Forever Home…

I finally have my dream home.

Let’s rewind a bit. I fell in love, we bought a house, blended our families, happily ever after, yadda yadda and now you are all caught up. My partner is a private person and still only has less than ten photos in his IG. Over the last few years, I have share tiny glimpses of my life through my IG stories, a lot less than I have during my blogging years and only recently posted a picture of our blended family after 3 1/2 years of dating. I wasn’t in hiding or seclusion, in fact, I have written about him here before, just without mentioning him by name (thank you again for all the laughter, then and now). I was learning a whole new way of life while healing from my past. It was scary, fun, exciting, and a lesson in resilience. I also learned, through him mostly, that the real moments are meant to be lived in, not seen behind a lens. No one cares about the memories you “curate” and it all passes so quickly. In fact, I started writing this post in July of 2021 after a very romantic birthday weekend filled with so much, and all we had to show for it is two pictures of us drinking our morning coffee on an empty cobble stoned street. In fact, in the last nearly four years, I have taken so many little romantic weekends and no one knows. No one has to. Social media given us a lack of privacy with only us to blame. Our relationship is hardly a secret but there is a sense of peace that comes with this level of privacy in a world where so much of ourselves is documented online. These wonderful moments are selfishly just mine. However, since shifting careers from the fashion and beauty industry to real estate, I have been missing the creative side so with his blessing, I’m returning to the blogging world and sharing turning our house into a home.

Our home search was a ‘discussion’ years when we met on what we’d want one day. Then I pumped the brakes, later he pumped the breaks, then I suggested buying townhomes next to each other based on an article I read in the New York Times. It was crazy and non-traditional and neither one of us was opposed to it, until he was. The day came for me to start looking for something a bit more comfortable for me and the kids, meanwhile he was ready to buy, and my non-traditional idea started sounding crazy to him. The topic of living together had not been discussed for almost a year and it turned into a quick 5-minute chat that completely changed us. So, we started actively looking. Our list of what we wanted wasn’t major at first but one thing that he really wanted was to be able to stand on a chair to change a lightbulb, his words. That was it. He is 6’5” so tall ceilings was non-negotiable. Then I learned very quickly that he was (and still takes the cake by far) my pickiest client. Sir, you said you were a simple man, the test shows that was a lie. That list grew every time we saw a house. That layout, with the look of the first house and that house but in this subdivision. He really thought we were building with Legos or something. Eventually we looked at new construction because it was getting out of control and we had seen every house for sale in our area, but that list of wants, the cost of lumber due to Covid and the way my pocketbook is set up…phew. While I make jokes at how particular he could be, it has been to my benefit. When we walked in the first time and stood in the entry way, we both looked at each other way beyond excited and grew happier with even room we saw. It just felt like home. I would have, as I often had in life, settled. And now here we are, slowly making changes to our forever home.