What to do with $8K

Part of the decision to buy a house came from the fact that as first time home-buyers we would receive an $8K tax credit from the good ol' government.

So the next question is...what do we do with our $8k?

So here is a little list of what we plan to do with our homeowner money:

1. Replace carpet with wood floors- Chase and I both love wood floors.  Our house is carpet and tile, no wood, so one of our first projects will be to pull up the carpet in the TV room and main hallway and put down wood floors.

Walnut wide plank handscraped engineered wood floors

2. Paint, paint, paint- we are going to go room by room and get rid of the one color house.  Starting with the office then tackling the TV room and master bedroom.

3. Landscaping- come Spring we are going to overhaul our backyard and some of our front yard.  The backyard will be basically gutted and re-created including a nice outdoor eating area with built in fire pit.  Luckily my little brother is in landscape design so that will help.

4. Electric gate- Our garage door is down the driveway and in the back of the house.  Right now we have a gate we have to open and close manually to get back to the garage.  We are really wanting some automatic gate action. 

5. Miscellaneous- everyday our list of small things to do around the house grows and the so do the funds needed to complete everything so a good chunk of the cash will go towards our misc pile.

6. Europe- this Spring I am going on a dream vacation with some of my best friends through Europe.  I think I will steal a teeny bit of the money to help with vacation costs.

What would you do with $8K?  Or what have some of you already done with your tax credit?