Pretty excited!

I've finally started back to work and have some income.  It's not much, but it's all going toward the house and land.  This weekend is totally dedicated to clearing the pasture.  I had planned on spending this weekend bush hogging and then maybe in a month getting some fence, a couple rolls at a time.  Then eventually bringing in some run in shelters and a barn.  And then maybe later in the summer or early fall getting some donkeys and goats.  The beauty of having them is they'd help keep the pasture from getting over grown again.

Then today a friend asked me if we would be interested in adopting a mini donkey family.  Oh my gosh!  I have always adored those tiny little things but never thought we'd be able to drop that kind of money on something to keep as just a pet.  Hubby and I talked about it.  How quick can we fence and get in shelter for them?  How much will they eat and what will it cost us?  Do we need to hire someone to transport them here?  Will they need their feet done when they arrive or have the owners already had the farrier out?  So many questions!  But we did decide that as long as the owners can give us a couple weeks, we'll put a rush on this and get it all done.  So in the next couple weeks we will be adding a momma, daddy and baby mini donkey about six months old to our family!!!

On a side note, two weeks ago I stopped at the local second hand construction type store.  I scored myself a small cabinet with a door and drawer and a lazy susan that's in near perfect shape for a total of $30!!  Other than the baking table and the bar / desk area across the great room, it's all I needed for the kitchen.  I also grabbed three tables for a total of $25 and one of them is big enough to be the base to the baking table, so my kitchen is so close to being done!

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the terribly over grown pasture land before bush hogging.  Once we get it done this weekend, I'll try to hop back on Monday morning and post the after photos!

What type are you?

I swear, Facebook is the root of all evil.  I think about things way too much because of crap that is posted there.  Tonight my near life long best friend posted a recipe for a gluten free brownie with cheesecake topping.  It looked like something I'd try.  I'm not into the gluten thing but if it's nummy, I'd still eat it.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not a glutinous pig by any means.  I try to eat healthy, going as far as growing my own garden full of non-GMO foods and raising chickens for eggs and meat.  This year we're adding in turkeys at least and possibly some pigs.  Eventually I'd love to add in cows.  I make almost all of my own breads, including hamburger / hot dog buns, bagels, english muffins, doughnuts, etc.  I bake all of my own cakes and brownies and cookies from scratch.  Nothing in this house comes from a box or pre-made and frozen.

Anyway, a 'friend' of hers, who's name is 'Working Out' (OMG dude, seriously??  *gag*) and who's profile photo is of a male torso posted that he was unhappy that she posted it because it looked good.  Good grief.  I told her to go make the damn brownies and enjoy them.  People need to stop being so ridiculous about food and learn how to eat in moderation.  Well, his answer was that I probably wasn't going into the male stripper business (um, don't you have to have a penis for that?  *scratches head*) and that you either 'eat tasty or look tasty' and he was choosing looking tasty.

OMG.  Ok, first of all, I can honestly say this is someone I would never, ever, ever, ever consider being friends with.  Ever.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm all about being healthy.  I think a healthy diet and working out are both good things.  IN MODERATION.  I also think that if you're putting all your eggs in the 'I'm hot' basket, you're going to wind up doing no more than collecting a bunch of rotten eggs in your life.  And I have nothing about exotic dancers / strippers of either sex.  It doesn't affect my life so I don't care.  We should all do what makes us happy.

But this guy reminds me of the girl that works at our local WalMart.  You can tell in her day she was positively adorable.  Cute little fake boobs (no, trust me, totally fake and no way to deny it), slender, pretty bottle blond hair and obviously has had some facial reconstruction.  Probably in her 50s and for her age she still looks cute enough. But again, she's in her 50s and working in WalMart.  Why?

Because she wasn't the trophy wife her husband needed for his career.  See, people like that marry someone that they think others will envy.  Then they take them to a doctor and have them all cut up and put back together in what they feel is the 'perfect' person to further add to another's jealousy.  The problem is, the relationship is based on one person's need for others to be jealous of beauty and all beauty fades.  Since she banked all she had on him supporting her and never did a think with her BRAIN, once her youth ran her course, she was traded in like a 1973 Dodge.  Hubby needed one of those new Camaros.

