What has been going on the last few days? House stuff, house stuff and you guessed it, more house stuff. Yesterday we met with a lady about our homeowners insurance which came out to be WAY less that it was supposed to. That is of course very good but makes me a little paranoid that the lady did something wrong because she is so scatter-brained. My mom even asked me if we had only insured the front door after I told her the amount. We did get a lot of discounts though (hardiplank, alarm system, etc) so hopefully that is why.
Today was our termite inspection which went very well! No sign of termites! We are good to go :) Closing is two weeks from yesterday, I can't believe it. Hopefully we are past all of the hard things about buying a house, except your hand falling off from signing so many papers. I am hoping signing all of those papers will help me write the last name "Moffitt" a little better. Whenever I sign my name "Julie" looks great (since I've been writing it in cursive since 3rd grade) but "Moffitt" looks like I'm still in 3rd grade.. if you don't believe me you should look at my driver's license.
Monday evening I went to Chrissy's house and got to meet her new puppy, Bella. She is so cute and Lindsey came too. We all don't see each other very often (well I think they see each other but I don't see much of them) so I was very happy to have a girl's night. And hopefully another one next week! Chrissy cooked spaghetti for me and it was delicious, especially since I had been craving Italian food all day.
Tonight I drove down to midtown to have drinks with Cat & Greg who I also haven't seen in a very long time. It was really fun to see them and catch up. I also did very good with sticking to the budget. We have $6 left for the month for alcohol (yes, alcohol is actually in our budget) and that is reserved for Matt for the super bowl. We had $2.49 left in the eating out budget so I got a diet coke and spent exactly $2.49, perfect. After I left I headed over to Walmart to make use of our $25 giftcard we got for Christmas. Matt and I both needed socks. Well I left with 10 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of stockings and a purse all for me. They didn't have any wool socks for men!! Oh well. I'm sure you really wanted to read about me buying socks :)
Lost comes on in a few minutes so until next time...
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Closing in on Closing
Sunday, January 25, 2009
You oughta see her on Sunday, in her sweatpants
Sunday afternoon. Is there really anything better than Sunday afternoon? This weekend has been good. Friday night my dad brought my sister to Decatur to watch a wizard rock concert so we saw Erin for a few minutes and hung out with my dad for about two hours while she was at the concert. Decatur is even cuter than I thought it was and we found some fun stores to wander in and out of.
Yesterday I went to my friend Stephanie's house who I haven't seen in a while. It was really great to see her and we cooked baked ziti for lunch with banana oatmeal bread for dessert, both Weight Watchers recipes and they were delicious! I can't wait to try them both out again.
This morning we had church and then went out to lunch with Matt's parents. Always fun, and we tried out Panda Express which was pretty good. I decided to do my grocery shopping today and only had my $23 left in the budget to spend. I was going to go to Kroger, Aldi & Publix like usual but once I was in Kroger and realized I only needed milk at Aldi and crescent rolls at Publix, I decided to just get it all at Kroger and spend about $2 more. I ended up spending $27.85 and put the money above $23 into our "eating out" budget for the month since we had some money left there.
I am going to go to Plato's Closet later today to see if they will give me any money for this bag of clothes I have. As much as moving is not very fun, I am looking forward to going through everything and getting rid of stuff. That to me is the best part about moving.
I am watching The City online as I am writing this. What a waste of my time but I love it! Oh I need some help. Does anyone know how I can know when the next Clinique bonus time is at Macy's? I need some stuff but don't want to buy it without getting my bonus. So please let me know if you know when it is or how I can find out!
Happy Sunday!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
House Inspection!
The exclamation point at the end of the title should tell you that the house inspection went relatively well. There are some problems, like every house has, but I don't think it's anything that can't be taken care of by Matt and I. Which means, I think we have ourselves a house! The house was built in 1943 so our inspector says that since that was during the war, all materials were going to the army meaning that if this house was built during that time, it was built very well (obviously since it's 66 years old and still in good condition). The biggest thing is that we need gutters put on the house which will take care of about 90% of the water damage that is there. We will have to replace a few spots due to water damage. Another semi-big thing is that the HVAC unit was put in to heat a much smaller house since this one was added on to, so it's not as powerful as it needs to be. We also need to put insulation in the attic and basement, but most of this stuff isn't super urgent.
