Home sweet home

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Home sweet home and a spectacular sunset that pictures don't even come close to the experience. 

So thankful to live here.   

Backyard

 When we find ourselves with an unscheduled afternoon (which feels like a rarity), this is where we find ourselves.  Home. My most favorite place to be.

Home

I'm wound up tight because of...

But trying to stay peaceful enough to keep the routine for...

It's quite the world of a mama....to feel all the feels but no time to process all the feels because you're doing all the things. Cannot wait until this is all a memory.  It will all turn out, right? 

Highlights at/close to home

 We're so fortunate to live where we live.  Recent highlights: 

1) Our regular visits with Nam and Pap. Kids look forward to seeing them. 

2) The milkman.  He doesn't go everywhere, we are thankful to be on his route. He brought us cream to make homemade ice cream as a surprise.  Such a treat to see him.

3) Kids had their first 'job', to take care of the neighbors cows and chickens. They loved that job so much, they wished it was more than just a few days.

We've lived in this neighborhood for 15 years, (7 years at another house 1/2 mile away, 8 years this October on the farm). So blessed to have landed here.

Backyard

I usually don't purchase things new, nor do I buy expensive things. I have been wanting one of these anti gravity chairs ever since a friend brought hers to the beach. This was a little more spendy than I usually would purchase. I told the kids not to take the tags off, I didn't know if I would keep it. My husband came home from work, tried it out and declared he liked it so much that he thinks I ought to go back and get a 2nd. Can't think of a better way (or place) to watch a summer sunset. 

Kitchen

I absolutely live in my dream house and never want to live anywhere but here. However, I've been long frustrated with the kitchen.  It and the bathroom were the only rooms 'updated' and the updated isn't the old kitchen style I longed for. Lots of yellow, yellow, yellow.  Tight quarters compared to the spacious rest of the house. Washer and Dryer in the kitchen. Everything gets dumped in this room (boots, shoes, coats). We end up homeschooling here mostly, so this is where all our homeschool piles end up.  I cannot even tell you how many times I've talked about creating my dream kitchen and how many times I've grumbled about this space.. 

(See what it was like when we moved in).

 Over the years we've dabbled with some paint, rustoleum and tiny upgrades. My favorite of which being my wood cookstove addition.

Of course each appliance has broke in succession.  I got the range of my dreams. I love this work horse.

We've been here nearly 8 years and my husband and I were enthusiastically talking about my long list of upgrades that I've dreamed about over the years and all those pinterest ideas.  But then I think about all the things we could do and was thinking that I don't really want to do all I thought I wanted to do in this space. Is it a show kitchen? No.  It's not perfect, it's not magazine worthy, but it's functional for us. After 8 years of thinking, I think all I want to do now is install my vintage cast iron sink. get some new countertops and some new flooring.  Maybe someday we'll do all my other ideas, but for now, I've grown more content with the way things are. I'm even used to the washer and dryer being there, after complaining about it for many years. I need to find my way to contentedness more often. It's a good place to be.
 

Screens and pillows

Every spring we take the walls and windows out of our house and put the floor to ceiling screens in on our 3 season porch. Then we pretty much move out there, spending almost all of our 'indoor' time on the porch.

(For comparison, here is what it looks like with the walls and windows.)


We have our big farmhouse table out there.

 As well as this daybed.  We can (and do!) all pile on this daybed.  The white pillows behind the kids in this pic were looking really dingy.  They are from the couch Justin and I bought in 2007. The couch is long gone, but the size and fluffiness of these pillows has worked perfect on our daybed.  Only the number of stains really bothered me.  Beyond bleaching it out, I decided to make new ones.

But then I had a little flashback to my high school days and rit dye.  I figured it wouldn't hurt to try to dye them. 

An overnight soak and they look brand new! (I also dyed the curtains in the girls' room that were a bit sun bleached).

 Now I want to make some quilted pillows to add in, which I will probably get to in the next decade.

 Anyway, the new color makes me happy. Now you can see where we eat, where we play and where we read books when we are inside all summer long.

 Definitely our favorite place to be all summer long.

Crazy Change in 24 hours

What a change in less than 24 hours.  Winter is so gorgeous here in Maine.

 

Progress...baby steps.

As of late, I'd describe my current position in this ocean of parenthood as treading water, trying to stay afloat, hanging on by a too small buoy.  Each day I have ideas and goals I set out to accomplish and each night I go to bed with that same to-do list, untouched.

This has been one of my projects that is moving oh so slowly. 

This hedge next to our house was once a well tended garden. When we moved in, it had decades of overgrowth in this particular area. Every couple of years I work to trim it back, but it keeps coming back with more and more expansive powers.  It's all junk that I don't want too!  Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY wants multiflora rose or bittersweet. We have more than enough burning bush.  Wineberry, barberry, no thanks berry.  So invasive. And pricky.  And the stuff I actually want to keep is very overgrown and could use a big haircut.

I have more scars and thorns in my body now that I did a couple weeks ago, but I'm determined to get this stuff up from root. I told my husband that if I don't do it when I'm healthy, this stuff will envelop our house if we let it grow. 

So far from being done, but there's a wee bit of progress. I found some buried garden edging too. I'm wondering if I pull all this invasive stuff up if we might just see some hidden perennials pop up. It's happened before in other parts of this property.

It's a mess. It's a big pile (that's problematic because it contains seeds for more multiflora rose. NOOOO!), but little by little, I'm making a dent.  And look,where you used to not even be able to see through, let alone walk through, you can now see a root free path! Still need to get to the brush on the right and take care of that pile. One step at a time.

Summer planning...

For 6 years I used to walk/run by this old farmhouse and dream of what it would be like to come alive with the activity a family brings. I always thought this house/farm would be a perfect place for a child to grow up. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be my family.

Those are my baby's diapers on the line. Those are my kitchen chairs that I painted with a fresh coat of paint. That's the wood that I stacked. That's the barn with my animals. Those are my children with the garlic I planted that's nearly as tall as them.

This is my home sweet home that is mighty alive with all sorts of activity.  

Now we're getting into the summer sunset time. There seriously is no better time of year to be here than summer sunsets.

All of this is too good to keep to myself.  I'm starting to plan some summer community events, including our Country Kids party.  Stay posted, we hope you will be able to join us this summer!

(More) Snow

These pics are from the last storm, but they weren't posted yesterday as planned because the storm wiped out our internet.  We didn't lose power though, so all is well. We got something like 3-4 feet of snow in 9 days... or something crazy like that. It's mighty beautiful out there.

 Country roads...