Does anybody read these?

Home Sweet Home

Perhaps it's the holidays, but I'm feeling very retrospective and philosophical today. I'm not sure I've really talked that much about my house and the journey to owning it, so I'd like to do that now. After all, I had my very first Christmas there yesterday, even though I was under the weather and spent all but a few hours of it sleeping.

My new house looks a lot like my former residence that I had hoped to purchase. I think I mentioned here that with the real estate market in shambles, that house didn't appraise for what my friend owed on it, and I had to look elsewhere. Because everyone was underwater, almost everything I looked at was a foreclosure or a short sale. This one was one of the nicer ones.

There were lots of starts and stops, and it took several months to get everything situated so I could buy it . The house went on the market on Dec. 3, I put an offer in Dec. 13, and my offer was accepted the following day. However, I didn't end up closing until almost the last possible minute -- Feb. 16.

The first weekend, we painted the upstairs bedrooms and the hall bath. The second weekend, we paid someone to paint the downstairs. It all looks great and we picked a great color palate.

For the most part, the furniture from the old house made the journey with us. However, this summer I finally had my door table constructed, although I am still waiting patiently to get the glass table top for it. I'm sure it will happen at some point. The house is still a little cluttery, but one of my friends said that a lived-in home means it's filled with happy people and that is definitely the case.

One thing about gathering around $3,000 in 60 days taught me was that I waste a lot of money. So, buying the house gave me the real opportunity to get myself on a budget and get all of my debt paid off. After the last few weeks of Christmas in Toyland, I've frequently said that I'd like to be out of debt before next Christmas. We'll see. It's an ambitious goal. More realistically, I'll be debt-free around the time our new roommate wants to move out, which would be perfect.

I've amazed myself with how grown up I've become in the last few months. I guess that's a good thing.

Of course, I'd also like to point out that there's plenty of room for gifts if anyone would like to come to Nashville to visit us.

posted by Laura at 10:45 AM