Our house is tucked away on a cul-de-sac in a heavily wooded area. We have a nice-sized yard surrounded by woods. On a regular basis there are deer, fox, hawks, and I even saw a bald eagle a few weeks ago.
The house itself is a very standard colonial home: center hallway, four rooms downstairs, four bedrooms. When we bought the house, it was a complete blank canvas. Everything was white! Since then, we have painted nearly every room, added bamboo floors, new windows, given the kitchen a makeover, finished the basement, added ceiling fans, replaced the front door and done a fair amount of work outside. Our wish list for this house is not yet complete, but it's getting there. We have both enjoyed putting our fingerprints on this home over the years.
Our forever house is easy to describe. We want very much to buy a 200-yr-old farmhouse on at least 10 acres and restore or renovate it. That's the dream house...actually it's more than that, it's the plan. We'll get there, but it may take a few more decades.
In the meantime, we treat this house well and it treats us well.
After living here for almost 7 years, we've built a nice network of local friends. In 2009 I joined a local mom's group and am currently serving on their Board of Directors as their Membership Vice President. I enjoy this group of women tremendously and am so happy to have found such a large group of women who share my values. We are not women out trying to be the Joneses: hiding mounting debt with the facade of having it all. We live within our means and sacrifice in order to be home with our children. We plan activities for our children to give them social interaction until they are of school age.
Shawn and I have no interest in keeping up with other people. We do what we want to do when we want to do it and because we want to do it, not because someone tells us to do it. Did any of that make sense?
My point can be illustrated as follows: We don't have TiVo or iPhones or an iPad. We don't go on vacation if the cash isn't in hand. We save money for our son's future. I buy consignment clothes. We own our cars. We both have college and/or master's degrees but no student loans. I feel we are more responsible than perhaps 70% of the people we know. This might be an obnoxious thing to say, but I sincerely cannot understand why people would place possessions ahead of quality time with their family or savings plan for their child's education. This is a mystery to me.
But don't get me wrong...we like toys. Shawn recently got a PS3 for Christmas and I received a Nook. What can I say? Some things just call to us. And each year we hope to spend two weeks at the beach. And I will confess to this, I love to travel. As soon as we are able financially and our son is of an age where he will remember, we plan to take him to Europe: France, Ireland, Spain, Italy...you name it, I want our family to go.
Well...that was a little more than just information about our house, but I want this blog to be an inside glimpse of who we are. Like I said, I'm going to be transparent...and since this process will move about 10 times slower than a snail's pace, I need something to chat about.
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