snappy snappy snappy snap welcome back to my channel today we have very
exciting news as you can probably tell from the title of this video we just bought a house
we got to new zealand in january and our plan when we got to new zealand was to look for a
place to call our own we traveled throughout the country for quite a bit both the north and the
south island pretty much all the way down uh yeah down to wanaka and back and we saw a lot
the difficult part was probably that there are just too many cool corners of new zealand and we
didn't want to rule anything out without visiting it and properly exploring yeah we wanted to make
sure we did our due diligence and looked all over the country to really come up with the area that
we really wanted to live and to be frank there are a lot of beautiful places in new zealand that we
could easily settle down and live we originally put two offers in in the hawks bay region which
we also love a lot of alex's family live in the hawks bay region as you guys know if maybe you
don't know alex's father was born and raised in new zealand that's what gives him the roots here
and that's why we're able to be here in the first place we decided to switch things up a bit and
look in the wellington region of new zealand because one we love wellington the city itself
we knew from the very start before we even moved to new zealand that we wanted to find something
more on the homestead vibe more rural so we ended up falling on this area of new zealand called the
wairarapa which is the wellington region but it's kind of like the rural
a little bit more artsy it's the northern corner of the wellington region yes and we
fell in love and so we felt like it was the balance of both worlds if you guys have been
following me for a while now you know that kind of this homestead farm house style vibe is something
that i've dreamed about for quite a long time i actually stumbled on a video from five years ago
before i ever met alex where i was doing a q a and i somebody asked me like how where i see myself
in five years and my response was like hopefully living on a farm somewhere i think i threw out the
option of oregon in the video but i was like i don't care where it is i just want to live
a farm life i really over the last five years have been obsessed with the idea of living somewhere
that has a ton of land that i can have goats and like pigs and um i don't know just all those fun
farm furry friends and and here we are i'm so happy that i found somebody that was willing
to kind of pursue that dream with me so this is really exciting and we will be moving into our
little homestead on two and a half acres of land in the first week of september it's been a whole
wild journey because between the two places that we put offers on
we were kind of gutted when we didn't get either of those houses but in retrospect it's worked
out perfectly because not getting either of those those homes that we put in offers
led us to this place and this place is by far and large the best of all of them and has so
many things so it checks so many boxes for us you know it's it's close enough to a big city where we
can get things that we need but it is rural um our neighbors are like horses and sheep we have
maybe about two neighbors which we got to meet and they're like younger couples which we weren't
really expecting that we thought we would have older people living around us so that was really
cool because um we didn't really mind but we we just thought it was quite cool that we had people
our age living around us it's gonna be a whole incredible journey because we have a lot to do
the house is in good shape but there are a lot of minor maintenance projects that we will be
undertaking step by step by step as well as you know there's land and we want to try to maximize
um what we can do with it following you know regenerative agricultural principles and
permaculture principles and we're really excited to kind of get stuck in and look at a lot of this
land as the blank canvas that it is and see what we can what we can paint and create learn along
the way and bring you guys along in that learning process i shared with you guys a video called how
to build a vegetable garden and that was after only a year of us growing a vegetable garden in
our backyard in los angeles we were kind of the weird people living on our urban street
in los angeles where our neighbors walked up to us and was like what are you growing back there
is that corn they could see the corn coming from our fence in l.a and not just corn it's not just
corn there are a lot of other things but you can only see the corn we just had so much fun learning
about growing food and one of the many reasons why we wanted to move to new zealand was because we
wanted to deepen our knowledge about permaculture about growing food and we felt like this was such
a perfect country to do that obviously you can do that in all different parts of the world but
there's just something really special about that this country in a sense of
many people are growing food in their backyards it's a very farm to table friendly and
we just know that there are so many experts in permaculture that we can learn from here and we're
excited to connect with people like that along the way like alex said the house itself it has
great bones it definitely needs some love though and we definitely have the love to give and we're
so excited to learn more about diying renovation projects and having people come in who know what
they're doing and learning from them and there are a few projects that we know we want to start off
right off the bat like we're going to paint the entire house immediately we're going to
kind of just do it inside clean yeah yeah but the outside will get painted the outside we think
will get painted at some point we quite like the color but we're probably going to paint it lighter
later on along the way we might ask you guys what you think when we get closer one of the biggest
boxes that we wanted to tick when looking for a house was the land and that's why we're so
happy about this specific spot because one it's the largest plot of land that we put an offer in
