As I have already stated when I started this blog, it is basically going to be a mix relating to a crazy girl's life. I am that crazy girl being a business woman on the internet and at trade shows and fairs, a wife, a daughter, a chef, a cleaning lady, and most of all a mommy. I would like to post a lot of recipes because my fiance that went to culinary school, deems me one of the best cooks he has ever met. I am sure this has something to do with the fact that he loves me but I also think I have a lot to offer other amateur chefs out there. i am adding a recipe I recently made to today's post but I am going to take it in a different direction today.

My fiance (whom I always refer to as my husband, just so you know from now forward) and I have been saving for a house. We live with my mom and stepfather now and they would like to move into a smaller home, this means we also have to move. At first I panicked and after I pulled myself back together, I came up with a plan.  Our goal was to have $10,000 saved in a year to spend on the down payment on a $30,000 home or so. Well, it turns out that life has happened to us and our credit is not all that great. We knew we had less than perfect credit but it turns out to be worse than we thought. So we had a change of plans. I was not ready to give up on my dream of owning my own home yet.

The new plan was to buy a home in cash. Of course this home would need lots of work. But all of us want to change things when we first buy a house anyways, so I thought we would just have to do more than the average homeowner. It helps a great deal that my husband, my stepfather, and my father in law are all super handy and have offered to help us fix the problem in the house.

And so began the home finding process. And it was both fun and frustrating. When you are trying to find a house for around $10,000 you see all sorts of silly things. I also think I should mention that we live in Pittsburgh, Pa so my price of $10,000 may be higher or lower than your same home depending on the cost of living in your area. We found homes that had giant holes in the roof, one home where we opened the closet door and could see straight outside, and another home where we totally felt ourselves walking downhill. It turns out that home had shifted and although they put new support beams in the basement I am not sure I ever would have felt safe in that house. And last but not least, the home that was hanging 2 feet over a cliff.

I actually was beginning to consider the shifted house mostly out of desperation and then the unthinkable happened. "Drum Roll" We found the house of our dreams for our budget. It was not only in a nicer area that we ever thought we could live, but it was in one of the nicer areas in our city. And so begins the real purpose of this post (I am sorry it took me so long to get here but I felt you needed some background on our struggles first) buying a HUD Home.

Yes, that's right the home of our dreams was a HUD home, this is one of the reasons we could afford it. HUD homes are basically foreclosures but they are foreclosures from people that had FHA loans. This has been the most frustrating and stressful and hopefully, in the end it will be the most fulfilling experience of our lives. First of all buying from HUD is buying from the government and as a lot of things go with the government there is not a lot of support and also a whole new world to learn. It is nothing like buying a home from another person or seller. We fortunately haver awesome people in our lives that went the extra mile to find out all the answers. The most important person to us for finding these answers was our Real Estate Agent Lori Bost of Howard Hanna of Pleasant Hills, Pa. So this is our story warts and all.