We Bought a House!

Two days ago, Blake and I turned the key to our very first home.

In all of my notes from the last two months, I call it the pretty blue house: a petite Craftsman from 1925, carefully remodeled over the years into a small but beautifully detailed modern home. It is the reason for all of our duck-wrangling and stuff-sorting, and it has been a long and stressful journey to get here.

But in the end, it's all been worth it. Because this house? This house is special.

  

In each room, there is a moment of magic: in the color of tangerine paint slanted with afternoon sun; in the parallel grains of wood floor and ceiling that catch your breath as you walk into the kitchen. In the oft-forgotten, tucked away places, too: in hidden closets, and bright, small tiles, and windows whose very presence is carved into the walls. The heart and care of this house is everywhere.

In our two years of looking, this was the first house that we walked into and felt immediately at home. At the end of the open house - completely unprepared for the possibility of making an offer, in every way but enthusiasm - I had begun to feel a deep pull to the place, so much that I almost ached at the thought of leaving. And now, months after the initial sparkle has rubbed off, even as I scrub away crayon from the walls and wipe down cabinets and vacuum away layers of dust, I can feel the life of the house humming through my feet - and it is just as warm and inviting as it was the first time I set foot there.

So the weeks and months to come are going to be an uphill journey, as we continue to sort and clean and move from our house of two years into the home we'll share for years and years to come. But the promise of this house - our house - is just wonderful enough to make it all seem achievable.

Happy Wednesday, friends.

<3

Cory