Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Our New Home

We've been so fortunate to have a few temporary living solutions over the past few months during Nick's new job transition. As you may have seen, I was in Texas for part of that time finishing my job, and once I got here (and got my new job too!), I was excited to begin the hunt for our next place.


Last week, I did a ton of research online and compiled a spreadsheet to be able to see the differences between all of our considerations much more easily - I would guess by the end, I had about 30 different places on the spreadsheet to check out (the winner isn't on the spreadsheet excerpt by the way).

I color coded green (visit in person), yellow (visit if time) and red (no-go), and eventually narrowed it down to exclude the "no-go"s.


Once we narrowed it down to our top choices, I called the places to see if they had availability for what I was looking for, and went out Friday afternoon to check out a few places and see how they added up in person!


Basically NONE of my initial top choices looked great in person. I was bummed, but knew at this point, that we may have to tweak something - go to a higher price with the amenities we wanted, or lower our amenities to fit our price.

I found this gem after driving by the not-so-great places. It looks new and great. I excitedly wrote it down to check out at home. I got to their website to find out it's a senior living facility! You may have seen my comment on Facebook about that. I had a few others that ended up with the same result!



I admired these beauties...



And took a breather to soak up the shades of the setting sun



The sunset from another bummer place I checked out

We were up early Saturday morning with a plan to show Nick some of the better options to get his thoughts. His time is valuable right now since he's studying for his upcoming certification test, so I wanted to use his time wisely.


This place's view juuuuust about had me sold. They were missing some key amenities though (and the price was still higher), so we had to walk away from this one. Isn't that a great view to wake up to every day though?

We spent the entire day looking and touring many more places (I hadn't toured the inside of any when I was on my own), and felt exhausted by the end of the day. We did feel we had a winner but had a few minor hesitations, so wanted to sleep on it.


As we were finishing up, the snow really started coming down, and within 45 minutes or so, we were covered! My first measurable snow of the year!





It kept coming down all afternoon and evening (totaling 4-6 inches I'd say?) We bundled up and shoveled the driveway that night (it was surprisingly FUN!!).





 I call it my Minnesota workout.





 Sunday morning, we decided we needed to try and make a decision that day (we've made a decision in just one weekend on the last two places we lived since we had time constraints), that way Nick could use the next few weeks to devote to studying instead of being sidetracked by the apartment search.



We had success at the second place we visited that day! During the walk-through (when the staff lady wasn't around), I gave Nick a big smile with raised eyebrows (my non verbal for "I'm excited!!"). 



 It's has a great open floorplan, unique angles, charm, and basically every amenity on our list, and in our price range.



We walked out of there, got in the car and Nick said, "We're going to live there". I was SO relieved to hear his agreement and after we decided which floorplan we wanted, we signed the deal!


For the first time since September, we'll have a place of our own again in just a few weeks! We are SO excited. It's our Christmas dream come true to be in our new place by Christmas. Life seems to be settling in a bit which is very appreciated (thank you, Lord!), but we'll take whatever life may bring our way.


By the way, being back with my hubby now (after nearly two months apart), I've seen how true this is...

(source)

And let me say, it's great to be home!




1 comment:

Rachel said...

Aww I love the quote... I've pinned that too. So true.

So glad you found a place of your own. Everything has seriously come together so perfectly. Wow.

Love you.

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