It left her with two options.  She can either trade down and find herself a well off 80 year old man who will take care of her for the little time he has left or she can go it alone.  But again, no career, probably no real friends because they were all just like Working Out and concerned about looks, she wound up as a cashier at WalMart.  And there's nothing wrong with being a cashier at WalMart.  I worked at a KMart while my kids were little.  But it's a far cry from that life she used to live when she was younger.  And it's what's facing Working Out, and I fear my long time best friend, and that makes me very sad.

I've found in my few years of life that we all get older.  As we get older, even if we work out and eat well, our bodies will show that age.  It can't be prevented unless you pay a butcher to hack up your body, sucking out fat and pumping in potentially dangerous materials.  And even then, time will still take it's toll and you'll be right back under the knife.

I've also found that when you live your life in a way you think is good and you're good and kind to others, you'll find a good class of people to share your life with.  Friends, significant others, even your children.  The beauty of people like that is they don't care what number is on the tag on the back of your jeans.  They don't care if you live in a mansion.  Doesn't matter what you drive.  I'm not saying don't get a job or don't pay your bills or don't eat right and try to be healthy.  I'm saying all things in moderation.  I'm saying we need to be focusing more on making REAL connections with the people in our lives, not connections based on looks.

I am always puzzled by those that are more concerned about looks though.  And don't get me wrong; I strongly support every person living their life in the way that makes them happy as long as it's not hurting anyone else.  But if you live simply for vanity, what do you think will happen when age does start to show?  Where will the 'friends' and spouses be?  Don't they worry that they'll be traded in by the current spouse so they can upgrade to a 'newer model'?  Or does it not cross their mind maybe?  Can you just truly make yourself believe that you will be the only person on the planet that's capable of fighting off the aging process?

I guess I just prefer a less stressful life.  I don't have to worry about aging because I know I wasn't made a wife because I was little and cute.  I married my best friend who knew the real me.  I gain weight, I lose weight, it's always changing.  I don't think I ever get over weight to the point I'm gross.  Sadly, I have been under weight to the point it was pretty gross though.  That was solved when I left the ugly appearance based relationship I was in and started dating my now husband.

It's made life better.  I'm not saying there aren't struggles.  I'm saying I no longer have nightmares about weighing 500 pounds because I had a cookie after dinner.  I'm saying I no longer feel that if I'm not working out an hour or two a day that I'll be confused with a whale and be rolled back into the ocean.  I'm saying that no matter what happens, I'll always have my real, true friends and my husband by my side, cheering me on and supporting every aspect of my life.  I don't worry that I'll wind up in a car accident that leaves me deformed in a way that leads to a divorce because my spouse doesn't want to be seen with me.  There's a lot of peace of mind that comes with not being vain.  And it makes me very sad for those who live their life around it.

I hope my friend, and even the unknown Mr Working Out, both figure that out before they wind up 50 years old and working as a cashier at WalMart.

A new career, a new direction

Other than an ugly stint for a local rural county here that was horrifically bad (typical small town USA), I've been unemployed for three and a half years.  I've applied for jobs that I was so ridiculously over qualified for that it just wasn't even funny.  And I wouldn't even get calls for interviews with them.  I applied for jobs doing the same accounting work I'd done for nearly four years and had amazing reviews and references for, only to be told I need to go back to college and get a degree in that field to prove I can do the work.  Apparently doing that specific work for a global full service high end company for years isn't proof enough.  Makes no sense to me.

I finally decided that I'd really have no choice but to go back to school in some form.  I needed a career change.  Law enforcement here in the small counties doesn't hire anyone outside their good ol boy network.  And I wasn't going back to school for years to get a CPA degree to do what I already knew how to do.  And quite frankly, accounting is pretty darn boring anyway.

Because I've been caring for my husband all these years that I've been unemployed, and found that I really, truly enjoy being a caretaker, I chose nursing.  Aside from the stated, it's one of those careers that no matter how bad the economy becomes and how bad things are, they'll always need medical personnel.  Our daughter worked for a local nursing home a couple years back and I knew they did training for the basic CNA course if you work for them for a year.  So I went and applied late last year.  I got a call asking if I was interested in the position and told them I'd need to make sure there was someone to care for hubby during my classes, but if there was I'd definitely be interested and I'd call back.  I called back half a dozen times and never got an answer or call back.  It was very frustrating.

Then almost a month ago I got a call as I was leaving a home visit for a foreign exchange student that I'm coordinator for.  It was the nursing home stating there was a class coming up in March and wanted to know if I was interested.  This time I didn't make the mistake of hesitating.  I said yes right away.

