Sunday, July 21, 2013

The Home is Ours!!!! (Almost)

So this week was a fun filled week and I won't get into the weekend quite yet (it will continue for the next three days :) ) but I wanted to recap the week so that I don't get too far behind.  Since the last time I blogged, we have made progress not only in our home buying process, but also in the wedding!  First, for the wedding...

Weddding planning will soon be put on hold when we have to close on the house, move, get situated, decorate, etc. but we knew we had to start thinking about save the dates.  There are always a few things that you get stuck on when it comes to weddings, no matter how much you think about budgets and making "smart" decisions of where to spend the money.  Save the Dates was one thing that Joe really wanted to do, and he knew exactly what he wanted!  There was no getting out of doing magnets for Save the Dates.  The main reason he loves magnets is because we still have all of the weddings we have gone to post college on our fridge!  There are so many great memories at all of the weddings that we just don't want to get rid of them.  We know a lot of our friends do the same thing (honestly who clears there fridge that often anyways) so it was a must for Joe!  We looked at a lot of magnet websites to get ideas of what we wanted, but after shopping around we realized that Vista Print was definitely the least expensive option.  The catch to Vista Print is that you have to design your own.  Since I do love working with pictures and design (I did take quite a few yearbook/art classes in high school)  I decided I might as well take on the task.  If they turn out terrible it isn't too much time lost!  So, this week I tasked myself to make them.  Tuesday evening as Joe was working I finally sat down and designed them and got them ordered (well the samples were ordered)!  I have to trust Joe since I have not seen them but he said they turned out well :)  So with that, we will make some minor changes before ordering the final version.  The next task is to get addresses and we are well on our way :)  So with that, we quickly marked one more thing off the list!

The other exciting/stressful moment of the week was our home appraisal.  We had already done everything else for the house but gotten the bank appraisal.  If the house didn't appraise, we were out of luck unless the home owners wanted to drop the price.  We knew that it would be close looking at comps (well Joe looked at them and I just nod my head) so we were very anxious to get it done.  On Wednesday, the appraisal was done, so we hoped that we would get an answer at the end of the week.  Friday morning we got word that we would hear shortly, but come 5 o'clock we didn't have an answer.  Joe and I had planned date night at Bistro Niko earlier in the week so we were meeting there for dinner before I hit the road to Greenville for my mini-vacation.  On the drive Joe received an email that our home had appraised!!! **sort of** We had initially offered 100$ over asking so that when it came down to it if the other person that had put an offer on the house came in at list we would win out.  When we got our appraisal back, it appraised for asking price (100 dollars less than our offer).  Although that was not a huge deal and we could just bring $100 more to closing we decided to ask the home owners to reduce our offer back to asking (I mean who doesn't want to save $100 even if it is very small compared to the price of the house!)  Interestingly enough, the home owners agreed, so at date night we had quite the celebration!
My favorite room of our new home :) Love Cooking!!!

Bistro Niko was a great date and I would definitely suggest it to anyone. Joe and I had way too much food to eat and ate cheese puffs (super fancy ones), duck breast, lamb sandwich, and grilled tomato something or another and everything was amazing!  After our mini celebration/date night that was perfectly timed, I hit the road to drive up to Greenville to meet up with my cousin that flew in all the way from SLOVENIA to see the USA for the first time!!! More of this trip to come, but it's not over yet and I am looking forward to taking some vacation days the first half of the week and spend some time with her and her friend, Ana.

Last shout out before I go, congrats to my amazingly beautiful cousin Marija for her first baby girl!!!! Born this Wednesday at 8:10 AM :) :) :)  Cannot wait to meet little baby Ana some day (hopefully soon!)

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