One year ago today, we closed on our first home.

That means it’s only been 365 days since I meant to write this post! But hey – what’s that old saying? Time flies when you’re going to Home Goods every other day, repainting all your rooms historically accurate colors from the Benjamin Moore Colonial Williamsburg collection, and getting excited at the thought of one day owning a power washer. Or is that just me?

But in all seriousness, after thirteen years and three very tiny apartments together, I don’t know if I ever truly thought this day would come. Owning a home seemed like this very unattainable goal that everyone around us seemed to be coming into with great ease. I know that a lot of that is social media and perception, and obviously, everyone’s situation is different, but sometimes it felt like this was never going to happen for us. For eight months, we spent almost every weekend going to open houses and showings and just being completely frustrated by what was out there in our price range. Our poor realtor always had a smile on her face when she saw us, but I very clearly remember saying to her one day “do you normally work with people for this long?” and she nicely said, “not this long usually…” 😂

And then it happened. I was sitting down to lunch one day with my mom and sister at a Mexican restaurant after we had spent the morning looking at linens for my sister’s wedding. I remember Steve said we should go to more open houses, and I begged and pleaded to be let out of house-hunter jail for a bit to do something, anything else because it had started to just completely consume our lives. He called me as I feverishly consumed chips and salsa at 11:15 A.M. (hey, they don’t have Mexican food on Nantucket, I was in withdrawal) and told me that he had just left an open house in… Rhode Island.

We had briefly looked at another house or two in the Ocean State, but I never thought we would seriously live there. “I really like this house,” he said, as I continued to devour what essentially became a brunch quesadilla (I mean, it’s noon somewhere, amirite?) and he rattled off the factoids: built in 1926 by a doctor, white with black shutters, recently flipped but had lots of original elements, and… tons of closet space. My spidey senses tingled. How could it be? A historic house with character + charm + storage solutions AND in our price range?! It didn’t seem possible.

“I really want you to come back here with me tomorrow,” he said and I wiped the salt and queso off my hands. I had trained myself at this point not to get overly excited about anything. In eight long months of searching, we had only put one offer in on a home that ended up having over fifty offers because it was drastically underpriced.

We drove down to Cumberland, RI the next day, bright and early so that we would be among the first people there for the open house. One of the things I hated the most about the house hunting process was the constant competition with eight zillion other people that look/think/talk exactly like you, especially where we were looking in Massachusetts. It just truly seemed like there was not enough to go around, and like we were all secretly fighting over these tiny little plots of land and second floors that Steve couldn’t even stand up straight in without whacking his head on ceiling tiles (yes, tiles). I’m not a confrontations person, and only competitive when it comes to really important things, like bowling or showbiz trivia, so having polite staredowns every weekend with other potential buyers while consuming tiny water bottles and crumby granola bars wasn’t exactly how I enjoyed spending my time.

Driving there, I remember thinking I don’t know what this house looks like, but I really don’t think I want to live in Rhode Island. And of course, the joke was on me, because when we arrived at the house, it was truly almost everything we could have wanted. Sure, it didn’t have central air (this doctor was ahead of his time with some things but I’m imagining that having a consistent stream of cool air running through your home was up there with flying cars in 1926) and it only had a one-car garage, but after you’ve lived with your spouse and dog in a one-room studio apartment, I felt like Annie the first time she enters Daddy Warbucks’ mansion.

I mean truly, no house is perfect, but there were just so many things we loved about it that we knew we needed to act on it. As we were exploring the upstairs (two floors?!?! gasp) I tried to gauge our realtor’s true feelings once we were out of earshot of the seller. “You guys are crazy if you don’t buy this house,” she muttered under her breath. We felt the same way, so that night we went back to Steve’s high school bedroom in his parent’s house that we had been shacking up in for the better half of a year and listed out our pros and cons. Eventually, we decided to make the offer, and shortly after, we got the call that it was accepted. After that, everything seemed to just move very quickly and go much faster than I anticipated. Maybe because there was so much build up, I assumed something had to go wrong. And yeah, there were a couple of little snafus here and there mostly centered around paperwork (like when Steve realized he had signed a bunch of legally binding documents with different versions of his name), but when we arrived at the real estate agent’s office on July 9, 2018, it actually happened. Like they gave us keys and everything.

