Below you will find a simple guide to who’s eligible and any restrictions that may apply. 

First Time Homebuyers

These buyers are considered “first timers” if they have not owned a home during the previous 3 years. For example, if you owned a condo from 2000-2003, then sold that condo, and have rented properties since that time, you would qualify as a first time homebuyer.

- Tax Credit – $8,000 ($4,000 for married couples filing separately)

Existing Homeowners

These buyers must have used the home that they are currently selling, sold, or will be selling as their primary residence consecutively for 5 of the previous 8 years.

- Tax Credit – $6,500 ($3,250 for married couples filing separately)

Rules & Regs

Credit Expiration:

The tax credit will be available for Purchase Agreements signed on or before April 30, 2010, however, time will be allotted through June 30, 2010 to allow for closing on your new home. Income Limits:

$125,000 – Single; $225,000 – Married.

Should your income exceed these limits by $20,000 or less, the tax credit will be phased out gradually.

Limitation on Cost of Purchased Home:

Maximum Sales Price of $800,000

Homes selling for under $80,000 will be eligible for a maximum tax credit of 10% of the sales price.

Other Key Details surrounding the credit:

- Homebuyers who purchase from a parent, grandparent, child or grandchild are not eligible.

- The tax credit may only be used for a primary residence including: single-family homes, condos, townhomes, and co-ops.

- The tax credit can not be used towards down payments or closing costs.

- For information on when and how to file for your tax credit, please contact a tax professional.

Please contact me immediately to begin the search for your next home. I look forward to working with you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stefanie Levy

What do Jerraud Powers, Shawn Southward, Kenyatta Roach, Cory Trapp, Marquez Jones, Adam McCarley and Dez Polk have in common?  They are all little guys, former Mizeman candidates and moving on to the next level.

Jerraud Powers,  cornerback from Decatur High school, drafted 3^rd round by the Indianapolis Colt  gets the starting nod after winning the Zeke Smith Award at Auburn as the Defensive player of the Year.  Who would have thought a player 5 foot 9 and 172 pounds would pack such a punch in the NFL.    So far, in this his rookie season, he has accumulated 29 tackles and one fumble recovery for the undefeated Colts.

Shawn Southward, running back from Florence High School and an 07-08 Mizeman nominee has broken into the running back rotation as a freshman at Troy University.   Playing in eight of the Trojans games Shawn has gotten 49 carries for a 4 yard per carry average and three TD’s

Others making strides are Kenyatta Roach,  RB from Brooks High School who signs a with winning tradition at the University of North Alabama.  Cory Trapp, QB from Russellville High School is playing on a baseball scholarship with University of Alabama Huntsville and has broken into the lineup at Short Stop.  Adam McCarley, QB from Phillips High School and the 2008 winner has also hung up his football cleats to play baseball at Northwest Shoals Jr. College.  Marquez Jones, running back from Hartselle High School and a 2008 finalist is currently playing wide receiver for the Hutchinson Community College Blue Dragons, an Air Force Academy prep school and Dez Polk, running back from Speake High School won MVP honors in the 2008 North South High School All-star game by catching two TD passes.

Some say dynamite comes in small packages, and in the case of these young men, I believe it.

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Posted by Buellboy

Dallas Cowboys' DeMarcus Ware, President Barack Obama, Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Pittsburgh Steelers' Troy Polamalu with Washington, D.C.-area children at the White House. Brees said it was the only time he had thrown a pass to someone wearing a Chicago Bears jacket.

Times-Picayune—In support of his United We Serve initiative, President Barack Obama and NFL stars Drew Brees, DeMarcus Ware and Troy Polamalu team up to highlight the importance of fitness for America’s children.

Obama joins Saints quarterback Brees, Steelers safety Polamalu and Cowboys linebacker Ware in a special public service announcement debuting during each of the three NFL games played on Thanksgiving.

