Thank you, President Obama!

My blog title may be a bit sarcastic, but thanks to President Obama (and President Bush) we are now $8,000 richer. We were one of the lucky ones who bought our house during the period where the $8,000 tax rebate was available for first time home buyers. Even though we went to settlement on our house in early March it wasn't until last week that we finally recieved that lovely rebate check in the mail.

For weeks we have dreamed about what we do with that money. We debated putting it savings, we talked about going on vacation, but ultimately we decided to put that money towards the house. Our first purchase was a shed for our lawn mower and Daniel's tools. Daniel was tired of having to drvie a half hour round trip to go to his parents and get OUR lawn mower out of their garage, because we didn't have a place to store it. We wanted to build a garage when we built our house, but our builder wanted a ridiculas amount of money for a simple two car garage. So therfore that will be a project down the road.

Our next project was to get a sidewalk put in our front yard and a patio put in out in our back yard. Daniel thought our builder's price for a sidewalk was too much, and he was definitely right, because we are getting a sidewalk and 15X15 patio done for less then what our builder wanted for a sidewalk.

As I type they are working on our sidewalk and patio, I will post pictures after they are done. Here are some before pictures:




As you can see we need some major landscaping done! A good portion of the rest of the $8000 wil go towards landscaping and some patio and porch furniture.

In the next few months I will be doing a lot of before and after posts of our house. I am in decorating mode and I am ready to have my house look great on the inside and out!