Hiiii – long time no chat! It’s been a very busy last year becoming a mama and starting my new business venture. With entering the toddler stage recently, life has become more routine and I can balance my blog again 🙂 I also needed time to learn my boundaries for sharing my son online (forever referred to on here as Baby S due to the nature of SEO 🙂 ).

Anyways – where to start?! Well…we sold our house on Monday (!!) and are on to a new chapter! We bought our first home four years ago and figured that once we had children, we’d be looking for a new house because it’s only 1,800 square feet inside and our current home is on a very busy, fast cut through road (well, it’s a 25, but everyone goes 45+). When I say the house is on the road, I mean the builder needed a special permit because it’s that close. Baby S started walking at 10.5 months so at 13 months now, he’s flying!

We have many other reasons it felt like the time to move on –

• Playroom: currently Baby S’ play area is the entire downstairs floor lol. We could continue to get by with this, but I’ve dreamed to make him a fun, colorful playroom. Plus, it’ll be nice to just shut the door if you’re too exhausted to pick up all the toys each day 😛
• Garage: we are very over shoveling snow all winter off our cars and it wears vehicles down quicker. If you’re a mom you know that dressing kids in the winter is weird when it comes to being in the car. They cannot be bundled in the car seat or have a coat on – makes sense. Going from house to outside (bundled), car (unbundled) to outside (bundled) going to your destination, is cumbersome. With an attached garage, we can skip a couple steps of the whole bundling / unbundling thing.
• Space: our neighbors are all awesome, but I grew up with acres and not being able to see other houses and I want that. There is something about becoming a parent that makes you crave recreating what you had / enjoyed for your own children. I grew up with acres of land, surrounded by nature with a huge yard to ride my bike, run around and be outside. I want that for my son and future children. Baby S isn’t a toy guy.. he just wants to be outside in nature all day, every day, all seasons, all temps. I LOVE IT. We are ready for land, privacy and space for our family!
• Growth: we are at a point where we need more space inside and outside, but due to the lot we are on, there is no expansion opportunities. We can’t just add on because there are neighbors at each angle. We want a home where we could expand in the future if our family grows and we need more space. Although life can always take interesting turns, we really plan for this next home to be the house we are in through our children being grown.

I felt like our ‘must have’ list for the house and property was never going to exist in Massachusetts, but then we found the one. 

Our new home

The plot of land is a dream and we know nothing could ever beat it. We are at the end of a small development – ‘small’ meaning the volume of houses is less than a handful – but the space and foliage between each house is perfect. So we have neighbors, but we don’t see each others homes from our windows. Exactly what we were looking for, but never thought we’d find in North Shore Massachusetts area that we love.

The development goes up an incline and being at the end gives us the dreamiest, most peaceful view. We see the tops of trees for miles and miles and miles. We bought this house two weeks ago when the New England foliage was at its peak and the view is nothing short of breathtaking. I am dying to see it with snowfall!

Both the front and back yards are vast for our son to play and for us to expand like we’ve always wanted with an in-ground pool, outdoor entertaining area, potential in-law suite for my dad, etc. The land is just a dream.

Oh and it has over 15 acres lol. We were looking for two to four, but long story short – this specific house came with 20 so here we are! 😛

As for the house, it is absolutely beautiful and have much more than what our ‘must haves’ and ‘wishlist’ both entailed. the house was thirty days out from being completed so I got to select all of our finishings – flooring, counter tops, etc. – which was really exciting for me. I’ll share what we selected in a future post. We about double our current square footage, have a garage, huge beautiful island, a playroom for our son, an office that fits us both for working from home and the list goes on.

The cherry on the top was that with what we make on our first home, our new mortgage ends up being about the same with this new house. It all just fell into place perfectly! We are so grateful that we found the house and land that we can plant roots in.

I can’t wait to share the process of decorating this home and making it ours! I’ll share our plans for the kitchen next 🙂