The 90-second PSA is a joint effort of the NFL’s PLAY 60 campaign, a league-wide effort to fight childhood obesity by getting kids active for 60 minutes a day, and United We Serve, the president’s initiative encouraging all Americans to participate in community service.

The spot will continue airing throughout the rest of the season in a shorter format.

“Through United We Serve, I have challenged all Americans to roll up their sleeves and engage in sustained service to strengthen our communities,” the president said. “For some of us that means volunteering at a soup kitchen or cleaning up a local park. For others, it means taking time to build a playground or volunteering your time to improve the life of a child.“

Quarterback Drew Brees

“No matter how we serve, we find common purpose when we dedicate ourselves to helping others. This holiday season, I am asking all Americans to find their own way to give back to their communities.”

The Saints’ Brees, who has been a national spokesman for the PLAY 60 campaign for the past two years, said, “We had about 25 minutes and did three different takes. I threw him a couple of passes. He was wearing his Chicago Bears jacket, so there was some ribbing about that.“

“Thanksgiving is a time when families come together, and it is also a perfect time to focus on the importance of keeping kids healthy and active,” Brees said. “I was honored to spend time with the president on an issue that is clearly important to him. I was also impressed by his wide receiver skills.”

More

UCF vs Troy in the New Orleans Bowl

Bengals, Kitna, and Carson.

Nothing like good football on Sunday. Today was pretty good. Nice surprise was the Cleveland vs Detroit game. Nothing like 2 crappy teams performing like its a playoff game between 2 actually good teams.  And I’ve warmed up to the Detroit Lions’ crappiness over the years. Its the Kitna connection. Kitna was the replacement QB for the injured Carson in the 2006 season playoff game. Carson Palmer was injured on the opening play and Kitna went on to lose with the Bengals. Since then Kitna had a short stint as starting QB with the Lions and is now backup for Tony Romo. Bengals didn’t too well their following seasons. They Bengals have a shot this season even with the bizarre loss today against the Oakland Raiders.

Raiders, Titans

Speaking of. The Oakland Raiders is a crazy franchise. So far this season they have strangely squeaked wins by Philly and now Cinnci. Another 3 win team  – Titans with Vince Young. Always thought he was a good player, he has Monday Night Footballs honors to continue to prove it this season. He faired much better in his NFL start than other newbie quarterbacks this year.

Viking Favre Peterson

This guy is old with some badass younguns with him. There are the constant jokes about the media and fans slurping him up but he’s such an easy sell. If I tell my non football fanatic friends hey there’s this 40 year old dood playing football and he’s damn good, they’re impressed. Add Peterson and everygame will be easy to entertain.Vikings of course had another great game thisweek against Seattle.

Steelers and Polamalu

Nice overtime win over Steelers by the KC Chiefs. I saw Troy Polamalu on Fallon some weeks ago (with January Jones, woo!) and he may be my new fave player. Too bad the Madden Curse persisted this year. till Next time.

Assassin’s Creed 2

Been playing this on 360 lately. Good decent game. The underlying engine hasn’t changed much. This really should have been how good the first game was. Nice addicting collection missions keep the game length going.  Good story and I feel Italian playing it.

Sweigard Bros. Inc.

We have a large inventory of new parts for Ford tractors (1939 and later), New Holland, Bolens, Troy-Bilt, Kohler, Tecumseh, and Briggs and Stratton.

Online Parts Lookup Tool

Contact Alan at 717-896-3414 or parts_sweigardbros@yahoo.com

We also have a large inventory of NOS (New Old Stock) parts for Ford tractor, New Holland, Dearborn, Ferguson, Bolens, Troy-Bilt, Garden Way, Fordson Major, Fordson Dexta, Ford 6000, 9N, 2N, 8N, NAA, Golden Jubilee, 600, 601, 800, 801, 900, 901, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, New Idea,  Avco, Woods, Wood Brothers, Tecumseh, Lauson, Briggs and Stratton, Kohler, Sauder, and others.  Give us a call or send an email.  We will be happy to check if we have it.

