Today is Our 1 Year Move-In Anniversary

Today is our 1 year move-in Anniversary, and as for our Homestead Updates:
The grass is thickening up real nice. Wayne built a wood shed(and filled it up already), 2 garden beds, a gravel box around the hose, extended the tiny home's deck an extra 2 feet, and started on a new fence. We bought over 100 pine trees to get things filled in nicely again too. The inside of the home got all new living room furniture, and a chopping block for our kitchen island. Sweet Liberating Progress.

This is our Before photo:

Old photos are refreshing. They remind us how far we have come, and I hope the photos I took today will be reminders of what this place 'used to look like' as well.

Our next projects are a new lower 200 sq ft deck, re-siding the lower part of the house with stone paneling, getting dirt delivered to level out and bury tree debris(so we can replant new trees), build 2 more garden planters, and 1-2 more wood sheds. Lastly fixing our gawd awful driveway.
The plans are endless, but chipping them away one thing at a time.. We get a lot done real quickly!

HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY NEW CASA! Cheers to many more!

Our 5 Year Anniversary

Wayne and I are not married.. You wouldn't know it though based on how we spent our 5 year anniversary. We wanted to take a trip somewhere.. But the weather sucks. So we thought we would hold off on that, and maybe just do dinner and a movie. We haven't been to a movie in a long time. Just before we were supposed to get ready to leave.. We started talking about what we need to do around the houses, and to improve the yard. Basically how to get rid of some of this mud/dirt. We got all excited on these ideas.. We were going to take our DAY OLD truck to the store and buy the supplies that we need for the new projects. That's right.. We just bought a new (old) workhorse truck, and spent our 5 year anniversary in the lumber yard! I kill me. I brought a camera with us, because I thought that our hilarious 5 year anniversary should be documented.. Our house and ideas are too important to care about a silly date that we were only going to go on because we "had" to do something for our anniversary. I say... Just plan a trip! I like to look forward to things!
For now we work, and get joy out of the action of improving our landscape.

We completed our gravel walkway!

..and a retaining wall for the driveway. We had gravel delivered to level it out, and get rid of the mud! Yay, progress! I am also planting new grass, and we got a wood splitter to help us out with all of this wood! The loggers said they guess that we have 40 cords of wood.

Romantic..

A New Start

I must admit.. I have been in hiding. I have been trying to figure out how to make this post for a couple of weeks now. Here goes!
Our property is covered in old growth doug fir trees(150 yrs+). The house was build literally surrounded by trees, and they have been untouched until today. We made the decision after our recent, and frequent wind storms. The trees surrounding the house's had to go for our safety now and in the future. Living so close to these massive trees made the house feel like a modern tree house. Now we have a mountain cabin, and the landscape is getting a new start. The previous owners were not smart about the trees. They topped a lot of them for satellite TV. So the trees grew back deformed, and top heavy. All of the trees fought for sunlight too. So the majority only had foliage on the tops, which also makes the tree top heavy.
We want to be smart this time around for future generations, but this means we are in for the long haul. We have our work cut out for us that's for sure. The cleanup is going to take some time, but we are damn determined.. This is our home. It will get done as soon as humanly possible. Once complete - I say it is time for a good long relaxing vacation! :)

But on the bright side (literally) we have tons of light for our garden, and for the trees to grow properly. We also now have a lake and mountain view!
This is our livingroom view before:

and after:

Our First Wind Advisory at the Homestead

Wayne and I were entertaining guests that had just arrived at our house when a wind storm picked up. There was so much debris in the yard, and I said, "Whoa this is crazy!" Then Wayne suggested they bring the cars closer to the house. As soon as he said that 2 trees fell knocking over a 3rd tree and one of them dented our guests rental car. The guys instantly went to work clearing out the driveway.. The ladies and I stood watching from the window. It was how I imagine hurricane winds to be. I saw Wayne start running towards the house and I looked out at the wind directly head on. The debris was blowing down and back up at the house hitting the windows. We looked out at the yard and saw another tree had fell. We all felt in danger. The only thing I could do was watch where the wind was coming from, and watch the trees. If I saw one coming towards us we were going to run to the opposite side of the house. The whole experience was unreal. We expect that we had 40+ mph wind gusts. Our guests wanted to get out of here ASAP! It was going to be dark soon, and they wanted to be able to see the roads and be able to call us to meet them if there was something that fell on the road. I insisted on staying at a hotel if this kept up. No way in hell I would be able to sleep seeing what we just saw. Trees are snapping like twigs! Somehow as our guests left so did the wind. What are the chances?! We are QUITE embarrassed by their experience of our property.. 

The tree we thought fell in the yard was actually half of the top of this tree below. 

On the plus side:

We have TONS (literally) of new firewood!

Also Kola brightens things up a bit. She doesn't have the slightest clue as to how much work this storm has caused us, but she is just filled with joy that we were all outside and able to throw toys for her in between hauling, raking, and cutting the debris & trees. She helps us take mental breaks from the work and keeps us laughing.

What a goober pants! ♥

Around The House

I have neglected the blog lately. This happens time to time, but I am getting back into things. I just needed a little break. I have still been documenting everything as usual. I guess I havn't found too many things to be very exciting. My shop tanked for a while and is now picking back up. I am sure that has something to do with my 'mojo'. Nobody wants to read a blog filled with excuses - so lets get to it!
It has been a pretty dry fall so far. One of those rare ones.. Unfortunately as I write this there is a storm over head. One of the first gusts of wind last night knocked a tree over into our driveway and through the fence that Wayne built. I must say that is a little scary since winter isn't even here yet.

Wayne has been cutting trees down left and right trying to get a good supply of wood ready for winter. It is expected to be a cold one.

I have been putting my rain boots to work in the last couple of months. I do not go outside in any other shoes except when leaving the property. In that case those are my "city shoes". I think I may be asking Santa for some Hunter boots this year.

Hard at work making a custom sign next to the fire.

This photo kills me.. Wayne and Kola hugging it out. Our 40 pound pup looks more like 100 pounds here.

Do not ask. I do not know. We had several of these massive mushrooms, and literally could have had a mushroom festival here in our yard. I actually bought the book Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest to try to figure out what some of them are. A lot of them look the same really..

This is what breaks look like on the homestead.

I could go on forever with photos that I have documented over the last month or two. Sounds like I have some blog post catching up to do! Check back soon!

Cabin Update: The Cabin Interior is Finished!

In my last cabin update I said that Wayne was working on figuring out some custom shelving for added storage. He made a kitchenette/desk, and we put a shelf in the "closet" that had sitting around looking for a home. It worked out perfectly.

We found a loveseat sofa bed sleeper that folds out into a double size bed, a mini refrigerator, and some small kitchen appliances, Also found some matching curtains for all of the windows.

Now for the deck! Wayne finished the deck in 2 days( I love this man.)!

You can see how much our weather changes from day to day!

And the moment we have all been waiting for.. The move-in!

Next Wayne will be building some steps down to the lawn. The stepping stones and "ramp" off the edge are temporary because of all of the recent storms we have had!

I am happy everything is finally coming together! ♥