Baseboards and Such

Hello again! Like I said in the previous post, we have definitely been taking our time finishing up the inside of the house these past couple of months.We finally got the baseboards installed and they weren't as much of daunting task as I thought they would be. Don't get me wrong, cutting and installing baseboards isn't fun by any means, but we got the task done over two nights after work and despite many incorrect cuts, we literally didn't waste a single stick. In fact, we have enough pieces left over to use on the spare room in the shop wen we do decide to tackle that project. So yeah, the baseboards went smoother than I thought and all that's left on those is to do some touch up painting where we nailed them in. (No pics on those yet, first of all, baseboards aren't super exciting to look at and second, we still need to do touch up paint!)

We have a few more small paint projects... still need to paint the door trims (which should be a one night job) and we still plan on painting the interior of our front door black (the husband's idea, and I think it's a grand one). Other than that, our last big project left (for now) is the shelving in the kitchen. We've procrastinated on this long enough so I'm really hoping to start that soon. We did by the lumber for the shelves, but after bringing the wood home, I decided that it was too thin for my liking and so we plan on searching the lumber yards around town for some thicker options.

James installing the new doors and frames

Me painting

But on a more exciting note, we finally got the exterior of the house and shop painted and they look great! We went with the medium toned gray (my favorite color) and a bright red front door (apparently kosher with feng shui for a south facing front door). Our friend Russ (with Russell E. Schader Painting) did an awesome job on everything and finally the outside of the house is up to par with the inside! Russ also gave our deck a coat of stain and it too looks great! (Sidenote: before Russ painted he pressure washed everything and our deck looked amazing after being cleaned... I couldn't believe the difference in color of the wood before and after, I wish I would've gotten pictures of that because it blew my mind) Oh and if you need a refresher on what the house looked like before, here ya go!

We are just loving that everything is really coming together just in time for the insanely busy summer ahead... which brings me to what I think will be a small shift in the direction of the blog. I plan to keep posting about all of the updates that we will be doing to the house and property (probably for years to come) but I also plan to start posting a little more about our personal life and especially on all of the fun trips and activities that we have planned for this summer. Our calendar is almost completely full for the next 3 months already so the work on the house is definitely going to slow down, but that doesn't mean that we are going to! 

Our home has been my focus for close to a year now... it was around this time last year that we decided that we wanted to put our last house on the market and ever since then our lives have been a whirlwind. We've been so so busy and it has been an absolute blast, but it is going to be so nice to be able to just relax and enjoy some free time. (And yes, by "enjoy some free time" I actually mean use that free time to plan out the warm months fully into the fall).

I think that I chose the name "Chasing Foxtails" for this blog because it didn't limit me to just writing and sharing about our house, it was more about chasing our dream of living in the hills and therefore leads to all of the things we've wanted to do. We plan to grow a garden and harvest our own fruits and vegetables, we also plan to grow and harvest our own meat one day, we plan to have chickens and baby goats and a mini dairy. We plan to travel, to see the parts of this state we've never seen, as well as other side of the world. Three of our best friends are pregnant right now.... THREE... and one just gave birth to twins this week! We have babies to meet and  and we plan on having our own to add to the lot not too far down the road... there is just WAY too much to be excited about and I can't help but want to share it with the world. Social media is too small of a platform to share on (and can also be pretty irritating sometimes) so I hope that everyone who has taken the time to read my blog up until now can give up some house and take in a little more of our adventures we plan on going on!