I sat here staring at my keyboard, hitting backspace on the title too many times. How do you title a post like this? Hey guys! We started a new business. We are house flippers now. Real estate investors. We bought a house. This is grown up stuff. We closed yesterday and now we are really doing this. I mean... I just have so many thoughts jumbled up and they are all trying to jump out of my mouth at once. Let me start over (I'll give you the abridged version).

I had this life dream. It felt like a very far-off dream. A couple years ago we sat down and decided that one day, we would start doing real estate investing. It would be our "retirement plan," as we're both self-employed artists and not really in a financial position to be putting a lot away for retirement. I've always loved the idea of renovating homes though (and I totally blame that on my parents, making us watch This Old House growing up, and having us help strip wallpaper as kids, painting rooms, etc.). When I got my VERY FIRST paycheck from my VERY FIRST JOB when I was 16 (hostess at Outback! hah!) I went straight to the store and bought a gallon of paint and a roller. I came home with my can of BRIGHT ORANGE PAINT and my mom looked at me and said, "What's that for?!" and I said, "My room!" Her response was "Hold on - let me change my clothes. I'll help." Did I mention the paint was BRIGHT. ORANGE.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. We had given up TV (I have more thoughts on that later) and instead of filling the kids' naptimes watching West Wing, I was now faced with confronting my life. My disappointments, particularly. I sat on the floor crying one day, almost mad at God for giving me this dream of renovating homes when it just seemed like it was never going to happen. (I should mention that Josh is part of this, obviously! He's so excited too. I just am telling this from my perspective.) It's never going to happen. These words just echoed in my head. I told God he needed to do something about it or take the dream away from me because I couldn't just coast through each day feeling disappointment any more.

The next day, I was texting my new friend Grace about mirrors and doing a photoshoot. Very random things. It came up that she and her husband flip houses - I casually mentioned, "Oh you are living my dream. I'd love to pick your brain sometime." She said, "What about tomorrow?"

The next day, we sat at a coffee shop and TALKED. And she encouraged me, and showed me how we could make this happen. Her enthusiasm and excitement matched mine. She said I could even make it happen that week, if I wanted to. Inwardly I was freaking out. She gave me a bunch of great contacts and I decided to take it from there. I went straight home and laid it all out to Josh and said "Okay, so what do you think!?" and he was like, "Okay - let's go for it."

A week later we bought a house.

Two weeks after that, we closed. (yesterday)

Today we got the keys.

There's a lot of feelings that go with this. There is excitement, there is terror, there is fear, there is blissful naivete, but most of all there is this overwhelming sense of joy and contentment knowing that this is exactly the adventure we were meant to be on. Oh and the gratitude. I am overflowing with gratitude. I am grateful to Grace Carpenter for sharing her wisdom and mentoring us through this! I am grateful to our realtor Tom Bryant for his kindness and wisdom (again with the wisdom! You need the wise people on your team). I'm grateful for our dear friend Rob Withem who gave up his time and is lending his expertise as a General Contractor to walk through homes with us and walk this adventure with us. I'm grateful to our friends and family who have been NOTHING but supportive!! I am grateful to Chip and Joanna Gaines for not having a TV, because that started a conversation between Josh and I in which we decided to get rid of our TV, which led me to rearrange our living room, which made me start looking for a mirror, which made me text Grace (she has a lot of mirrors), which made us meet and led me to where we are now. And of course, I am so grateful to God for responding in such an immediate way. I don't often ask God for some direct and immediate action. I can admit that I even asked / prayed without any faith at all. And it's humbling how He works anyway, despite a lack of faith. Humbling that I didn't believe this could really happen and it is happening now.

Anyway, here's a few peeks of the house. I'm tentatively calling it the Atrium house because of the entryway (I have an Atrium House pinboard that I've already been called out on starting - haha). It's a mid-century cutiepie. It's pretty rough (and walking back through it today caused a lot of gulping. Oh man - so many things we missed the first time walking through. Termite damage! Charred outlets! Water damage! OH CRAP!). But I just kept telling myself - imagine the "after" photos! Eyes on the prize! This is what we signed up for. This is our dream. We are going for it. We are excited!!

We are hopefully turning this front entry way into more of an atrium feel. PLANT WORLD USA. And the plan is to try to put in double front doors, painted a light peach! And all of the brown trim is gonna go gray. Okay I'll shut up - more posts on our plans later!