We bought a house!

Almost exactly one month ago, we bought a house. It's still a crazy concept to us - there are many night that we're sitting around and one of us says to the other "holy crap, we own this!" But let's go back and talk about how we got here.

We knew we wanted to buy a house and we knew that we should start looking during the summer. We weren't sure how long it would take us to find our house but we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time before our lease was up in January '14. Our realtor took us to a few houses but none of them were what we were looking for, they were either too far from where we wanted to be, not the kind of neighborhood we were looking for or just in general not the house for us. Before even looking at our house, we actually put in an offer on another place. Thank goodness we didn't get it!

Fast forward to July 10, our 3 year anniversary. Chris arranged to see 2 houses before we went out to dinner. They were actually on the same street! The houses had similar footprints, but the 2nd house we looked at felt right. It was just what we were looking for: right part of town, great neighborhood, flat back yard and great flow. It didn't need a ton of work but there were definitely opportunities for upgrades and putting our stamp on it. We knew - this was the house. Before heading off to dinner, we told our realtor that we wanted to put in an offer. The next night we were at a Braves game and signed the counteroffer...we were officially under contract!!

Next up, the inspection. Chris was the most nervous about this. The inspection came back with no major issues and we both finally breathed. I think we were holding our breath from the moment we went under contract. We loved this house and didn't want anything to cause it to not be ours. The entire house buying process went so incredibly smooth. I know it's because we were working with some great people who made everything so easy for us. 4 1/2 weeks after we went under contract, we were closing on our very first house.

It's crazy to think that we've only been in the house for 3 weeks - it feels both longer and shorter than that. But it's the best feeling to come home every night and be able to say: This is ours.

~ Lauren