PJ accepted a new position with his job this past fall which meant it was time for a change, a change that involved a pretty big move! For YEARS PJ has been working North of Boston and has dealt with the Boston traffic everyday. With this move, we knew that his commute would be better, I would be able to continue working on the Cape and South Shore with my Ali B Weddings and Families and just everything about our life would be better as long as we were all together. While we LOVE Plymouth so much and we have many friends and family there, we hope to have visitors and we hope we can get back there a lot to see them too! The process of buying and selling a home is like a second job! When we bought our first home we were moving from an apartment. This process was very different and scary at times! There are so many mixed feelings I felt throughout this whole process! We learned a lot and I think my mixed feelings are going to be with me for a bit…however I am pretty excited to slowly  decorate our new home and share a few of my favorite things with you!

10 Things we HATED 

•   A spotless home: Seriously… imagine your life with 2 kids, one infant and one toddler. Now, imagine being home with them during the week, while your husband is already working in New Hampshire 2 hours away, and we get notified that people wanted to come and look at the house the night before… and the time always had to revolve around nap time! It got old, pretty fast. I was up late cleaning the night before, putting things away, making sure the house was as presentable as I could for potential buyers to come walk around for 15 minutes or so. If I didn’t get to clean up the night before, I was scrambling around in the morning
• Listening to the feedback from buyers: There are a few things with our home that we have zero control over. One big thing we had to hear was “Oh, the power lines are just way too close”. The power lines never bothered us, and there was nothing we could do about that..
• No Shows: We had a few showings scheduled for smack dab in the afternoon. So, I got the house ready, I got the kids ready, got myself ready… that took a few hours! We would get out of the house and if they didn’t car nap, we were most likely mall walking… Then a few hours later we would get home to realize that NO ONE showed up. It was pretty infuriating when this happened, but the kids liked being out. ( Trying to spin that into a positive thing…)
• Losing things: Sometimes there would be a few loose items laying around and If I had to get the kids in the car, fast, I would shove things in a drawer then forget about it….. #reallife
• Early Showings- and by this I mean we would have realtors arrive at the door an hour sometimes an hour and a half early! Henry would be napping in his crib and I would be doing last minute touches. Many times I had to turn the potential buyers away because my baby was sleeping. When this happened about 75% of the time, they never rescheduled to come back and see it
• Waiting in the car- This was so tedious. If a showing was at 1pm. I would have to plan to be out of the house by Henry’s first nap around 10am because he would wake up around noon and to get 2 kids out of the house, on time incase they came early was really hard on me, so we would leave for the nap, he’d fall asleep- I would drive around listening to podcasts for 2 hours. Then Ethan would nap. By the time they both woke up from their car naps at different times, it was time to go back home
• Constantly being asked if we sold the house: It was really nice that everyone wanted to know if we sold the house, but it was hard to continuously share that there was no movement on it yet, and that the time of the year for selling was pretty bad..
• SNACKS: I am not kidding. Every time we got in the car to start the car nap experience, Ethan was screaming for a snack…
• Packing the car for a full day: Yes, I had to pack the car as if we were not going to be home all day because as I mentioned the naps were always in the car and they were way before or even after the showing time. It was really hard to judge that and with people arriving early, I just started leaving once we all woke up, and we’d drive around, go do an activity that mostly involved mall walking since it was winter out and way too cold to play outside. I had bags and bags and bags of things that I know my kids would need… Toward the end of the showings I started packing a backpack with my ” portable office” and discovered stealing internet from Starbucks and working on my laptop was the only way to get some work done during the day
• Second guessing EVERYTHING: Is it the kitchen cabinet color? The bathroom wall paper since we didn’t get around to re-doing them, the size of the bed rooms? Maybe we need to get rid of some photos, decor… maybe they didn’t like the neutral grey walls we picked and pained ourselves…It got confusing and we didn’t know if we were doing something wrong, but we made it through and the buyers liked what they saw and they wrote us a letter all about themselves which I loved! 🙂

