Spreading Holiday Cheer with Shutterfly

Well, M&J are getting ready to do what everyone else is out doing...

No, not Christmas shopping (although that needs to be done - thanks for the reminder). Actually, we need to order our Christmas Cards. We really struggled with a location this year, which is uncommon for us. We knew we wanted to feature our first place in some way, but that is easier said than done, especially when lots of your home is UNFINISHED. Don't think an incomplete room does much for a beautiful Christmas Card.

After multiple attempts to try to get "the right photo", then J went looking for the right card. She searched site after site, and then found multiple (I know, this never happens) cards that she LOVED on Shutterfly's website! AND to make it even better, Shutterfly is having a promotion right now for bloggers and they are giving them 50 free holiday cards if they share their favorite cards. If you'd like to learn more about it, go here and if not AT LEAST check out Shutterfly's website and pick out some Christmas cards if you haven't already ordered yours.

These are just a few of my favorites from their site and why I love them -

J loves this one for its simplicity and for the monogram:

And this one for its unique vertical design with two photos:

As well as this one for its unique fonts:

Not sure what we'll choose yet, but with so many options, J is hoping to pick something that is NOT red (the last two years have been red and M&J should really branch out and try something different) and M is hoping for something that isn't too girly. We'll see how successful we are...

Also, if you're looking for a good Christmas gift idea, I heard these make great gifts:

Our House - Before

After our home was officially ours, we went and took beginning photos of our first place. We wanted to be able to look back and see what our house was BEFORE all our hard work. Here's the "before" of our home:The Outside

Entryway
View of the Combined Dining and Living Room

View of the Kitchen from the Dining RoomAnother view of the KitchenHalf bath - just off the kitchen

Master Bedroom
Full Bathroom
Second Bedroom - will become M's OfficeThird Bedroom - to become Guest BedroomHallway with Built-in ClosetOne half of the Utility RoomOther Half of the Utility RoomOpen Room in the Basement - will become J's Craft RoomCloset in what will be J's Craft RoomOne Half of Family RoomOther Half of the Family Room

Knowing what we had to work with was going to help us know what steps would need to be taken to get our home to the place we wanted it. We were looking forward to getting some ideas together and seeing what opportunities would be available to us for our new place, and we couldn't wait to get started.

SOLD!

On day 250 of marriage, (but who's counting) M & J purchased their first home.

SOLD - M & J are now Homeowners

In Front of our New Place

We were armed and ready to get to work - the faster we got things finished up the faster we could get moved into our new place. We had a long list of tasks, but were hopeful to get most of them done (at least to the point that we could move in) by the end of May. We were hoping to have friends over for the 4th of July holiday, and wanted to have a renovated house finished and ready for guests. Boy, we had a lot to learn...

A Lesson in House Hunting

M & J became interested in house hunting in the fall of 2009. After J’s graduation and Christmas, we decided to move from online searching to actual home showings. We tried out four places on the first day out and never would have guessed that one of them would be our future home.

One house was too smoky for our taste and not big enough. Nope.

The next two seemed like more logical options. Both in good locations, had lots of garage space, but had some work to be done and were listed at higher prices.

The last home was in a great location, but that was about the only “great” thing we saw that day. Torn up inside, only one full bath, lots of work to be done in every room and a HIDEOUS 18 inch back door that could not be overlooked.

After the first day, we were discouraged by the amount of work to be done in all of these houses and felt like we had lots to learn and were going to be sacrificing a lot to even find a house we would consider buying.

We went back to Manhattan and stalked checked out realty Web sites often to see if anything new was coming onto the market. Things got crazy for M in February when he started traveling frequently for work and then in March we lost his dad. At this point, it reiterated the fact that we should move back to Central KS and fast. Our lease ended in Manhattan in May, and if we wanted to avoid being homeless, we needed to act quickly. Little did we know – we’d have to go through attempting to purchase three houses before we’d land our first place.