Hello, friends!

You have no idea how much I’ve missed y’all over the last week or so as I’ve been moving, unpacking, and settling in to our new home. I have so many things I want to share, and I’m so excited to be back and blogging again.

I’ll be honest and say that it still feels very weird to actually be living in Austin. Corey and I have been talking and dreaming about it for so long, it’s very surreal to actually be doing it. But, we’re here and we’re here for good so I guess we’d better get used to it! It’s still kind of hard to believe that it was just over a week ago that Corey and I packed up everything we own into a moving van, took a few last minute photos of the empty house, and headed out of College Station for good.

Our last photo in front of our little duplex

Corey and my dad loading up the UHaul

Our sad, empty duplex

For the first few days we lived here, it was absolute chaos. There were people all over the place, installing things, spraying for bugs, and for the first week or so my house kind of felt more like a train station than an actual home. It wasn’t until this past Thursday or Friday that Corey and I actually had a full day in our house without anyone else being there – and it was glorious.

After having our duplex be so incredibly messy for the last couple of weeks we lived there, it was kind of sad to realize that there aren’t any magical moving fairies that come and make your new house look perfect from day one. Instead, I had to deal with this for the first few days:

Oh, the joys of moving.

But thankfully, we’re almost completely unpacked, organized, and settled, and it’s starting to feel a little bit like home.

The dogs have definitely settled in, and they’re loving their huge new backyard. Of course, when we first moved in the yard was practically a jungle because it hadn’t been mowed in a good two or three weeks and we didn’t own a lawnmower. Oops.

You probably can’t tell, but Cullen is actually in that photo, underneath Ranger. He was pretty much completely invisible in the grass.

Thankfully, we have since invested in a lawnmower and the grass is a much more manageable length – and I can actually see Cullen when he’s outside!

I have an insane amount of stuff to share with you, and I can’t wait to get started. But first, tell me what’s new with you – anything new in your lives in the past week? Also, if you’ve made the move from renting to owning, did you forget that you’d need a few basic things (like, um, a lawnmower!) like we did?

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In just a couple of hours, Corey and I will be heading out to pick up our (gigantic) UHaul truck. We’re going to spend today loading up, cleaning, and saying goodbye to College Station.

Then, in the morning, we are out of here.

Things are going to be really crazy for us over the next few days as we get settled and start unpacking – I’m going to try to get as much as possible done over the next week, because I start work the second week of August. So, because of all of the insanity that is about to descend on my life, I’m taking a week-long blogging break. I’m going to spend my time unpacking, enjoying my new house, and possibly (probably?) even adding a new addition to our family (more on that later)!

I’ll be back next Monday, but be sure to still check in on the blog, because I’m not leaving you guys totally neglected! I called upon my wonderful friends, and I have some super awesome guest posts coming your way. So, get excited, and send me lots of good thoughts over this next week – I’m going to be one busy lady!

How long does it usually take you to get settled when you move?

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Two months. Eight and a half weeks. 60 days. And then we’ll be living in the town that we truly consider home. In our own house.

There are no words to express how excited I am. What’s even more exciting is that we close on our house in a mere 6 1/2 weeks. Ahh!

In honor of having a new house, I thought my list this month would be about the house we’re currently living in. So, I present the top three things I will miss about the house we’re in now, followed by the top three things I will absolutely NOT miss.

1. I will miss having my mailbox right outside my door. Silly, I know, but until I lived in this duplex I had never had a curbside mailbox outside of my house.

Growing up, we lived down a long dirt road, so the mailbox was at the end of the road, about a fourth of a mile away from our house. Then, I lived in apartments with community mailboxes. Then I got this house – the mailbox is at the end of my driveway just like it should be.

Our new neighborhood has those community mailbox stations. So, the mailbox will once again not be at the end of my driveway, and I’m strangely sad about that.

2. My gallery wall.

I love the collection of photos we have hanging in our living room, and our new living room layout isn’t really conducive to something like that. Of course, that’s probably not going to stop me from finding a place for a gallery wall SOMEWHERE, but it just probably won’t be front and center in the living room like it is now.

3. Location, location, location. While College Station doesn’t really offer much in the way of entertainment, we are right in the middle of what it does offer. It doesn’t take us more than 5 minutes to get anywhere in town that we could possibly want to go to, and most places take less than two minutes.

Our new house is still close to a lot of things, but not quite this close. We’ll be very close to our grocery store (which is the most important thing for both of us. Is that a sign that we’re getting old?) but everything else we’ll want is about 10-15 minutes away. Still not bad, but not quite as nice as the super quick drive it is now!

And now the list that I could probably do a lot more than three things on: the things I will absolutely NOT miss in the least.

1. The shaded backyard.

(I don’t have a good photo of just the backyard, but you get the idea)

When we first moved into this duplex we were both very excited about all of the shade in the backyard. Until we realized that it was so much shade that our grass wouldn’t grow. As you can see in the photo above, our yard has NO GRASS. It doesn’t help that the renters before us didn’t take good care of the yard, so whatever grass had been there was dead and gone. It’s finally starting to grow a bit of grass now that we’ve been taking care of it for almost a year, but it’s still only a few patches here and there.

Now, I can live without grass. I mean, it’s not a huge deal to me that the backyard doesn’t have grass. The part that really bothers me is the insane amount of dirt that the dogs track in on a daily basis. With no grass to keep the dirt outside, I could sweep twice a day and still not keep up with all the dirt that covers my kitchen floor. It’s disgusting and I’m more than ready to move to our new house with a lush, green backyard!

