a hunting we will go

Before you read this post, read this to see the reason behind this post.

One of our favorite things to do on the weekends is to get in the car and drive around, exploring neighborhoods or other parts of the city. We've posted on this before but really feel like our house hunting adventure has been kicked up a notch over the past week. While driving through an area of South Austin (by far our favorite part of town) we stumbled upon a new single-family house neighborhood, The Skyway. We went through a few of the open houses last Sunday, took some notes about our likes and dislikes, and left it at that.

As the week went by, the houses we saw never seemed too far away from our conversations. So Jake called the real estate agent, got some information, and we decided to head over the the neighborhood again for a second look.

Now, we knew when we moved to Austin that buying a house was a year to maybe two year away goal. We love our townhouse, location, as well as the $799 price tag that comes with it. We figured that we could stay here for a few years, stowing away extra savings every month. Although this may still be in the cards, our house hunting adventure has seemed to motivate us in a whole new direction.

We took little ol' Stew along for the ride with us this time because we wanted to test out the communities private dog park and see if the backyards would be enough space for our little man.

our apologies for the "stagemom" in the background}

Stew LOVED the dog park...we will definitely be back to play fetch every week!!

Here are a few pictures from one of our favorite models. There are still some spots available in the community that are yet to be developed so we are hopeful that this may be a top contender for our first house (believe it or not!).

{exploring the neighborhood}

{in progress}

{our future lot?}

The Keen is one of our favorite floor plans that we've seen over the past few weeks (although we like The Robinson too but haven't seen it first hand). We loved the patio and backyard area along with the fact that the master suite is on the first floor (this is pretty common here in Texas).

We also love the fact that this neighborhood is only 8 minutes from downtown (yes we timed it). It's also close to some of our favorite outdoor activity spots (ie Zilker Park, Barton Springs, and the Greenbelt) and, coffee shops, HH bars. Although Jess originally wanted something with a little but more character, those houses are completely out of our price range because they have been gutted from top to bottom, or will require A LOT of work every free weekend we get. Mr. Nig and Mr. Penske (Jake) advised against the latter so it was definitely a compromise (on both parts) at its best.

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The whole point of today was to "plant the seed" and declare what we want. The Universe has endless possibilities and opportunities for each and every one of us. We're doing our darndest to stay in touch and and in tune with its vast abundance. Acting "as if" seemed to have worked for us so far (um, hello? displacing ourselves from Cali to Austin), why not keep it up?