POLISHED POPE | STYLES

What a September To Remember. On the most recent blog post title ‘Nine, Four, Eight, Seven’, I shared my 30th birthday with you guys and I appreciate all the birthday wishes. Not only did Beyonce and I celebrate our birthday on the 4th but I also celebrated my mother's birthday on the 6th, mother-in-law's birthday on the 3rd, and my daughters birthday on the 18th. So as you can see, September is always a party and filled with so much LOVE! Hubs and I were also in our friends spectacular wedding on the 17th. As the ‘Matron Of Honor’ I had the best time ever decorating her ‘Kate Spade’ themed bridal shower. You know I am all about themes! Last month, there were also a host of some of my friends birthdays and celebrations because, Virgo’s Rule!

The most important event out of the entire month was September 15th. Besides the days that our children were born, the day that hubs proposed and the day that we got married, September 15th will go down in history as the most spiritual day that we had ever experienced together. So, let me back up a little. As I reflect back, I remember friends asking me all month long, what I was going to do for my 30th birthday. Thirty is a big deal right? Previously hubs and I had made plans to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday the first week of September per usual, because that is normally when hubs takes his vacation from work. My family had planned a vacation to Jamaica for the first week of September to celebrate my Mother’s birthday so the trip would just be a packaged deal for everyone! We were so excited to go to Jamaica but reality set it and we had to make completely different options to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday.

The end of July, I went to Miami for my friends Bachelorette Party. While sitting down in Miami to have lunch, I received a call from hubs. He had been pre-approved for our home. I was so excited but had to suppress my emotions until I’d got back home. We were so shocked! What we thought was an inquiry to homeownership became the beginning of the home buying process. Of course, I was nervous, and all sorts of doubtful because I wasn’t expecting things to happen so fast so with that being said the trip to Jamaica had to be canceled to allocate all of our time and funds to looking for a home. Jamaica could wait right!! I want to give you a little more insight on the miracle that this homeownership situation has been to us.

Let’s rewind to the December 2016. I do a vision board pretty much for every year and for the last two to three years I had a picture of a home, the words ‘Buy A Home’, pictures of money and even a picture of hubs and I standing and hugging one another on a porch in front of a home from a visit to Detroit..post children. We decided December 2016 for sure with the vision board and a semi-plan that 2017 we would begin the process to home ownership and plan to close in the early part of 2018. My family of four, well six had been living in a two bedroom apartment since 2011. With two children and two dogs we had completely outgrown our 1062 square foot apartment.

Daily, Hubs was becoming so frustrated living there. He started to dread pulling up to the parking lot everyday because he felt that he worked so hard and that his family deserved something so much better. Don’t get me wrong, apartment living is fine for temporary living but eventually WE have to do better by investing into ourselves. We initially moved into the apartment to save money. We found this brand new apartment and the lease was almost three hundred dollars less than what we were previously spending for rent. We moved into this apartment in 2011, and got married in 2014. Year after year we continued to renew because at the rate of rent in Nashville we just couldn’t think about spending over $1000 to rent anything.

At the beginning of the year my immediate focus became working on our credit and took ‘The Budgetnista’s FREE Live Richer Challenge. Doing some of the basics of the challenge, I started working on credit, paying things up and off. We consolidated our student loans, got a couple of credit cards to build on my credit and made a habit to do better in that area. You know, adult stuff! Now, lets fast forward. Once I came back from Miami, things kicked into high gear. Our lease at the apartment happened to be expiring September 30th, so we had to make some things shake. If you know anything about me I am a planner, so I hadn’t even had a chance to research everything required and everything needed to go into the home buying process so of course fear started to creep in.

Hubs could sense my nerves and felt like I was excited about buying a home. I can only be honest and admit that I was scared. I had never experienced this, never seen anyone experience it and usually if that's the case I at least give myself some time to research for a better understanding but there was no time for that. When you are in the pre approval stage, you live in a sellers market, and houses are flying off the market like hotcakes you have to move fast so that's what I did. Things were going so fast and I became both excited, humbled, grateful and amazed at how this miracle began to manifest.

This post is going to get even better! To hear more about this blog post, stayed tuned for the next post to find out more about how much of a miracle September has been and video footage from our house reveal...