Guys! Happy New Year! I have some super exciting news… we’re buying a house! Well, a condo because that’s big city life, but seriously ~ !!!!!

If I’m being honest I vacillate back and forth between this is totally happening and this is not going to happen at least 10,000 times every day. Also between being totally ecstatic and totally terrified too, lol. Somedays I feel like I’ve never been on as intense an emotional roller coaster as being under contract on this puppy.

I was really hesitant to share any of this yet because really, nothing is guaranteed until you sign that huge stack of papers at the closing table. And let me tell you, this deal has been anything but smooth, but we just got past the biggest challenge that really could have derailed things, so from this point on it’s full steam ahead!

You guys, buying this place is one of my biggest dreams. Not just owning a home, but it’s our first fixer upper!! I’ve helped bunches of other people on their projects over the years, but this is my first real live actual renovation project of my own… and I’m literally dying from the excitement!

And it’s great that I have all that excitement to balance the overwhelming stress of the real estate part of this intense shin dig. HA. Because it is way more stressful than I expected.

To be honest, part of all that stress is that this just happened to be a difficult deal due to some things going on in the building, which I will share later on in life, but we are making it through… slowly but surely.

I think ultimately this process is a great real life reminder that I can’t actually control anything. I can get all of the information my attorney or lender needs, and I can facilitate and negotiate all the live long day… but there are a lot of moving parts when you buy a place, and at a certain point a lot of things are out of my hands as a buyer, and they are out of my hands even as the agent.

That doesn’t really sit well with the dominant control freak part of my personality, but after I literally lost like a week’s worth of sleep and thought I was starting to have a panic attack, I sat myself down for a little come to jesus talk and said ~ self, calm down, for real. If this doesn’t work out then it wasn’t meant to be, and there will be another one… at a certain point you can’t force things, you really just have to trust and surrender.

Also, to be clear, if you hadn’t noticed this in your own life, that is way harder to practice in real life than I ever really realized. Especially when it came to something I really care about. But it’s the truth… trying to force and control everything only makes everything more stressful and it’s not productive. Ultimately I surrendered and took a deep breath, and in the end, it’s all coming together… it’s clearly just a HUGE deal for this to become real for me, so of course there’s a lot of energy trying to come in and interfere… just gotta keep breathing deep and going with the flow…

Honestly I think 2019 is going to be awesome. {and also intense and terrifying as all of this becomes real!} One of my biggest dreams is actually coming true and although I forget that in the mess of coordinating money and closings and moving and packing and contractors, every time I stop and remind myself I literally get giddy inside like a little kid.

I can’t wait to start sharing everything about this big new adventure with you, from what  projects we’re doing to what our goals are on the back end {selling this baby and moving on to the next one!}. For now here’s a sneak peek of the awesome twenty year old kitchen I’m going to completely overhaul a.s.a.P!