USA Joint filing question for 2011

[longpoc201]

Dear forum member:

Me and my wife were married back in 2/2011 in California. I am a CA resident and she was on student visa.
After our marriage she received Green Card in November, 2011. We moved to Texas in late September, 2011.

My wife still keeping her CA resident status. I applied Texas driver license in January, 2012.

Our income status:
Wife: 5K income from CA , 4K income from TX
wife owns a town house, she bought it before our marriage (purchased in 2010)
Me: $700 from CA (self employment), 3K income from TX
Our combined income is between $10,000 to $20,000 for year 2011.

We plan to file jointly (Federal and State) for year 2011.

I have the following questions

• Should we hire a CPA to do our income tax, in order to get maxium return and avoid paying to much taxes (Federal, State and property tax etc)
  
  a)Should We hire a CAP from California or Texas? (I think this depends on our home state status for year 2011)
  b)Since our income is kind of low this year, can we get some money back from CA property tax paid for 2011?
• If we file jointly, should we declare home state as CA or TX?
  
• I declare my mother as my dependent on my previous years tax return. If we file jointly can we declare my mother as our dependent?
• Regarding community property state, I did some research online, we can declare
  our employment income as community income, other income such as dividents, captial gains and interest earned from CD account can be declared as separate income.

Please give us some advises, your insights are greatly appreciated!

P.S. Anything we should know that can help maxize our return, please let us know.