MOVING DAY IS HERE!!! So while we’re running around like fucking chickens with our heads cut off allllllll day today, I just wanted to take a moment out to give a little ode to Picardy. This house, and street, and community I have loved so much for 7 years.

First off, one of the people I follow on Instgram is an artist called Phoebe Atkey. I love when her drawings pop up a couple times a day. They range from jewelry, to architecture, to fashion. And they are all S.T.U.N.N.I.N.G.

One day I thought the perfect way to honor our house would be to have a custom drawing made of Picardy. So I checked out her website and inquired if she did commissions – HOORAY, she did! I sent her some photos of the house and corresponded back and forth in email. About 10 days later I got our emailed drawing and another 5 or so days later I got our beautiful drawing in the mail

Amazing, no? I LOVE IT. I absolutely LOVE IT. I LOVE IT so so so so much. I CANNOT WAIT to frame it and hang it in our new house. It is beautiful and honors our sweet first home in the most perfect way. (And honestly I cannot recommend Phoebe more. Her prices were totally awesome, she was incredibly friendly, and well, her artwork is fucking amazing).

Now, more ways to honor Picardy….

I will miss the architecture

I cannot express the joy I would get each time driving down this street. Seeing all the sweet homes and seeing our special, sweet home. I loved when people who had never been down the street would express so much excitement at the gem they had found, “All these houses are so cool!” they would frequently express. That made me proud. It’s not like I had done anything special to get to take credit for this house or this street, but I still felt very proud each time I drove down it.

I will miss the sense of community

This street is fucking awesome. And the care with which all its residents take is amazing. People take so much care to live here. We have “Block Watchers.” They are folks who walk the street at various times of the day as neighborhood watch. We have a Yahoo group specific to our street so we can be all kept in the loop about goings on. We have Christmas Socials, Summer Socials, entire street wide garage sales…I mean, you couldn’t ask for a street that shares in community more.

I will miss Christmas and Halloween

Complete destinations in the area. We get SO MANY Halloween visitors, it’s insane. We go through pounds and pounds and pounds of candy every year. It’s gotten to the point where we only hand out one piece of candy to each visitor and we still spend about $75 each year in candy. I LOVE that so many people come to the street to share in our community. And the same goes for Christmas. That nearly every single house lights up (about 90% this past year) for the holidays is just about one of the happiest things to see in the evening in December. All the twinkle can’t help but make you smile. So. Much. Twinkle. And so much happy. I love that we have Christmas community celebrations for our street and for the larger community as well. It’s amazing. And makes people feel so much love. We’ll definitely be coming back for those holidays.

I will miss our neighbors

We hit the jackpot with our neighbors. People care so much, but also leave you be. A simple wave makes people happy, and then every few weeks or months you get a nice gab fest. We look out for each other. It’s just perfect.

I will miss Zoe’s (and our) friends

This one actually makes me pretty sad and makes my heart hurt a little bit. Our across the street neighbors have 4 kids – the oldest is in 6th grade and the youngest is about 2 weeks older than Merritt. Zoe LOVES their oldest. Like, ADORES. And he is the nicest older brother there is and is so, so, so, so sweet to her. I wrote down in her baby book how much she likes him. It’s the cutest thing in the world. If we’re getting out of the car and he waves to her she will come RUNNING into the house exclaiming, “Baraka wave to me! Baraka wave to me!” And one of my favorite things is to be able to just walk across the street and let our kids play together. We’ve of course become friends with the mom and dad and she and I text back and forth all the time. We’ve definitely become good friends. And that’s a wonderful thing. I love that Zoe has friends on the street that she could just run over and play with. My childhood best friend lived around the corner from me and that was awesome. Chris always laments how it was rough that he lived so far away from all of his friends and so he felt really isolated growing up. I hope hope hope that Zoe is able to have friends who live close by in the new house.

I will miss the memories we created

I can’t really actually think about this one too much. It makes me sad if I really dwell on it. Obviously we redid this house from the ground up. Every single room was touched. Every single room was transformed. We cried. We yelled. We learned SO MUCH while going through that together. But there was also so much pride and happiness in those experiences and I felt so much joy in that. Obviously the renovations gave us thousands of memories. But, then there are the supremely sentimental memories: we decided to have babies, we brought home our Zoe girl, we got married, we got pregnant with Merritt, we brought home our second adorably smiley baby girl and we started a business together. All here. I can still remember SO VIVIDLY the exact place where Zoe took her official first steps. There are so many sweet stories and tear inducing memories. I will never forget that.

Oh Picardy, how I adore thee

There are some things I will not miss. But let’s just gloss over those:

1. The people FLYING down the street going WAY TOO FUCKING FAST – because the street has no stop signs or speed bumps like others in the area so people use it as a thoroughfare. And seriously sometimes go close to 45/50 mph with kids running around playing. It ALWAYS freaks me the fuck out.
2. The crime – two immediate next door neighbors have been broken into, as well as our behind our house neighbor. That is close to home. Many houses on the street have been broken into and it feels like we are almost biding our time.
3. The residual crime – we live very close to a bad neighborhood and have had 2 cars drive down the street shooting each other once when we lived here for a year or two.
4. Wondering if the loud noises at night are fireworks, a car backfire or gunshots – about 3 weeks ago at night we were SURE we heard fireworks, but it actually happened to be a series of gunshots 1 street away

There are other little things here and there that I will both love/miss and some that I am not sad to say goodbye to, but that is my ode to this street.

We were lucky to move onto a street that had such a sense of history and community already when we moved here. And we felt so lucky to get to breathe life into a home that had been forgotten about for so long. We feel like we did this home good.