Category: Here and there

Here it is! This is our super cozy movie room. We have had some wonderful movie nights here already and can’t wait for more. We went with a patriotic theme which was Husband’s suggestion and we all love it!

The bean bag was on my wish list and we just LOVE IT!

See the long wall behind the couch? We plan on putting all our favorite movie posters on that wall, but in a smaller version so we can fit LOTS of them. This is going to be our “cool hang out” place. We plan on starting some tween movie nights this winter and combined with the mini fridge, snack shelf, and bean bag, I think we’ve nailed it! The coffee table and school table can handle several board or card games at once which we will be testing out this coming weekend in our first Soup Night open house.

Up close shot of our canvases showing some epic/ pivotal times in American history.

We’ve done some reading aloud on the couch/bean bag with the fire place on and woah, it is warm! I do really miss our real fireplace, but I’m hoping we can have a fire pit outside someday, so we can still split wood and get that crackly fire experience.

Ha! You can see me in the reflection- hi! Note the huge bin of blankets- we got allll the cozy going on.

I think that’s all of the house for now folks. C did not want his room shown and the storage room is kinda boring. Once I get our workout room finished, which will be awhile, I’ll show it to you all. Until then, I’ll be giving updates on our activities learning our new area and a few recipes I’ve developed recently.

Cheers!

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Hello, friends. How has autumn been treating you so far? Maybe it’s doesn’t feel like fall where you are, but here the night temps are starting to drop to the high 30s, which is a pretty swift change for us. Temperature hasn’t been the only big change, we’ve gotten a pretty rough introduction to the high winds that Eastern Idaho experiences. Randomly during the day, although the weather report didn’t alert us, the wind became so extreme that it picked up my chicken coop, yep, the steel and heavy duty Omlet one, and rolled it across the yard. It didn’t stop there. It swept the extended aluminum run, which is quite large, across the yard, bent it like a paper clip, and flung it over a water spout, breaking off said water spout which proceeded to flood part of the yard. I was able to grab the run and stop it before it ravaged the neighborhood. Even then I had to sit on the ground gripping it so it didn’t take me with it. Needless to say, it was a pretty devastating situation. We’ve gotten things battened down better now we think. Pro tip: staking it all in the ground does nothing. The good news is: all the chickens are just fine- they didn’t even turn a feather.

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

L.M Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

We have been winterizing as quickly as possible between all our activities and the various repairs that the house needs. But despite that I still feel so busy that I can’t get everything done around here. I had hoped to have a fire pit built and some trees put in, but it looks like we won’t get to that till next fall. Along with being busy with work and school and the house, Chris and I are deeply involved with the leadership aspects of our extra curricular events, which is very fun, but very time consuming. I’m hoping with football ending, and our 4H club meeting less often, that we get a few more free evenings.

The kids and I have a goal to read The Lord of the Rings aloud over the next year. We’ve read The Hobbit last year, the whole Chronicles of Narnia the year before that, and we finished the whole Harry Potter series earlier this year, so I feel like it’s time! They can handle the density of it. I had contemplated doing the audio book version but… I feel like I would be tempted to turn it on and then do other work. I think this is the best way to keep it a bonding activity between me and the kids. However, ask me how I feel about that half way through The Two Towers. haha! I’ve already gotten a comment that my “Dumbledore voice and Gandalf voice sound a lot a like.” Well kid, I’m trying. I’ve only got so many old man voices in my repertoire. I’ve been able to reinstitute tea time to much general excitement. Lil C just loves setting out tea time, which buys me some points with her and some good read aloud time to the bigs. Usually, we plow through the school readings first then get to “the good stuff.”

(why is the clock crooked? Ugh)

Ah, yes. I forgot to mention, I turned 34 this month! It does feel strange. I don’t feel nearly as together and grown up as I imagined I’d be around this age. But I have some lovely role models here in the women I’ve met. They are quite admirable and I hope to learn a lot from them. As usual I was quite spoiled on my birthday. Husband got me several of amazing cast iron pans (the ones I’d worked on for ages to season got lost on the move! We think the guys didn’t pack them). He also got me this epic set of sourdough starter jars that measure the temp and growth of the starter. I’m quite official now.

I am hopeful to get another tour update soon: the tv room! It’s very different than the rest of the house because it was Husbands choice in the decor. I really like it! We look forward to hosting some tween movie nights over the fall and winter, as well as open house soup nights, so I imagine it’s gonna get quite a bit of use what with the weather being so snowy in the winters here. The big kids are very excited for all the happenings we’ve planned, hopefully we parents can keep up.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer, fires in the fall!