2. Crappy appliances.

Our refrigerator freezes things (no matter what temperature we have it set on), our oven’s thermometer is wildly inaccurate, our dishwasher gives me dishes that are dirtier than they were when I put them in, our A.C. is older than I am and can’t keep up with the Texas heat, and our hot water heater doesn’t like cold weather and basically refuses to work when it’s below about 50 degrees outside.

That’s really all I need to say about that, isn’t it?

3. BUGS. Now, I keep a pretty clean house. I mean, it’s not immaculate at all times, but I clean on a very regular basis and there aren’t things like old food sitting around or anything like that. Yet we continue to find ants, spiders, and cockroaches roaming around our house constantly. I have three ant bites on my body right now just from taking a freaking shower. We’ve had the exterminator come to the duplex three times in the ten months we’ve lived here (and he’s coming again today) and the bugs just keep. coming. back.

I will NOT miss the bugs.

And that’s the list for June. Only one more list to go before we’re living in Austin again! Corey and I headed out to Austin tomorrow for our home inspection, and I’ll be grabbing the camera from his parents’ house, so be ready to hear all about our house hunting adventures!

What are some things you would miss (or, you know, NOT miss) about the house you live in now?

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This past weekend, I hopped onto Twitter and announced that Corey and I would be doing something very exciting on Saturday, but I didn’t really provide any details. I felt bad being such a tease, but I couldn’t hold my excitement in, and I didn’t want to say anything about it until I knew for sure it was going to pan out.

And now, I can tell you what we were doing.

We were looking at a house, because we’re officially hunting for a home to buy in August.

!!!

Let me tell you the full story.

For the last few months, the thought of where Corey and I would live when we moved in August was enough to send me into a panic attack. We had no idea what our plans were, couldn’t figure out what the best option was, and were too stressed to even begin thinking about it.

But one day last week, all of that suddenly changed.

Corey likes to browse real estate listings all the time. There’s just something about the future real estate agent in him that draws him to the internet to look at houses. It’s never been a big deal, until one day he sat me down and let me know that he would seriously like to think about the idea of buying in August.

Wait, what?

I was immediately thrown off. We hadn’t even really considered the idea of buying for at least a few month after we moved to Austin, and the whole home thing wasn’t even on our radar. But Corey had found a home that he loved, and he really wanted to pursue it. I listened to his ideas and looked at the house, and suddenly, I was in love too. Oops.

I was pretty against the idea at first, until I started doing my research. To rent a small house or duplex with a backyard, it would cost us just the same (if not more) as a mortgage (plus tax and insurance) would. If we wanted to save any money, we’d have to move into a 600ish square foot, one bedroom, one bathroom apartment. On the top floor. With 80 pounds worth of dogs. And all of our furniture.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that buying is really the natural option. We know Austin well, since we both grew up there, so we’re not worried about ending up in an area we hate, and we want to buy eventually, so why put it off?

So, we scheduled a viewing of the house on Saturday.

And, oh man, was it ever disappointing.

We actually did like the house almost as much as we had in the photos, but the neighborhood? Yeah, it wasn’t going to happen. Let’s just say it was one of the sketchiest neighborhoods I’ve ever seen, plus it was less than a mile away from a fire station, train tracks, and a major toll road. Not ideal.

So, the house was crossed off the list.

We are pretty disappointed that it didn’t work out, but we’re feeling optimistic. We’re planning on heading back to Austin this weekend to go look at some more houses (w, and we’re feeling really good about some of the options we’ve seen online. We’re so excited about the idea of buying now rather than later, and we can’t wait to see where this journey takes us!

I promise to update on the process as we go, and I promise next time I’ll actually include a few photos! Hopefully the next time I talk about this whole house-buying thing, I’ll have some good news!

Have you ever been disappointed in a house that you loved online?

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As of Saturday morning my husband is officially a college graduate!

He is so excited to be done, and I am so proud of him! We got up bright and early on Saturday morning to head up to campus and watch him walk the stage.

Even though we were sitting in the very back of the arena, he was pretty easy to spot – his giant boot was pretty hard to miss!

(Sorry for the blur, hard to get a good photo in there!)

It was weird to me to be back there just a few months after my own graduation, sitting out in the audience instead of down on the floor. And, of course, when I say “weird,” I mean that only in the best possible way!

I’m so happy and relieved that we’re both done with college and we can start our “real” life now. It’s a huge step, and a big thing to cross off the list before our Austin move!

After graduation was over, we came back to our house where I had prepared lunch for everyone! Our house is pretty small, and our dining table only seats four, but my mom and I are pretty resourceful and we just grabbed our patio table (yes, the one we use for projects that is covered in paint and stain) and pushed it up against our actual table.

It looked silly, but once we added a tablecloth (aka, a sheet, because we’re rednecks like that) it didn’t look half bad!

I was super excited about getting to use some of the serving pieces we got for our wedding! We don’t have people over often right now (since we don’t live near any of our friends!) so this was the first time I got to use a lot of it!

I didn’t take any photos of the food (I would never make it as a food blogger – I forget to take photos until I’m halfway done eating!) but trust me when I say it was oh so tasty and worth all the work!

Of course, we had to bust out our Reveille wine glasses for the occasion.

It was a wonderful weekend and I’m so incredibly proud of my husband. I can’t believe college is over for both of us!

What did you do this weekend?

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