Feels just like falling in love....

Remember when you were young(er), that first time you fell in love? The butterflies, the blushing, and for most of us the inevitable moment of heartbreak? And how sure you are that you will never get over it and never love like you did before?

As we learned in the last few months of 2010, buying a house brings out the same range of feelings. Hey, you live, you learn......

The first house we fell in love with, was at 2 minutes walking distance from the university, had a amazing kitchen, free parking, was close to the highway and had a backyard. IN AMSTERDAM! And it was in our price range! It seemed almost too good to be true.

And it was. After some stiff negotiations and having the highest bid, the owner opened up the bid for a third party and we chose to leave the negotiations table.

We were heartbroken. For a while.

We have seen many, many houses. After a few weeks we fell in love again. This time it was the difficult kind of love. Perfect on paper, but somehow it just doesn't work, no matter how much you want it to. And we wanted it to badly. 3 Bedroom, HUGE backyard, a kitchen to be redone, everything we were looking for and then some. Some moisture issues, I mean. One of the walls was saturated and you could almost dig through it with your hand. One of the walls had some nice flowers on it (not wallpaper, but fungus) and the problem was not that it could not be fixed, but we were not the ones to fix it. And to be waiting for a third party to fix mold in your bedroom was not a situation we wanted to put ourselves in. This time the heartbreak was even bigger, but we also knew that there was more out there.

And then, out of the blue, I saw this house come online. One moment it wasn't there and then after a screen refresh, there it was, in Amstelveen. I immediately called the real estate agent and was told that they did not have the keys to the house yet and to call back next week. I don't think so, I thought and after (ever so) gently persuasion they fixed it so that we could see the house the next day, as the first couple. Nobody else ever got a chance....

We bought ourselves our first home! Tomorrow we are signing the official papers, we wanted to wait for that before telling everyone, but somehow word is spreading already. We won't be moving for a while, as we are getting the keys somewhere between April and July, but we are designing the kitchen and picturing ourselves living there already.

Henny, the 30th of July my sister is flying back to Holland. We would love it if you could start looking out for a cat at the shelter that would be old enough to be spayed and sent over by that time. Joris and I have room for at least 3, and would love one from there :o)