A moving announcement & moving announcements

Well, it finally happened. I left the city for a 3-bedroom in the suburbs.

And I don’t hate it.

In fact, I kind of love it. Our neighborhood has winding tree-lined sidewalks where I can walk Rufio (and I don’t need to worry about him hurting his little feet on broken beer bottles like when we lived in fratty South End). There’s a neighborhood pool and playground around the corner from us where I can hear kids splashing and laughing, trying to squeeze the most out of these last few nights of summer. I drive down pretty country roads to get here, yet we’re still close to Starbucks (priorities), our favorite South End restaurant (Pinky’s), and a picturesque outdoor mall. Rufio loves to run up and down the stairs (and bark at neighbors from the bay window). I’m still mastering pulling in and out of our 2-car garage, and we’re still getting photos hung on the walls, but this is our home.

I would like to give a shoutout to my walking commute (RIP). For the last four years (two in Troy, two in South End) I had been able to walk to work, and I had become incredibly spoiled. I now drive 25-30 minutes each way (which I know isn’t terrible) and tweaked my schedule for Charlotte traffic. So these days the Ryan household wakes up at 5 am and is out cold by 9 pm. It’s an adjustment for sure, but I just pretend I’m one of those people in the new Delta commercial (hi-ho!)

If you know about my love of stationery, you can imagine that one of my favorite parts about buying a house was picking out new address labels and moving announcements. I searched for a long time (like before we even scooped up this house over the fourth of July holiday), but I had trouble finding one I loved because they all seemed a little too ostentatious versus informational. The Christmas/moving announcement cards were some of the worst offenders – “We’re celebrating Christmas in our new house” – and they don’t even wish the receiver a happy holiday! So I lucked out when I found these moving announcement postcards from Rifle Paper Co. Simple and to-the-point. And I picked up a 10-pack on sale for $5. Can’t beat that!

I’ve been sharing some sneak peeks of the house on Instagram stories as rooms start to come together, but I’ll start posting more here. The first room we completely finished was our guest room. We affectionately call it “the blue room,” and you’ll see why soon.

So there you have it. The Ryans are officially homeowners, and we are totally rocking this whole suburbs thing. I hung a Fall wreath on the door yesterday, and MPR just ordered an Islanders flag for the front flower bed. We got this 👫🐶🏡