Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Home Sweet Home

Good morning!

How is everyone's day going so far? Mine is kind of gloomy so far - it's foggy and raining (and cold, which means it's icy). I was struggling not to slip on the sidewalk this morning and was thinking that that had been the story for about the last month or so.

I decided that today was the day I needed a pick-me-up about our house. I'm tired of the gloominess and being shut in and looking out and seeing nothing but white for the last few weeks. Here are a few pictures of what I've seen since the beginning of December:







Looking back (now that I'm not snowed in!), these pictures are pretty cool. My poor little Molly wanted to come in so badly after our first snowstorm. The snow was bigger than she is. Now that she's been through a few big snowstorms, she loves them and wants to go out and play. I'm afraid one of these days we're going to lose her in a big snow drift! The other two pictures are views from our deck of our property. You can see how there's an ocean of white all through our yard - and it stretches out from the house for 10 acres! It's really incredible to look out over undisturbed snow for as far as you can see.

But, I need the snow pick-me-up today, so I'm looking back at photos from our realtor when we bought the house. Here's our home buying story: Mike and I had been looking for a small farm for about 5 months. We put in offers on 4 different properties and they were all rejected for one reason or another (mostly because someone put in another, higher offer - grrr!) I was feeling very dejected at that point, and then Mike sent me one picture and said, "I thought you'd like this kitchen." Here's the picture:

Um, hello. I want that! So, I told Mike that we would be viewing that house, ASAP (keep in mind that I still haven't seen the listing, or any other pictures of the house). I called our realtor and she said she could get us in that evening (Tuesday). We met her after work and spent about 2 hours on the property. It was love at first sight. I remember being so excited that I could hardly contain myself, and when we got a moment alone, I told Mike, "This is our house. I want this house." In the two hours we were there, we didn't see a single car drive by (meaning it's SILENT!) The sun set over the back property line - gorgeous! I couldn't get the smile off my face.

We told our realtor we wanted to make an offer, so we set up a time to meet with her the next day. She called the seller, who told us she already had two offers on the property. My heart sank because this had been our luck through the whole process. And I loved this house more than any of the others (those were ones I could just live with/make changes to). We went ahead and put in the offer, and waited to hear back. On Thursday, just after noon, Mike called me at work and told me to go close my office door because he had bad news. I immediately knew that we hadn't gotten the house and my eyes teared up. I asked him what was going on (meaning did they reject the offer or submit a counter offer) and he said, "Well, the bad news is that you're going to have to pack again - we got it!!" I cannot tell you how thrilled I was because there aren't even words.

After that experience, I truly believe that you don't appreciate successes or happiness until you struggle for them. I am so thankful that we had all the ups and downs that we did in our home-buying process, because I would have never known how amazing it felt to finally have a place that was ours and that would be our home. Most of the time, I look around our house and think how lucky we are to live in such an amazing place, full of history and stories and the promise of a future. I loved the house I grew up in, and I know that when we have children one day, they will have that same sense of love for our home.

Thanks for bearing with me through that story. I need to remember how much I love the house and where we live sometimes. It's very easy to wonder why we live in the middle of nowhere when we're driving 90 minutes to work, or can't leave the house for 4 days because of snow. Since you made it this far, I'll share some other photos of the home from our realtor. I haven't actually taken photos of our house since we moved in (over a year ago), because I want to be finished decorating before I do. I've come to realize that's an on-going process, so I'll just get my Christmas decorations put away (yes, there's still not put away - I'm dragging it out as long as possible!) and then take pictures. I've said it on the blogg-o, so now I have to do it!



(I just realized how few pictures I actually have of the inside of my house - so that must change!) The first picture is the back of the house from the driveway. The second is of our beautiful (original!) built-in cabinets in the hallway. Love the storage that comes in old farm houses! The third is the view to the south, where most of our land is. Can't wait to see that space green and cows eating. The first is the room that would eventually become my craft studio. Mike was so understanding when one of my demands for our home included my own space for crafting - that I could leave messy! This room is perfect for that :)
Thanks for checking out my home. Have a great day, everyone!

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