We're Under Contract!

I'm so excited to share that we are UNDER CONTRACT on our new house! This means, that in 30-45 days, this beauty below will be OURS! Can't wait to make some memories and watch my family grow here!

Front of House

View of the 3-car garage

Front Entry 

Since this is a HUD house, it's definitely going to need some work. Flooring will be first on the list, since, besides the tile seen in the foyer and kitchen, there are no floors in the house.

View of the foyer

Formal Living Room

Formal Dining Room

Painting will be next, because as you can tell from these pictures, the previous owners were not afraid to use dark bold colors throughout the entire house. Not exactly our style when it comes to colors; however it will eventually be everything we dreamed of!

View from the Kitchen

Kitchen Cabinets

More Kitchen Cabinets

Entire Kitchen

Eat-in Kitchen Nook

Family Room with Gas Fireplace

Kid's Room #1

Kid's Bath

Kid's Room #2 (This will be Parker's Room)

Upstairs Guest Bedroom

Upstairs Guest Bath

Luckily, there aren't any structural issues that we'll have to face prior to moving in. The only major damage we've been able to find so far is the hole in the master bathroom wall. We're hoping our contractor (A.K.A. my dad) will be able to fix some of these issues rather inexpensively. HOPING. 

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Master Shower

Master Bath - plus lovely repair that needs to be done.

Master Closet

Laundry Room

View inside of the 3-car garage.

Next project will be fencing in our back yard. As you can see below, the yard is huge. There is a main road on the other side of the wall in our back yard, therefore we will need to fence it in to keep Millie and Parker safe and sound.

View of Back Porch from the Family Room

View into the Back Yard

Full View of Back Deck

View of Side Yard

Full View of Back Yard

Wish us luck on our journey towards home ownership! We're going to need it! Be sure to follow our adventures on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #TheAmesBuyAHouse.
My handle on both sites is @MrsAnnieAmes!

Cheers!

Annie

Ames Family Adventures - Project #1

I would like to call myself somewhat of a handy-woman. I helped (more like watched) my dad do several do-it-yourself projects growing up including Making my own headboard for my bed out of a picket fence piece, build a corn hole (beanbag game) set for a friend, change my own flat tires, and paint practically everything. Now that I'm a grown up with a family of my own, I've started collecting "do-it-yourself" projects that I never seem to have the time to start (or finish for that matter). 

DREAM DINING ROOM

Yesterday, I received a sales flyer in the mail from Haverty's furniture. As I sat there drooling over the gorgeous dining room table, chairs and hutch (above) I found myself trying to figure out how I was going to buy this set immediately after we close on our house. I mean, look at it. It's gorgeous, has seating for 8 and is going to match perfectly in the rest of the house. After some heavy daydreaming I had a come-to-Jesus moment with myself I had to face the facts - I'm going to be broke as hell once this house finally goes through. After the pre-paids, closing costs, new flooring, paint, and general repairs needed throughout the house, any "fun money" I have is going to be non-existant.

Faced with that fact - and staring at my lame dining room table set (which we inherited from a friend) - I decided that NOW was the time to design my own dining room table and customize it to look EXACTLY like I wanted. I had always thought I wanted to paint the dining room set white and throw a navy blue material over the cushions. But after eyeing that set from Haverty's, I decided that I wanted to strip the bad boy down and stain it dark. 

My sad dining room chair (before picture)

Therefore, I did what any brave, DIY'er would do and had a chair massacre in my living room. It took me about 30 minutes to take each chair apart - I was smart enough to put all of the nuts & bolts in ziplock bags and then got to work googling how I was going to strip the wood down. After a couple of calls into my dad and a few texts to Mike letting him know our next adventure, I had a plan in place.  Operation "Update Dining Room Furniture" is officially underway! Stay tuned for updates!

Parker's Fisher Price chair was the only one who survived the Chair Massacre of 2015

Cheers! 

Annie

PS: An update to this post was created on 8/7/2015 and can be found here. 

The Ames Buy A House

Hello my friends!

I'm excited to share some BIG news with everyone! Mike and I have finally bit the bullet and have decided to venture into the home-ownership world! The house hunting process, while it seems to be fun and exciting, was actually more of an emotional journey than I expected. 

We started our search for houses in November 2014 like most people do - peeking in the windows of vacant houses in our current neighborhood (like stalkers). When we decided to actually inquire about a house - we found out that it was already sold. Strike ONE! Although we were a tad bit disappointed, some good did come out of the situation - we met GEORGE! George has been our realtor through this entire process and I cannot say enough great things about him!

