TSS: New House!!

This Sunday Salon is going to be short and sweet, because I have about a million reviews to write today (well, six.  But it feels like a million).  What I wanted to announce today is that the hubby and I are buying a house!  Most of you probably recall that last December we moved from Chicago to Orlando, and since we’ve been here we’ve just been renting an apartment until we could figure out if, when, and where we wanted to purchase a home.  To be honest, I wasn’t sold on the idea of buying right away – we do, after all, still own a place back home (and we have a stable renter, so the situation is okay) and I just wasn’t sure I was ready to commit to living in Florida for the foreseeable future.  And we weren’t seriously looking, either.  But recently hubby started looking at foreclosed properties in the area (sadly, there are a LOT of those around here) and fell in love with this neighborhood of townhouses about twenty minutes from where we’re living now.

Long story short, we discovered that although there are a few foreclosures in this neighborhood, there is actually a new builder who just came into the property and is going to finish the only halfway-finished neighborhood!  And the brand new homes are going for just a tiny bit more than the foreclosures at this point.  It didn’t take much more than a walk through the model home and neighborhood for us to be sold.  And when we found out the price, and everything we would get for that (incredibly affordable) price, we were completely sold.  So we signed a contract, and our home should be ready for us by February, with the closing scheduled for March.

It’s been a busy few weeks of getting pre-qualified by the bank, picking out all the add-ons and design elements we wanted for the home, rebuilding our financial plans to be sure that we can easily afford everything, etc.  But we are very, very excited and I for one cannot wait to move in come March.

So that’s my announcement. 🙂  And now I suppose I’m living in Orlando for good.  Which is actually completely okay, over the past 10 months I’ve really come to love it here.  And we’ve gotten connected with our church extremely well, we’re in an awesome small group, we both have good jobs, and who can complain when it’s 80 degrees in October?  So, yes, things are going well these days!

As far as books and reading go, I am mostly concerned with getting reviews written right now.  I’d overloaded myself with review copies this year and have recently stopped accepting them until further notice, which will probably be sometime after March.  Until then, I plan to finish whatever I can, but also read library books and my own personal books too, and enjoy not putting so much pressure on myself.

That’s about it for me!  What are you up to this Sunday?