What Ana Does

This is the hard part. Sure, we're not actually doing the packing, thanks to the movers, but this feels stressful. It feels like carrying a 100 lb weight on my back. Seeing all our belongings and questioning 10 times an hour if this was the right decision. And how will we ever be so comfortable again!?  Having done this before ... seven times ... we know that it will all be worth it. Change is always good. Being uncomfortable is a place of growth. And there are brighter days ahead.  Speaking of GROWTH ... I took some photos of the girls by the wall we measured them by for the last night years.   Point to how tall you were when we first moved in ...  And the Sticker Door! On all our adventures, we'd collect stickers to put on the sticker door. "That's a great Hawaii sticker, we'll put it on the door!" We pulled off anything within reach and could come off easily. Hope the new owners are planning to get a new door ... or enjoys funny stickers.  Last but not l...

The story ends on the first house we put in offer in.  Too much money, time, patience to bring this lovely house into 2021. But it was very fun to explore the house ... after 6 months of house hunting, this is the first one I got to walk through.  Some very beautiful details. On to the next one ... 

House hunting in a pandemic; would not recommend.  Especially out of state.  And during an unprecedented, insane market.  It's deeply a seller's market, so that's good for us as we are selling our house for exactly what we wanted to get for it, as is, without having to put in time, money and effort to fill holes, update mechanicals, repaint ceilings, etc. The punchlist I had was made completely obsolete when the buyer bought quickly and "as is."  But on the buying side, it's pandemonium. In our ideal location, it's also the ideal location for families exiting big cities (ie. Philadelphia and New York) as companies are becoming more sympathetic to remote work -- some companies even selling off office space to keep employees working from home. So there's that: lots of buyers looking in this one area.  Then there's sellers who are hunkered down for the duration of the pandemic. Financially, they don't want to rock the boat and move. Or they see th...

Last week, to liven things up from the boredom of making dinner every night, I declared it PASTA PALOOZA and challenged myself to prepare a brand-new pasta dish every night.  The girls and I love pasta, so I wanted to find a new dish to add to my monthly repertoire. The rules were the dish needed to be new to us, incorporate veggies and from a cookbook I don't often cook from.  It was a total success! We looked forward to the new meal every night and really liked each recipe, but one the most.  Sweet Leek Carbonara ( link to recipe )  This was our favorite! It's from Jamie Oliver's VEG cookbook and has very few ingredients but came together really quickly. It's really silky and super savory. Who knew we'd love leeks so much?!   Sunshine Fusilli Pasta  There's no link for this recipe online, but it's from the same Jamie Oliver VEG cookbook, on Amazon . The pasta sauce is made from yellow peppers blended up with cheese and pistachios! We all really liked...

While we were away in PA getting the lay of the land, our realtor was in our house snapping photos for the listing. We were blown away by the pictures she got. I mean, is this really our house?!  It was a great affirmation of all the work we did in this house and how much it's changed in the last nine years. These are going to be so beautiful to look at in a few years, too. This house was so so so good to us. We'll miss it. 

I watched Netflix's new series Bridgerton during my evening walks on the treadmill in the basement and whew! what a series! I was a very dedicated walker during the week I watched it.  And it does fill me with a certain amount of glee when a romance novel goes mainstream. As a dedicated romance reader, and lover of historical romance, especially, I get excited to welcome new fans to the party!  Because, yup, I totally read several of the books in the Bridgerton series. Julia Quinn isn't my favorite romance author, so I didn't finish it. But I'm really happy to watch the series, taken in a far more colorful and inventive direction -- with a queen! -- and see where it goes.  If I remember right, Anthony's story was better than Daphne's, so we have much to look forward to!  Interested in reading Regency/Victorian-era romance? Sarah MacLean and Lisa Kleypas are my all-time favorite authors in this genre. The Wallflowers and Ravanels' series are soo good. And Sar...

It's time! Let's buy a new house.  We've been talking and thinking about this move for so many months, that it seems crazy that it's FINALLY time to DO something, but it is.  So last weekend, when we were really supposed to be safe at home, we packed up the kids and flew to Philadelphia to drive around the Bucks County towns we have been investigating all these many weeks.  And while we're gone, our realtor is going to jump on the opportunity to take pictures of our house for the listing (GAH)! So much happening all at once! Let's start with flying during a pandemic; We haven't been on a plane for the last year and, while the empty planes and non-crowded airports is nice, it's still anxiety-inducing and not all that fun.  We took all the precautions -- double masked, washed hands, wipes and hand sanitizer. We kept a distance with others and I think we did pretty well. Though, I would NOT recommend anyone travel, unless totally necessary. I was a bundle o...