One Year At Home

I can’t believe it’s already June 21st… today marks one whole year in our house. I feel like we’ve lived here forever though, in the best possible way. Mike and I are both so happy to be here. So much so that we’re both wishing we could live here forever. As excited as I was to move in, thinking we had found the perfect home, it has exceeded both of our expectations.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that every time I walk down the stairs in the morning, I am kind of in awe that we live here. And every afternoon when the golden hour floods our kitchen with gorgeous light, I feel it all over again.

I just reread the post about buying our home… that whole first half of 2019 was pretty dedicated to the hunt and then home buying process. It felt so overwhelming at the time, but I’d gladly do it twenty times over. It was so worth it and now it feels just like a tiny “blip” on the radar.

I did some decorating but put off some of the bigger things to do at the beginning of 2020… still hasn’t happened. There’s a lot to do still! Every time I check one thing off “the list,” I swear three more things get added on. Still need to finish up my office, completely do the guest room and guest bathroom, get window treatments made for the first floor.

That said, even without the decorating being done this house feels like home.

Some moments from the past year that I never want to forget:

– The morning after we moved in, Mike and I sat outside on the patio with coffee just taking it all in.

– Last summer, we slept in the guest bedroom because we didn’t have furniture for the master bedroom. We had put up temporary paper blinds and the room would be SO BRIGHT by 5am, so we got up every morning incredibly early.

– Our Christmas party! I was so nervous about having that many people over… I’m not a natural host, but it was a BLAST. Even the next morning, we had a couple of friends spend the night and the four of us had bagels and coffee while we cleaned the GIANT mess up… It was so fun.

– Countless game nights around the kitchen table with friends.

– The first “real” snow we had. Mike was working from home and we sat in the living room with the fire going and grilled cheeses and tomato soup. I loved how the house looked covered in snow with wreaths in every window.

– Getting our sod put in. I was embarrassingly PUMPED about the grass. (I’m pretty sure Mike’s parents will never let me live it down because I could not stop talking about how great it looked!!)

– Walking the dogs through the neighborhood through every season. The bright green of summer, rich reds of autumn, the cold white of winter, and then various pinks of spring.

– Weirdly, quarantining due to COVID. It was just Mike and me for months and we didn’t just survive but kind of thrived. We were so, so grateful for the house… and especially the backyard. Even that first month was still freezing out and we’d bundle up and sit outside just to sit outside.