A Year in Review

What a nifty app Timehop is, because I almost didn't realize that this week marks one year since we got our keys to our little home.

I must say, this year has absolutely flown by... definitely the fastest, busiest and most fulfilling year of my life. This time one year ago, my mind and my Pinterest was a flurry with ideas, tutorials and budgets galore... and as I look around me I am mesmerized, because this home, along with my amazing husband, is my dream come true. Yes, I will always keep on dreaming of what the future may bring (I'm 95% sure that our next home will be a yurt) but we are very comfortable that this house will be ours for many years to come.

This house made me realize many things...

• First, my husband and I are a great team. We may bicker along the way, but mostly we work great together and can accomplish anything (a bottle of wine can sometimes help).

• Along with an amazing group of friends and family, I can remodel a freakin house. Some of these details may be repeats but if you can't remember, when we bought this house it was a disaster. Besides the roof, pretty structurally sound, but filthy-dirty, grimy and weird smelling. The carpet was stained, the kitchen cabinets had a layer of grime that could be scraped off with a putty knife and something must have died in the refrigerator. By now means are we finished, but I must say that we've transformed this house into a pretty nice, cozy home that we love sharing with the people we love.

• I started that last point with "Along with an amazing group of friends and family" but really I can't say enough about the people who have helped us along the way. I am getting emotional typing this because the outpouring of love and help we received along this journey has been overwhelming. Our friends are (obviously) already awesome, but how many people can say that they have friends who would volunteer and actually want to help them remodel their new house?! We even had a few people say that even though it wasn't their own home, they too felt accomplished and fulfilled to watch and help with the progress that we made. I have the best squad that a girl could ask for and we 100% couldn't have done all of this without our amazing crew.

I don't want to keep blabbing but I feel like a ball of Grateful right now... tomorrow being Thanksgiving and all, it's hard not to. Today we had our first snow . It was just a dusting and we probably won't ever get more than that at our elevation... but as I brought my goats their evening alfalfa and scooped the slushy snow out of their feeding trough, I looked around at the amazing yellow oak trees glowing in the evening light and listened to the trees branches dripping all around me, I let out a sigh that was the tiniest bit a cry. You wouldn't think that something as simple as being here in this home, with the perfect man, in beautiful El Dorado county, in this awesome country of ours could make me so happy... but it does. I feel like that is where I belong and that this is the best time to be alive! 

Thank you friends, thank you family, thank you Mother Nature and thank you Universe for bringing me here, I am forever grateful.

Winterproof (Fall on the Homestead)

Summer turned into winter pretty quick around these parts. A few weekends ago, we were outside working and it was actually hot, the next weekend, it snowed in the Sierra's and we had our first fire in the wood stove. We were lucky to have the long summer to finish up the bigger outdoor projects that we had gong on, yet there was still a scramble the last couple of weeks to "winter proof" the homestead.

First off, the husband brought home some bark for the dog pin, we were hoping to minimize their opportunity to roll around in the mud (my dogs love the rain and prefer to bask in it) and so far, the mud has been kept at bay. Also, the small rock area that we installed for them turned out to a pretty good idea... for whatever reason the dogs are now doing 90% of their pooping on the rock. Pretty convenient!

Our biggest project for winter proofing, though, was pouring our patio! This was a big project that I can't say I had much hand in, we had a lot of help from our friends Justin, Chris, Ryan and my dad. The boys framed out the patio one weekend and then we had the concrete truck come the next. The concrete truck came early one Saturday morning and the concrete was in place within a few hours... for a group of guys who don't professionally pour concrete, they did a pretty good job. 

And of course, I had to throw in something fun, so I made everyone who worked on the project leave something behind in the concrete.

We plan to eventually stain the concrete ourselves but we aren't in any hurry to do so. Before the summer comes again, we hope to add some patio furniture and maybe even an outdoor fan, but until then, we will just enjoy the mud free area!

Another fall festivity... we had our annual Friendsgiving although I didn't take many pictures, the turkey and all the fixings turned great (per the usual) and there were babies and toddlers galore... so yeah, get ready for baby overload ;)

In goat world, my babies are putting on nice thick coats for the winter... my precious Willow had some dark fur come in and is also getting some pretty rad markings on her face. Sage is still crazy and all over the place and Jonesy is rocking a pretty tall mohawk on his back. The oak trees on our property are a beautiful gold right now and finally, the pretty green grass is coming back to the pasture! 

Tomorrow we are supposed to get our first snow but we are ready to hunker down and enjoy some real November weather! Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving week everyone!