We also have hard to find plow shares, moldboards, landsides, shins, coulter parts and other plow parts to fit Ford, Dearborn, and Ferguson.

It took all five games, but La Cañada girls’ volleyball narrowly defeated Troy, 18-25, 25-19, 26-24, 13-25, 15-11, at home on Tuesday night to advance to the CIF Southern Section Division 2-A finals for the second time in as many years.

Down 8-4 in the final frame, the Spartans charged back against the Warriors, scoring eight consecutive points.  Senior and captain Courtney McCutchan stepped up big time for the Spartans in the fifth game, with seven kills and five of the Spartans’ last six points.  As fierce a game as it was–the Spartans had 60 kills in the game and yet scored fewer points overall–it ended on a back player attack violation, when Troy’s back player stepped closer than 10 feet to the net.

“Oh my God,” exclaimed McCutchan after the game.  “That was amazing.  I couldn’t have asked for a more intense match than that in one of my last home games.”

McCutchan led the Spartans with 21 kills.  Senior Tara Rallis had 25 digs and senior Hayley Woodford had 55 assists.  Freshmen Micaela Anderson had 12 kills and Katie Peirce had eight.

La Cañada (25-6) beat Troy in the playoffs for the second year in a row.  Last year, the Spartans beat Troy in the CIF semifinals, 3-0.

The Spartans will play the winner of Elsinore-La Reina on Friday or Saturday, pending a decision by CIF Wednesday morning, La Cañada Head Coach Brock Turner said.

The Ft. Hood Shooter.

United States Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the troubled military psychiatrist who killed a dozen fellow soldiers and one civilian at Ft. Hood, Texas on November 5, continues to spark heated discussion in the media and the blogosphere. Hasan is a Muslim and a US-born child of Palestinian parents, and in his professional capacity he “counselled soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder”. So why, exactly, did Hasan choose to turn Ft. Hood into a shooting gallery? Was he striking a jihadist blow at one of the military nerve centres of the Great Satan, or did he somehow snap under the stresses of his profession?

Since Hasan is alive and capable of talking, although reportedly paralysed, there’s always the possibility that he’ll decide to explain himself. In the meantime, however, pundits have been having a field day. Particularly in the immediate wake of the massacre, it was easy to find articles that fastidiously breezed over any possible Islamic motivations but went on at great length about the horrors of battlefield trauma. A particularly fine specimen in the New York Times even flirted with the idea that Achilles “displayed a form of traumatic stress” outside the walls of Troy. Presumably it was a good thing for the Greeks that there was no psychiatrist on hand to treat Achilles, or he (the psychiatrist, not Achilles himself) would have gone berserk and probably bumped off half the army as they slept.

However, reports quickly emerged that Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar” at the beginning of the massacre, and that he had been known to espouse a concept of Islam with a hard, political edge that led him to sympathise with America’s enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. This lent ammunition to pieces that criticised the initial batch of trauma-mongering articles for being naïve and ignoring the dangers of militant Islam in a misguided spirit of multicultural sensitivity. Charles Krauthammer described Hasan lecturing doctors and students about the punishments that would be visited on infidels in the afterlife, and then went on to write:

Nor was this the only incident. “The psychiatrist,” reported Zwerdling, “said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he’s a terrorist, or is he just weird?”

Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?

Of course the “potential danger” is not Islam per se, but rather specific interpretations of Islam that have violent, anti-Western overtones (see this chilling, hilarious piece in the Independent for abundant insights into this mindset). Some of the trauma-mongers would probably argue that, even if this is a fair description of Hasan’s religious views, he might not have put them into murderous operation if he hadn’t been under psychological stress. Fair enough, but the other side of the coin is that he might have responded to the stresses very differently if he had been an atheist, a calmer variety of Muslim, or even a militant Christian with equally intense but differently directed religious obsessions.