Another big thing is just some shoddy craftsmanship. There are unfinished surfaces - a little caulking, fixing a threshold or two, and adding a few finishing tiles. We have to get the dishwasher screwed in because right now it's just slid into the hole in the counter. There is also a big hole in one wall that needs to be re-drywalled and some rooms to be painted. We'll probably paint all of the baseboards as well. And of course it needs to be cleaned before we do any of this, it has been sitting vacant for a while and hasn't been super cleaned since the last people that lived there. Oh and adding either temporary or permanent window coverings quickly (the neighbors can see into our bathroom from their backyard!).
Front of house (green), needs landscaping
View when you walk in, looking to the right
Guest / spare bathroom
Kitchen
Kitchen / pantry / fridge spot
Family room, kitchen overlooks
Kitchen / family room / view into master bedroom + hole in the wall!
Master bedroom
Partial view of master bath
Going into basement
Basement
Backyard
Back of houseTuesday, January 20, 2009
Solos & Stella
This past weekend was spent at Matt's grandmother's house in Tennessee (we both had Monday off). We stayed with Mimi and also got to see some of Matt's extended family that we haven't seen in a while so that was great. Matt's cousin has a 14 month old little girl who is very cute so I had fun playing with her. Also Matt's uncle got a new dog while we were there, an English Springer Spaniel, pretty much THE dog that we want. Matt sang two solos at his grandmother's church on Sunday (both amazing, of course). One of my favorite things is to listen to him sing, it was fantastic.
The weekend was spent doing a whole lot of nothing really since there isn't much to do in middle-of-nowhere Tennessee but I did finish the book I was reading (2nd Twilight book) and we shopped around at some of the local places. I also helped Mimi learn how to use her new computer a little better which culminated in me trying to explain to 90-year-old Mimi how to get to Google over the telephone about 45 minutes after we were headed back to Atlanta because she forgot to ask me that while we were there. Needless to say, it was unsuccessful. All in all a very fun weekend of seeing family and relaxing :)
I should also mention that I have lost Matt to another "woman" - Stella. Stella is a very, very old guitar that Matt's grandfather bought for Mimi to learn to play guitar on. It lives at Mimi's house and every time Matt is there he can't put it down. This weekend especially he played it NONSTOP. He decided he would bring it home with us and fix it up to bring back and leave in TN so it will be fixed up and will still be there every time we are. He took off the 50 year old strings and put new ones on and is still playing it nonstop. Not sure what else he'll do to it but he'll fix it up somehow.
This week we are counting down the days and hours until our inspection on Thursday at the house. Once that is done with we will know if we will be getting the house for sure. If we are getting it, I will post pictures that I am going to take on Thursday so you can see it!
One thing I am happy about tonight is that my budget seems to be paying off. It's only been a few weeks so I can't really tell how it will end up, but so far I know that I have spent more each week on groceries than I had planned which means I only have $23 to spend next week. If I didn't have the budget I would go out and spent $60 like usual, so this is a good limitation. Also good is the fact that we have soo much food right now stocked up so it's ok that I can only spend $23 next week. In meat alone we have 10lbs of chicken, 6lbs of ground beef and about 6lbs of pork. I think that will be plenty ;-)
Biggest Loser comes on tonight, you should watch!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
House Update 2
Well.. we are under contract! The bank counter-offered again today and we accepted their counter-offer. We are so excited! We have scheduled our inspection for next Thursday. I'll take a half-day off of work to go and Matt doesn't have school that day. I will take pictures so I can post some for you to see! (If the inspection goes well.. no use in posting pictures if there is something horribly wrong with the house and we have to bail).
