When I left you last, I was sharing part 3 of our journey from a doll house to sugar house. We had just toured a house and property hoping to find lots of maple trees. Instead, we found three trees. If this is your first time here, you can start from the beginning: Part One Part Two Part Three We knew right away that the house was a “no-go”. I returned home later that afternoon and sent the sweet couple an email. They already knew. They knew for us, it was all about the trees. As I was on the computer, I reflected back on our conversation after we left the house. The town we were in was quite interesting. It was totally rural, quiet and there are a fair amount of lakes. The bonus – it was only about 30 minutes away from our house. Would it make sense to look for a house in that area? I got onto a real estate site, and began looking. There wasn’t a ton of inventory, but there was one house in particular that was very familiar. I kept looking at but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, I realized that I had seen the stairway and gallery wall on Pinterest before – that I had already “pinned” this house!

And I knew I recognized the greenhouse made from vintage windows – something I had also “pinned”.

You can view the whole house in this NY Times feature. So, of course, I called the realtor. And, she actually called back, to tell me that the house was sold. Actually, as I looked into it further, there had been a full on bidding war. And of course, there wasn’t a huge amount of property and it was a very small house. I could overlook the small – but as I said, trees were our deal breaker. But, now we were on the phone with a realtor. We told her what we were looking for, and she began her search. Fast forward many months, a few realtors and a lot of Sunday drives. We drove past many houses to get a sense of the area and the land. We eliminated whole towns and areas to look in, solidifying what we did like. We only went inside two houses when it was all said and done. One, gross with lots of trees, but it was beyond repair. One, that I still plan the decorating for in my head and was amazed by all the space for such an old house. But, you guessed it, no trees. We drove past one that I didn’t even want to pull into the driveway – it gave me the “heebey geebees” for some reason. Dana agreed. Oh, and it looked someone was squatting on the property. Not a can of worms I wanted to open. Then, we gave up on the house idea, and just started looking at land. And, we started looking even closer to home if there was no house included. In our heads, we kept just thinking that we knew it didn’t really make sense “on paper” for us to buy an old fixer upper, but somehow it just felt right. Much to the disappointment of me, and it seem many of you have been following along, we have not bought our dream country house with acres of maple trees. And, we probably won’t be any time soon. But, we both know with confidence, that some day, that will be our plan. That we will find that great old house with nooks and crannies that we can customize. And that house will walk out to land with lots and lot of maple trees. By the time we took this picture above, it was November of last year and we were ready to make a new decision. We weren’t finding the house and we weren’t finding the land, but we had big plans! Stay tuned! Thanks so much for reading! I promise, I am not trying to torture you - in just too much for one post!

Click here read part 5