Freakish incidents like the one at Ft. Hood don’t really change anything by themselves, but they can certainly concentrate minds. It’s not a bad time to ask whether something similar might happen in Canada – or, to put it more bluntly, whether we should be worried that there are fanatical Muslims lurking on our military bases, possibly capable of being driven to jihad-flavoured violence by the stresses that soldiers routinely experience.

As a starting point, it’s worth remembering that only a small percentage of our armed forces is Muslim, as someone called Cmdr. Denise LaViolette told the CBC in 2006:

She said there are only 648 people in the regular Canadian Forces from predominantly Muslim countries, out of a total roster of 62,500. Using those figures, the Muslim ratio is only about one per cent.

Obviously, not everyone from a predominantly Muslim country will be a Muslim; equally, some Muslims in our armed forces will come from non-Muslim countries, including Canada itself. Perhaps, on balance, “about one per cent” is about right. So what percentage of that one per cent are likely to be violent fanatics? And is it worth subjecting Muslim personnel, and new Muslim recruits, to special scrutiny in order to weed them out? I would suggest that the answers are “vanishingly small” and “probably not”, respectively, but I would also argue that it should be possible to discuss the issue in exactly these terms without being muzzled by the vengeful forces of political correctness. What do you think?

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……..Families………. Children…………..Pets…………………..Engagements…………….Events………….Weddings………..

Oct. 10th, 2009 ……………..Uwharrie Mountain Festival

Oct. 17th, 2009 ……………. 1st Annual CommunityFest for Humane Society

Nov. 8th, 2009 ……………..Santa Paws

Nov. 20th, 2009 ……………Wee Care …Salvation Army ………Asheboro, N.C

(rescheduled for Sat. Dec. 5th )

Dec. 5th, 2009………………Wee Care Salvation Army Event ..Asheboro

Dec. 6th, 2009 ………………Booked

Dec. 11th, 2009 …………….Booked

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

2010 Schedule of Events ……

Jan. 16, 2010 …………. 123 Jump …Charity …………………………………….Concord, N.C.

Feb. 6th, 2010 …………K-9 Pawfect Valentine Party and Photo Session

March 27th 2010 ………..Furry Friends Easter Bonnet Parade for Salvation Army ..Asheboro

April  17th, 2010 ………..Mother’s Day Vintage Tea Party and Photo Session …….Gold Hill, N.C.

June, 2010 ………………..Engagement Special on location ………………………………………………….

June 30, 2010 ……………Troy Fest……………………………………………………………..Troy, N.C.

July 22, 2010 …………….Back to School Special

August 15, 2010 …………Fun Beach Photo Theme …….fundraiser …Food Bank….Rockingham, N.C.

Sept. 18, 2010 ……………Fall Portraits

Oct. 9, 2010 ……………….2nd. Annual CommunityFest

Oct. 31, 2010 ……………..Monster Mash Cute Dog Halloween Contest and Photo Session

Nov. 13, 2010 ……………..Christmas Portraits

Dec.  11, 2010 ……………..Santa’s Coming To Town !

BOOKING NOW FOR 2010 !

My kids have always been avid readers. From very young when we would read simple board books to them before they could speak. They grew older and would memorize stories and pretend to read their books from memory. Then came the first simple “chapter” books. Now they lay in bed at night and read normal “adult” books until they fall asleep.

I like that. The printed word is probably on its way out, but, I cling to my traditions even in the face of the possible extinction of newspapers, paperbacks, etc. We are rapidly heading down a path where all of our written information will come in the form of electronic media displayed on our MePods. But, that’s another story…

A couple of nights ago, we were all in the kitchen and the story of Troy came up… As in the “City of”. I started telling the kids about the impenetrable walls of Troy, of Hektor, of Helen… Of the face that launched a thousand ships and the love story that ended up conquering a city that had never been conquered.

