One year as a Homeowner

On Saturday, my husband and I marked one year of being official homeowners. We couldn't be happier with our purchase! Monday actually marked one year of living in the home.

There was something else about this one year anniversary that also stuck with us. Neither one of us have lived in one place for a whole year in quite some time. For me it would be going back to 2005 when I graduated from college and lived with my parents while working as a paid intern for several sports related jobs. I lived there for a year and 4 months before I began bouncing around the country. My husband also graduated in 2005 and began a career in New Orleans just months before Hurricane Katrina hit. He lost everything and relocated to Oklahoma 3 short months later. Even though he lived in Oklahoma a year and a half, he had to move apartments a couple of times because of the unusual living situation that was set up. That's another story in itself.

While we may have lived in one city for more than a year, circumstances always had us relocating apartments before the year was over. When we lived in Phoenix, we moved a month before our lease was up because the owners of the apartment complex were building a newer complex closer to our jobs and they offered us a deal we couldn't refuse, in addition to getting out of our lease early. We were a few months shy of our one year lease when we relocated to Pittsburgh. While we were in Pittsburgh, we lived with my husband's father, then found a house in a nice neighborhood, only to find out it had a mold problem 8 months into our lease. We moved into a nice new apartment and life was good except we hated Pittsburgh winters. Then my husband lost his job, I quit mine because it was nothing special, and we moved to North Carolina. We then lived with my parents for 9 long months and bought our own house last year!! We have no itch to move, which is a first!




My flower baskets in all their spring glory before the summer heat!
They're still alive but you can tell the summer took a beating on them.

I don't keep as many boxes around ready for the next big move. I've learned that those can go in the recycling. Confession: I still keep really good boxes out of habit. We didn't start hanging anything on the walls until last spring. I unpacked my last box sometime in April but left all of it's contents (picture frames) laying on our guest bed. They're still there. I swear I'm going to hang them up soon. I still don't have a lot on the walls because I'd like to paint soon. When I do hang a picture, I want it to stay there for a while. I have to constantly remind myself, it's a process. We will get there. Until then, I'm feeling quite content with what we've accomplished in just a year!