Starting Over

It's been so bitter-sweet buying this new house. While I knew for a fact that we had outgrown our little home, it was a really difficult decision to leave it. We had lived there for nine years. It was our first home purchase and where we came home for the first time as a married couple. We spent our first night as husband and wife here, raised our babies here, and put in countless hours of work, blood, sweat, and tears to make it a home.

It took us all nine years to get the house "finished". We painted and repainted every single room. We put on a new roof, got a new furnace, converted to gas, put in a new water heater, landscaped, added a garden, installed hardwood floors, tiled the shower, tiled floors, painted cabinets, put in new counters, added a shiplap backsplash, new sink, faucet, hardware, and much, much, much more. We did it all while working full-time as teachers and raising a family.

Our new house isn't going to be one of those transformations that happen overnight. We aren't full-time bloggers like Sherry and John over at Young House Love. We don't have the money or star power to call in Emily Henderson or Jenny Komenda like Cup of Jo. But I'm excited to make this house feel every bit as much ours as the last one did. Even if it takes us nine years (although I'm hoping it doesn't!) Because we're planning to live here forever. '

It helps to soften the blow a little because when we visit our friends in the old neighborhood I can see that our little house is well loved and cared for. I feel like all of our hard work isn't going to waste, and I hope that the new family who lives there appreciates it as much as we did. I hope that they make as many wonderful memories as we have. And I hope that the house is set to last at least another hundred years.

I think that Lucy has already mostly forgotten her first home, but Violet is holding onto it fiercely. All of sudden out of the blue emotions will bubble up and she'll burst out with tears and wishes that she still lived in her old house with her little climbing tree and her secret garden and her room with her cozy bed nook. She misses romping through the neighborhood with all of her friends and taking walks around the corner to the park. I think that the move has been hardest on her. We have big plans to make her room feel a little more like her old one. She misses her birds and her clouds, and she's requested that her walls look just like her old ones did.

Lucy is excited for her dots to go back up on her wall, and she seems to regard photos and videos of her old crib with nostalgia, but she doesn't have the sadness over the loss of her first home that her sister has. Two is a much more flexible age, and she's taken the move in stride. She started climbing out of her crib just before the move, and I was nervous about switching her to a big girl bed and moving her to a new house all in the course of a few weeks. But except for a couple of weeks of rough nights for Kevin and I, everything has really been a lot easier than I expected with her.

A week or two after we put our house on the market, we were contacted by Sherwin Williams and Apartment Therapy about collaborating on a room makeover. We redid our master bedroom in the middle of trying to sell the house, and it felt insane to finally have the very last room finished only to move a few weeks later. I still feel sad and nostalgic when I drive through our old neighborhood, but I don't think I'd do anything differently. Our old house was perfect for our first chapter, and it will always have a big place in our hearts, but we're ready to make this new home ours. To make new memories and start the next chapter. We hope you'll follow along for the ride! I think it's going to be a great one. xo, Lauren