on and we are so happy that this one was accepted and this plot of land has water on it so there is
a pond and there's also a second pond that's more seasonal um we saw the property in the winter so
everything was pretty much dead in terms of the trees it was still very green because of the
rain in that area but all of the trees there's an orchard on the property with with apples and plums
and other stones and a bunch of other trees that we don't even know and we're like this is going
to be a huge surprise once they start to come in yeah that's what we're so excited about is to be
moving into the property in september which here in new zealand september is the start of spring
and so we'll be moving into the property as it warms up and as everything blooms and just enough
time to put some seeds in the garden exactly so right when we get in we want to start the
garden and i'm just so excited to like wake up in the morning and to start just seeing different
fruits and vegetables in the backyard come to life specifically the fruit trees and just all of the
trees on the property because we don't know what everything is we solve berries but we don't know
exactly what berries there are because we haven't been able to necessarily talk to the owner we've
really only been on the property twice once during the open house and once during the
inspection and we wanted to find something that we could customize over time slowly but surely
and make it our own and specifically with this property we really want to go in and slowly but
surely the one of the first things we are going to renovate is the bathroom and make it our own
so this is a three bedroom house it has a sleepout um including the sleepout that has a toilet and
a shower it's two and a half baths so three bedroom two and a half baths with the sleepout
and yeah it has the water on the property one of my favorite parts of the house is that the pond in
the backyard has a little island in the middle of the pond that has a willow tree i absolutely love
willow trees and it's just funny because to be honest with you as we were looking for houses we
were always like oh yes we love the house but like what kind of fruit trees always be asking the real
estate agent like so what's what's planted back there and they're kind of like uh they want to see
like what's happening inside the house like we're a little bit more interested on what's happening
the outside yeah they never really know what exactly each tree is especially when there's
like a little orchard there he's like i know that there's stone fruit in there and apples and stuff
and like that's as far as i know so again it's going to be a big surprise it's going to be
a huge learning experience for us in so many different ways for the land and for the home
and this is exactly what we dreamed up before we wanted something that was a bit
of work for us to learn because we feel like these skills are so incredible and practical
and important in life the good news is that we never unpacked our stuff from when it arrived
from the u.s we were like we're not going to open anything because we're going to find our place
so everything's still packed it's in storage it's ready to go so all we really need to do
is like kind of organize it a bit more throw some tape up some of the boxes that got kind of
damaged in transit and then um get down there move them into a little van that we i don't
know maybe a medium-sized van that we were going to rent and the good news is we sent over our
indoor dining room table our outdoor dining room table our bed from la we ended up sending like
just our favorite pieces of furniture and we're so happy we did that because it'll be something
to put in the house yeah exactly we don't have to like run to the store and go purchase everything
you know right away because um that just makes the whole process so much more expensive too
so it's nice that we saving some money yeah we have like some big furniture pieces really the
only big thing we need to get is a couch i want to say thank you so much to those of you who
one have been following along on this journey and have been so supportive and excited and when
we didn't get the offer before so many of you guys were like it just was not meant to be it will come
and it will be the right place and that is just so true when we look back now in hindsight we're like
thank goodness that those fell through because this was this is what it was meant to be
i will say this when i envisioned us moving to new zealand and i i'm so i'm like a very visual person
when i make changes or think about things and i imagined the view that we have from the house like
almost to a t because when i would think about new zealand i would think about hills and when
you look out from our property you just see a bunch of really interesting hills and like sheep
grazing on them and it's just extremely horses next door next door it's just might need a home i
know we might be here lots of announcements might be our first adoption um and yes lanka is also
very excited he got to view the property when we went to the building inspection so we let him out
to roam around and he's stuck he's very happy this little one is very excited to have his own paddock
and um you know he's just live out in his inner dreams of being a sheepdog
what do you think are you excited to roam around and enjoy all the magical land or you eat my face
i also want to say thank you to you guys for really making this possible i feel like
we're so lucky that we are able to do this for a living which is what makes us be able to work
remotely which has led us to be able to make this big leap of faith and that's why and not only the
only reason why i also want to share this journey with you guys because you've been part of it from
the very beginning um but also because you guys really did help in making this all happen so
i never forget that and i just want to say thank you and i have so much gratitude for all of you
thank you all for watching this is not goodbye this is honestly it feels like just the beginning
just the beginning so thank you guys for being here and i will see you very very soon in any one