Wednesday's Walk - Our First Home / Give away Winner

First of all...

Happy 9 Months Jackson!!

Born 10.22.2008

His 8th month was a big one! He started to repeat "Mama" and has begun crawling!!

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Wednesday's Walk - Hosted by Lynnette Kraft

While I was looking through my photos (because you know I can't post with at least ONE photo!) I came across January 2008, we purchased our first home. We were aware in December of 07 that Paul was offered a job position almost 2 hours north of where we currently lived, Milwaukee. So our search began in Neenah and Appleton, WI. Of course we were in love with a house in Neenah, but someone got to the bid before us. So we kept looking until we found something we liked even more.

Yes, we moved in the freezing winter!

We discovered a new construction home in a subdivison just outside of Grand Chute. The neighborhood was still developing at the time (and still is). We couldn't believe what we could afford up here compared to Milwaukee and the Metropolitan area. Our dollar sure went A LOT further here. We were in a time crunch to purchase a home because Paul had already started his new job in the beginning of the year and for the whole month of January, he commuted the distance! We only had Sundays to make the trip up to Appleton to search for homes because I worked at the salon Tuesdays - Saturdays and Paul of course worked on Mondays. Our Realtor was great and made wonderful accommodations for us - like showing us several homes in the worst blizzard Appleton had seen in a long time. And like I said, we only had Sundays to search and Paul needed to stop driving back and forth!

Our kitchen roughly staged. This was the final walk through, so we didn't move it yet much less paint or decorate :) This is the bare bones my firends!!

The house we purchased is about 1520 sq. ft. Its a 3 bedroom (split bedroom style) ranch home. It has vaulted ceilings in the living room that carry over to the kitchen area. We have a patio off the kitchen that leads to a future deck. The living room is a bit on the smaller size that features a gas fireplace - our future plans is to built out the basement for a family room (move the tv down there). The lawn was not established when we moved in, so we had that planted in August 2008. We had to finish the rest of the concrete driveway which the builders leave half undone to keep housing prices down.

Final walk through - roughly staged

We have been here for 1.5 years and we love the neighborhood and have settled into our home. We have many plans for the future and try to put our money to good use. A new construction home is great because for the most part, our money is going to new things that we want, not old things that need to be fixed! And that if wonderful for a single family on one income!

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And now for the Give Away Winner!!

Congratulations to...

KT

I invite you to peek at this Sneaker Teacher's Blog. Katie is a motivated school teacher with great ideas that moms and teachers alike can take advantage of!

She has received this bracelet that I handmade. Thank you to all the participants who entered!