Autumn Fires- Robert Louis Stevenson

Decorating this room was one of my favorites because I’ve decided to fully embrace that I LOVE neutrals, and I’m going to implement that in our bedroom (Husband doesn’t really care what the room looks likes as long as it’s not a bunch of girly patterns, haha!) I sometimes get a lot of guff for decorating in so much white, grey, and brown, but these tones feel peaceful and clean to me, so that stepping into this room is instantly calming.

As you can see we still have a little buddy sleeping with us in here, her bed decor is totally throwing off my vibe, haha! When she snuggles into the middle in the wee hours all cozy, I know it’s worth it, and I really don’t mind. She will sleep in her own gorgeous room when she is ready, but for now, the adjustment to the new house is proving enough for her to cope with at the moment. Plus, I feel a little more secure having her close by in this big house- I feel like I lose the kids in it all the time.

That quote above our bed in from one of Husband’s favorite Luke Combs songs, and I got him the print for our anniversary (12 years!).

Our morning coffee nook that I just adore! This has been a bucket list item and I love it. Looking out at the back yard, and all that sunshine, AND hot coffee? I just *swoon*!

I got this wall mount for Husband’ s guitar last Christmas in the hopes that if the instrument was more readily available, he’d be able to play more- it’s worked! Now, he’s not quite singing me love songs over our morning coffee, but that’s okay, we make up for it by being the scourge of many a campground with our evening practice of duets…but that’s another story.

Big C assembled this desk totally by himself. It is so fantastic that he is so handy, he helps me a lot. I got the Celtic crucifix for Chris for Father’s Day and we had it blessed and it was such an epic blessing! I am so grateful for our priests here. The sign below I made myself (woot!) it says “I am with you always” which is my very favorite Bible quote.

You can’t go wrong with a couple of Anne of Green Gables quotes when you wake up each morning. I just love these quotes; “It’s been my experience you can nearly always enjoy things, if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” Yes! None of this waking up on the wrong side of the bed for me, happiness is a choice! The other says, “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” Maybe this quote is more fitting as a reminder before you go to bed, especially if you like to mentally doom spiral, like myself.

That’s all for today folks! I have just a couple more house tours coming up, before I start to document daily life and our plans for development in the back yard. I’ve got lots of ideas, but in the mean time- anyone know of any plants that love alkaline soil?

Cheers!

As a Friday treat you get a tour of two parts of the house! First up is the entry way from the garage. This is where we enter the house primarily.

This isn’t all our coats and such, the rest are in the garage on some storage racks C and I assembled so you’ll see that once I tour the garage. I’m working hard to make sure this doesn’t just become a “dump” zone, but better here than the kitchen.

Right off the entry is the laundry room- pretty great! What is not great is that we were suppose to get a washer and dryer on the 11th and it got pushed to the 20th now. Ah well, I’m getting lots of appreciation for our daily comforts by hauling everything to the laundromat a few times.

Next up is one of my very favorite tours I’ve been looking forward to! The SCHOOL ROOM!

Hallway to the basement. Check the sweet safe. The basement is open concept and is shared with the movie room. But! School room first.

C and A’s desks and our communal school table. Also peep Lil C’s tiny table to work at! C assembled the desks and all the chairs himself. He’s such a help. I am so excited to do school here!

Our awesome storage cubes! Best $50 ever spent.

Eee! I’m so excited for her adorable set up. She’s very excited to do her “work” she says.

All my school stuff fits in this closet. It is the absolute BEST. We also could fit all the games on the top shelf because I’m sure our school table will double as a game table. It has an extra leaf we can put in if needed.

This is for the movie nights, guests, and busy school days. I’ve wanted a snack bar for guests and movie nights since I started designing my future house at eight years old. Dream come true✔️.

This is two of the three of my “shelves of inspiration”. I was so excited to make these. It took a lot of time to find all the prints/art, I’ll tell ya. However, I’m not going to give you a closer look at what exactly they say/are. You’ll have to visit to see 😉.

We have our school binders all ready to go, and I’m nervous/excited to jump into 4th and 6th grade on Monday. Wish us luck!

Down the hall to the guest room is our big maps and our timeline for history this year. Last time we used this timeline C was so wee! Now he will be filling it out with A this year with pretty much no help from me. Time does fly. I’ll just go color with Pickle to assuage my mommy woes.
Boy, I’m so excited to finish the guest room which has been a labor of love, and… badada! The LIBRARY! Another bucket list house item since I was a little girl. Come to think of it, this house has a lot of those! I am so blessed!

