Home Sweet Home

Ever since Nate and I moved to Salem over 2 years ago we've been tossing around the idea of buying a house.  We finally got to a point where we felt we were done with apartment life (thanks to the help of some awesome neighbors... heavy sarcasm) and decided to take the plunge.

We were pre-approved, of course, for an amount far FAR outside of our budget.  I was mistakenly under the impression that lenders weren't doing that anymore.  Thankfully I have a husband that is so meticulous that he has been keeping a spreadsheet of our expenditures for awhile now, unbeknownst to me.  So it was easy to sit down and determine what price range we were actually comfortable with.

I was worried that with the amount we felt comfortable spending that we would never find a home we loved.  And after every viewing I began to lose hope that we would find one that would work for us.  So many homes were close, but none a real possibility.  And just when I really started to lose hope, a house that we had occasionally checked out online (but that was just above our reach price-wise) dropped into our range.  We checked it out and the minute we stepped in the door we both knew it was the one.  With each room I kept thinking, "Okay, this will be the part that makes me change my mind." (That happened with many houses.)  But with each room I fell more and more in love with it.  I wasn't going to have to settle!

Does it need a little love?  Yep.  It isn't perfect, but it's perfect for us right now and I think over time it will grow with us and I can make it pretty darn close to perfect.

If all goes well, our closing date will be June 25th!  (I'm writing this post because the house's status has FINALLY been changed from "for sale" to "pending," just today, so it feels a little more official.)  And I am eagerly waiting to get my hands on those keys.  I'm constantly thinking paint colors and how we'll be arranging furniture.  I keep daydreaming about strolls in the neighborhood with my family and lemonade under the pergola.  This is worse than when I was 6 waiting for my best friend to come over.  I'm not sure I can handle the wait.  The best (and maybe only good) part about a June 25th closing though is that Girls Camp is the week before so I can have one last hoorah with my girls.

(One of those "you drive by and I'll snap a photo real quick" kind of things)

Things I'm most excited about:

*not having to hike a mile to my car with Ryan and all my groceries... okay so this is a slight exaggeration, but I would say it's the average distance you have to walk from your car to the grocery store, but I'm making the trip without the help of a shopping cart.

*not having to share walls (or ceilings OR floors) with any one.  That means being as loud as I want.  And that means not getting woken up in the middle of the night by the morons next door getting arrested after a drunken brawl.

*having storage space.... okay having more space.  Period.

*being able to design and decorate a space anyway I want.

And finally, after snapping the above picture of our future home, Ryan, Nate and I hit up a local school for a picnic.  Here's the little guy enjoying some apples and a pb&j sandwich.  It was a beautiful day.