That's the exciting news of the day. Oh and did you watch The Office? It was great tonight :)
Happy Friday tomorrow!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
House Update 1
I have a little house update for you tonight. We finally heard back from the bank about our offer on the house. We heard back from our realtor around 1pm today with the bank's counter-offer. They basically didn't come down on price at all, gave us half of the money towards closing costs that we asked for, shortened the inspection time period, and didn't give us any money for a refrigerator or gutters. We didn't think they would give us money for the fridge and gutters anyway since the house is "sold as is." I was a little surprised that they didn't budge on price though. So we countered again with a lower price, more money for closing costs, and that the 10 days was ok, as long as it is 10 days from the time all of the utilities are on. We can't inspect the house until the electricity, water and gas are all turned on and the bank has to do that. Apparently this is all typical for foreclosures. We have given them until Friday at 5pm to respond, so hopefully by the time this 3-day weekend rolls around we will be under contract! Then we just have to hope the inspection goes well since they won't fix anything if anything is wrong.
Other than that, life stays busy. I never feel like there are enough hours in the day but somehow we get most everything done. The goal for tonight is to clean and read while Matt is at choir practice. Keep us in your prayers with the house.. I didn't think I would get very anxious about it but it has been giving me a stomach ache from worry! It's excited worry though :)
Monday, January 12, 2009
We made an offer
Yes, you read the title correctly, we began our house/mortgage/etc search on January 4th and made an offer for a house on January 11th. I can't even believe it! This weekend was absolutely fantastic. Friday night Matt and I watched Juno which I had seen before but he hadn't. I forgot how awesome that movie is and Matt loved it as well. Saturday morning came and it was time to meet up with our realtor to go see the 7 houses we had selected. Some were a little scary and some were ok but not what we were looking for. Our second choice house of the day was actually one where I think a squatter was living in there.. and may have been there while we were.. it was a little scary. But that house was cool and had great potential. The house that we fell in love with was the last house we saw. After seeing the houses we decided to go to Panera for lunch where we ran into Jay, Scruff & Scruff's girlfriend. What a fun group of people, they ended up sitting with us for about an hour, which was good to get our minds clear about the house. After lunch we drove up to the house again to see the neighborhood again and decided we would come back that evening after my work party to see what it was like in the middle of the night. (I promise I am getting to actual house details).
Saturday night was my work party and it was ridiculously fun. We had the same band that played at our wedding - our good friends Flux Capacitor - 80s cover band. Matt and I ended up dancing for almost 2 hours! We had a blast and everyone absolutely loved the band. I heard all about it at work today :)
Ok so the house. I don't want to give the address because I have this paranoid feeling that someone will steal it from us, haha. I will give those sorts of details if everything works out. And I don't have any good pictures unfortunately. I will also get those if everything works out, I promise. The house is everything we were looking for. Not only does it have the things we needed (3 bed, 2 bath with a basement) but it has so many of the things on our wish list. It is 100% remodeled, originally built in 1943. The remodel is beautiful. It even has a pantry and a laundry room which we weren't expecting either of. The kitchen is a-m-a-zing and overlooks the living room. Gas stove. Under-mounted sink. Master bath room with TWO sinks, connected to the master bedroom. The perfect basement = enough room for Matt's band practice and a lot of storage. Beautiful hardwoods. Already a good paint color on the wall - neutral brown/tan. The layout is awesome. The yard is small which is fine, less to take care of. And there is a perfect spot for a garden. Walkability - we can walk to the Marietta square and some of the new shops going up. The neighborhood is quiet - we went at midnight on Saturday night and there was not a single person walking around and we turned the car off with the windows down and could not hear anything. The house originally sold for $100k MORE than what it is on the market for now (a year or two ago) and the house next door that has the same remodel, and it is smaller, sold in August 07 for $65k more than ours is on the market for.
