Let’s take it back a few months…

We’re in our apartment and hear thumping from downstairs. Nothing new or shocking here, we’ve grown used to it at this point. I’ve had to go knock on these assholes’ door 3 different times since we’ve lived in the apartment – the first time I fully expected & mentally prepared myself to fight. I was gonna start swingin’ – and then this nerdy little guy answered the door & was super chill about things so I felt bad. THEN about a month later, some blonde came a’knockin’ on OUR door & asked if we were down doing anything in the floor because all they can hear is a thumping sound & they believe it’s coming from us. “Nope honey not us! Maybe try the people directly underneath us because they’re super loud! Where do you live?” and she answers me “Directly underneath you”…woops! Well, take that as your sign dear. You’re loud. So now it’s like February and the thumping continues! I look at Clinton & blurt out “I can’t take this shit anymore!” and I stomp out the door & down to the 2nd floor to ask them -nicely as always- to please turn it down, our floors are vibrating. I’m always the one to go ask, Clinton’s way of handling this is to stomp on the floors, beat on the walls, and scream “SHUT THE FUCK UP” until I’m pretty sure someone is going to call the cops. My way is more effective.

I knock & the nerdy guy answers again. If all else fails & I need to beat somebody’s ass, I can beat his so I’m not worried. I say calmly but directly “hi guys I’m sorry to bother you but ya gotta keep it down! It’s constant! Our floors are literally vibrating” to which he decides his method of warfare will be humiliation of the enemy, so he goes on the attack. He tells me -this is the short version- that he can hear EVERYTHING we do…yeah. Use your imagination. He says a few other things but it really only took the one thing to get me goin’ & so his method worked. I’m pissed. I choose maturity though, so I yell at him to “quieten down you twerpy little bastard” – ah yes, maturity. At this point I’m nicely fueled on adrenaline and pure rage so I run the steps back up to our apartment and yell out to Clinton as I burst through the door “THAT’S IT WE ARE MOVING! I’M MESSAGING TARA”

Tara is our realtor. I messaged her right then and there to get us started on the home buying process. And so it began! My friend & buddy bidder Karren is her mom so we had already been talking about potential areas to live while on our flights because she knew our lease was up in April & she thought we’d probably be able to find something in the area she lives in, which was perfectly okay by me because I like her neighborhood a lot! We got our pre-approval and started looking…and I started getting discouraged. Florida is expensive. Which I know, I’m not an idiot…but still. For people who look good on paper with our credit and down payment, we still didn’t have tons of options. Also, I’m not willing to budge on homes that need work so that made our options slimmer too. Paint? I can work with. Anything more than paint? It’s a no from me. I work too much to come home from a 4 day trip, staying in hotels, & not be able to relax because of projects around the house. I don’t want projects! I’m not a projects or crafts kinda girl. Besides, I can’t calm down or relax being surrounded by construction and work. I want turn-key, move-in ready. Judge me, I really don’t care.

We had just about started looking in a neighboring town instead of where we’re at when one night I just clicked onto Zillow to see what was available & found one that looked okay. I sent it to Tara & she sent me 2 others back and wanted my opinion. One had only been listed online for 55 minutes and it was cute! The pictures were kinda bad but they got the point across. We went ahead and put an offer in just simply because you HAVE to! Everything is going so fast right now that if you’re interested in something you need to act fast & get your name thrown into the proverbial pot! If you don’t like it once you see it? You can back out. We drove up from Orlando the next morning and walked the house & it was perfect. Small garage but 4 bedrooms, 2 bath, lots of space. Completely remodeled & everything is new and we love the style they chose to remodel it in. We have a fireplace and a sky light, both of which are nice touches that we thought were very cool! We were called about an hour later to say they’d accepted our offer. We were under contract! We decided to keep it secret aside from parents and we did pretty good with that for a while then slowly we started letting a few more people know – I don’t give a shit what people know about me AFTER it’s happened but until it’s happened, I don’t want anyone knowing what’s going on in my/our life. Why? Because not everyone is happy for you. I don’t want their negative vibes anywhere near me. No one was going to mess this up for us!

However, it was overall a simple & very pain free process buying this house! I feel like we were blessed with the best team to help us and they took such good care of us the whole way through. We closed April 30th and moved in the next day on the 1st.

A good friend asked me the day we closed how this compares to my other homes & their buying processes – I technically owned 3 with my ex-husband but we’re not revisiting those. The cliffs’ notes version is I have lived a lot of places in my life & owned houses in Indiana (Dyer, not too far from Chicago), Missouri (Kansas City), and Alabama (Moody, right outside of Birmingham). I’ll tell you here and now why this one is different – this one is mine. Every other home I helped purchase (let’s be real, I was just along for the ride playing the role of doting railroad wife) was not mine – they were purchased under the terms of that we would be moving again. I knew from the very beginning that they were not permanent. They were not meant to be roots. They were “don’t get attached” (I did cry like a baby when I left the Indiana home though…I really loved that one). They were “don’t hang anything up because we don’t want to hurt the resale value by putting holes in the walls”. They were “landscaping is a pain to keep up with so we just won’t have any”. I had no connection with the realtors or the people who helped with the mortgages from those homes – but not this time. I consider Tara a friend & at this point, her family is practically my family. One of the days I was feeling particularly discouraged over not finding anything, we went to Karren’s parent’s home after looking at 3 homes to just sit and decompress with everyone and I was telling them about this one that we loved the pool and backyard but we didn’t love the actual house but that we don’t even care about having a pool. Karren’s mom (MeMaw) spoke up and said “well honey you don’t need a pool anyways! Your MeMaw has a pool!” and that just warmed my heart. All 3 of them (Karren and parents) even came over and did a walk through on the house with us! The ladies who work at the mortgage company have sent us “congratulations” emails & texts as well. We have trees & plants! It’s not cold & boring! Clinton has already started hanging things up on the walls! It just feels like home…the others just felt like places to live temporarily because that’s all they were.


I guess if you really think about it, it doesn’t compare at all.

And that’s that! We cannot wait for our first visitors!


– Autumn (& Clinton, Emma, & Nagini)




*This is a link to an Amazon registry we put together – I’m not very savvy with stuff like that. We expect nothing & wasn’t going to even do something like this at all but a couple of people have asked if we had anything like this set up so I thought “maybe”…anything is appreciated but not at all necessary or expected! If you click the link & decide to help us out please know how thankful we are for you!
https://www.amazon.com/registries/custom/2S8ZTES42ZNX0/guest-view