Our beginnings...

In 2009, we bought our first home. After living with Josh’s parents when we got out of the Navy and a couple of years of apartment living, we decided that it was time to look into buying a house. We started our search online and found a neat little house in Lowell. The realtor for that property was a man named John Cremer. Once we contacted John and asked to see it, we decided that it was a nice house, but not exactly what we were looking for. We continued working with John to find the perfect house.


In the winter of 2008, we received an email from John about a property that he had just purchased and he thought that it was exactly what we were looking for. In the email he gave us the address and told us to come out and look at it anytime. The next day, Wednesday, we decided to check it out. As we are driving slowly down the road, we were quiet, lost in our own thoughts. After coming over a slight hill, we see the house. We both looked at each other and said out loud, “This is it.”

We pulled into the driveway to find John’s car and a slightly beat up pickup truck. After getting out of the truck we walk into the garage to find the two men. John introduces us to the other man who is the mason. John walks us into the dining room and then starts a quick tour of the house. I was sold on the first look of the bedroom. Josh was sold on the first look of the land.

One of my main “things” was that the master bedroom had to be large enough for our bedroom set. We have a California King bed, 2 nightstands and a large dresser. We had many issues with our furniture in the apartments due to its size. I was not going to sell my bedroom set so therefore the bedroom had to be big enough.

Josh just wanted space. He didn’t want neighbors so close that you could spit and hit their house. He wanted to be out in the country.

Needless to say, no one else looked at the house. We told John that day that we wanted to start the paperwork right away. Four months later, the house and land was ours.

The house we purchased is an 87 year old three bedroom, one bath cottage on 5 acres at the Caledonia/Dutton border. It has two barns and a ton of potential. Since moving in 3 years ago, we haven’t done nearly as much as we thought we would have had accomplished by this time. Josh and I both have full time jobs that keep us away from the farm for substantial amounts of time during the daylight hours. Most of our “upgrades” have been done at night or on the weekends when Josh and I aren’t working.

Regular posts coming...

Josh and I have started documenting our lives as we start to make our farm into a self-sufficient farm. I have been writing "chapters" as each new event happens. Josh told me to start posting these for others to read and so everyone (who actually wants to) can follow us and what we are doing with our house and land.

I plan on trying to post a "chapter" every Tuesday.

I really hope that everyone likes them.

Enjoy!

My insane life...

So, I finally got the internet back thanks to Virgin Mobiles Pre-paid thingy. It works awsome and I highly suggest it to anyone who doesn't want a contract. Okay, now that I've done my public service annoucement for today, let me tell you how different and spastic my life has become.

My job: I started working at Wendy's in April of 2011. In December of 2011, my store had a fryer fire and was shut down for almost a month. I transfered to another store just down the road. I am going back to my store at the end of this week.

My critters: I still have my 3 cats, Landon, Liam and Bella. I now have 4 dogs. George and Daisy had 11 puppies in August and we were dumb and decided to keep 2 of the puppies (James and Jules). The others found new forever homes and are doing well. We dogsit for a friend every other weekend so on those weeks we have 6 dogs in the house. Those weeks are typically crazy, but the money comes in handy.

My house: We have finished remodeling the bathroom and it looks soooooo much better. There are still a couple of things that we have to do in there, but that is mainly touch up painting and trim work. We have now started on the 3 front rooms. 1 is a small closet, 1 is the front door entryway and the other is a small room in front of the bathroom. The layout is funky so we are going to tear out the doorways and make it all into one large room. Once we add the new closets, the layout will make alot more sense. We needed to do this anyways because there is/was little-to-no insulation in any of those rooms. This is one drafty old house. Insulation for those 3 small rooms would have cost us almost $100. Thank you to everyone who gave us gift certificates to home improvement stores!

My marriage: It's been almost 11 years since we were married and we are both still alive and kicking, so I'm assuming that we are doing something right! :) I still love him to death including the times when I would like to drown him in the bathtub. I have found, however, that he actually enjoys being "swatted" with a paint stick.

On that note, I'm going to locate a paint stick and chase my husband around the house. :) Enjoy your night everyone!