So far, 2017 has been an awesome year. The first half was filled with AMAZING travels to Puerto Rico, Cabo San Lucas, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and Nashville. We will be heading to Milwaukee and San Diego in the next few weeks. AND – I just learned that the Zika Travel notice to Southwest Florida has been lifted!!! That means I’ll be able to join my family for our annual Marco Island Thanksgiving trip! Travelwise – this year has been seriously on point.
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Besides traveling all over the globe, we were really hoping to find a new home this year. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve been house hunting like crazy. I swear I’m on the MLS, Zillow, and Redfin all day long!
TBH, Chicago real estate is really starting to annoy me. It seems like the new construction homes are all cookie cutter houses using the same exact floor plans. Is it too much to ask for a house with a little character?!
The houses in our ideal locations are like 5 BILLION dollars. The neighborhoods with ideal houses have terrible walking scores. Our hope is to find a place that we can perform all daily errands on foot, but this is proving to be difficult.
We are also debating renting a house vs. buying a house. To say we are all over the board is a complete understatement. Hopefully we will figure out what we want to do very soon. In the meantime, we are busy prepping our condo to sell. We are definitely overwhelmed with the process.
If you are friends with me on Instagram (follow my account here) or on Snapchat (labuttl), I’m sure you’ve seen the crazy DIY home projects I’ve been taking on. I decided to pretend we are actually moving to put “moving vibes” into the universe.
So get this – In my efforts to declutter our space, I found this company called MakeSpace. This company makes putting your sh*t into storage as simple as possible! They came yesterday and I couldn’t be more pleased with their service.
- They drop off bins (if you need them)
- Pick up all your stuff (including large items like furniture – goodbye ugly massage chair!)
- Take photos of each item being stored and upload them into your account
- By a click of a button, they will bring back any or all of the items you stored!
This company was basically designed for city dwellers with small apartments/condos that have small cars or even no car at all. They currently service NYC, Chicago, LA, and D.C. Friends of Sips & Sequins can get a $75 credit to MakeSpace here.
Keep your fingers crossed that we find a new place soon! We need all the moving vibes we can get. 🙂
XO, Lauren
I went to PR this past May and I regret not kayaking in the bio bay!! Great post, keep them coming!
& best of wishes as you look for a new place!
I totally feel you on finding a house with character. Aaron and I have decided that our next place will be a single family home, but there is nothing out there under $5 billion dollars (LOL) that’s floating our boat. We’ve gone so far as to looking for empty lots and having something built. There’s one house we found literally around the corner from our condo, but it’s short one garage spot. We really wouldn’t have to do a thing, but it’s missing a grassy backyard. It’s definitely something we’ve considered, more so that the price dropped from when it was on the market last year.
Good luck on the house hunt!
I mean… it’s ridiculous. We looked at empty lots too, but in the location we want the land alone is $700,000. CRAZY. We’ve pretty much given up the idea of having a yard as long as there is a park nearby. Hopefully we can both find something soon! Thanks for reading and good luck to you as well!
Bio Bay was awesome! So scary coming back in the pitch black though… Thanks for reading and for the well wishes! 🙂