Our hopes are up even though we wished they weren't. We keep telling ourselves there are more houses out there in case this one falls through. It is actually a bank owned foreclosure. Banks take longer than sellers to get back with you and go through the process so although we made the offer on Sunday afternoon, we put a time limit of Wednesday at 5pm on it. So now we wait. All day I waited for my phone to ring but nothing yet. Hopefully they will give us some of what we asked for ($10k off the asking price + $9 worth of stuff.. haha). You never know, they might be really desperate.. everyone seems to be right now. Send some luck our way and I will keep you posted with what happens.
In other news, just made my weekly grocery store run. I came in a little over budget for the week (still on track for the month) but that included 10+ lbs of chicken! We definitely have a ton of stockpiled food right now so I am hoping to not have to buy very much at all next week.
Hope you all had a fantastic weekend too. Happy Monday!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
"Move that bus!"
What a terrible quote for a title, but an exciting one! We are very much in the middle of the whole first house business. The plan was that once the new year hit, we would go full steam with this house stuff and full steam we have gone. It is only the 7th day of the month and we have already met with a realtor, been pre-approved for the mortgage from two separate parties and picked out seven houses out of about a hundred to go look at this Saturday.
We love our realtor! She was recommended to us by my old roommate Meg and her husband and she is fantastic. It's amazing how Atlanta can have 5.5 million people in it, yet Matt and our realtor knew about 10 of the same people, small world. Also in the small world category, I received our mortgage broker's name from my friend Amy and come to find out that she works with our realtor all the time and she is the person our realtor would have recommended to us if we had asked for a name. So looks like we have a good team to help us on our journey!
We are specifically looking for at least a 3 bed / 2 bath single-family home with a basement. In my mind it must have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms or we would not fit in it. I would also like there to be room to grow into the house in the future and anything smaller would just not work. It has to be a house and not a townhouse or condo due to Matt's music, which is the same reason that we must have a basement. We also want a good yard for a dog (but really any yard will do). We're not too terribly picky about the house just as long as it doesn't require major remodeling. However, come to find out there are a ton out there in our price range with updated everything (including kitchen - score!) so we might just get everything we hope for.. fingers crossed of course.
I will keep you posted on the house hunt including pictures I'm sure. If everything keeps going at this speed, who knows, we could put in an offer this weekend ;-) That's probably wishful thinking though.
Other than that we have been busy around here. My company's anniversary party (like a holiday party) is this Saturday and I am in charge of music and one of the games. I am in charge of music because I convinced them to use the band that played at our wedding (awesome!!) and now have to put together playlists full of "mingling" music and "other dancing" music. But honestly Matt is taking care of all of the music for me since he isn't in school this week and I'm super busy, so he is a wonderful husband. We will have a very busy Saturday full of houses and a great party!
Last thing I promise, did you see the Biggest Loser premiere last night? It's going to be a good season! And if you don't watch it, well, you should :)
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Shopping & Budgeting
Yesterday I was able to do one of my absolute favorite activities: shop at Ann Taylor Loft! I don't go in there anymore because I have no self control once I'm in the store, better to just stay away. But due to the very generous gift cards I received for Christmas, I was able to go. The clothes I got were a STEAL! If I remember correctly, I got 4 shirts, 2 cardigans, 1 dress, 1 skirt & 2 pairs of pants, all for $175! Pretty unbelievable for Ann Taylor Loft. I went to the Atlantic Station store, just like old times. That petite section never lets me down. Three of the items I escaped with were even less than $10 each.
After shopping I headed down to watch Matt's gig at Lenny's Bar. I arrived around 9 and Matt's band wasn't expected to play until about 10:30. We hung out and listened to the first band until Matt went on about 10:45. They finished up about 11:30 but we were unable to leave until the last band finished playing due to the rules of this bar that you can't unload your equipment from the bar until all the bands are done. So we stayed through the last band which was TERRIBLE. There were 6 people in the band, all playing "instruments" made of various things you would find around your house. They were all very crude people wearing ridiculous outfits. We suffered through and finally made it home about 1am.
Oh I forgot to mention also that I checked out realtor.com yesterday for houses that we would be interested in and found a TON! I'm so excited. We have our first meeting with the realtor tomorrow afternoon so hopefully that will go over well.
