Tag Archives: michigan

Back in Michigan

February 6, 2019 By in The Dream Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The move is done and the North Carolina house is sold! It’s been a little over three weeks since we made our last 12-hour drive up to Michigan, this time with our traumatized cat, Lucy. Trent would later recount to me how she was fussing from the crate in the backseat of his car pretty much the entire time. Poor baby (the cat and Trent). The good news is that Lucy settled into the apartment pretty quickly, I’m not sure it’s quite the same for us, though. We’ve tried to limit ourselves to unpacking mostly essentials given that this is just a temporary stop, but we couldn’t resist hanging just a few pieces of art on the wall and ordering new bedroom furniture. With the move, I’m working from home now, so I needed to make this place at least feel mildly cozy while we hunt down our mid-century modern home, and neither of us wanted a mattress on the floor any longer than we had to.

Finding a mid-century modern King size bed isn’t exactly in the cards, so West Elm came to the rescue and it’s lovely! This simple piece should fit nicely into any space we end up with, but we’ll wait to see what the new home offers before pulling the trigger on nightstands. For the time being, we have some mismatched mid-century originals that do the trick.

With the North Carolina house behind us, we have been officially on the hunt for our new home. It’s not the best time of year for listing yet, so availability has been pretty slim. We saw one that was promising, but it was so much more house than we needed and we ultimately decided to pass for a few reasons. Plus, if it didn’t completely feel like the one, there was no way we could just go with the first house. Time is on our side, but it is so hard to be patient. While we wait for listings to pop up, we drive through neighborhoods all over the Lansing area nearly every time we head out. This past weekend was spent slowly driving through Walnut Heights in East Lansing, drooling over the gems in that little pocket. People probably thought we were weirdos if they saw us snapping photos out of our car window. I personally think we are pretty okay, so do you want to sell your house?


Not Enough Coffee

January 2, 2019 By in The Dream Tags: , , Leave a comment
Not Enough Coffee

We’ve gone a little quiet since starting this space because of so much going on with the move. On December 20th, we accepted an offer on our Charlotte, NC home, with a quick close. Since that day, it’s been full speed ahead. In the span of 12 days, we’ve nearly completed packing a 3600 square foot house, traveled back to Michigan for Christmas and rented an apartment while there. Not to mention the countless logistical details involved in a move, which is scheduled for January 10th. As hectic as it may seem (and is), it has all been moving forward pretty smoothly. I credit the afternoon coffee for getting us through the long days.

If you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen that we attempted to sneak in a bit of mid-mod neighborhood hunting during our trip back to Michigan. While I had every intention of snapping more photos, I opted to save that for another day when the move is complete and time is back on our sides. We did drive through some pretty fabulous areas, in addition to checking out the neighborhood around the Lansing Country Club, we found some real gems in the Glencairn neighborhood in East Lansing, as well as some pockets of mid-century modern on the west side of Lansing. We barely scratched the surface in Okemos this time around, but took another drive through Indian Hills, which has some of our favorite homes in that area. Sadly, the houses for sale that we hoped to see during our visit were both under contract by the time we arrived, but that just means the right house for us is still out there somewhere. Until we find it, we have a nice apartment with an attached garage to call home (and storage) for a while.

Time for more coffee…and packing.


Slowly Searching

December 13, 2018 By in The Dream Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Because we still have a house to sell before making the move, we don’t want to buy another house until that part is wrapped up. The grand plan is that when we sell in NC, we’ll rent an apartment in Michigan while we search for the perfect mid-century gem. Despite that, we can’t keep our eyes off of the real estate listings. It’s something we’ve always done, though – scanning the listings, looking for amazing mid-century modern homes just for fun. Now it’s for real, although I can’t quite call it “for real” until our current house sells. Once that happens, then we are genuinely all-in.

Since we started the mid-Michigan mid-century home search, we’ve come across a number of great houses, even with the market being a bit slow this time of year. There is one that we’ve been spying in East Lansing for some time now, and we can’t seem to get it out of our heads, even  though it doesn’t fit exactly what we are searching for. In our opinion, it’s a bit overpriced for all of the work that it needs inside, and taxes in that area are pretty high. It would be tough to justify the cost, but it has a ton of potential if the price was right. Can’t you just envision gorgeous wood floors, a bit of work on that ceiling and beams, with a fun front door and entryway? Oh, and those windows! The listing is located here with lots of photos.


The Mid-Century Modern Dream

December 9, 2018 By in The Dream Tags: , , Leave a comment
The Mid-Century Modern Dream

It was February 2007 when my husband, Trent, and I decided to make the move from Lansing, Michigan to Charlotte, North Carolina. We were both ready to get out of the cold and take on a new adventure in our lives. It’s been nearly twelve years and Charlotte and the fine people in it have treated us right, but we are about to embark on another turn with the decision to head back up to mid-Michigan. Yes, we might be a little bit crazy for going back to the cold, but we are thrilled to be closer to family and the place where our hearts never left.

We’ve both always been drawn to home design, sometimes obsessively so, but during the time we spent in Michigan, mid-century modern never crossed our minds. Our focus in those days was centered on arts and crafts bungalows, but we quickly learned we weren’t going to afford what we were dreaming of when we arrived in Charlotte. Instead, we bought an adorable townhome and enjoyed that for our first 7 years here, until building the home that we initially thought we would spend the rest of our lives in. It’s amazing the lessons you learn after building and then living in a house. As much as we adore our current home, life and the visions within it have shifted. Not only is it far too much house for just the two of us and a tiny cat, but it is no longer a style that we are in love with. As beautiful as the home is, it is nothing near mid-century modern, yet we started obsessing about that period before even completing the build. This is evident in the many mid-century pieces that we’ve incorporated in the house over the past five years, and now we’d like to give them a place that’s more suited for that style.

We placed our home on the market just a few weeks ago and although we were spying a few pockets of mid-century neighborhoods here in Charlotte, it was shortly after the home went on the market that the decision to move back to Michigan came about. It was after our first look at real estate in mid-Michigan that we couldn’t believe what we were seeing – mid-century modern is everywhere. I mean, some digging will still need to be done, but it exists in what appears to be greater abundance than what we ever expected. Neither of us can believe that we never noticed this in past years, but much like our lives have takes some shifts, so have our tastes in design and this just wasn’t on our radar all those years ago.

While there is still much to do, we are excited to share our journey in finding and creating our mid-century dream and everything that comes along with it. Life is an adventure and this new path is certainly going to be a fun one. Now just to sell the house in Charlotte!

-Tracie