Christmas card

Joy Wreath Holiday 5x7 folded card

Shop hundreds of holiday photo cards at Shutterfly.

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Here's the fantastic card I made on Shutterfly.  Of course it took me forever to make.  Not because the site is hard to use at all--in fact it's super easy--but because it was so difficult to narrow down which card design was my favorite.  I could have spent hours looking through all the card options.  There are literally hundreds of cards to choose from and then you can customize them a dozen different ways to further personalize them.  I am thrilled with the card I made and hope it looks as great in person as it does on the computer.

Have you borrowed money lately

We last bought a house in 2008.  Due to being relocated we are once again buying a house just a little over 2 years later.  This time is NOTHING like any of the times we've bought a house before.  The new lending and banking guidelines are un-freakin-believeable.  They are nearly impossible to satisfy.  The government has freaked out and gone the extreme opposite direction from where they were 2 years ago when they were encouraging anyone and everyone to borrow money to the exact opposite where now it's amazingly hard to borrow money.  Just to get mortgage rates run you have to fill out a 19 page loan application, submit to credit check, and give the lender permission to pull your last 2 years tax returns--all of that JUST to get rates run!  Once you get past that then you have to keep detailed paper trails of everything, be able to explain every last dollar in your bank account, can't spend any large amounts of money prior to closing, and on and on and on.  I keep thinking they are going to ask us to submit to DNA tests next.

A house is not a home without love (and paint, carpet, new AC units...)

Ok don’t fall over from shock but after 5 months we finally put an offer on a house.  We found out we were being relocated back to MS the last week of July right before school was to start.  By that time, all the houses in our prefered area had been snatched up by people just wanting mailboxes to get their kids into our great school system so we were left with little or no inventory from which to choose.  We knew all along we really wanted to be back in our old neighborhood.  In the mean time we've been bunking at my parents house (which is also in our old neighborhood.) 

So this week it finally happened--well, rather hubby convinced me/ talked me into putting an offer on a house.  No, I’m not jumping up and down because frankly it's not my favorite—it’s a real fixer-upper—as in major fixin’ to be done.  It definitely needs serious work in areas--it's VERY outdated and has been vacant for over a year, but it’s a heck of a deal and hubby's trying to convince me that we could go in and redo everything the way we want it done. We'll see what comes of it but we did go ahead and make an offer and now are just waiting to hear back from the sellers.