The House - Part 1 in a series.....

I am the queen of whims. I get grand ideas in my head all the time. Most of them I never even follow through on.....some I do (like my trip to London).

My latest whim is a home of my own. It came about because of two things:

1) I am totally obsessed with HGTV. The thought of actually being able to ALTER my living space is just too tantalizing to handle! I want to paint.....I want to install things.....I want to tear things apart and put them together again. Can't do that in an apartment....

2) I have spent a good part of the last three years hating my neighbors. I live on the second floor of a three-floor building. This means I have people on ALL sides of me. My last two upstairs neighbors have driven my nuts.....the last guy was a STOMPER. I swear he was wearing concrete-enforced combat boots. The current guy plays reggae music very loud. And I think he owns only one cd. And it's not any better downstairs. The last tenants were a Hispanic couple that yelled and threw things a lot....and always at really inappropriate hours. The guy now screams out obscenities and bangs on the wall at strange intervals. Needless to say, I am SO looking forward to not sharing walls with anyone....

So today I took the first big step in the house hunting process.....I applied for a loan. I will hear on my pre-approval early next week and then I can hit the ground running. The lease is up on my apartment in April and I am *praying* that everything falls in to place at the right time. I am going to go and talk to my apartment manager about what I need to do. I am hoping that, because I have been a very good tenant for over 5 years, they will cut me some slack.

Anyhow, I am excited and scared. I really have no idea what I'm getting in to. I really hope I can afford all this (if I could just win the $205 million Powerball, this would not be a problem). My monthly payments are going to go up, I know that utilities will go up, and the upfront costs of movers, appliances, getting utilities switched, etc. But other people do this every day, right? If they can figure it out, so should I!

Next step is to find a real estate agent and have them start looking. The next three months are going to be a whirlwind of craziness! Hopefully ending in a cute little house that I can start to demolish......