We moved to Amy’s hometown (Chicago) in 1998 to pursue different careers.

We bought 631 North Drury Lane in Arlington Heights, Illinois (northwest suburb of Chicago) in July 2000 and progressed through all the typical new-homeowner milestones: removing wallpaper, planting new landscaping, replacing our air conditioner, and fixing plumbing.

After over a decade of professional growth, travel, and personal pursuits, a coach we’d both engaged helped us get clear on our relationship to money and what was important to us financially. We then met with a financial planner in 2013 who interviewed us about our dreams, visions, and passions. We spent an hour telling her about our garden, how much we enjoyed cooking and baking together with its bounty and breaking bread with friends and family in our home. We also discussed how at least one of us would work from home in the future. Her advice was simple: "you need to invest in your home. That’s clearly where your heart is." This helped us get clear on what we really wanted: a home that would enable us to enjoy what we cherish the most and expand as one of us transitioned to running a business from home.

Months later, we'd engaged a real estate agent and started looking.

We found a home that met our criteria in June 2014 and won an ensuing bidding war after which I distinctly remember placing my hand on the wall of 631's living room and saying "we're going to miss you, house" with earnest sorrow. We felt like we'd spent a lifetime (of only 14 years) in this house – we'd renovated both bathrooms and the kitchen and had put extensive resources, time, and love into our garden and our landscaping – and now we were going to give it up to start all over again with a new house and new neighbors. But within days, we'd lost the house: the sellers pulled out of the deal for unexplained reasons. Despite this shock, we kept looking on and off for a couple more years afterwards. (Beverly listing; Beverly cancel)

However, Amy and I started to realize that The Universe was telling us to stay at 631 North Drury Lane

We belonged in a community that lives up to the motto of Arlington Heights – The City of Good Neighbors. An already fabulous neighborhood where neighbors truly know each other, help each other out regularly and socialize together was becoming even more so as regular social traditions took root such as our annual block party expanding to the full ½-mile length of Drury Lane, weekly Happy Hours, monthly book club, holiday gatherings. We already had everything we wanted right here at home in the town and on the street that we love. We also realized that by staying we would continue to benefit from the years of cultivating highly productive soil through our natural gardening and composting practices. We weren’t going anywhere!

We agreed that the home needs to

• Make it even easier and more inviting to share those moments of breaking bread with people in our various communities. 

• Support our own community of two and enable our healthiest living habits with high functionality.

• Role model our passion for sustainable living practices.

Realizing this is what’s most important to us in life, we committed to renovate with a philosophy grounded in these three pillars

• Community

• Functionality 

• Sustainability

From the inception of the design process in 2018 up until the moment we are writing this copy in the spring of 2020, we have grounded all project activities in this philosophy and used it to make all our key decisions. By the end of this project, our vision is to contribute the first LEED certified home to our town of Arlington Heights and the first LEED Platinum renovation to the Chicagoland suburbs that is a highly functional space for two and a gathering space for our community.

As we have found others have been inspired by our story of realizing how much at home we are in our current neighborhood and how intentional we are about how we are renovating, there has been pull for us to share this story.

With both of us being somewhat in the Dark Ages when it comes to social media and shying away from online spotlights, we were hesitant at first to share beyond our beloved Drury Lane community. But as more and more people expressed interest, we realized that there are aspects about this project and story that genuinely interest others.

Perhaps it's our early backgrounds in education or both of our careers spent partially in the marketing world building brands and telling stories or perhaps it’s simply our passion for what we are doing, but we have now come to terms with the online world as the medium for sharing and are excited to share our Happy Boolo Project story with you.

We hope you will enjoy our journey as we renovate our home according to our philosophy and bring our Happy Boolo Project to life.