'

10. You'll want to click on the first option 'Generate a code for my handwritten signature'

11. Copy the code and paste it under your Dashboard > Settings (Tab) > Formatting > Post Template

That's it! It doesn't automatically post in old posts but it will automatically post in all new posts until you take it out of that "Post Template' box or change your signature. You will not need to enter it in each time you do a blog post.

Quick Name Plaque

I have been a teeny bit crafty over the last couple months but I just haven't posted everything and/or taken pictures of everything, I've taken pictures of some stuff and will start to post....I made a ton of valentine's lollipop flowers, they were so cute, unfortunately I just kept one and I'll make sure to take a picture of it but it wasn't my favorite! :-\ I did some with bright green paper that I loved, oh well! Note to self: Always take pictures of crafty stuff!

In January I made this for my friends baby shower, she just had her baby last week on Friday the 12th! I painted the whole thing tan and the front green. Then I painted the brown and tan "frame" for his name. I used my CriCut to cut out his name and the dots and I glued them and used Mod Podge over the entire front!

Spring finally!

Ahh sigh of relief! Spring is finally here! It's felt like it for days, especially after day lights savings time last weekend but it's official now! I already feel like I have more energy! :) The weather was perfect today and it's going to be another perfect day tomorrow!

I took this picture this afternoon....the other day these were barely sprouted from the ground and now they are already bloomed! With all the rain and snow we've had in the fall and winter, it's going to be the perfect spring! :) Yay!

Crafty Blogs I follow

Fortunately they make it super easy to switch over the blogs between accounts, unfortunately they don't switch over the blogs that I follow. So I literally had to copy the links of all the blogs I follow, add them again and un follow them from chance's email. SO I thought I would share all the crafty blogs that I follow if anyone wanted to check them out too! All of them are great but some of these are super amazing! Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

p.s. even though some of them are .com's you can still follow them, just go to your dashboard and click 'add' and paste the url!

http://www.bakerella.com

http://bedifferentactnormal.blogspot.com/

http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/

http://www.controllingmychaos.com/

http://creationsfrommyheart.blogspot.com/

http://www.domestically-speaking.com/

http://gorgfabgoodies.blogspot.com/

http://imperfectlybeautifulms.blogspot.com/

http://j-a-girl.blogspot.com/

http://knockoffwood.blogspot.com/

http://let--it--shine.blogspot.com/

http://www.livingwithlindsay.com/

http://makeitandloveit.blogspot.com/

http://littlenannygoat.blogspot.com/

http://roomtoinspire.blogspot.com/

http://samstermommy.blogspot.com/

http://shanty2chic.blogspot.com/

http://theidearoom.blogspot.com/

http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/

http://kari-youcanmakeit.blogspot.com/

Yaay, more posts to come!

Okay when I first started this blog I used Chance's email because he had gmail and I didn't want to make yet another email. But it became a pain to use his email and I considered deleting this blog and starting one of my own. I didn't really want to do that because even though I don't post a lot, I don't want to loose what I've posted on here. I ended up making a gmail account and I was going to start another blog this morning but I decided to look up to see if I could merge them and I could! Yaaaaaay! SO I granted admin rights to myself and took them away from his email and now this blog is on my account. Woo hoo, so I decided to spruce it up a little and now that it's on my account, hopefully I can get the umph to start posting more :) And hopefully I can get my computer fixed so I can start uploading pictures on it. I guess I could upload pictures on his laptop (which I'm using) but I don't really want to and my computer had a virus. I could plug my laptop into the internet and start using that! Or I could go into the basement and use his computer...haha we have way too many computers for two people but my wireless is broken on my laptop and my computer has a virus but that would make sense that MY stuff is broken and his stuff works just fine!

Anyway I know I haven't posted since like Christmas but nothing is really new, job is great, hubby is wonderful, we've been trying to get in touch with this guy to get pre-approved and we are trying to figure out where we want to live now....we thought gaithersburg/germantown but now we don't know what we want to do....we'll see! :)

Our First Married ornament!

So ever since we got engaged I was so excited to get a "just married" or something similar ornament. Well I didn't find one that I liked, Christmas came and went and still no ornament! But I refused to wait until next year! I looked and looked and my friend Lee even did research and found some really cute ones! I found one I kind of liked (in previous post) but I couldn't figure out what it was exactly, the picture wasn't very good....but I decided to try and recreate it! It cost me under $4!

Everything I used I got from Michaels or I already had.

Wooden piece (99 cents)
Twine to hang it and to attach the bells ($1.49)
Two bells (99 cents)

I first took a black marker and colored the edges. Then I painted it in "heirloom white". Once it was dry I sanded the edges so the black would show through. Then I brushed it with this gold metallic paint, well it's more of a glaze. Then brushed it with a cotton swab so it would be lighter. Then I used stamps to write the " Our First Christmas as Mr. and Mrs." and hand wrote the 2009. Then I went over the stamp with marker because it just wasn't dark enough. Then I used that metallic paint to draw a heart and traced it with the marker. I painted the silver bells with both paints and ran the twine through. It actually got curly by accident but ended up looking pretty good....then I hot glued the twine w/the bells. I cut two pieces of twine and hot glued each side to the back. Then I took two black brads that I had and used pliers to cut the little brackets off the back and hot glued them on the front. Sounds complicated because of this huge paragraph but this was super easy :)

So glad we have our first married ornament and that it was made by me! :)