My Big News!

You may have noticed that I have been a bit absent recently. Life gets in the way sometimes and I am ok with that.

I have been sick and ended up getting a biopsy on a recurring lump in my neck. (Yes, a needle, actually 3, in my throat!), which thankfully ended up negative but still no explanation to what it is. And if you have been reading my blog you will have noticed that it has been birthday central with lots of party planning and celebrating (you can read more here and here). To go along with their birthdays both my girls have decided now is the perfect time to undergo major developmental stages. I am seriously dreading the future, though probably not as much as my husband is, when all 3 of us have PMS at the same time. But all of this aside it has been an especially exciting time because we have some major, life changing, big news. We just bought our first home!

I have never been so excited to be in so much debt. But it is good debt. It is happy debt. As anyone who has bought their own home will know, we have been through a roller coaster of so many emotions these last couple of weeks. First there was the uncertainty of getting pre-approval from the bank, especially since we are self employed, followed by cautious elation when we got it. Then there is the hunt for the right house which at first is very exciting, then worrisome that you will never find a house, then exciting, then depressing, then exciting, then stressful, then exciting when you think you just might have found the right one, then scary, then exciting. Then begins the process of making an offer and negotiating a deal. And while you wait to hear back from the owners the cold feet syndrome kicks in– have we made the right decision, chosen the right house, the right neighbourhood, the right timing? Then the next minute the phone rings and we have bought a house. Happiness. Followed by days of paperwork where you sign your life away on a whole tree of paper. We have just finished the agonisingly long but also surprisingly quick wait to be sure it is unconditional. This was paired with the sudden rush of reality when we handed in our notice to leave our rental property and realised that we only have 2 weeks to pack the house up while 2 kids and a dog run in circles.

Now that our move is certain we have been busy getting organised and planning out our house, which is of course involving a lot of time browsing around on Pinterest and filling my boards with ideas for our new home. Recon trips to Masters and plenty of Google searches later I have an abundance of ideas and I am sure over the coming months I will bombard you all with things we are doing, making and buying to make our house our home.

We have only just bought a house because to be honest we were busy using our money for our lifestyle. We both moved out of home straight after high school and survived being university students on minimum wage part time work. We did the big wedding thing out of our own pockets, we honeymooned in Africa, we travelled the world, we bought stuff, we lived overseas for 12 months and when we returned we basically had to start from scratch and save up all over again. But that’s ok. It is a decision we made and we have absolutely no regrets on that. But we have just reached a point in our lives where we are ready to have our own patch of earth we can root ourselves to.

Armed with a wish list for what we would love in our dream house and our bank approval in the other hand we started crossing things off and getting realistic. We had the list down to a few essentials the house must have, and a few would-be-great-if-it-did-but-not-totally-necessary items too. We looked at a lot of houses, thankfully this can mostly be done online, but there were a fair few that we squeezed into our days somehow and went to visit. It is surprising how quickly you get used to the whole process and you can very quickly tell if a house is for you or not, which is good because houses have been selling as soon as they are listed in my area. We had to be prepared to move quickly and make instant decisions. In the end, the house we bought is close to everything we want, has a big backyard and while it is perfectly fine to live in now it also has renovation potential for when we ever have enough money to do it.

So now comes the packing, and of course the unpacking. But I am really excited about that (yes, ask me again in a week and it may be a different answer.) But right now I’m excited about finding a new little home for everything and setting it all up just the way we want it. We can put nails in the wall without asking, we can fix the leaky tap on our own, we can rip out the ugly plants and make the garden our own. We get to learn the new noises our house makes, meet the neighbours, figure out which direction the rain usually comes in, learn the quirks of the door locks and what time the postman comes. It is all so exciting.

Enough babbling from me about my big news, I’m very busy ignoring the pile of empty boxes in the middle of my living room because there are things begging for my attention over on Pinterest! Anyone have any low-budget but totally worth it ideas for me to do in our new home? Or maybe you have a miracle packing tip to make the move go smoothly?

So, this is a long winded way to apologise for my absence recently and while I want to try and keep some time aside to stay in touch with my blogging community I should probably apologise for the coming weeks too. I have a feeling that things could get a bit hectic, but I have a pretty good excuse right?