Home

This summer has been quite a whirlwind for me. I have been extremely lucky to have been able to check off plenty of things that were on my bucket list. One of the major items on that list was buying a house and it feels so amazing to say that my husband and I are homeowners. It has been a long process and moving is always a drag. We waited and saved up a bunch and we are so happy to be home.

Every since getting married there has been some pressure to buy a house. We heard it from every friend and family member, "Now is a great time to buy" and "interest rates are so low!" Well I was gonna take the next big step in my life when I was damn well ready. The thing that really freaked me out was the cost of a house. Not just the mortgage payment but fixing things that break, because its not a question of IF something breaks, its WHEN something breaks. So it took me about two years to get over that fear. In January I felt it was time so I found a real estate agent and Tim and I were on our search.

We saw a lot of interesting houses. Some horrible and some magnificent. Of course the magnificent homes were out of our price range and the horrible homes did not even have potential! Which is what we were looking for just potential! We even went to one house that was owned by hoarders. We passed on that one big time. Then in May we came across a listing online that was only up for about two days. It looked great based on the listing so we told our agent we need to see it ASAP! We were amazed by this place, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is done! The best part ? It was in our price range, actually towards the lower end! There really was no catch, the sellers are retiring and wanted to leave as soon as possible. We put our offer in on a Thursday night and continued to have the most nerve racking weekend of my life. We went through a bit of a bidding war but to our surprise we won, the house was ours! 

We moved in at the end of July and are still getting ourselves settled. I am really pumped to start decorating. I started a few minor things and have had to restrain my self from purchasing too many house things, because now that I have a mortgage to pay we are on a budget. However now that I have a garage I have a space to experiment with D.I.Y. projects. 

Last week I was excited to host our first guest, my little brother Billy! He is about to start his first semester at the University of Florida at Gainsville. I am so proud of him! While he was here we had some fun and he himself is not stranger to D.I.Y. In fact he is an accomplished knitter of mustaches and he has made his desk and a few other projects. So I called on his help for my first project! We are building a coffee table out of these crates and he helped me sand and stain them up. Aside from the coffee table we did some other little projects. I showed him the awesome power of the freezer paper stencil! He makes really cool star wars stencils but he does it the old fashioned way. We made this rebel alliance t-shirt. While going through my book of reference images he saw the shape of Long Island and asked me to make a patch for him.

As he was leaving he said how much his misses Long Island and that for him it would always be home. I thought it was a little interesting that I am in the midst of establishing my home while Billy's sense of home is scattered between Long Island, Florida and now school. Whatever the case he always has a place to crash when he is on the Island.