I'm pretty sure when Dr. Seuss wrote that line in his book of the same title, he meant far-away lands and interesting places. But today, I'm going to apply it to our recent House hunting adventures.

So, just so we are all on the same page. Yes, we are house hunting. But we aren't in any hurry. We would like to move out of Cuyahoga County for tax reasons. And we kind of (we don't know for sure at this point how we feel about moving) want to leave our house because it is really too big for us now that it's just the two of us. Too big, and oh, a three story colonial with our master bedroom on the third floor and our family room in the basement. Read - lots and lots of stairs. So we are looking in Geauga, Lake and even Summit counties. Most of them feel like farm country to me after so many years of living in the Heights - I'm not sure I could ever really pull the trigger but I suppose if we found our "dream house" maybe I would feel differently.

We have been going out almost every weekend and looking at what there is available in our price range that fits our criteria in the above mentioned counties. And, for the most part we don't agree on anything. Not that that in of itself is a surprise - we rarely do. But we look, sometimes I make the list of houses to see and sometimes he does.

About 6 weeks ago, I found what I would call the "perfect house" in the "perfect place" with the "perfect amount of land." He said it was too big, it cost too much and it needed a new roof. So we looked some more only now I have a house to compare every other house to and none of them are measuring up. And I might be a bit pouty about it. I got an email recently telling me it is under contract so in addition to pouting, I am now salty about it.

My perfect house

About a month ago, Steve found his idea of the "perfect house." Points to him for finding it in my "perfect area." We saw it on Sunday morning and over dinner on Sunday night he announced that he wanted to get back in and take some measurements to kind of figure out the cost to do some stuff. He texted the realtor on Monday morning only to be told that it was now under contract. I was OK with that, it meant I didn't have to disagree with him.

Steve's perfect house

So you might be thinking - wow - you are having amazing luck. That's because I haven't mentioned the house that I had to be forced into. It gave me the creeps on the outside and I said "I really don't want to go in." He made me and let me assure you, inside was worse. And the realtor who was also the next door neighbor talked my ears off about what a great house it was and how much potential it had, Yuck.

Then there was the smoking man's house. It was a nice house, decent sized, nice property parcel but it reeked of cigarettes, Reeked. And I'm not sure you can ever really get rid of that smell.

And then there was the house with many cats. It also smelled quite strongly when you walked in. I'm a dog person and I know my house smells like my hounds, but they are my hounds and I can deal with it. But a house that has many cats - not so good. (And, oh, by the way, I have a bad smeller. My sense of smell is shot after using Zicam nasal swabs - but that is a rant for another post.) So if it smelled bad to me, goodness knows what it smells like to anyone else. Steve said it was bad.

I could go on and on, but the real reason I decided to write this post is because today we saw the most unusual house ever. And I kind of wanted to buy just for it's uniqueness. But after driving home in two separate cars we met at home and both agreed that although it was very cool, it had many reasons why it could not be our dream house. Yes, we agreed!

Cool and unusual home

So you are probably looking at the photo above and thinking I have gone off the deep end because that is a photo of a barn. And it is. It is an authentic 1865 Harley Warrick "Mail Pouch Barn." And inside of that barn is a lovely two story English cottage that was built in 1978 with many accents brought over from England to lend authenticity. It is very, very cool. And it is a lot to wrap your head around.

The following photo is what you see when you slide open the massive barn doors. The door shown is the door into the cottage. And that is a faux sort of cobblestone courtyard in front of the cottage.