Today I got up, did some cleaning and things like usual, watched a few Gilmore Girls episodes. Lindsey came over and brought Matt and I some Chick-fil-a in exchange for some sourdough bread, yum :) Always fun to see her! After lunch Matt and I headed up to Dawsonville to go to the outlet malls. On our way we stopped off at Plato's Closet to try to sell some clothes and I managed to sell 3 shirts for $7.83. Not very exciting but better than nothing. She told me to bring back these 4 pairs of pants I had in a few weeks and they could take them, but I think I may just try to go to a different store location and see if they'll take any more of the clothes I had in the bag (that location was way up 400 anyway).
We made it up to the outlets, and after returning a few items, ended up spending $26 and came away with an amazing coat from Ann Taylor, a new fleece for Matt and a pedometer. I am very excited about my new winter coat. I have a decent amount of coats and basically dislike all of them.
Something exciting to report is that I just spent about an hour and half building our new budgeting model in excel. Yes, I love excel. I am very excited about the model I built and hope that Matt and I can work out the kinks of our budgeting amounts within a few months so we can understand our savings better. Send a little wishful luck our way :)
That's our weekend so far, hope yours is fun too!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Christmas, parts two & three
It has been a whirlwind of holidays the past week and a half. Now I have to squeeze them into one, hopefully not too long, blog post. Here we go..
Christmas part two was spent with Matt's family in Marietta. This includes his parents, his brother John and his wife Stephanie who live in Connecticut, and his brother Andy and his girlfriend Crystal who live in DC. We spent a good two days with everyone. Christmas was kicked off with our suspicions that Matt and I will become an aunt and uncle next year becoming true - John & Steph are expecting in July! We spent Christmas Eve night at a beautiful church service and then back to the house for a big dinner that we ate around 10pm. I stayed up as late as I could that night (about midnight) and we headed to bed. Christmas morning was full of fun with opening gifts. A few things I received include clothes, Gilmore Girls & a cookbook. Matt got a keyboard, record & scotch glasses plus other things. We spent the afternoon with Andy, Crystal & their dog Thomas on a 3 mile walk on the trail behind our apartment. The weather was amazing, it was about 70 degrees, we even sat out on their back porch for lunch that day.
Christmas part three was spent in Augusta. I worked the day after Christmas and we headed to Augusta that evening. We spent Friday night opening gifts with my family and then were able to spend some time with my BFF Emili (yeah we still say BFF). My big gifts were having my wedding dress cleaned & preserved, a gift card to Ann Taylor Loft, and some DVDs I asked for. Matt got the John Adams DVDs and a lot of coffee and some other stuff. We spent Friday night through Monday afternoon in Augusta. Saturday we lounged around and also did Christmas with my dad. Sunday we saw Marley & Me - great movie. Made greater by the fact that the woman sitting directly next to me cried ridiculously hard for the last 45 minutes of the movie. It took everything in me not to bust out laughing. And the majority of the weekend was spent with my brother, Matt and I all addicted to my sister's new game for her Nintendo DS called Ninja Town. It was awesome. Oh I also went after-Christmas shopping on Saturday and got a TON of Christmas decorations for next year when we will hopefully have a house!
We headed back to Atlanta Monday afternoon and I worked Tuesday & Wednesday. Last night we spent New Year's with Matt's parents at their cabin and had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in Jasper. I fell asleep on the couch at 10 and woke up at midnight for my new year's kiss, haha. We left after lunch today to come back and start crossing things off of our to-do list. Life is becoming even more hectic now with me trying to get going on the house stuff. We are meeting with a realtor this Sunday so wish us luck! Now I have to get all my documents together for pre-approval.
Here are some pictures..
Matt and I after the Christmas Eve service
Can you tell they are brothers? John, Andy, Matt
The Moffitt girls - me, Crystal, Steph
Matt, me & Emili, my BFF 
My family - Charlie, Erin, dad, me
me & my mom