Let’s say I have a plan for my life or at least a list of things to accomplish in a certain order. Next on that list is to buy a house with my dear husband. I wrote about our decision to start the buying process here and what you can do to prepare. Today I have more exciting news to share today – We were approved for our mortgage and can officially start looking – WOO HOO!!

The mortgage process was fairly easy, we already had a mortgage guy lined up so we sat down with him and talked about what we were looking for, what we wanted our monthly payment to be and what areas we were planning to look. We hashed out some numbers and then we had to provide our W2’s from last year, our last two months worth of bank statements and our last two pay stubs. We were able to do this fairly quickly and it only took about a week to get a final number.

My husband and I are beyond thrilled and immediately contacted our realtor who has been waiting a long time to get us into our dream house. We are going to sit down with him in the next few weeks and start looking through houses.

To kick this process off, my husband and I had to make a list of some of the things that we really wanted in our home, these include:

• Four Bedrooms (we need to have room for future kiddos)
• 2.5 Bathrooms (We need two showers for all of our future kiddos and I want a half bath so guests don’t have to use our bathroom)
• Full Basement (Finished would be a plus, but this will be John’s Man Cave)
• Dining Room (I love to entertain and have always wanted a Dining Room so I can host holidays and dinner parties)
• Attached two car garage (three would be a plus-I can’t wait until we can both park in a garage!)
• Nice Backyard (I want to get a hot tub in the future and have room for a swingset for future kiddos)
• NO Bungalows (Been there, done that)
• Laundry Room/Mud Room
• Modern Kitchen with an Island and lots of counter space (The hubby likes to cook and I like to bake)
• One room needs to have a master bath, preferably with two sinks (I can’t wait for two sinks!)
• A big front porch

I’m sure we will come up with more things to add to the list, but I would love to hear your suggestions on what we should look for in the comments.