Our dream retirement home – we bought it!

Over the past couple of years, I have mentioned how we cannot wait to find our dream home. We started the search a few months ago, and decided on an area that has a man-made lake in a gated community. We really loved the homes on that lake, so that made concentrating on an area pretty easy. Best of all, this is the town where my BFF lives!

We won’t be able to move permanently for about 2 years, but it is only 3 1/2 hours away from our current home, and we will be making frequent weekend trips, as well as spending our vacations there. It is actually kind of nice not to have to rush out of our current house – we can take our time moving things down, and I am having a BLAST decorating the new home (the pics below are from when we toured the house…not my decor). I will post some new photos once it’s all prettied up MY way

Entrance (that's our realtor)

When we walked in “our” home, we swooned from the sheer beauty. As you enter the front door, you can see straight through and out the window to the lake. Beyond that (on a clear day) you can see the Sequoias, which at this time of year are snow-capped.

You can't see the lake from this photo

There is a beautiful indoor pool/spa (it is to the right in the picture above), and here is a view from the hallway:

In the pool area there is a shower and a bathroom, and it also has sliding doors to the backyard:

Here is the kitchen and family room. The kitchen is bigger than it looks here – it has really long counters (finally countertops that will allow me to go crazy when baking) and if you are at the sink, you are facing the big glass doors and you look out at the lake (I don’t think I’ll ever mind doing dishes again!).

View from dining room:

The master bedroom is ginormous!

Here is the master bathroom. I am so excited to have a big tub again…at our old house (9 years ago) I had a huge tub, but when we moved to our current house, there is only a shower in the master. I have to share a regular sized tub with the kids. This new one is mine…all mine!

And I am loving all of the room in the master bedroom:

View down the lake – see the snow-capped Sequoia mountains (Sequoia National Park) in the background?

We went down to our new home again last weekend and had so much fun. My husband even picked up a fishing pole, and it was so good to see him relaxed (trust me – this is a rarity!).

We saw this couple sailing by…

We enjoyed having coffee in the backyard, watching the ducks and geese on the lake. It is so peaceful, and definitely something special to wake up to each morning. We even met a nice duck couple – we named them Dave and Darlene (I might have fed them some crackers too but shhhhh…)

I have been doing a few craft projects down there too, and it’s been a blast. I will be sharing a few tutorials and decorating ideas in future posts (make sure you see my post about making decorative pillows out of place mats!).  I will also be sharing some items I have bought and/or received for review, during my upcoming “Sprucing Up and Moving In” event!

It is SO hard to leave though, when it is time to come back to our other (current) house…