Outside is Calling

The warmer days are coming, and the sun is starting to dry up the mud, and the birds are flitting, and the bees are buzzing, and the outside world is calling.

I love spring.

I've been walking around our yard and land today. It's so beautiful here, but the beauty has been a little neglected. Same as the inside of our house. The plants are a bit overgrown. I've held Jeremy back from cutting everything back because I haven't been able to figure out a plan for all the landscaping yet. I don't want to accidentally lose something we need to keep.

But the outside is calling me, and I'm starting to dream. I really miss having a garden too, although it may be that I'm forgetting all the work that goes into a garden. I miss those fruits and vegetables though.

So I walked around and dreamed. This field is about half an acre, and it's on a bit of a hill. I've planned to put the big garden here. There are some setbacks though. I'm not sure how to design a garden on a hill, and this field is nowhere near a water source. Except for the pond, but we don't have any way of getting the pond water on the hill. Of course, it's been so wet here lately, I don't think we'd need to water a garden for a couple of years.

But then here, next to the house is a sweet little spot for a small garden plot.

And this spot in the front yard gets lots of sun too, and is nice and flat.

Hmm, lots to think about. It's going to take lots of time, money, and work to get everything the way we see it in our heads. But it's kind of funny how quickly things can get done. When I think about where we started with this house 2 years ago, I'm amazed. We've gotten a lot done! We've had lots of help, but mostly it's just the two of us working in our free time.

The kids were outside too, and Noemi showed me how she gives the goats a treat. She had all three of our girls at attention. Greedy goats.

And then the billy came over to see what all the fuss was about. So Noemi gave him a little treat too. Leeli has to watch him closely though. At least, the two of them get along pretty well now.

Have you got any garden plans? Any ideas on gardening on a hill?

The Living Room

We got the living room cleaned up after Christmas and I found a beautiful, big, new-to-us rug, so I snapped some pictures while it looked like people don't live here.

Some parts....

Some parts of my bathroom look like this:

A Quick Update in Pictures

We've been working, but it's slow and not very exciting so far. And it's really hard to see what all we've done, but last weekend I realized we only have 15 weeks until the baby is due. (I honestly don't think I've been preparing for a baby to actually come, so it was a bit of a shock to me.) But I figured I could share some of the pictures!

Building Built-ins

Oh, this is fun to share! The new bookshelves are built!

It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, but Jeremy did help quite a bit. If it had all been left to me, we'd still be waiting.

Working on the House

Work has begun again on this old house! And it feels so good!

A Honey-Do List for Upstairs

The kids need to move upstairs, y'all. Not only do they need their own rooms (all three are in one downstairs, and Noemi is in our room), but I need my own room! We need the space too. We're all tired of being cramped downstairs. So we've been working upstairs and it's progressing quickly on Jeremy's side of things and slowly (so, so slowly) on my side.

The Floors

We've made some progress in the last couple of weeks! The flat of land for the barn is ready and we even have the post holes dug. The kitchen has a new (to us) oven that does not smell like burning rats when it is cooking. Jeremy has even caught a couple of rats in all his many traps.

We are in a mess!

Ohmygoodnesswhatwerewethinking!??!?!

The Master Bedroom's Walls

We are slowly making progress on the master bedroom. The master bathroom still looks like a gutted room. But I have to trust Jeremy because this is how he works. He takes forever to figure out how to do something, and then finally does it really quickly.

The Master Bedroom's Ceiling

So while Jeremy has been taking apart the mudroom/bathroom, I've been slowly plugging away at our bedroom. I'm finally on the other side of the messiness, and it's starting to clean up a little. (And then I find one more thing to caulk!)

Bathroom Plans

The fun part of putting in a new bathroom is the decorating. Also, this is stressful. Especially when two people are decorating who have drastically different tastes. I love Jeremy, and he is very, very good at balancing me out, but we do not have the same taste in decor at all.

This is both good for us and hard for us. It teaches us to compromise and well, then we actually have to compromise.

Still Demolishing

So "Demo Day" is misleading. It's more like Demo Weeks. And the Fixer Upper show just shows the fun parts, the boys have been pretty appalled at the mess that they have to clean up after the fun.

But, boy, have they had fun during the demo.

First Demo Days

We worked on our new old house last weekend! Let me tell you, this house remodel is going to help our marriage in BIG ways. At least, that's what I'm hoping. Because the decisions we have to make together are LIFE THREATENING. Like, what color to paint the wainscoting that we are possibly going to put up in the new bathroom.

Compromise is tough, y'all.

The Floor Plans

I started writing about the things we got done this weekend on the house, but I realized I needed to share the plans first so you can see where I'm going. We've got a lot to do! (Here's the news about our new homestead, in case you missed it!)