10 things we LOVED

• Time to plan- We knew the house was going to be going up for Sale towards the end of September. It wasn’t exactly official until mid October and just before it went up for sale, we purchased a dumpster and completely filled that thing! It’s crazy how much STUFF you accumulate after all the years of being somewhere! CRAZY! We completely filled it up and then were able to plan what things would be out of sight for the home photos ( that yours truly took!) and what didn’t need to be seen for the showings that were going to happen. We would have about 1-2 days notice for a showing which was helpful for me to make sure the house was presentable and to know what time I would need to leave with the kids to base it around their naps.
• Living in perfection- I say thing because we went to New Jersey for Thanksgiving and we were gone for a week. In that week there were 2 showings. Before we left we made sure the house was clean and looked nice. When we arrived home it felt AMAZING that the whole place was clean! It felt like that each time we came home from being out after a showing. Not having everything around/ getting rid of a lot really makes you feel good!
• Spending 2 weekends in NH- We went to NH twice to see houses. The first time was in October and the second time was in March! Getting to come and look at different houses was nice. We had the kids with us each time and they think hotels are the coolest thing! We got to go swimming and and enjoyed being together for a full weekend.
• Fresh Flowers- When PJ brings Ethan to the grocery store, they always come home with fresh flowers to surprise me with! The best is when Ethan picks out the flowers that are in an actual flower pot that should be planted in to the ground, but I would always put them on the kitchen table! It made the house feel nice.
• Hearing that a few buyers thought i kept the house clean with 2 kids- This was a HUGE compliment. I know many people have more than 2 kids, but really….anyone that has kids (plus owns their own business), keeping a clean house is dang hard! It was nice to hear that they appreciated that even if I went to bed past midnight every night!
• Our Sweet Friends- We had so many friends text us daily checking in on the process and always making sure we were okay. They offered to take Ethan out, have both kids at their house and just wanted to be apart of it. We are so thankful for them and we are so blessed to have so many amazing friends in our lives!
• Our Kitchen- For the last 5 years our kitchen cabinets were a pretty dark brown color. We decided to paint them white in November as we were not sure if that was something that was stopping potential buyers. We painted them white and we wished we did that years ago! It made the kitchen so much better!
• Minimizing and organizing- Now, I didn’t really LOVE this in the moment, BUT growing up, my mom collected a lot of things to which I feel that I am not as bad as she was with that, I still have a LOT of stuff, but I knew that having so much stuff, it just needed to go- I listened to minimalist pod casts and follow a few minimalist groups on Facebook and really worked (and stressed) on getting rid of things I didn’t use/didn’t have a purpose. I went on Pinterest and looked at ways to organize a few items- specifically the linen closet items that tend to over flow! At the end we had over 1150 lbs of trash that PJ brought to the dump and I donated about 20 bags between friends and to Savers! It felt good to release all that stuff from me and it’s weird to say how much “lighter” you feel.
• Neighborhood Walks- When we would get overwhelmed and if the weather was semi warm, we would walk around our neighborhood or go downtown.
• Self Portraits- This year I decided I wanted to be in front of the camera more- knowing that we were not going to be in our first home much longer, I made it a point to get out the camera more, capture moments of us all together in our home that we brought our babies home to, just doing some of our favorite things.

When all is said and done, I know that the struggles of selling a house are much like first world problems. Yes, life is stressful and this fall/winter/spring hasn’t been the most peaceful seasons however I am very aware that we are so blessed to even sell a house. This house was our first home. The home  I labored in for 2 pregnancies, the home we brought our babies home to…. The home we hosted EVERY Christmas Eve, Fathers Day and Birthdays for the last 4 years! It was a home made for hosting and we loved getting everyone together each time we could! I remember Ethan’s first birthday party out in the back yard…. I think 100 people showed up! It was like a wedding with the amount of people we had there celebrating him! It was amazing. We hosted our NJ family there when they came to visit, and with kids, the memories of Christmas morning are so special to look back on. It’s bittersweet. We are so blessed.

We moved to New Hampshire ( New Hamster in Ethan’s words) on Henry’s 1st Birthday! We have been so busy that I feel like I didn’t really get to process our move until right now while writing this! Ethan will talk about neighbors and friends we lived close to in Plymouth, and thats when I feel most sad. BUT  we will be back a lot and I hope that we get to see our friends as often as we can!

Closing on both houses on Henry’s Birthday- April 5, 2018 was really exciting! I loved getting to share with you the day on Insta Stories and I hope you enjoyed watching! Our home in New Hampshire is coming along- We are excited to get a few new things to decorate and as I type this post in my new office, I am just so excited to have a place to call my own and I can not wait to decorate it! It’s a great size and I can even use 1/2 of it as a studio for practice with my kiddos which is exciting! We love our neighborhood and have already met a few new neighbors this week! We are looking forward to making new memories in our new home and we can not wait to have visitors!

xo.