That’s all for now folks. We have our first guests coming over this weekend, I’m excited to serve up some yummy healing food to our new friends to further christen the house. I’m sure it will help the wave of homesickness I’ve been battling this week. Have a wonderful weekend all!

P.s. Bonus picture of our new kittens, Tonks and Hermione❤️

I was in the middle of cooking dinner so decided to make the most of my time and take some pictures for you all of our new kitchen! It’s pretty fabulous and wowza, it’s big.

I’ve already got plans to ditch that microwave and put in a hood. Miss A suggested a mosaic of bread baking too- I love the idea!

Folks, I’ve got a PANTRY. Dreams do come true😍!

AND room for cookbooks!? So blessed. I’m not gonna lie, some of the cabinets annd drawers are actually empty or very close to it because this kitchen is so much bigger than our last one. However, to my undying shame, I already have a junk drawer. Woe.

You know things are going well when there are full homemade granola containers, fresh eggs (the chickens are home, YAY!!) and spruce tip beer brewing.

My view for dish washing. You can see the hens and Lucas in the distance. I’ve got big plans for this yard I can assure you. First, I’ve gotta figure out this alkaline soil situation. Any ideas? I’m thinking all container and/or raised beds.

Well, that’s the kitchen ya’ll! I’m already working some yeast magic here as you can see above, so that must be a good sign, right?

Cheers!

I’m so excited for the girls to each have their own room. Their age gap is five years which at this point, merits some space so we opted to not have them share a room. Miss A decided to go with a more grown up theme, which as bitter sweet as that is, I’m charmed to see her sense of style develop. I still have a lot of creative control for Lil’ C’s room, yay! Luckily, she folded on her room being “alll black” because she’s decided that her favorite color is not only black now but also pink. Come see their lovely rooms!

Can you tell I’m excited to embrace the swan/ballerina theme for our Little Swan!? C approved of the crown on her canopy naturally, haha.

Okay, that hammock chair is THE BEST for book reading to Pickle. It is probably the coziest seat in the house.

So. Much. Storage. 😍

Before I forget! Here is the hall to the girls rooms. We put all the birth frames and rulers here together because I didn’t want C’s all alone downstairs. Without further ado, here is Miss A’s room!

“I need a seat to look out the window while I write my book mom”, you got it girl!

Although it wasn’t her favorite, I think that little shelf is perfect for A’s trophies and special things. She asked for the icons over her bed especially. 🥰

She didn’t want any “pink” but asked for “mint and rose” colors in her room. I like it! She’s got great color instinct, makes sense; she is our resident artist.

Heirlooms. Soon to be closer to home, as A is starting harp in addition to continuing piano this fall.

Again, much untapped storage which I’m sure to be extra thankful for in the teen years.

She really wanted a cork board for all her special things from friends, mementos, and photographs. She also really likes having a calendar to know what’s coming up.

I hope you liked this tour of the girls rooms!

We’ve been in the house we purchased for one week and I am super proud to say, there is only ONE box left to unpack! It helped that we packed up only 1200 sq feet and now those possessions occupy over 3500 sq feet; so much storage everywhere! I’ve had a blast decorating and making this house home. I was particularly determined to get things set up so that the kids could really start settling in. I’ve made bread, granola, and marshmallows so it’s just about home, all it needs is a spruce tip beer fermenting on the counter (coming this weekend!).
I am so anxious to share the house with all of you, so here is the first peek. And I do really mean a peek. Before I am able to take pictures, obviously I have to clean up a bit (believe it or not my house is not spotless 😜) so I plan on going through the house one room at a time. Here is our living room!

Pictured is the view right when you walk in the front door. You can sneak a peak of our dining room table to the right.

Over the gas fireplace is some decor and family pictures. I like it, but maybe it’s a bit crowded? I’ll muse on that. To the left is our icon corner.

The space to the right is eventually going to have a harp in it. Aren’t we blessed!? Azelie is starting harp this fall. Yay!
To the left of the icon corner is …

Oh, how excited we all were, especially Caidoc, to get the piano back! I’m excited that this is a music room AND living room. It’s going to work so well for gatherings and supervising practicing. To the right of the piano I am planning on putting the … cello! Extra super blessed! Caidoc is starting cello this fall as well. Aren’t we lucky to have so much music in the house?
That is all for now friends! Remember, you’re always welcome to come visit.

Cheers!

Well, I did it again.

