How do people do this?

That would be the question D and I have been asking each other these past few weeks. How do people juggle demanding jobs, plan a wedding, buy a house and not kill each other? D's work has gotten particularly hectic lately and we're four months away from our big day. Oh and every single other person within a 30 mile radius of Austin, TX is trying to buy their first home and we all have the same budget. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that we're in a position to buy a home especially while interest rates are so low, but this process is making me crazy.

Every single home we drive by or go into (pictured above) has something majorly wrong with it or someone beats us to the punch and snatches it up before we have a chance to put in an offer. In case anyone's wondering, all of the above houses have some or all of the following problems:

• It's already under contract.
• Someone outbid us.
  
• It's in a really scary neighborhood.
• The surrounding houses are in trashy awful disrepair.
• The foundation is heaving, sloping, cracking or otherwise sinking into the earth (most common problem).
• It's too small.
• It has no yard.
  
• It has aluminum wiring.
• It requires more work than we can afford to do.
• It's downwind from a landfill.
• It was built during the eighties.
• It's in a subdivision that reminds us both of Children of the Corn.
• It's in a subdivision where there are no trees taller than the houses.
  

What I'm having the most difficult time with is all the emotional ups and downs. Our Realtor tells us to sit in a house we like and imagine ourselves there....to see if we fit. So we do that. We drive by to see if we like the neighborhood, we look at the pictures over and over to imagine where our furniture will be. We imagine family dinners and where the Christmas tree would go. Then we go in the house and find that it's slowly sliding downhill and we have to scratch it off our list and mourn the loss of this theoretically perfect home. Rinse and repeat. Our realtor insists that it's just a waiting game and the perfect house is still out there, just waiting to go on the market...but we're starting to feel a little beat up by this process and we're taking it out on each other. How do people do this?

June

The world has been a busy place this June. D's little-est sister graduated from high school as the valedictorian. She quoted Emerson in her speech and made us all cry. D's family had quite a graduation party for her, but my all time favorite part was sitting on their back porch. I could spend hours on that porch drinking coffee and talking to D's mom about crocheting. The view is amazing.



My birthday came and went. I feel like I've spent the last year making the transition from adult to grown up and now, at 28, I don't feel like such an impostor. We had a nice quiet dinner with friends followed by amazing chocolate goodness from Central Market. D's middle little sister showed up at my school with flowers from her and D since D couldn't get away from work. I decided a long time ago that I wanted zinnias for the wedding. And the beautiful bouquet on my desk confirmed that.



We went camping the weekend after my birthday. It was beautiful and hot. We spent the weekend alternating between hiking and sitting in very small waterfalls reading. We ate the requisite hot dogs and roasted marshmallows and enjoyed our lack of cell phone service and Netflix.



The wedding is just over 4 months away and my current project is organza and tulle flowers for mom corsages and hair decor. It was a bit of a challenge finding fall colors at the beginning of the summer, and I keep burning myself...but otherwise I absolutely love the way they're turning out. I'm finishing them with seed beads and vintage buttons. And the kitten keeps trying really hard to run off with my scraps.

We've started spending all our evenings and weekends house hunting. Houses in our price range move incredibly quickly so we keep finding that perfect house and a moment later it goes under contract. Fortunately there's a lot on the market and our Realtor, Abbe Waldman, is amazing. I can't wait to post pictures of the elusive new home...once we find it.

Covet

I want this house. The trees and red garage door and the sheer old lady-ness of it makes my heart pitter-patter. It's too bad my credit is shot and we have too much debt.