Our serious home search began in January; we would reserve Saturday mornings and weekdays after work to go check out houses - we even put an offer in on a couple. Let's talk about THAT emotional roller coaster. The first house we put an offer in on - we were over bid on. Granted, our offer was $10k less than what the asking price was, so no wonder. But hey - it was worth a shot. It's actually a blessing in disguise that we didn't get it - looking back on it now, the house just wasn't "us". 

The second house we put an offer in on had a pool, a layout we liked, didn't need ANY updates... Mike was instantly in love. Alas - we were over bid on this one as well. However - this was just another blessing in disguise. The pool would have required more work than we were willing to put in, the neighborhood wasn't my favorite, and the front entry way had 3 different types of flooring - all within 5 feet of the front door.

After losing this house - and starting to lose hope on any others, Mike and I determined that we were going to take a break for a couple of weeks to re-group and come up with a game plan. We decided to "up" our max budget by about $20,000 just to have more options to review. On Wednesday, February 25th, we met George and went through three houses together. One was a Fannie Mae property that didn't need any work at all, another was a Short Sale in our current neighborhood that didn't need much work either, but had zero yard space, and the last one we saw that day was a complete disaster. It was owned by HUD, had no floors, had holes in the walls, was painted EVERY COLOR UNDERNEATH THE SUN; however - it had potential... and a huge back yard. Guess which one we decided to go with? THE HUD HAZMAT HOUSE!

For those of you who aren't familiar with HUD - they're home selling process is a little different than other types of home buying. For starters, the house goes up for bidding for 10 days. Only Owner-Occupants, Government Agencies and Non-Profits are eligible to bid on the house. If it doesn't sell within those first 10 days, it gets opened up to investors. Mike and I knew, that if we wanted this house, we were going to have to fight for it. The bidding deadline was Thursday, March 5th at midnight. We put in our offer on Wednesday night, with the help of our fabulous agent, George. And then we waited.

All day Thursday, Mike and I were nervous wrecks. After losing 2 previous offers and countless other homes that went off the market before we could even put in an offer, we did NOT want to lose this house. We both didn't get much sleep Thursday night - tossing and turning each hour, not knowing what Friday would bring us - tears of sadness, or tears of joy.Waking up Friday morning, Mike and I immediately pulled out our phones and checked the HUD website - terrified. First thing we noticed: The bidding period was EXTENDED to Monday 3/9. WHAT DID THIS MEAN? Hurriedly, I sent George a text message (at 7:00am) asking for an update (HELP US GEORGE!). With nothing new to report, he convinced us to be patient and let us know that he would update us if anything happened.

Around lunch time, my curiosity was getting the better of me. I sent George another message asking him if he had any updates. His reponse: "The HUD website says that the bidding period has closed an offer has been accepted, but I haven't gotten an email yet." Here is where my heart sinks. Could we have possibly lost ANOTHER house? But then another message comes from George: "The bidding period is closed because they accepted YOUR offer." Could this be true? Did they really pick us? Did we have a house? OUR HOUSE? Commence extreme excitement dance in my office chair. [side note: Mike forgot his cell phone at home this day - therefore, I had to call every friend we had to try to find him to tell him the news.]

Now that the paperwork is in to HUD (including our pre-approval letter and binder check), the real fun is about to begin! Please send prayers, good vibes, and any other good mojo and karma our way - we're going to need it these next few weeks as we try to close on this house and get it ready to be lived in! I'll be sure to keep everyone up-to-date on our progress, including photos! Stay tuned for more!

We can't wait for our friends and family to visit us at our [soon-to-be] new [to-us] house!

5347 Clapboard Creek Drive

Jacksonville, FL 32226

Cheers!!

Annie, Mike & Parker

Influenster Review: Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel

Greetings followers!

I hope your 2015 year is off to a great start! A couple of months ago I joined an awesome site called Influenster. You basically answer questions, review products and share your favorite products via social media - in return they send you full size products to test (FOR FREE) in the comfort of your own home! HOW MUCH FUN!

My first VoxBox (as they're called) was for Neutrogena's new "Hydro Boost Water Gel" moisturizer. We'll start off by saying, I was a LITTLE too excited to get the box in the mail - Mike was a bit confused. But when only a few people get selected to test each product, you'd get excited too!

After first trying this moisturizer, I will say that I'm hooked. It's extremely lightweight and feels AMAZING on my face. It's not oily, it's not creamy, it's just like a splash of water that soaks into your skin and makes you look glowingly beautiful. I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a light-weight moisturizer - great for those hot summer months when you don't want to use that heavy stuff from last winter!

Go out and give it a try!! 

Cheers!

Annie

PS: I received this product for free to test thanks to @Neutrogena and @Influenster. #BehindTheGlow #Neutrogena #Contest