Where do we go from here?

We are in the early stages of planning a sustainable, green, affordable dream home for our family of 4. We have reached the point of no return as we've done enough research to know we HAVE to build a sustainable home. We have a lot of ideas and plans but we are now in the money/land stage and not sure where to go from here. Obviously we need land...any suggestions for finding affordable land in the South Okanagan? We have briefly (informally) spoken to our bank (a credit union) and they seem interested to work with us on this project. We're just not sure what we need to make our home happen. Should we speak to an architect? We've been reading a lot but still aren't sure what our next step should be.

If anyone is interested in giving us a little help in our project, please email me at cmcorfield@telus.net