My 25th birthday was on Monday, and Tuesday marked 9 months of marriage to my wonderful husband, Matt! I’m telling you, 24 was a pretty crazy year. In the course of one year, I got engaged, got married, and Matt and I bought a house. You know, when you say “we bought a house” what most people leave out is the never-ending phone calls with lenders, brokers, agents, insurance providers, and the endless searching on Zillow.com in the middle of the night, the endless stream of documents that need to be filed or filled out, and the renovations that may need to be done. I simply did not realize that this process of buying and renovating a house would take over MY LIFE. Being an adult is hard, y’all, especially when you’ve never done any of this stuff before!

our house hunt…

Originally we were searching for a practically move-in-ready, 1500 square foot house with an open floor plan and a garage. I didn’t think we had high demands, but it turns out we did! I wanted a small yard but lots of privacy, and we needed to be less than 15 minutes from Matt’s work. We did see a few fixer uppers, but I wasn’t ready to commit that much time to a project.

In the end, we compromised. I got an e-mail from Zillow with the CUTEST 1100 square foot house in a quaint neighborhood in Easley. The yard wasn’t too big, and there were trees on THREE sides, so it felt pretty private. It didn’t have an open floor plan, it didn’t have a garage, and it wasn’t move-in ready. But for some reason I fell in love!!

Matt and I like to take our time making big decisions, but in today’s real estate market that really is not an option. Most homes we looked at were put on the market and sold in one day! When we stumbled across this home, we found out it was going to be sold on an online auction 2 days later, and when the auction started, it wouldn’t end for another 5 days after that. That means we had a whole week to think about it! We made our decision, set our max budget for the auction, and on February 22nd we got online at the appointed time for the auction to end. I was shocked when we ended up being the highest bidder, and we didn’t even get close to our max budget!

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t been as active on my blog or social media, it’s because of all the work I’ve been doing at the house! We closed on March 23, and we still haven’t put in our new floors! I’ve been up to my ears in painting and cleaning, but the end is in sight! We should be able to install the floors soon, and then we’ll get our appliances and pack up our belongings to prepare for the move. I haven’t put up a lot of photos of the house online simply because it’s not ready to be seen yet HAHA.

trust…

This season of our lives has been a stretching one. In the midst of our house hunting, Matt has been under some added pressure at work. I’ve also been working through some things with our business. We are learning how to grow and strengthen our marriage when we are both under stress. One thing I’m learning is that I can’t be in control of every aspect of my life. I think that especially as an adult with increasing responsibilities, there are always some ends that are left open, some prayers that are left unanswered, and some things that will be left unknown. I am learning to trust God completely in the midst of a lot of change and unknowns.

love…

I am also learning that true love only blooms after pruning. My ideas of love had to be stripped away before I could begin to love Matt fully. Marriage isn’t about making each other happy, it’s about serving each other sacrificially. I was told that over and over again before we got married. But it took living through it for me to see it for myself. I am so excited to see what the future holds for us and to watch our love grow even more!