Smile!

I got a new camera!

It's my first "grown up" camera.  A Canon EOS M purchased from Amazon.  My brother bought it first and suggested I purchase one as well.  What a great suggestion from my little bro the photographer.  It arrived in the mail last week and I've been having fun capturing little bits of life with it.  I'm heading to Southern California this weekend and I can't wait to use it for my travel photography instead of my cel phone camera.  :)  Here are some of my favorite pictures taken with it so far.

Summer Eurotrip- Vienna

From Budapest, we traveled by train to Vienna, Austria.  This would have been a simple nonstop trip under normal circumstances, but the Danube was flooded.  Our quick three hour train ride took the entire day.  I will disclose that we waited in line for over an hour to buy tickets (there was not a kiosk available to purchase tickets and we were unable to buy them online days before) so we missed the 11:00am train and had to take the 1:00pm train.  As for the ride itself, we had to take a short train ride, then a 30-minute shuttle ride (standing room only by the time we got on), followed by another train ride.  But we made it!

Summer Eurotrip- Budapest

It's time to take a breather from all this house talk!  Before we do... we decided to go for it!  We are thrilled, albeit broke (or we will be for a while after we close).  It's expensive to buy a house, even though the seller covers the broker's 3%, with the inspection, closing costs, appraisal, year's worth of home insurance, three months of property taxes, etc...  It's a good thing I already took a summer vacation, because there won't be any fun trips for this blogger for a while!  I'll have to dive into my archives or go through my list of past trips I haven't blogged about yet.  So don't worry, I will not be short on content.  I will be here to help you waste your time while you procrastinate work (just like what I'm doing right now...). 

Without further adieu, about this Eurotrip.  Last month I went with two girlfriends to Budapest and Vienna!

To buy or not to buy?

That's the question.  We looked at our mortgage loan paperwork last night and got a little freaked out!  Of course, this whole house shopping process is turning out to be more expensive than we expected.  We should have known, right?  The house costs a little more than what we wanted to spend (but we may have had unrealistic expectations considering the neighborhoods in which we're shopping).  The monthly payments are within our budget, but we were hoping to pay less so that we'd have more money to spend on fun things like travel.  We have eight days to decide if this is the place for us.

On one hand, we're getting the house below market value.  It's in a convenient location and the neighborhood is up-and-coming so we could potentially sell it in the not-too-distant future and make a sizable profit.  It's also highly rentable if we want to go that route.  I feel like it's a decent investment opportunity.  On the other hand, the monthly payment is almost as much as our rent, and we have to factor in paying for maintenance, which we don't have as renters.  I think the ultimate question is are we ready to be home owners?  I know it's in our budget to buy this house.  We're just getting cold feet because of the financial commitment.  We have to live somewhere, and right now we're getting zero return on investment for the rent money we're spending, and if we buy this place, we're doing something with our money that could turn a profit for us in the future.

Rent vs. buy... What would you do in this situation?

Our new house! (almost...)

We found out this morning that our offer was accepted on the house!

It felt like a relief, and scary at the same time, as this will be the biggest financial investment of my life so far.  This afternoon there was some confusion between the lender, Realtor, and us regarding who is covering the 3% brokers fee.  Fortunately, we worked it out.  I'm still confused as to whether it was a misunderstanding or if something had to be taken care of behind the scenes... but it worked out in our favor so we're grateful!  The inspection will be Friday and the potential closing day is August 13th.  I can't wait to get my hands dirty with this place.  It's in an excellent location and has such great potential.  Stay tuned for lots of DIY posts in the near future!

Holiday House Hunting

I don't usually say this, but I'm so glad it's Sunday!  We celebrated the Fourth of July this weekend (well, on Thursday so it was practically the weekend) as well as a good friend's wedding here in Dallas.  We also started our house hunting process, so I am exhausted today!

What better way than to celebrate Murica's b-day than with a dunk tank?