A Quick Life Update

I know we’re almost at the end of the month, but happy October my friends! We have been enjoying some cooler weather here in Oklahoma. I think I can speak for most of us when I say I’m thankful for it after the brutal summer we had. A cold from blew in over the weekend, so it’s OFFICIALLY sweater weather. All of our extra time has been spent out on the golf course or sipping wine on our back patio. I’m taking any chance I can get to enjoy being outdoors before it gets too cold!

It’s been radio silence around here on PBW, and I owe you a quick life update. (My last post was in June, whoops!) I’ve got all sorts of fun things going on in real life, and one is MAJOR. I desperately need to get it off my chest, but it hasn’t quite been the right time. Now that things are settled and officially moving forward, I feel like I can tell you what’s been going on! I’ll start from the very beginning…

The Background

Back in April 2021, Rob and I had a casual conversation about how wild the real estate market was in our area. I remember we had just left a golf lesson and we were sitting down for lunch, drinking margaritas and splitting an order of chips and queso. Out of curiosity, we did a little research on the value of our current home at that time. To our complete shock, comparative properties in our area were selling for MUCH more than we expected. This would give us the ability to potentially sell our current home for more than we ever dreamed of. Our conversation then shifted toward talking about our future and whether or not we see ourselves staying in our current home forever.

I love our current house. I love our view off the back patio, the memories we have made here, and the neighbors who have become lifelong friends. Ultimately though, this house was never meant to be our forever home. We both agreed that we want our home to be a place where our family can gather for holidays, host our friends for get-togethers, and have more space to hopefully grow into with a family of our own one day if that’s in the cards for us.

Another thing to factor in is how much time we spend at the golf club we joined earlier this year. We became fully-fledged members back in May, and we have definitely succeeded in getting our money’s worth of golfing in. We’re there almost every day after work playing golf, practicing, or grabbing dinner with friends. We love the community we are part of there, but we feel a little removed from it since we live on the other side of town. It’s about a 20-minute drive for us to get home, and we’ve always liked the idea of living out by the club so that commute turns into more of a 2-minute drive.

The Big News!

All of these things pointed toward an obvious solution, and that is… to move! We talked and prayed and weighed our options, but ultimately decided it’s a great time to think about the future and build our forever home. So that’s the big news! We’re MOVING. It’ll be in 7-8 months and it’s only across town… but it’s a huge change and a major accomplishment we’ve been working toward. (Even though we were not expecting it just yet.) Current feelings include: nervous, elated, stressed, and excited all at once, but since we decided to move forward with the process, it feels like the right decision for us and our family.

On one hand, I am OVERJOYED and so grateful for the opportunity to build a home that is something we will truly love and can customize to our heart’s content. We are definitely in a different phase of life than we were when we built our current home, and there are definitely somethings we learned in the process that we plan to do differently this time.

On the other hand, my head and heart are spinning. We’re leaving our first home. The house that made us homeowners. The place where we made some many memories. We hosted our first family Thanksgiving. Had endless late-night chats on the patio watching the sunset. Made it feel like our joint refuge from the world.

We lucked out with a lot location that will be just down the street from the club, and it’s close enough we’ll eventually be able to get a golf cart of our own and REALLY commit to this whole country club thing. We are currently in the midst of designing our new build, and I cannot wait to share more details with you in future posts including the inspo I’m using, progress, and more! We’ve done this once before, but we’re using a different builder this time who specializes in custom homes so the options are, quite literally, endless. It’s a wonderful, but overwhelming thing. We’ve admired our builder’s homes for several years, and it’s a dream to actually be working with them. We fell for a floor plan, made some customizations to match what our specifications are, and we are about to get started! Feel free to leave any questions in the comments below! This house has been on my mind constantly for months so it feels GREAT to finally share it with you all and chat all things “home”.

Sometimes big changes can be scary, but we are doing our best to trust the process and the direction we’ve been led. So far we’ve had one of several design meetings, as well as our pre-construction meeting, so we should be breaking ground very soon! You can catch me Pinterest-ing all the ideas until this process is complete!

Thanks for reading along! I’m so thankful for each of you who show up to this space. I enjoy sharing my head and my heart here, and I love connecting with you! Have a great weekend!