Housiversary

Seven years of projects, seven years of changes, seven years of growing into this space we now call Home (with a capital 'H'). There is still a ton we'd like to do... but I guess that means we won't get bored any time soon!

Cheers to seven years and many more!

First Fire

Cold and rainy day

Gray light out, warm glow inside

Quiet zen of home

Cold Front

It always, always feels like a holiday around here when the first cold front blows through... like, the first real cold front (I'm not talking about those false-hope fronts that bring the daytime highs down into the mid-80's, y'all). We got a good one this week, and I felt perfectly justified pulling out the hot chocolate, hoodies, and long pants, then later lighting a fire in the fire pit (never mind that it was also because we cut down a couple trees and needed to clean up the branches).

We even had to close down the windows a couple times- we got chilly!

I know it'll be warm again soon, but I am so glad we got to really feel fall for a few days!

WellDoor

We got our DIY on this past weekend and finally checked a kinda-big project off the list. Winter is coming (catch my weak pun in the title?) and with our first freeze already under our belts our well house was becoming a source of concern- it still didn't have a door.

No door = no freeze protection. No freeze protection = frozen pipes. Frozen pipes = no water to the house. We had to deal with that situation a couple years ago and lemme tell ya, it was no fun. At all.

So we got busy and fixed it right up.

It rained buckets the night after we finished the installation, and this coming weekend we will probably have another freeze... plenty of opportunity for our project to prove itself! We made it mostly out of scraps, leftovers, and improvisations, and if I do say so myself the result was pretty darn nice!

High five for home improvement! Now... which line item is next, dishwasher or wood shed...?

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, there was a family that wanted to live away from the setting of a conventional neighborhood. The kiddos were just getting big enough to appreciate wide open spaces, the Daddy was tired of dealing with HOAs, and the Mama thought deep down inside she could be something of a hobby farmer.

The family looked and looked and looked, and at long last they found their perfect home; plenty of room inside and out, with nothing but hay fields, cow pastures, and woods for neighbors. The family moved in and lived there happily for quite some time.

Then one day the hay field right outside their front door went up for sale. It was quite a surprise, and the family watched anxiously as buyer after potential buyer was paraded over the land. There were even some contracts on the property, too, and all of the interested buyers were developers. The family discovered the field was zoned to allow up to six houses per acre, but one of the developers didn't think that was enough and was working to get the field rezoned to allow for even more homes to be crammed onto the land.

The family felt doomed. A neighborhood... of up to eighty homes... right outside their front door. But what could they do?

Then, suddenly, the developer's contract fell through. The land was up for grabs once more.

What they had to do was clear.

And so the family bought the land, ensuring that their home would remain nestled in a buffer of peace and wild, even though the rest of the land around them will eventually fall into development.

Once again, the family is living happily in their kingdom, surrounded by woods and scrub and their new expanse of open field... and feeling so fine about it that they can even be found occasionally out in the twilight howling at the moon.

And they'll live happily ever after. The end.

Satisfaction

"Happiness does not come from doing easy work

but from the afterglow of satisfaction

that comes after the achievement of a difficult task

that demanded our best."

-Theodore Rubin

Having one of those life moments when you can see the past, the present, and the possibility of the future all in one hazy, sunlit whoosh. So much of what we've been hoping for and working towards is coming to fruition, and it's almost unreal to be standing with my bare feet on the pavers we've laid with our own hands, looking into the woods that we've cleared and seeing the fresh green sprouts of grass that we've seeded, while thinking about the possibilities that are still hanging thick in the trees and lying quietly in the soil. 

I think I'll just hang out riiiiiiiight here and ponder it all a little more and watch the sun set behind the woods... until the mosquitoes come after me... 

Before and After :: New Paint

Before:

After:    

The first interior space our attention has focused on since the weather sent us in to the air conditioning has been the kitchen. Since moving in we've been working toward making our kitchen light and modern, and today we put one of the major finishing touches on the room: fresh, light new paint.

It's amazing how much brighter and more open the kitchen feels now that it's not boxed in by that dark greyish-blue! Now all we have to do is put all the books and stuff back and this room is nearing that beautiful thing that is "FINISHED"!

Yusssss!

Housiversary

Pavers are down, pavers are down! We are finished laying pavers, y'all!

Today is the three-year anniversary of our move-in/first night spent in our house here. We were reminiscing about the move over dinner last night, and everyone can agree- we are in a way better place today than we have been for any other houseiversary. What a difference three years makes!

I took a little walk down memory lane (this one too) and it felt so much more sweet than bitter this time around. The past three years here have been a whirlwind of precious moments mixed with incredible struggle and stress, but that light we were chasing at the end of the tunnel is shining brightly now, and we're finally lifting our faces to it and soaking it in!

And it's not just the big stuff lifted off our shoulders that's making us feel so good about Our Place- it's possible that by the end of this month we'll have almost everything crossed of our Phase One To-Do list.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

That means all the "We need to..." stuff will be D-O-N-E done and we'll be on to the "I want to..." stuff, and we all agree that list is way more fun.

So today I'll be overseeing some work on a few unfinished projects inside and lining up a few more for this weekend... but for now I think I'll take my coffee and head out to my patio for a bit before everyone is up and at 'em.

Happy housiversary to us!

Work Work Work

For some reason we have our timing off this year, and we've been finding ourselves drawn outside by various projects right as the summer is gathering real presence. We've tried to cope by following the movement of the shade, but it's still so hot! However it'll be superhot until mid-September, so it doesn't make sense to put off the work... so out we go!

We're currently working on our back patio area... it used to be a disjointed, disproportionate-to-the-house and hard-to-utilize space back there, but when we're finished it'll be just the opposite!

For now, though: pavers, pavers, pavers! (We're using these, which we caught on a crazy-good sale, if you're wondering)

And don't let the photos fool you- Daddy paused to take some photos, but he was working just as hard as the rest of us leveling the sand, hauling and cutting the bricks, and laying is fair share, too. It's been quite the family affair.

Like I'm sayin', it's going to be amazing when we're done, and that's what's keeping us going! Can't wait to do a 'Before and After' post on this one!

The Last Time

There's a wet cold front moving through today that is probably part of the weather pattern that brought us some of the only snow we got last year. It's not cold enough for anything to freeze this time around, but upper 30's with a strong wind is still cold! It's been raining slow and constant since about midnight, and as predicted the winds are increasing as the day goes on.

We were supposed to get out to hunt and gather groceries today, but after dropping Sissy off at school Hen and I decided we'd much rather stay in, light a fire, bake banana bread, and read books. After the weird warm winter we've had, this will probably be the last time we fire up the wood stove anyway, so we're taking full advantage of this chilly day!