It's Been Awhile

It's been about a year since I've blogged, and about 8 months since I last updated the Facebook page. It's time to get back in the swing of things.

We have a lot of projects for this year! Some of them are...

-Cutting down trees for firewood
-Enlarging the chicken coop
-Making a new duck coop
-Making a new rabbit enclosure
-Finish painting some rooms
-Actually having kitchen cabinet doors
-Going through the rest of our boxes from storage
-Creating Athena's garden

Needless to say this year will be busy!

New House Sneak Peek!

For everyone that doesn't know, we officially have a closing time! Tomorrow morning at 9AM we will be signing papers for our new to us house! We will still have a couple months of tiny house living since our loan is a rehab loan. The house has sat vacant for around four years, so there is surface mildew on some of the trim work, the plumbing is stripped out, the furnace needs replaced, the electric is shut off, and the carpet is coming up in places, not to mention there are raccoon tracks going from the open dryer vent to the toilet (and that raccoon enjoyed playing in that toilet!).

Once we sign Friday morning, we are heading straight over to the house to change the door locks and start ripping out some carpet and drop ceiling. This weekend is a little messed up, because Luke has a photo shoot Sunday, and Avery and Henna's birthday party is Saturday afternoon, but we are hoping to get as much ripped out as we can before our contractor officially comes in to start working. That means we'll be bouncing all over the place this weekend. It really doesn't help that it gets dark at 5PM, and with no electricity, we'll have to drag dad's generator back up there with extension cords and lights so we can see if we do anything in the evenings.

While the demo is going on, we also plan to get a box truck and empty our storage units into the small garage, and grab as much of our outside stuff from dad's yard as we can before it freezes to the ground. We also hope to move Luke's Fieros from dad's yard, but that will require us to push all the crap that's in the big pole building (nicknamed "The Toybox) out of the way. There's china, a dresser, a wood totem, craft stuff, VHS cassettes...just a bit of everything in there!

I hope to have a lot of blog posts about the house progress, but in the meantime, how about a sneak peek of the property!

This is the fireplace in the living room. Technically, we are going to call it the library, since we plan on using the formal dining room as the living room with the TV. This room will have bookshelves, the piano, and probably a table for games.

This is creepy Halloween Tree. It's in between the house and the driveway, and looks to be wrapped around a windmill base. It's super neat, and it had orange flowers sprouting from it earlier this year.

This is facing directly East when you stand in the driveway. You can see the little deck and back entrance into the kitchen, the concrete patio area, the toybox (red building) in the far distance, and lots of trees. 5 acres is massive after living on a city lot for 11 years!

This is the two car garage where the driveway is. I guess it can be my garage since Luke gets the big one LOL!

This is the view facing Northwest from the driveway. The overgrowth shrubby areas are on our property. The nicely manicured field is the next property over. We can see a lot of sky. Perfect for the Observatory we want to build.

Here's the Southeast view from the driveway. You can see the front porch on the other side of Halloween Tree, and it's nothing but farmland and sod farm fields in front of the house.

Stay tuned! We'll have a lot of in progress pictures from demo work coming up in the next few weeks!

Delays, Crafts, and a Boot!

The great news for the week is that the water test came back good! No E. Coli or coliforms. The bad news is that due to the sheer amount of paperwork involved in a USDA rehab loan, our closing has been pushed back, and due to Thanksgiving, our new date is December 4th. Looks like we will be tiny home living for awhile longer.

It's not all terrible though, Luke has some photography stuff to finish up, and our Girl Scout troop is going crazy with Christmas crafts (and I'm the troop craft mom), so we are plenty busy with things, and getting a delay gives us more time to finish up stuff. We will be shoving family into my dad's house for Avery and Henna's birthday party, which is scheduled the day after closing!

Our Girl Scout troop wants to make ornaments and tags to sell as a fundraiser this year. Our meeting spot is a little grocery store that only sells locally grown foods and local artisan crafts, and they will allow us a small table after Thanksgiving, so I've been busy trying out different crafts, seeing what will be easy for us to do. The hardest part will be coming up with prices.

