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We're home.
And have been for over a month now! Summer life has been anything but lazy. Our house (we still can't believe it's our house!!) was on the market for over two years and the sellers were forced to do a short sale. Ultimately that means a lot of delayed maintenance. Landscaping, gutters, trees, cleaning... it's a lot. There's an infinitely long to-do list as we continue to settle in. On top of cleaning up the house and yard, we still have unpacking and decorating to do. There's a shrinking mountain of boxes and furniture in the garage, homey details are popping up, and regular maintenance eats up hours each weekend. On top of the move and adjusting to home-ownership I'm nannying nearly full time for a 10-year-old girl and planning for my second year of full-time teaching. I'm moving from 6th grade math to 5th grade social studies and language arts, and school starts again in 3 weeks!! The summer has been exhausting, but we love this house.
Matilda is also in love. She has a HUGE yard to patrol, a BBQ and picnic tables to summit, one orange tabby cat to torment, dozens of neighborhood dogs to greet as they walk past, and hundreds of squirrels, bugs, rabbits, and birds to watch. 
We had our first real gathering on Saturday to celebrate Dylan's birthday. More on that later, but it forced us to get a few things in order. We finally found fabric we loved (Dwell Studio "Botany Floral") for curtains and cut panels for the four windows in our living room. 
We also bought and hung curtain rods, and moved some boxes and clutter to the basement and garage. It was wonderful to have the space to comfortably entertain a dozen friends.
I have the day off and there's tons to do-- I'm hosting a small teacher gathering Sunday and want to hang some curtains and pictures in the dining room! More updates and photos soon!
Meet Garden:
(thanks google street view)
Garden is our soon-to-be new home. We move Thursday and have big dreams for this house. Dylan's brainstorming blog names today. Our plan is to start a new site where we'll document some of those dreams. Unfortunately "meisterhaus" is taken at wordpress (Sorry blogger, Dylan just loves wordpress) so we're still thinking. Until then, I'll update here. First, a little background on our search.
Since Dylan and I met, we've dreamt of omelets Saturday mornings, woodworking in the garage, a huge garden, cold nights snuggled in front of a fire, and room for a puppy to play. We've always wanted a real home together. A house.
In the middle of my long-term teaching assignment last year, we finally had a steady income, and with the $8k tax credit we thought we might finally be able to buy a house. I started searching online on this site. Constantly. I knew every home for sale in Columbus and the surrounding 30 mile radius that met our initial criteria: 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a fireplace, and a 0.25 acre lot.
Then this September I found the perfect house. "Schoolcraft".
It met our generic criteria, plus it had a privacy fence and a gorgeous, huge covered front porch. We signed up for more information, and a realtor, Erik Hiss, got in touch with us. When we went to look at it in person, I expected fireworks. But we just weren't that excited. We just kind of looked at each other like "is this what it should feel like?" I could imagine us living there. It had everything we were looking for, and the front of the house was beautiful, but we didn't know if it felt like home. So we kept looking.
Erik was great. He looked at dozens of houses with us and listened as we arranged and rearranged our list of priorities (location, yard, fireplace, school district, square footage, price) and helped us determine what we were truly looking for. In the middle of all this we found a really unique, beautiful house and decided to make an offer. "Glen" was a split-level with a wide open floor plan--think open kitchen/dining/living rooms with continuous, gorgeous hardwood floors. The back of the house was mostly glass and doors and overlooked a fenced, wooded lot. I deleted all our pictures of Glen when things didn't work out. As gorgeous as it was, we would have needed to spend a good amount to update the house. Already at the top of our price range, when the seller wouldn't budge much on the price, we let it go and kept looking.
We spent fall and winter going to open houses and continued to develop our priorities. We limited our search to Clintonville and Beechwold, neighboring communities in the heart of Columbus. And then in January I found Garden. And Garden is the one. More on Garden this afternoon. I have packing to do!
A dozen blog drafts never completed-- documenting Thanksgiving, Christmas, redecorating, and more. I'm still working through rarely finishing what I begin; a habit that's plagued me since second grade. Working on that.
So, a quick update. The biggest news? Dylan and I have been house hunting for a few months. It's been quite the journey figuring out what we need and want right now. We thought this was our dream house, made an offer in October, but it wasn't accepted. And it's a blessing. After exploring huge farmhouses near Marysville, 2 bedroom cape cods in Clintonville, and cheap fix-me-ups in shadier parts, we fell in love with a house on Garden Road in Beechwold a few weeks ago. Our offer was accepted by the seller, but it's short sale which basically means the bank is taking a loss to avoid foreclosure, so not only does the seller have to accept our offer, but the bank and any other parties who might be entitled to money ALSO have to accept it. It could be months before we know anything. In the mean time we're dreaming about a fenced 0.29 acre yard, two car attached garage, 1.5 bathrooms, and wood-burning fireplace. Also having too much fun playing with Ikea's Kitchen Planner website and daydreaming an Ikea kitchen remodel:
More to come!
We've been settled in to our new place for almost a month, but it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that we had our first "real" meal at the table! I made about 8 oz of pasta, drained it, added some lemon zest and juice, salt/pepper, lots of grated parm, and fresh spinach. It was really simple and really delicious. Here's the table all set with new dishes and place mats! More pictures soon of our new hutch and dining/living room :). First official day of school tomorrow!
We're home.
We had our first real gathering on Saturday to celebrate Dylan's birthday. More on that later, but it forced us to get a few things in order. We finally found fabric we loved (Dwell Studio "Botany Floral") for curtains and cut panels for the four windows in our living room. 
We also bought and hung curtain rods, and moved some boxes and clutter to the basement and garage. It was wonderful to have the space to comfortably entertain a dozen friends.