So I've been in class since the first week of March.  It's a CNA position.  It's not glamorous by any means and being on the floor for eight straight hours is killing me.  By the time I get home my feet hurt so bad I could cry and my legs, arms and back are super stiff.  BUT it's a step in the right direction.  I'd hoped to attend the two year RN course this fall at UT Chattanooga, but after talking to a lot of nurses I realized that it's so intense that if I went that direction I'd have to give up work and put all of my life into that class.

Now, two years in school vs four years in school is nice.  BUT if I take a four year course I come out with a higher degree and because it's a slower pace, I can work while I do it.  So it definitely is a much better option for me.  The bonus?  TTU in Livingston has the courses.

We've been looking at a large tract of land up near the state line that's about 45 minutes from where the classes would be.  It's a small town we'd be living in and it's close to where hubby's doctors are all at anyway.  The bonus?  It's only an hour and a half north of where we are now, which is also an hour and a half north of where the two girls and our grandbabies live, so we'd be close enough to still see them on a regular basis.  Up until we found this land and this RN course we'd been looking at land in KY and WV.  I'd wondered many times how in the world I'd handle moving away from them.  Now it feels like everything is just falling into place.

We're going to drive out to where the land is next week.  There's no road that actually goes to the property, which is the hold up on buying it.  They're trying to get a right of way issue resolved since it sits behind two other people's pieces of property.  The realtor did say that we can park at the creek though and walk the creek edge back into this property to see it.  From the photos it looks like there's a big rock cliff on part of the land and aerial photos from Google show a couple places where the creek branches off and runs through the land.  A huge bonus for us!

So the current plan is to finish up the work that needs to be done to the farm here.  We'll get the basics done - replacing carpet in three bedrooms, refinishing hardwood floors in a couple rooms, finishing tile and renovating the bathrooms and kitchen.  Do some landscaping and most important get some outbuildings and fencing put up so it can sell as a true small farm.  We'll be adding in some donkeys and maybe some goats and pigs once the fence is up since they'll help clear brush and turn the land to make it more fertile, all helping improve the value.  If we can use the pay I get from the nursing home job and pour it into this house and get a decent credit card through a home improvement store with a nice credit line and a small loan, we can get this work knocked out quick.  Once it's all done we've estimated that we should walk away with enough to pay for the land and a little used trailer to drop on it as a temporary living place for the time being.

Here are some photos of the land and the area:

Cave in the town

Downtown

Another abandoned old mine

The valley and river

Aerial view of where the land is

Courthouse

Map of where the land is (outlined in thin red lines)

River

Waterfall

River

Another cave

Rock bridge at the local park

View of the valley

Waterfall at the old grist mill

Pretty neat little area, huh?  It's full of rivers and creeks, caves and old abandoned mines, waterfalls and mountains and valleys.  Exactly the type of area we have been looking for.  And it's a HUGE tract of land for a very tiny price.  Probably because there's no electric lines close by so it'll cost a bundle to bring in electric.  And there's no public water or sewer but that's fine with us since we wanted septic and a well anyway.  We're also wanting to put up some solar panels and use as much solar as we can and only pull from the grid if there's an emergency.

I think we've also decided on the farmhouse.  It's not the cute little Florida Cracker Style home I wanted, but it does definitely fit in the area better and it's a better layout for us as far as fenced areas for the dogs (no wrap around porch where they could potentially jump a gate and get loose), as well as the brooder room for the poultry.  We've got a group of White Rock chicks right now and after having to keep them in our house the last month or so, I'm totally ready for a handy attacked brooder room.  It'll make life so much easier!

The garage will go at the back of the yard and we'll have an outbuilding along each side.  By connecting walls between the house and each of the outbuildings on each side and then from the outbuildings to the garage in the back it'll give us a nice private garden type area.  

