Here it is... THE BIG REVEAL!

Here it is... the day I'm sure you've all been waiting for with anticipation just as much as I have.  The day I get to reveal the news I've been hiding for several weeks..months even.

So, take a look at the picture...look through the door way and wonder what it is I could have been hiding all of this time.  Many of you have had guesses....lots and lots of guesses.  Many of you have had some pretty outrageous guesses.  Many of you have had the right guess, but I didn't want to let you know that easy.  Many of you have probably decided that you're bored with waiting and just done.  And I understand, I got to that point, too.

But, wait no longer.

The picture you see above is a very special entry way.  It is the entry way to....

MY NEW HOUSE!!

Yep.  My new house....as in Hubby and I bought a house.  We own a house.  Not just any house, either, but we found our dream home.

Back in February, you all might remember how unhappy I was about the house I'm living in right now.  I made it my goal...no, my mission to find a house this year so that I could move out of the ramshackle piece of crap I'm living in now.  I spoke to a banker and got pre-approved quite easily for a home loan.  And yes...you'll see the constant "I", because I started the process off alone.  I realized that unless I started pushing Hubby, nothing was ever going to happen.

After receiving my pre-approval letter, I went and found a realtor.  I sat down with an extremely nice lady and she asked me for my "must-haves" (just like they do on House Hunter).  I told her we had to have 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, had to be move in ready, large back yard, and preferably out of the center of town...country would be best.  She then asked me how much I wanted to spend.  When I told her no more than $130,000... I'm pretty sure she thought I was crazy.  She told me it would be extremely hard to find what I wanted, but she'd do her best to try.  And so the search began.

After some serious arm twisting of Hubby, I got him to agree to look at some houses.  He really didn't believe we would be able to afford what we wanted, and was worried I'd fall in love with a house way above our price range or a fixer upper that was just as bad as what we were living in.  We looked at a total of 6 houses in a range of about a month.  One had the space, but was too run down.  The next was beautifully updated, but way too small.  The next offered space, an extremely low price because it was a foreclosure, but way too much work needed.  After that, we had the space and some of the updates and was a maybe.  Then, I walked in to a house and knew right then it was the one.  We'll get to that in just a sec.. but the last house we looked at was right after THE house and even though it was gorgeous, I didn't feel the same connection as I'd had just a few minutes prior.

We went home after looking at those last two houses, and I begged and pleaded with Hubby to put in an offer.  It took some nagging, and sitting down and crunching all of our numbers before I was able to convince him that the house of our dreams wasn't that much more than what we are currently paying for the dump we live in.  We made an offer two days later, it was accepted March 14th, and we've been going through the loan process ever since.

We closed yesterday morning...and the house is now ours!

Let's take a tour, shall we?  At the moment, I only have the pictures from the listing because I haven't had a chance to take any pictures at the house yet... but the pictures I'm going to share with you are ultimately the reason I knew the house was going to be our home.  When my realtor emailed them to me and told me that the house had been drastically dropped in price, I just knew that it was the one before I ever set foot in it.  And I was right.

The house we managed to get for $127,000.  It is 2376 sq ft.  It has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms.  It has been completely remodeled and renovated with new hot water tank, roof, and AC unit.  It has brand new laminate floors in the living areas, tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, and carpets in the bedrooms.  It has a huge fenced in back yard, a large front yard, a small private side yard...and a bonus room attached to the carport.

Here we go...

The formal living room and formal dining room (the new couch stayed)

The den/ informal dining room (the pellet stove went, and now we just have a regular fire place)

The kitchen...lots of cabinet space!

The master bedroom... with privacy deck

Peanut's room, that no longer has brown carpet..because they put brand new blue/gray carpet it in for her

Butter's room

Kids' bathroom/ guest bathroom

Outside covered patio area that's attached to the huge carport

Side yard...that I've claimed as my own retreat area

Huge fenced in back yard..that is a lot more green now, and bigger than this picture portrays

And then, there's the added bonus....

OH YEA!! An inground pool..completely fenced in!

With pool house separate from the house

The house looks a lot different, and bigger now that it's empty.  I'll be sure to get some pictures today when we go over there.  I just couldn't be happier with it.  It has everything I asked for...and then some.  And even the realtor just couldn't believe how much house we were getting for the price.

Before closing, we met with the sellers to do one last walk through.  They were so nice to us.  They explained how they'd changed the carpet in Peanut's room, they didn't want the new couch they had purchased just a few months before - because it was too big for their new house and wanted us to have first dibs on it before they sold it or gave it to someone else, they bought a new motor for the pool pump because they were nervous the old motor was going out, they left a bucket of pool chemicals, the pool electronic self cleaner, and all the tools to go with the pool, and even bought us a small gift to welcome them to the home... a set of lavender candles.

Today is our first day to go and start moving in, and I'm so excited.

I know that most of you had already figured out what my secret is, and I hope that those of you that didn't aren't disappointed.  I had to wait, because I wanted to make sure the house was officially ours before I said anything.

Now, I have to run so I can go spend some time in my new home.  Oh, how I've waited so long to call a place HOME.