It has been a bloomin long time since I last blogged here. I’m so rubbish! Basically life got in the way – work, home etc… all rather busy and something had to give.

But also, I was getting a bit fed up to be honest – fed up of planning my dream shabby chic home, but not actually having it!

However… the house hunt has now started! We got a mortgage offer in January and have now started to look for houses in our local area. It’s tough though because there’s not really much around. We’ve been very selective in our geographic area, and there’s literally 11 available properties that match our basic requirements. We’ve seen about 6 of them, a couple are buy to let and a couple are so ugly and in need of complete renovations. We’re willing to take on a little project, but only a little one.

We saw two houses this weekend and the one on Saturday is ‘the one’! We love it.

It’s perfect inside – you could move in straight away and not have to do a thing to it. There’s fireplaces in all of the downstairs living areas and proper wooden floorboards throughout. And the kitchen is gorgeous – we wouldn’t need to do anything to it. All the rooms upstairs are really good sized too. The only downside is the bathroom is a bit on the small side. But there’s a loo downstairs too, and the garden is really nice – nice and small and manageable. It’s all south facing too. And – I forgot this bit – it’s detached! Woohoo!

So we offered on it this morning (is that the term?!). I don’t want to risk saying what we offered or linking to the house on RightMove in case there’s anyone else out there who’s wanting to buy the same house. This is what I’ve realised – it’s one big poker game. I don’t like it. But in a nutshell our first offer it was rejected (no real surprise) because they were hoping to get closer to the asking price. So I told them there’s no way we think it’s worth that and we certainly wouldn’t be offering that at all. I said we’d think about it, but that we’re in no real hurry as we can stay in our flat as long as we need. So I said I’d discuss it with the BF tonight and I might call him back tomorrow.

Then the estate agents called back an hour or so later and said that he thought we should know that they’ve found another property they’d like to buy (I had been told they’d already found a place, so I don’t know if this is a new one, or if all of this is total bull), but that this new property they like is actually a lot less than they thought they were gonna need to spend, so they might not be so reliant on getting the asking price for their house. So I said that that was interesting, but in actual fact what they’re buying isn’t important, it’s the value of what they’re selling that’s key – why should I overpay on their house so they can buy something bigger?! (was getting a bit stroppy by now!!). He just said that he didn’t want to put us off totally by giving us the impression that they wouldn’t accept any lower than their asking price.

So now it’s our turn again… make another offer if we want, but how much?? That is still to be decided….

Another quick update… I’ve been going some jewellery lessons at the local college. I love it; been making lots of lovely things. I’ll take some pics and post them soon too.