And then, the real work began. But that’s another post (or twenty) for a different day. There’s so much that we want to do to our house to make it even more like the place we always dreamed of living. Don’t get me wrong – there truly is nothing “wrong” with it and everything about this home is completely livable (with the exception of a few paint color choices that the owner made in the flipping process that make absolutely no sense to me). We’re suffering from a case of handy husband + Pinterest obsessed wife ÷ lack of funds due to dropping the largest chunk of change in one fell sweep × the number of hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year… you get where I’m going this.

Truly, I’m not complaining and I can’t wait to show lots of before and afters of what we’re working on around here. While it’s taken me a bit to share more about the house on my blog, you can follow our most up-to-date progress on my Instagram (check out my story highlights for some of the projects we’ve already started tackling). But before we do that, please enjoy a small photoshoot that I made Steve and Schoon humor me with on the day we bought the house. I blame the internet.

There is so, so much more to share but I think this is enough all that my wannabe-HGTV self can handle for now. Let me know what kind of updates you most want to see! Me personally, that blue hallway would be my top choice but it seems like there are many other priorities on the list ahead of it, so it shall wait…

Domestically yours,

~L

I know the term “fomo” is relatively new as far as the English language goes, but I’ve been suffering with this affliction since grade school. It’s not that I was a spoiled kid, but often I was so intrigued by things that I wasn’t a part of, which only made me more desperate to be included (we’ll call it more of an obsessive curiosity). In second grade, I didn’t understand why all the girls in my class were wearing white dresses and veils at their First Communions and I wasn’t (we weren’t Catholic, so that may have been the cause), and I used to gaze longingly at the kids in daycare on my way out of school and feel like I was totally missing out on some cool club where they got to play games in the cafeteria (my mom had to explain to me that not all kids had parents who worked at home).

But the biggest “club” that I have never been a part of and was desperate to join was, once again, not something that most kids wished for themselves: I wanted to wear glasses.

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Why? I have no idea. I’m going to chalk it up to a young Lindsay wanting to express herself with as many accessories as possible. I thought kids that had glasses were just the coolest. I mean, when superheroes wear them, no one knows who they are! You cannot deny the power of a good pair of specs, amirite?

Slight snafu here: I was cursed with “better than perfect” vision (20/15 to be exact), discovered after I accidentally walked into the side of my house when I was 8, resulting in a large goose egg and a trip to the eye doctor. When the optometrist ensured my mother that I was not in fact, blind, but rather clumsy, my four-eyed dreams were dashed.

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That is, until now. That’s right – I, Lindsay Scouras, am finally getting… glasses ?

I know what you’re thinking. Lindsay, glasses are a sign of aging! Why celebrate the fact that your once perfect eyesight slowly going down the drain? This is just the first of many ailments to come that show you are no longer a spring chicken, lady! True, but I am looking at this at more of a preventative measure that happens to be sanctioned by a medical professional. Botox for the eyes, if you will.

You see, for the past couple of months, I had started to feel like my once-perfect vision wasn’t so perfect anymore. During the day, my eyes would start to go blurry at work, and I would have trouble getting them to focus again. I started feeling way more sensitive to fluorescent light and colors, sometimes having to go off into a dark room and allow my eyes to “reset” before I went back to work (super productive, no?). It was an unfamiliar and completely disruptive feeling that was really throwing me off my game at the office, and also causing me to turn into bed way early when I wasn’t even tired because I just wanted to be in the dark.

But let’s call a spade a spade – I work in an office and spend at least 60 hours a week staring at a computer. I enjoy blogging and editing photos, which adds more screen time after-hours. I do social media for my job (and okay, also for fun) and treat my iPhone like it’s my tiny tech child – never too far out of sight. And yes, I’m turning thirty-two next week, so there’s that.

