Ten Months!

We're celebrating our tenth monthsary today! Okay, before you get any ideas, we don't really celebrate our monthsary but we usually greet each other (when we remember!), but this month is different since we just moved to a new home.

We've been crazy busy the past ten months and here's some of the fun stuff:

January - this was the month a wanna-be domestic goddess was born. We tried to survive on left-overs and fast-food, but we longed for home-cooked meals. We thought we'd burn down the house with our first cooking attempt. The smokin' stove though was overshadowed by our rocker-washing-machine. We took some time off though by going to Singapore for our honeymoon.

February - our second month was a barrel of laughs when I our sink started spewing out smoke. This was the month that I took my ambition to be a domestic goddess into the next level. Conquered the stove and washing machine!

March - we finally got our groove at home and took our first out of town trip with Miguel and friends. Things were going on smoothly and we had a gardening 101 session with Mom. This was the month that our septic tank gave us nightmares.

April - the summer heat was so bad we dreaded our Meralco bill. With the septic tank problem solved we managed to have some summer fun by attending events here and there. We were plagued though with ants! They were everywhere and attacked our gadgets. Thank God for ant chalk, they soon dreaded setting foot in our house.

May - this is the month we had our first family vacation. Went to Cebu and Bohol. We got so busy that month we weren't able to make any blog posts. This was the month that SM Supermarket included me as one of their 25 Food Council members.

June - the start of school proved to be difficult since Miguel got sick. We were relieved though that the multiple sickness that plagued him was resolved with meds. Our sixth month though was no less happy.

July - this was the month I started to get pats on my back for learning domestic chores really fast -- especially cooking and doing the laundry. I also learned to cook more dishes with the help of the internet and online cooking mentors. We were also quite busy working on Miguel's college entrance applications. Jay also started working for an embassy and so I had to get used to being home alone all day.

August - during this month we started to discuss moving to a new home. It was reinforced by the fact that our neighbors weren't friendly and the bathroom started bubbling up waste again. We began house hunting. Miguel also took his UPCAT and Mapua entrance exam.

September - there's just something about that sink. I was found unconscious by Miguel when he got home. Our all-around helper, Mang Jose, sprayed a little insecticide under the sink because we suspected it to be infested with termites. It took three days before we could eat at the dining table again. We almost bought a house, but eventually decided to move closer to my parents.

October - moved! We love our new home and hope to build more happy memories here sans house problems. Our wedding feature on Kasal.com is also now available!

How time flies! We've had a lot of fun and have learned a lot of stuff in the past ten months we've been together. Hopefully with our new groove in our new home we'd be able to do other stuff and be of service in our community.

Woohoo!

The House Hunting Mishap: a PhP10,000 Lesson

We went house hunting in the past two months thinking that we could already afford it. Haha. We were in for a suprise since we didn't know that you need to pay up at least 20% cash for equity before you could get a bank loan. Realizing that we found a nice little house with affordable downpayment and monthly amortization. We immediately latched on the idea of getting the house, but wanted more time to think about it. We unfortunately fell for the real estate agent's spiel that we should immediately pay for the reservation fee. So we did.

After paying for the reservation fee I started having doubts. Big doubts that I was unable to sleep for a few nights. I always take time to make big purchases. It takes me about a year before I actually purchase a PC. So you can just imagine my anxiety at purchasing a house. Sweetie and I talked about it and did additional computations and research. We then decided to forgo buying a house so we could save up for more equity.

The next day I went to see the property developer to tell them that we were letting the house go. She said that she could only return 80% of our reservation fee because the real estate agent already got her agent's fee. The property developer explained that this was common practice for them and even showed me the signed voucher. I was surprised that they released the fee even though the sale was unconsumated.

So it was a badly rushed decision for us. What was painful though was how the real estate agent rushed us to put in some money even though I said that I wanted to forego it for more thinking time. I had thought that I could trust the real estate agent to put our needs foremost before anything else since I had known her since I was a kid. We had heard a lot of complaints about her prior to engaging her services, but we let it go as hearsay since we had known her for decades.

We did not try to get the money anymore and just let it be a hard earned lesson about saying no.