It's a done deal . . . :(

It's been less than two weeks since we put our house on the market and gosh dangit - it sold. I thought I was ready to leave it and maybe part of me is but the part that weeps obviously isn't.

I cried when we signed the contract; cried every time we looked at another house and had to leave the realtor's office when we signed the offer on the new place (pictured above) so I wouldn't embarrass us all by leaving tears on the paperwork.

It’s a weird feeling for me. This is what we do and what we've always done. We buy homes, improve them and sell them when the market is right, a process that has afforded us the opportunity to live all over the country. Changing surroundings has been a huge part of what feeds our total creativity and keeps us motivated. We enjoy the joint collaboration of transforming a new place. Truth is, I don't want to lose that sense of adventure because that, it itself, is revitalizing for both of us.

There have been other special places, like Indiana and Reagan Wells but I don't remember feeling this way about leaving those. Mike tends to look at our homes as new canvases, fresh fields to plant with color and stone and stagnant spaces to breathe new life and light into. For me, it's another chapter in a book already filled with adventure and heartfelt memories.

I know it's time to sell this house for a lot of reasons but I am certainly going to miss it. The door frame inside my dressing room has eight of my ten grandchildren’s growth chart penciled on it. They love backing up to the wall, standing tall, tall, then jumping away to see how much they’ve grown (and who they’re catching up to).

The saving grace for me is that I just adore the couple who are buying the place. They have twin 3 year old girls and a 3 month old baby boy and they're going to make some wonderful memories here. (I must confess, however, that secretly I've imagined that for some bizarre reason, their loan falls through and we decide to take the house off the market for another year or so). I don't wish it on them, I just imagine what I would do if that happened. They're way too nice and I like them too much for that.

So, after spending a small fortune in fuel driving around the hill country looking for that perfect "next" house, we've made an offer on one in Wimberley. We rented a place in Wimberley a few years back for about seven months while we were house hunting. Wimberley is a wonderful little bustling art community with Cypress Creek and the Blanco River running through it. It is almost always alive with an atmosphere static with creative enegery fueled by a steady stream of tourists and a variety of cultural and festive activities.

An added bonus for me is the church in Wimberley. I missed going to it after we moved and never found one here that was comparable.

The house we're buying is a diamond in the ruff - typical for us. It's large and has an attached workshop that will become a sculpting studio, a wonderful north facing painting studio and a large office. It sits on cliff overlooking Cypress Creek and has sweeping views of the hill country. Our plan is to take the first six weeks off after we move to gut and remodel what will become the kitchen/great room. Tracy, our contractor, will be there part of the time but Mike and I will do a good portion of the work, which is something we truly enjoy and haven’t had time for in the last two years. I’m sure by the time Vegas rolls around, we’ll be very ready for a break!

I'm starting to feel some excitement about the move but it's going to take some time to get over this place and grow affection for the new one.

At least the house hunting part is over. While it's normally fun, this time it was a chore! The upside was we made a great new friend in Beverly Hohertz in Brownwood, who is hands down the best realtor on the planet!