Of course the part about the Trojan Horse came up and I had to equate it to the Giant Bunny in Monte Python’s Holy Grail… Which, or course, prompted my outrageous French accent to emerge… But then, we got back on the story of the Iliad and of Achilles, of Helen leaving her superstitious daughter behind, of Agamemnon and Odysseus…

I then mentioned that we probably had a copy lying around. After a few minutes of rummaging, I produced a leather-bound volume of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was four or five inches thick, with raised ribs on the spine and guilded page edges.

Rather than hearing “wow, that’s HUGE” as you get when producing a volume of War and Peace, I heard “Wow, I want to read it!”

My recent spate of blogging comes after months (I think my last post previous to this set was February) of doing absolutely nothing constructive in the writing/blogging space. Now, is this because I’ve suddenly rediscovered the love of the written (or typed) word? No. Sadly, it’s because my stupid office internet blocks all the fun pages or the pages where I waste the most time, namely Facebook, Gmail or… ok, fine, they blocked Facebook and Gmail and I didn’t know where else to go.

It’s kind of sad and now is the first time I’m thinking about what an absolute waste of time Facebook really is. Would I stop using it after realizing that? Probably not. I feel the need to exercise, on a daily basis, the strength of my Mafia, my prowess as a farmer or my skill as a mariner in the multitude of games that FB offers as a means to kill whatever remaining brain cells that TV didn’t.

The Board of Commissioners has approved the construction of a new terminal building at the Oakland County International Airport.  As Vice Chairman of the Board’s Airport Committee, Tim Burns worked to ensure that this new facility would be Oakland County government’s first LEED Certified, energy efficient and environmentally sustainable building. No funds from taxes collected by Oakland County will be used to fund the new terminal; rather it will be paid for from user landing fees and federal stimulus dollars.

CLICK HERE for more information.

Indigo, Tennyson, Barnaby, Ashby, Rowan, Arlo, Benson, Beckett, Dashiell, Dante, Emmett, Emilio, Gabriel, Gulliver, Hugo, Harvey, Leo, Oakley, Orlando, Pablo, Preston, Perrin, Quinlan, Raphael, Romeo, Remy, Rupert, River, Rafferty, Rutherford, Samson, Sommer, Steven, Troy, Tristan.

Bellona, Bedelia, Decla, Eloisa, Evangelina, Freya, Ferelith, Genevieve, Greta, Ginella, Hazel, Hyacinth, Honora, Isabella, Isadora, Junia, Luciana, Lucelia, Leora, Maddalena, Noella, Ophelia, Ottilie, Polly, Pearl, Primrose, Rosabel, Romilly, Raphaella, Rosamund, Seraphina, Sofiel, Simone, Tallulah, Valentina, Viola.

It’s not just for first timer’s anymore…

If your on the fence about buying a new home, the government has stepped in again to help spur sales. 

On Nov. 6 President Barack Obama signed a bill that extends the $8,000 first-time homebuyer’s tax credit, as well as expanding it to include some existing homeowners. 

Under the expanded program, homeowners who have lived in their prior residence for 5 out of the past 8 years are eligible for a tax credit of up to $6,500 if they purchase a new home.   The credit would apply to home purchases under contract by April 30, 2010, as long as they close by June 30.  The new credit is available to individuals earning up to $125,000 or couples earning up to $250,000 and can only be used on homes that cost $800,000 or less.  This tax credit cannot be applied to vacation or second homes.

First timer’s aren’t left behind.  The tax credit extension will still apply to first time home buyers, and will also be extended through April 30, 2010.  Buyer’s will have until June 30, 2010 to close on their new home.

What this means for Real Estate in general, is that what would be considered the “slow” time leading into the holidays will once again pick up thanks to a little monetary incentive.  Buyer’s who might not have considered take advantage of the low sales prices to move up into larger homes will now have up to $6500 reasons to change their mind.

Is this a Sailboat or a picture of a sailboat?  The season is a marathon, not a sprint.  I want marathoners……Not making sense?  Neither do my picks the last few weeks.

1. Arkansas (-13.5) at home against Troy
2. Boston College (-4) at Maryland

Nahright with the scoop.