Hi, everyone!

After much deliberation, conversation, and some tears I’m announcing that our home will be on the market soon!

We moved here 8 years ago! As someone who’s moved 21 times in my lifetime, this is the longest I have ever lived in one place!

What? Let me explain.

When we moved here, it was just me and my hubby, we both worked downtown and didn’t mind the 1-hour 15-minute commute to work. Then my husband started his own business and started working from home just at the same time as I was pregnant with our first child Ezra. Shortly after I had Ezra, I also started my own business, as well as this blog, and those were scary times financially but also very rewarding. After a couple of years, my husband and his associate parted ways and he went back on the job market. Fast forward to today: he has a great job managing a team of software programmers in Old Montreal, with 1-hour 40-minute commutes both ways. With a young child at home and the demands of my business, the long commute has taken its toll.

So we’ve decided to move back to Montreal so that we can spend more quality time as a family in the evening and my husband can be less drained!

We’ve been scrambling to get our home ready to be put on the market, the same way I advise all my clients. The way we live and the way we sell are different!

Spending the last weeks here preparing our home, re-arranging,  touching up paint, decluttering, and depersonalizing has made me extremely nostalgic for the last 8 years! The memories we’ve made are inexplicably beautiful. Three months ago, when my husband suggested looking for a new place, I cried so hard and was even mad at him for betraying this house and its memories. I kept saying, “But we’ve had the best years of our lives here!” And he agreed, but said maybe we could have even better ones.

Speaking of emotional torture, here’s a quick sentimental recap:

On December 21, 2009, we got the keys to our newly built home and we were very eager to make it our own!

Along the way, the decor has evolved so much. After renting for years, I had the opportunity to do what I wanted and not ask permission!

Our dining room went from this:

To this:

Our living room:

Our master bedroom

This is also the home were my thumb became green!

We currently have about 25 plants in this home!

I also got pregnant in this home and did a nice photo shoot while pregnant and when baby came along:

We also hosted several spaghetti nights every Friday!

Ezra built his first snowman in our front yard!

…and carrot became his favourite vegetable.

We celebrated and hosted a lot of birthdays!

So much Karaoke!

Life here has been pretty darn good!  I am grateful to have a home, one that I love, with such amazing light.

We put a ton of money, heart, love, time and sweat into making it a beautiful home – inside and out, literally – and it surely has paid off emotionally!

We are pretty darn lucky to have lived here. Just like the next owner will be. The house where you start a family is an emotional place, in location and in your heart. Our kid won’t remember it for long,  he won’t have alarmingly nostalgic ties to it, but I will. FOREVER.

We are not sure what’s next for us. Montreal properties are very different and so is the market! We’d love to purchase a revenue property like a duplex, but we are also open to renting again. Here are our requirements in our new pad:

• In a good school district
• 20-min walk (max) to a subway station
• Tons of natural light
• 3 bedrooms
• Some sort of outdoor space or a solarium

We know that by moving to Montreal we’ll definitely sacrifice space, but we’re at peace with that. Currently there is 1/3 of our home we almost never use so we really don’t need that much space! Whatever we get, we’ll make it work!

In the coming weeks, I’ll be presenting how we are staging each room to appeal to as many people as possible.

Stay tuned!