Game plan right now is to get the house we're in now fixed and sold and buy the land up near the state line in the next year.  We also want to invest in a little piece of lake front property in northwest Florida in the Chipley area at the same time.  Then we plan on building the farmhouse at some point over the next five years.  Once we've recovered from the strain and stress of building that house, we're looking at building a small vacation cottage on the Florida lake front land that we can spend a couple months each winter living in.  This is the floor plan for the little cottage:

It will actually look like the house on the bottom left corner.  It will have cedar shake siding and a slate roof and functional shutters, which is what the photos are of.  I extended the loft to include a screened sleeping porch over the full size screen porch on the main level.  Since we'll be there in winter the weather should be nice (what we consider nice, not what those crazy ass Floridians think is nice!), so we could sleep on a bed out there.  I'm sure we'll also have friends and family coming up throughout the year.  The rest of the time it'll be a seasonal rental.  We'll place it with a property management company down there and use that money to off set the cost of ownership some.  It's small, but with a sleeper sofa in the living room and the loft and beds in the two bedrooms and the sleeping porch, it has the ability to sleep ten people.  Might even do a built in twin bunk over the sleeper sofa in the loft upstairs to add an additional person sleeping space.  I figured pre-teen kids might think that's pretty cool.

So, that's the current plan!!  Nursing career, here I come!  

And now maybe the TN / KY / WV house is changing too?!

Because things are never simple here!  I LOVE the floor plan for the southern house we want to build.  It reminds me of the houses on the island I grew up on in south Florida.  Hubby however told me the other day that he wants to have a farm house.  That he's always dreamed of a farm house with a big wrap around porch.  Well, crap!  How can I tell him no?  I chose both floor plans, but here and up north.  He did look at them and agreed he liked them.  But he didn't pick them.  So, here we go again.........

The new floorplan is for this:

Here is a rough sketch of the floor plan on the inside.  I'm still playing with the master bath and may wind up making the master bedroom larger and the bathroom smaller.  

I'll be playing with it a big.  I think we'll do ours with a basement that has a couple bedrooms, bathroom and a rec room.  Instead of upstairs it'll just be extra high ceilings on the main level with the two front dormers sitting over the master office and the den / library, which will be hubby's man room.  

But then again, we know how it goes with me right?  It'll be totally different in a month anyway!

The Maine house is no more

As we get closer to the point where we can seriously look for land and build our home in the south, we've been focusing on the floor plan for the Maine house and looking into permitting and such.  During that search we found out that Maine laws pertaining to stand your ground / castle doctrine / duty to retreat were pretty crappy up there.  Because we take our safety VERY seriously, it removed the possibility of a house in Maine from the table completely for us.

We did find that VT has great laws but it's not on the water.  NH isn't too bad, but prices are pretty steep and permitting and such is a bear.  So we're punting.

We extended our local search for land.  KY has awesome laws for gun owners / rights.  We've looked and found some nice pieces of land up there.  Maybe if we build our annual house there we can build in AL or FL for the winter if we build along the very north shore of the Gulf.  Gulf beaches are where I grew up, although they were WAY south.  It would kind of be like going back home.  And land down there isn't too very expensive.  Of course there are the permitting issues of course.  They rape you when you build in that state.  But if it's a small house, maybe it won't be so bad.

So, we're back to square one.  If we're not putting a home in Maine for the summer, we'll need to reconfigure where the primary home will be.  I'm really leaning toward northern east KY up near the Ohio state line.  Instead of going north for summer, we could go south for winter.  Time will tell, right?!

In the meantime we're working at getting our land and house here set up as a true homestead.  It will add greatly to the value of our home for when we sell, and be very useful to us in the meantime providing a garden, eggs, chickens, pigs, etc.  This is the logo we're looking at.

Maine house........more edits

It always bothers me when the only guest bathroom available is located inside another bedroom.  I know if I'm company I'd be a bit weirded out if I were staying at someone's home and they had a friend come over who needed to use a bathroom and to get to it they walked through the bedroom I"m staying in.  My husband is sick and because of it he sleeps a lot.  What if we were staying with someone and he was napping and their company needed to use the bathroom?

Anytime I'm looking at our floor plans I always try to put myself in the house and in several different situations to make sure the plan actually works in real life.  Because of that I didn't think this plan worked.  If it had a half bath some place on the same floor that would be a different story.  So I decided to fix it.

By removing the closet by the fireplace and relocating the water heater to the guest bath, I was able to use the old closet as the door way into the guest bath.  I relocated pretty much everything except the sink, which was scaled back to a smaller sink making room for the water heater by it.

The other option is to put the water heater in the pantry.  I'm not a big fan of a water heater sitting next to my canned goods, so for me the heater in the bathroom, while it means putting in a false linen closet which I don't like, actually worked better.

I also removed the side lights from each of the entry / exit double french doors.  I'm planning on doors with large glass inserts so the side lights aren't really needed.  It also freed up space where the stairs are to the loft.

