A property virgin no more

This summer has been exciting for my boyfriend, Mike, and I, as we bought and moved into our first house! After living in a condo for several years, I was very excited that we would finally have our own backyard.

You might be wondering what the excitement of a backyard is; it's nowhere as big as the park we used live across the street from, we have to mow the lawn ourselves (and even change the sod next spring to something a little more alive!), and as far as backyards go, it's pretty pint-sized.

For me, however, having our own backyard signified something bigger. It was finally a little piece of the world that was all our own. It was a place to spend hot July afternoons getting burnt sunbathing, a place to have lazy August BBQs, a place I could plant flowers that wilted two weeks later, and a place we would probably ignore for most of the winter. But it was our place, and we could do whatever we wanted.

Mind you, this doesn't just apply to our backyard, it applies to our whole house, our own little castle. It's a place that after the first two months living there has more holes in the walls than were there before (either covered by artwork, or carefully covered with plaster and painted over!), a place where we spent 3 days trying to find the matching paint colour, and then had to redo the whole main floor, and a place where we have a list of 25 To Do's, but it's now home.

Now it may seem like we've run into a few trials and tribulations in the first few months of owning our home, but I think we've done pretty well. We've learned a few things already, with many more to come I'm sure! I hope I can share some of what I've learned and get some advice in the future. Above all, if you're considering purchasing your own abode, I hope you'll consider one with your own backyard.