What Ana Does

 I don't mean to whine.  We really feel lucky we have friends who have a vacation home, weren't planning to use it, and would give us the keys. So we could leave Illinois and be closer to where we want to live; with the ability to look at homes on weekends, etc. It's a very comfortable house and we're very comfortable in it.  But here's the thing about me: I'm a nester and a planner.  That's how I'm built, and no matter how comfortable I am here, I can't really do either. And that's what's making me restless and this transition time painful. I love DIY and home decorating. Duh. This blog is basically cataloging my home improvement projects and decorating ideas. My Pinterest feed is mostly home decorating posts. And my Instagram feed is a lot of home renovators working on basements, closets and a really cool kitchen project. It stinks watching these projects when I can't imagine them working my space. Because ... I don't have a space! ...

In the last month we packed up all our possessions and sent them into storage for who-knows-how long. Sold our home of nine years. Packed up the cars with two kids, two dogs, two boxes of houseplants and a trailer full of gym equipment and pantry perishables and drove across several states to temporary home -- the lake house of good friends who didn't have plans to use it until July. And here we are.  To say we're all having some big feelings about this transition is an understatement. Though, we're all feeling pretty optimistic about opening the next chapter of our lives. WHEN is the big question.  The main challenge is this real estate market. The inventory is super-low. I've read news headlines saying it's a 40% its usual rate. It's a seller's market and they're basically asking for anything and everything. We, as buyers, get what we get. It's terrible.  It's good to be closer to Bucks county (2-hour drive) and able to attend showings in perso...

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.