BIG NEWS…

…WE’RE MOVING! WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!

This has been one of the hardest secrets to keep from y’all, right up there next to Caffeinate Your Soul and being pregnant with Liv. HA. 😉 But we are SO STOKED for our little fam to start a new chapter, albeit in the weirdest of times.

Of course, it was not our original hope or plan to move in the middle of a global pandemic.

Our gameplan from the start was to eventually move closer to where J works; is current commute was about 40 minutes, and since I work from home, that’s a pain in the butt and pretty unnecessary if we could help it. We’ve had our townhome for four years now, and the addition of Liv started to make things feel…tight. We’ve loveloveLOVED our first little space as a family and it’s served us so well, but we just knew in our guts that it was time to start making some moves (literally).

At first, we checked out a few places, but nothing clicked – mostly because nothing felt like us or felt like “home.” It was hard envisioning our family in a house that was already home to another family, and we saw things we liked…but didn’t lovelovelove. And for something that would be our home for the long foreseeable future, it didn’t feel right.

So, we figured we’d build our home! It made sense to us to take the bits + pieces that we DID like from houses we had viewed and make a gameplan to work our vision around that. We had been meeting with different builders and contractors for months, touring model homes, even picking out little details. At the time, there were two open lots we had been looking at specifically, so we thought we had a plan and that that plan was to build our house on open land.

But we all know what God says when we have a plan… 😉

With lots, it can be tricky because they need to pass certain tests + inspections during the selling process to ensure a house could actually be built on them. The first lot turned out to be a bust because it failed a major test. We set our sights on the second…only for the same thing to unexpectedly happen again.

At that point, we were pretty bummed; based on the timelines we had been hoping for, we were looking around a summer or fall 2020 move IF we were able to build on one of those lots. And good lots for a custom build (versus buying a lot in a pre-contracted development) are pretty hard to come by in the town we’re moving to, so you really don’t know if/when one will go on the market – and if/when it does, if it’ll pass all of the tests that the previous two failed.

The night our building plans pretty much fell through, I sat down to take a breather on the couch for a hot sec, and got on my Zillow app without any expectations.

I clicked on a house that looked interesting without really thinking much into it – until I started scrolling.

Room by room, it seemed to have nearly everything we were looking for in a home, down to “little” or “funny” details that both J and I were hoping for in our dream situation (a jetted tub for me, a shower with a seat in it for J – silly things! Ha!). It even had a little piano in the room that would end up becoming my “piano room” and a little sign that said “HOPE” that my mom also has in her house – it felt like a little kiss from heaven that we had found our place – or, at least a place very much worth seeing in person.

I gasped and ran upstairs to show J while trying to keep cool and not get my hopes up prematurely.

We were able to see it the next day (this was all pre-pandemic – it’s been ongoing since January-ish!).

We stepped inside and both just knew! It felt right and we saw the potential and could feel our family fitting in there quite perfectly.

Fast forward quite a few months to today and…it’s OURS!!!!!

BIG NEWS: WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! - on Coming Up Roses

We’ll be doing some minor renovating/remodeling and doing some small touch ups around the house, but ultimately, we’re SO STOKED because it ended up being *exactly* right for us – and we didn’t even think we were heading in that direction.

The process ended up being a bit unorthodox given quite a few behind-the-scenes happenings, not to mention the pandemic, but ultimately we’re just grateful that it’s all worked out so far.

I’ll be sharing some of the inside and different rooms on my Instastories today, so make sure you’re following along there (@ericaligenza) if you aren’t already + have notifications turned on for when those happen!

Otherwise, lots of projects + unpacking ahead, and we’re just going to strive for progress, not perfection. 🙂 Praising God for the blessing that a roof over our heads is always, and can’t wait to bring y’all along the ongoing journey of turning our new house into a home!