New House! (Picture Heavy!)

Okay, so I told you guys that I'd post some pictures of my new house, so today is the day.  :)

So a little info about us, and our house.  My husband bought a condo when he was 21 years old.  It was a small, one bedroom/loft type of condo.  He was also married at the time, and his ex hated the condo.  It was also difficult for them, because the condo association fees went up $350 from when he first bought it.  It became too expensive, and he wasn't able to sell, and he ended up divorcing his then wife, and eventually it went into foreclosure. He had intentions on living in an apartment for the 7 years that it would take for his credit to become better, so that he could afford a new house.  Well, then we met, and lived in an apartment for 3 years, and when I started my new job, my boss told me about how she was selling her house.  That kind of turned us on to looking for a house.  My bosses house ended up not working out the way we had hoped, but this house was introduced to us through her realtor. 

Because my husbands credit was bad, and I had only been at my job for a few weeks, the bank wasn't willing to give us a loan.  They said we'd be able to get an FHA loan, but not for another year.  So our options were limited.  The house that we were looking at (and eventually bought) said it was a possible land contract, so that's what we did.  If you don't know what a land contract is, it basically means that the lady we bought the house from owned the house completely, and instead of getting a loan from the bank, we paid the down payment to her, and we will pay our monthly payments to her.  All the money we pay her will come off the total price of the house, and our contract says that in 3 years, we will have to get a loan from the bank, and pay her off, and then we will have a regular mortgage payment.  She lives across the street, so that's super nice because we can just walk our house payment over to her.  :)

The house is super small. It's about 900 sqft.  Which is okay, because that's all the space we need.  It was built in 2003, so it's pretty new, and everything in the house is in great condition.  The only things we had to change were paint colors, and some cleaning.  Eventually, we plan on getting a hot tub, and Cody is going to turn the garage into his "man cave", complete with a keg-orator haha. There is two bedrooms, one bathroom, and it came with all appliances.  We have half an acre, so eventually, if we decide, we can expand if we want, but with the land contract, when the 3 years is up, we can either take out a mortgage, OR we can choose not to, and we'll just lose our down payment, and the money that we have been paying each month. 

Okay, now picture time!!!  This is our house...no stalking! :)

The landscaping was all done by the previous owner, and there are already flowers and stuff blooming.  I'm gonna go through and take out all the dead stuff, and hopefully it'll look a little bit cleaner. 

This is the living room....

This is our little dining room area...

And the kitchen....

Our new patio furniture!

And the backyard...

(ignore the two bags of leaves and stuff, I forgot to move them!)

Like I said, it's kinda small, but we love it so far....it for sure beats living in an apartment!

And, one of my favorite pics of Remy...

In other news, I just was told today that the Color Run is coming to Grand Rapids, which means I get to do it!! it's in August, so I had better be able to easily run a 5k by then!  Even though, from what I've heard, you don't really have to be able to run in order to do the Color Run. I'm so excited!!!