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Studying Up

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I have spent countless hours over the last few months reading about buying a home.  I have read about HUD homes, FHA loans,  interest rates, financing, Mortgage Refinance Rates, how to buy a foreclosure, how not to become house poor and more. Shoot….I even read about VA loan rates just because the info was there!

I find myself constantly searching on Google for more info to fill my crazy brain with.  The way  I see it, the more I know the easier it will be to understand what we are doing and how we are going to get through the crazy, emotional mess that is buying a house.  Yes, I said crazy…..I have yet to find someone who has had their entire home buying process go off without a hitch.

I’m just preparing myself early.  I want to make sure that I know what to expect.

Now I just need to go back to sitting and waiting to hear back from our mortgage dude and see where we stand.

Again, please keep your fingers crossed that we will be shopping for a house SOON!!!!

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The journey to home ownership

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As I have mentioned before, the Alex and I are getting ready to begin the journey towards becoming homeowners. We have had to take a few extra years to do so in order to repair our credit thanks to a little birdie pretending to be the Alex a few years back and destroying his credit via the internet. Had I known then what I do now about identity theft protection, I would have enlisted the help of a service like Identity Hawk to help safeguard us. If only I could turn back the hands of time!

We are hoping that this is the year in which we purchase a home of our own. A home that I can paint any color I want and decorate it just right and make it ours.

I sent an email off to the mortgage officer that has been working with us for the last year to see if we are ready to jump in and get the process started. Now I am just waiting for him to return to work from his vacation and let me know where we are.

If we aren’t quite there yet we will be doing everything in our power over the next few months to get there because we want to be in our own home before the kids start school in September. I hate the thought of them starting school and then having to pack everything up and move them and then having to get settled in once again.

Ideally we would like to stay in the same community we are currently living in so the kids can stay at the same schools and we will still be close to my parents.

So, keep your fingers crossed for us that you will be hearing news that we are house hunting soon!!

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Homemade Play dough

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Alexander loves play dough and we tend to go thru A LOT of it since he likes to get real creative and mix colors when he is in creative mode. Because of his obsession with play dough I have learned that it is more cost effective to make our own play dough at home than it is to continuously buy it. Being a former day care teacher, I have a lot of awesome recipes for different things in this head of mine and the play dough recipe I use is wonderful.
All you need is:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
Food coloring
Storage containers

Mix together the flour, salt and cream of tartar in a saucepan. Mix water, oil and food coloring together and gradually stir into dry ingredients. Cook over medium heat stirring until dough forms into a ball. Remove from heat and knead until smooth.

I personally like to make bigger batches, mix it up, separate it into large ziploc bags and then add the food coloring and let Alexander mix it together by squishing it around in the bag. It is another great sensory project before he even gets to play with the dough!

I also love that by mixing it in the bag you get a marbled result….I just think it looks really neat!

Enjoy!

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Make Your Own CHUNKY Toddler Tie Dyed Crayons

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We happen to go through A LOT of crayons in our house. I feel like I am constantly buying them. Over the years Zack & Libby were required to have crayons in their school supplies which always left us with baggies of crayon remnants at the end of the year. Now that Alexander is into coloring I have found that he performs better with the thick chunky crayons but these tend to be cost a bit more than your standard crayon so we decided to put our crayon remnants to good use and make our own chunky toddler tie dyed crayons.