Master bath lost a sink, but given that there truly won't be much company there and we'll only be in the house a few months of the year, I don't see a single sink in the master as a huge issue for us.  Most likely when we don't have company, one of us will use the master and the other will use the guest bath.  I also expanded the closets in the master bedroom.  The plan, for us anyway, works much better this way.

I also cleaned up the outside of the photo.  It originally was meant to be a four bedroom two bath floor plan and each of the bedrooms had french doors leading to the porches.  Cute, but the new design eliminated both of the front french doors, although in the photo they still remained.  It also had the center of the house on the main floor with just a set of windows.  So the windows were moved to the sides where the bedrooms are and the french doors relocated in the center of the house where they belong.  Now it's a more accurate representation of what the house will truly look like.

And the edits continue..........

Not many changes this time, but here is it.

Screened porch was added to the back deck.  Because the house will sit so high on the main level because of the walk out basement below there will be tons of steps down.  Because hubby is disabled I was trying to figure out how to correct that when hubby said, 'add a slide'.   Ok, chances of my then nearly 60 years old disabled husband sliding down a bright red plastic slide made me laugh a good half hour.  But then I thought, 'that would be so cool for the grandkids'.  The oldest will be 18 by then, but the others will be between 7 and 11; they'd LOVE that!!  So the stairs are moved to one side and a silly looking slide is on the other.  Even when the grandkids aren't around, I have a feeling that Gramma might be using it!

I also added the platform area in the Rec Room downstairs.  Still trying to decide how to do the patio off the Rec Room.  Thinking maybe it'll just be a small enclosed area under the upper floor screened porch with maybe a small tunnel to the side?  I don't know.  I'll keep working on that.

Last I finished up the second floor of the garages.  It'll be a studio for hubby.  He's got a lot of musical instruments and wants so badly to have a recording studio.  I don't know why.  I honestly don't think he will ever use it.  Seriously.  The friends he has that are also into music all live up north and I doubt they'll be flying in to play around with him in the studio.  But I can move all of his CDs and records and books and junk up there and get it out of my house.  So he's got it now!!

And yet more changes...........

We had a wicked little cold snap here.  Temps were a few degrees below zero.  The CHA in the house couldn't keep up with the cold outside.  I have no doubt that was partially due to do our eighty year old newspaper and old clothing insulation.  Oh, and the inch wide gaps between floors and walls and windows and doors.  It certainly wasn't helped by the fact that our only fireplace is DOA.

After living in what felt like an ice box for a few days, I started playing with the floor plan to the TN house.  Aside from upping the insulation big time, which we'd already decided years ago we'd be doing, I also changed some walls and doors and added a couple new fireplaces.  Now there is the one in the great room but also one in the master bedroom and one in the dining room.  It meant the nice french doors going to the master suite onto the back porch were replaced with a single french door and the door that went from the dining to the porch is now gone completely.  A small price to pay for knowing we'll be warm!

I don't remember what the last posting was that I had for this floor plan but I've also changed the stair case.  Instead of a formal staircase going to the Rec Room downstairs, I've put in spiral stairs at the front entry.  A half bath down stairs with the laundry facility and a built in bar.  Next to the bar will be a raised floor to put a pull out sofa bed on.  There will be a loft over it with a twin bed.  In the photo they've put it over a queen bed, but there's no reason it can't go over a sofa bed, right?

I also found the PERFECT hardwood floors to go in the bedrooms.  I'm sure they'll cost about as much as the rest of the house, but they are exactly what I've wanted my entire life.  If they're too pricey we'll just put them in the two rooms of the master suite but I'd really love to be able to swing them in the guest room too.  Seriously, how amazing are these??

Other ideas I thought were amazing that we'd like to incorporate, including a fireplace that has built in seating.  Can you imagine coming inside from the snow and being able to take a seat right at the fireplace?  Too awesome!

I found this great idea for empty space walls.  I'll incorporate it in the blank wall by the bar.  Perfect, right?

Again, given space allowance, I'd like to have this system built into where the sofa bed will be sitting.  One big drawer that pulls out a full size bed.  A drawer next to it for storage.

And last, the cleaning ideas.  Baseboard vaccuum slots so I can just sweep right up to them and kick a button and it'll suck all that dust and dirt and hair out of the house.  Laundry chutes built into the backsplash in the kitchen that will go to a garbage disposal system.  

Getting really excited about our house!  Now I just need that money........