All these factors combined lead me to take a trip to the eye doctor. And let me tell you, I have never had a better medical appointment in my entire life. If you are on Nantucket and need to go to the eye doctor, do yourself a favor and hightail it over to Dr. Gage at ACK Eye. I almost asked her if she had any other specialities, because I would seriously let her poke and prod me any day.

Have you guys been to the eye doctor lately? I mean, I know I haven’t been seen about 1993, but these people have gone full-on Jetsons futuristic. The thing you use to read with all the different-sized letters? It’s on an iMac now. They change the letters with a remote (apparently, people who chose to deny themselves the opportunity to wear glasses would memorize them). Also they had the best waiting room magazine selection I’ve come across in some time.

So anyway, what I gleaned from my new BFF Dr. Gage is that my eyesight is still good. I’m far-sighted and still see very well at great distances, however, my close-up skills need a bit of work. Blame it on age, the computer, whatever – but I need to keep these girls in check (and yes, I have chosen to start referring to my eyes in the way that other women talk about their breasts). She found that my right eye is slightly stronger than the left, which she said was ironic because I’m left-handed, and most people’s dominant eye is also their dominant hand.

She wrote me a very low prescription, and encouraged me not to wear my glasses all day (so I don’t become completely dependent on them prematurely) and to wear them starting at say, 2 P.M. when my eyes start to feel a little tired from looking at a screen for a prolonged period of time. Dr. Gage said it should not only help with focusing and reading, but would probably help wake me up a bit more in the afternoon, which for someone like me who doesn’t drink coffee, is always helpful.

She gave me a few other helpful (and obvious) tips, like giving your eyes a break at least once every hour – getting up and changing scenery for a few minutes is best, but even blinking strongly for a bit when you can’t escape the clutches of your desk is helpful.

Even though I had to get back to work, I couldn’t resist trying on at least a few pairs of glasses before I left the office, though I knew I was in no place to decide on a pair that day. The women in the retail area were so helpful and nice even when I nervously exclaimed that I couldn’t possibly make a decision today at least three times during my visit. Of course I immediately fell in love with a $300 Zac Posen pair, even though though I tried on an almost-identical no-name brand (I’m such a sucker).

Side note: Can we talk about how difficult it is to take a quality selfie in glasses?! I am so not used to having this thing on my face, I had no idea where to look, which angle to turn my head at – not to mention there’s a glare no matter where you go. Four-eyed ladies (and gentlemen, I’m not fussed), please give a girl some tips! It’s also really hard to tell what these actually looked like in person. I tried on numerous pairs that I thought sort of suited my face, only to find them to be gargantuan in photos.

Anyway, this brings me to today, kids. It’s time for me to get glasses but I have no idea where to start. I was told by numerous Nantucketers not to buy glasses from the eye doctor directly, because like produce or housewares, the upcharge just for being on a island is bonkers. Everyone said take your prescription the next time you go off island to a BJ’s or somewhere that sells glasses on the cheap. I don’t think your first pair of spectacles can be picked out online anyway (also, do the kids still say spectacles?) – this is definitely a try-on in person scenario.

The other advice I got was to go with a service like Warby Parker, where you can try them on at home and pay a nominal price for the lenses and frames. I know you get what you pay for, but I’m basically getting a slightly better pair of the readers your mother buys from CVS and always loses at the bottom of her purse. In less than twenty-four hours after my appointment, I already sent away for the Warby Parker “At Home Try-On” and am anxiously stalking the mailman for my package.

Is there anywhere else I should be looking? Kate Spade is one of my favorite brands, so I was slightly curious about their offerings in this department, however I’m such a novice here that I’m literally running around helpless wondering how to purchase a set of frames and a prescription separately and have them fit together. Send help!

~L

**This post is not sponsored in any way (duh, it’s like, a medical appointment – although in the blogging world, who knows what’s next for #ad content), I just had a really great experience with this doctor and wanted to share the completely ridiculous excitement that I feel over having to get glasses!