On a last note, we had our check ups at the podiatrist this week. We go every 6 months. All four girls seemed to inherit my flat feet unfortunately. Lexi, Lilly, and Henna seem to have no problems or pain with theirs. Avery has some leg pain, but her left tibia is also twisted slightly, which may be contributing to everything. We saw an orthopedic pediatric surgeon in June that did a full x-ray, and we are playing the waiting game now to go back in a year for a repeat x-ray to see if it is straightening on it's own, or if it's getting worse. As for me, my problems started in 3rd grade after being asked to run a relay race. I've had orthotics, foot surgery in 5th grade, and then slacked off with visits and orthotics in my late teens and early 20's because of insurance and kids. That was the biggest mistake ever. Now I have plantar fasciitis, and it is awful! I've done inflammation medication, cortisone shots, and new orthotics. Now I have basically have a walking removable cast. We are starting with my left foot, and I wear it all the time until the pain is gone, then wear it a week longer. Then I can switch it to the other foot. Needless to say I go back in a month to see how things are. Right now we are trying to avoid surgery, but make it easier for me to keep up with the girls.

Isn't it gorgeous?

Moving Forward...

Our house is gone. We closed on October 13th, so we spent the weekend before clearing out the house, and cleaning. The night before we brought the girls back over to help with a little last minute cleaning, and for them to say good-bye. They took pictures of everything, and when our big camera died, I gave my cell phone to Lexi so she could keep taking pictures. She took this one of Lilly. It describes perfectly what our mood was that night. As glad as I am to be rid of that house, it was our home for the last 11 years, and the only one our girls have ever known.

Shortly after moving in, my grandma went into the hospital for surgery, and ended up with a blood infection that she couldn't recover from. It sucks to move so close, only to have her gone just 2 weeks later. I still don't think it has set in completely, but I hate that she'll never know whether or not we will get the rehab house we are looking at. At this rate I'm not sure we'll ever know either! We are currently waiting on the appraisal, which should have been in last Friday, but we've yet to see it.

Moving in to tiny barn hasn't been easy, but we've managed these past few weeks. We are currently fighting off a little sickness, which is hard when you live in less that 480 square feet with 6 people. There's no place to rest in the quiet, and when one is up coughing, everyone is up! We got through Halloween, although we had no inside decorations. We still have a lot of organizing to do in tiny barn. We'll probably have it done by the time we move out lol! If you can't tell, we were Doctor Who themed this year

And here's me with one of our chickens that are left. Whenever we move, building a bigger chicken coop is one of the first things on the list, so not only can we get our two remaining chickens back, but get more too!

It's Been Awhile...

I know, I suck at blogging, but I've made it a goal to get better. I'm going to have Luke teach me how to run Photoshop, so I can get my own pictures sized for the blog, and I'm going to start carrying around a better camera, instead of relying on my phone.

The house is still for sale...sort of. It was a sold, and then it wasn't. It's a very long story that I won't get involved with, because we are getting legal advice as to how to proceed, which means I shouldn't disclose anything until we get things figured out. Trust me though, it's a mess. On top of that mess we had yet another offer come in on the house, and this one seems solid, so hopefully by the middle of October we will be out of this house and moving on with life!

In the meantime, we had a plan to do some tiny house living while we were in between houses. My dad purchased a 12'x40' prebuilt barn, and we have been busy finishing the inside so we had someplace to sleep, work, and homeschool while we were searching for a new house. Even though our house is still for sale, we are still working on finishing up what we have named "Tiny Barn", and we will move into it whenever we get it completed.

As far as homeschooling goes, Lexi and Lilly are finishing up their accelerated 3rd grade math this week, and we are busy gathering up last minute photos and work to put into portfolios that will be looked over this weekend. I was a terrible parent last year, and never had portfolios checked, so we will be getting our 1st grade portfolios, and our 2nd-3rd grade portfolios graded for Lexi and Lilly. Avery is still young enough that I don't need to report her to the school district. She's made it most of the way through the kindergarten curriculum, so next week we will be starting 4th grade for Lexi and Lilly, and 1st grade for Avery.

Tiny Updates...

There has been so much going on this summer, that I still haven't gotten Lexi and Lilly's birthday party put up, or any holidays for that matter. Luke has been busy with weddings, and I've been busy trying to organize and pack up this house. We still haven't sold the house, and we are actually considering renting in out. No matter what we do with the house though, it is time for a change. We currently have a plan that involves my dad buying a barn/shed to put in his backyard. We will finish off the inside, install a small bathroom/kitchen, and move in. It will be extremely tight to fit a family of 6 in to a rectangle that is probably no bigger than 12 feet x 36 feet, but in the long run we will save money, pay down debt quicker, and that will make it easier for us to buy the house of our dreams!

With that current goal in mind, Pinterest has become a major inspiration for minimalist living, tiny homes, loft bedrooms, and how small can I make a bathroom ideas! Hopefully things will slow down enough in the next week or so for me to get caught up with blog pictures, and then it will probably get super crazy as we move!