I sit down, I squirm and wiggle. I get up. I make tea, throw a load of laundry in, heat up my rice pack. I come back and sit and am still adjusting and fidgeting. I open my desk drawer. A disk with a green paper case looks back at me: ” Gavin’s skydive – June 30th, 2013. I debate if I should pop it in and reminisce on that day. No, I must practice discipline and write. But, it’s been so long. I don’t know where to pick up. I don’t know which projects should be promoted to being captured within the memory vault of this blog. I set…

Warmer weather & longer days have propelled us forward and pushed us into exhaustion nearly every night. I’m learning more intimately this truth every day: The only obstacle in-between dreams & reality is a simple answer: Work. Not until you don’t feel like it anymore. Not until there’s something more enjoyable to do. Work until you feel like you’re going to fall over. And then get up in the morning, and do it all again. It sounds intense. How could we really live like that? You want something bad enough, that’s what it takes. This is a reference for myself of our Spring 2020 projects completed: We’re giving it all…

Guess where I am right now? Yes, it’s true. The library is officially complete and I’m curled up on the day bed with a mug of hot tea. Dreams do come true. But not without having worked for them. I can take a sigh of relief now that it’s over, but it’s been a journey to get here and it started all the way back in June of last year. If you’d like to rewind where it all began nearly 8 months ago, please refer to The Library Pt. 1-3. Working on this room has taught me a lot, both in renovating old walls and cultivating a renewed sense of…

Spent Friday night working on the walls in this room. I should say wall (singular) because that was my goal. One wall scraped clean and spackled. It’s ironic how something as simple as smooth walls can take so much effort to get there. I carried the little TV from our bedroom, made some tea, got some snacks and resolved to devote my evening to this task. Being without a cellphone currently left me unencumbered by the added heaviness that it possesses. I felt free to a certain extent and lost myself somewhere in the middle of balancing on a ladder and chipping away at the years that came before me.…

I think God has a sense of humor. As I begin to describe yet another component of this property, I think back to how I used to be before this endeavor. I was watching Tiny House Nation and contemplating if life could best be lived between the walls of 600 square feet. My grandparents were the opposite. So, the pavilion, as it’s known as, sits up to the pond. If you open up one of the back sliding doors, you could step out & fall right in. The intention being to build a deck off of it in the future. The vaulted ceiling is beautiful with cedar boards running length…

Four Saturdays, two Sundays and countless hours after work filling the days in-between to complete cleaning out underneath the grey house. I’d like to give a special thank-you to Gavin’s friends: Lenny, Tyler & Ryan for their help in moving many of the big, clunky objects and heavy furniture pieces. The following photos are a synopsis of what we found and how we started to organize everything . . .

Settling in to write this morning at 5:53 am feels like returning to an old friend. The quiet darkness before the dawn is a salve to my busy mind. I can take a deep breath and reunite with putting written words to this season of life. Gavin and I took a vacation to Florida earlier this month. Every day was a new adventure, just me and him: a long awaited honeymoon or a one year anniversary trip, I can’t decide what name to give it, but I’d like to capture each moment of sand and sun and carefree smiles and hold them close to my heart forever. We returned on…

I started with the first windowsill, using a small putty knife & sanding block to slough off the chips of paint. Next came wood puttying all of the holes, allowing it to dry, then sanding everything smooth. I caulked around the perimeter of the window & any gaps that remained. I looked over my work. Better. Two more windows to go. The following days, starting clockwise from that window, I began working on the walls. I realized quickly that the two strips of wallpaper that had come off easily before was not how the rest of it was going to be. My rose colored glasses began to wane. What have…

I anxiously turned the knob of the back door and stood inside. Light poured in from the opposite end of the hallway. It was in. The window had successfully been installed in less than two hours Gavin said. I walked closer and it grew larger until I stood at the entryway of the bathroom, gazing out through our new window. It was more than I imaged. This had been a dream of mine & there it was before my eyes. The original entryway to the home was officially reopened, displaying a beautiful view of the land around us. I think about all of the families that have come before us,…