I typed a lovely Christmas letter and then promptly got over whelmed with running another theater camp (Beowulf!), schooling my kids, and traipsing to all their activities that I completely ignored my blog. I tried to write a couple times, seriously, but it just didn’t make it all the way to publishing. I’m here now though, to update you all on a very huge step our family has taken.

We’ve moved to Idaho Falls.

Does that seem random? It kinda was. Husband has been job hunting for some time, and we knew we wanted our kids in a more wholesome environment but we weren’t quite sure where that was. But, after Husband prayed a novena to St. Joseph, he got offered this job here at Idahoan Foods, on the feast of St. Joseph. It felt divine so up we packed, and a month later, showed up in Idaho Falls knowing no one, never having been here before, and knowing next to nothing about the place. Husband and I are not ones for huge spontaneous decisions, but this wasn’t really that; we truly believe we’ve been sent here by God. For what reason? I’m sure we will find out.

It’s been two weeks so far of Chris loving his new job, and the whole family throwing themselves into finding some roots. The journey to get here was quite exciting and I am blessed that we had so much help. I still find myself staring outside and wondering what the heck we are doing here but everything will be okay as long as we have each other. I tell the kids that when they mention that they miss home; “what made our house a home was the people we shared it with” and I hope that helps, at least, it’s what helps me. So, while we continue this adventure of setting up our lives here in Idaho, please think of us- send prayers, good vibes, what have you. I will try and keep the blog more updated on our lives here in Ida-home, while we navigate this leap of faith.

I am infinitely blessed to have been in this glorious life for 33 circles around the sun. I do not take it for granted.

I’ve really got it all. I am so thankful for every moment.

Cheers to 33!

I’m watching my chickens hustle around foraging in the yard and I can’t help but admire their industriousness. Everyone likes to joke about how dumb chickens are but they are actually very intelligent animals. Did you know they can recognize up to 100 human faces? And it’s suspected they have names for each other? It didn’t take me long to figure how smart they are as soon as they left their brooder and we had to keep them contained outside. Despite having food available to them 24/7 their foraging instincts are so strong we’ve found our most rascally chicken scaling the fencing with her legs! They also come when called, which is very handy.

Watching the chickens be so self sufficient inspires me. Any time I try another project to experiment with self reliance I am always astonished at how much work it is. It is a good idea for me to read books about farmers and their experiences because it is sobering to say the least.

While I may not be self sufficient I am happy with the baby steps I’ve been taking to use the land we have more effectively; slowly transforming our large spaces of grass into something that will produce food or medicine. After all, lawns are gross waste of space, water, and money. The biggest issue I face in is process is the quality of our soil. I’ve always container gardened or brought in outside dirt for my raised beds because there is no way of knowing what our soil was treated with in the past.

Many chemicals used to kill ”weeds” stay in the soil for decades. I am sure our soil is very poor, since it cannot retain water well and is hard as a rock. I’ve been reading a book my mom recommend called Dirt to Soil which has put the breaks on me taking a tiller to the whole yard because it would destroy the soil’s natural microbIology, but since I bought myself some organic tillers a few years ago, but I’ve decided to put them to more effective use.

Chickens are the best tillers in the world. Now that the fall has rolled in with the smoke here in Western Washington, the kids are not outside much- a perfect time for me to experiment with the yard. The goal is to have the chickens till the whole yard slowly over the course of the fall, then once the rains and snows hit, they will go back to their ”winter pasture” and the soil has the chance to deep soak all the moisture nature provides. If the chickens till and fertilize effectively, the soil should be primed for the microbiology to make a better come back. We have a good amount of grass and clover intermixed, but if I am able to add in more diversity, our soil will be able to heal which means, it will be useable soil. I experimented with this method last fall, but I made a mistake and didn’t rotate the coop frequently enough. The grass came back really well despite the ravaging chickens. I didn’t water it even once this summer and it is just now (at the beginning to September) starting to turn brown. This tells me that it held moisture okay, but it could be improved.

Forests never get watered in this part of the state, and they stay lush and green all year. So, by letting the chickens do their thing again this fall, and adding more plant diversity to the soil, I hope to be able to keep a kid and chicken friendly “yard” while being able to produce more food AND have the space be attractive to the eye. Totally reasonable right?! Ha ha! While I’m not sure how long it will take to achieve my end goal, I have already had such success seeing more green in the past year that I can help but feel hopeful. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

I hope your fall is off to a wonderful start. Our schedule is about to get more busy with our extra curricular activities, so I’m soaking up these last few days of a slow paced week. And of course, taking all the extra time to squeeze in all the homesteading projects! Here is to a industrious autumnal season.

Happy Fall Ya’ll!