The past few weeks have been fraught with everything to do with the purchase of the house.

We have the Mortgage in place, and our offer has been accepted. Our property sold literally within a few days (Still can't believe that one!). Mid February Solicitors were engaged and surveyors have been out to write up a report on the house. It’s early days but hopefully all seems to be moving along in the right direction!

As it's Easter time we've travelled up to the North East to spend the holiday with Neil's family and of course we've had to drive past the house a few times just because we can. It's not like we are five minutes away from where we are hopefully moving to, so every time we come up to the North East we just have to go and have a look.

We parked up and decided to have a walk past and to walk around the immediate area... after all we hope to be spending the rest of our lives here.

On walking down the long road we found an amazing park that is pretty big but is not like your usual park where the grass is cut and kept short, nope this is more like a nature reserve as they leave everything to nature... all the paths are kept clear of obstructions and a few places are cut but generally it's left to it's own devices. At the entrance there is information on all the nature that thrives here including parakeets that make some weird and wonderful noises as you walk through the parkland... this'll be on our door step in walking distance!

The following day we asked the estate agents as we were up here visiting family if we could have another viewing, we made some excuse of wanting to measure up for curtains and various things and this time we took Neil's Mum along with us of which we now have the seal of approval from for the house.

It was kind of weird stepping back in to this house that will hopefully be ours in the not to distant future, but at least we were able to get a few pictures of bits and pieces we'd been talking about, especially a better picture of the awesome Newel Post Lamp that adorns the bottom of the stairs.

We've done a bit of research on these and it seems that a Newel Post Lamp was only installed by the original owners of the houses once the mortgage on the house was paid off and we've also read that back in the day when the house was built which was 1901 it was also customary to include a set of the original house plans in the actual post. Every one of these houses has a unique and different Newel Post Lamp.

We also visited a few of Neils friends who are all waiting with bated breath hoping that we actually get the house so that Neil will once again be up here back home. One of his friends has a beautiful Victorian house they purchased a few years ago and will literally be living five minutes up the road from us...

If and when we move in!