We Bought a Zoo!.....No, wait, I meant to say A HOUSE!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. We are moving even farther along that scary path called adulthood. We purchased our first home at the end of May, and so far, it's been absolutely fantastic.

We started looking in February, and we were having trouble finding what we wanted. We live in Minnesota, a place where land is at a premium. It's not like the place we're from farther south where you can buy a home on a few acres (or, as Minnesotans say, an acreage) and pay less than you would to live in town. No, here, it's much cheaper to live in town. That's also because we live in an area where you can't go 100 yards without stepping in a lake (seriously, it's true), so buying land outside of town inevitably means proximity to a lake, which means BIG BUCKS.

So we searched in town. Our list included these important essentials:

1. Preferably on at least one acre of land.
2. Even better if it has a small wooded area or the possibility for some sweet trees. 
3. At least 2 bathrooms in the house. 
4. A garage--ideally a two-car garage, but we'd settle for a one-car garage. 
5. A sizable kitchen area to accommodate the one area where we are major hoarders. 

Everything else was pretty flexible. We searched high and low. We scoured the real estate websites. We hired ourselves a great real estate agent. We did a lot of work, but we just kept running into problems. Finding an acre of land in our price range was going to be challenging at best. Minnesotans love their gorgeous, full, grass lawns, so a lot with tons of trees? Not a lot of them. All the houses in town (in our price range) seem to be made with only one bathroom. More than one bathroom just didn't seem to be a thing until people started building houses in the 90s--and all of those houses were out of our price range. 

One day, as I searched Craigslist and dreamed of drum sets (we'll be buying one in the near future and it will be awesome), I casually clicked over to the Real Estate section. Just for fun. I saw a listing that was a few days old for an actual house in town (most Craigslist listings are for vacation properties or land) and it was For Sale by Owner. It was just above our price cap, but I clicked on it anyway. I got a little excited. When Levi got home I showed him the listing. He got a lot excited. We had our agent contact the seller, and the rest is history!

It has everything we were looking for. One and a half acres. Last house in town. A whole half acre of woods! Two bathrooms--one on each floor, and one en suite with the master bedroom (living the life of luxury now, ladies!). A detached, two-car garage with enough room for a workshop. A generous kitchen area with plenty of cabinet space. Beautiful (mostly) views of fields on three sides. The only house on our street, which is a dead end. 

We closed at the end of May and were completely moved in two weeks later. Grown ups. Officially. 

And now for what you've all been waiting for........the pictures! Here it is, friends. Our new home. 

This is the view from our street. We closed on our house on the one day that the crab apple tree was in full bloom. It only lasted for two more days! Also, we were so giddy with excitement that we even forgot to close the car door.

This is the view from our front porch. The field was pretty blah at this point, but it became soybeans over the summer. It is now blah again. 

This is the view from our back door. That large expanse of green behind the tree line? It's wheat! It was so beautiful this summer, and it reminded me so much of home.

A view of our kitchen. We have dreams someday of redoing the layout of all of this. Also, note the cafe curtains and the magnets that the seller kindly left behind for us. The magnets are gone. The curtains are not--yet.

Looking at our kitchen from the dining area. The dining area is pretty much the same room, but it's divided by the large buffet counter you see in the front. All in all, it's a nice kitchen right now. 

The living room. First, those windows are amazing. They're old and need to be replaced, but they're still huge and let in a ton of light. But that brick. People, it's not real brick. It's not even faux brick. It's plastic pieces actually mortared onto the drywall. And I don't care how cozy everyone who enters our house says it looks. It's awful, and it has to go. That will be accomplished soon by a lot of paint. 

The other side of the living room. This angle allows you to see just how hideous that "brick" is. On the other hand, that strange corner area is real brick, and that thing hanging out of the wall is a stove pipe. Yes, people! We could have the coolest pot-bellied cast iron stove someday. 

This is the upstairs bathroom. Sadly, that tub will only ever be a bathtub. The ceiling slopes rather severely down to it. It's a nice room, however, and we're grateful to have a bathroom just for company.....and kids, someday. 

Well, y'all, that was what our house looked like at the end of May. It's not a lot different right now, but tomorrow I'll give you some ways in which we've made this house into a home. Our journey through the events of the summer continues tomorrow! Until then!

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Keep it real, 

MB