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Before I start writing posts full of horribly ugly before photos where I may or may not have sprinkled in a few extra pieces of found ulgliness to enhance the depth of disdain, I need to tell you something.

Do you have any idea how excited I was to get to tell you about this house?

Yesterday when I announced this next nesting adventure you all knew what that meant–it meant so much more than simply buying a cute little white house. You know our story. You put up with me hot gluing drapes while we paid off our debt. You’ve stuck around this journey; a public diary thinly veiled as a decorating blog. I started out so ill content with our home situation–and slowly learned to absolutely, truly love where we were in our rental. You were there as I finally became content to rent.

Funny how it wasn’t until I could be fully at peace with where we were that we were able to move.

You know that houses are my love language–most of you are here because houses are your love language too. I cannot tell you how deeply you have all encouraged me. Your words of celebration and excitement and congratulations over the past few days have completely overwhelmed me. You will never know how much this community means to me. And you who are renters? Your words meant the most.

This house was such a gift to us. We stumbled into learning that we could qualify for a house and within days stumbled onto this house–pretty much the only place we even looked at before we made an offer. The girl who LOVES house shopping had no desire to look at anything else. Besides, we were looking for so much more than a house. The house was secondary. We were looking for a place. A place we had dreamed about so we could one day share it with you.

This place hogged up almost our entire summer. What a joy. And you know I don’t believe that there was any accidental stumbling. And, I’m pretty sure my parents prayed us into this house. It’s that surprising that it all worked out. I think I’m still in shock. We. Love. This. Place.

Four months ago when I was knee deep into writing a book all I wanted to do was to get a hammer and chisel and break apart my computer into tiny bits until it turned to dust and and then I wanted to go paint a wall. It was all I longed to do–to paint a wall! Oh the luxury!

Do you know what I did today?

I painted a wall.

In our house.

And I didn’t even worry that someone would get mad that I painted their wall because it’s ours.

Seven years ago this month Chad and I knew we needed to put our house on the market. We lived in a house we loved that was 15 houses away from my sister. We had a failing business and a mortgage we knew we wouldn’t be able to continue to pay. We sold the house by owner within 30 days of listing it. Our oldest had just finished 2nd grade. He’s going into 10th grade this fall.

This blog isn’t really about houses and tricks to make us like them more.

It’s about our heart and what our houses can teach us about life.

We can learn a lot from paint and fabric and budgets and imperfect circumstances.

And we’ve only just begun.

 

PS, a few hours after we closed on Wednesday, Tsh and I recorded a podcast. she was so kind and let me ramble on forever about my house. It was after an all day adrenaline high so I’m pretty sure I sound exactly like a melancholy robot on drugs. Forgive me. But, if you are interested you can hear a lot more about the house and see a few more photos here.