living room :: revealed!

You've seen the RED dining room, our restful bedroom, the kids blue oasis, the sunny guest room ... but no living room. When I posted the original before pictures I didn't even include the picture of the living room. It's a small living room and isn't as impressive, in my opinion, as some of the other fun features of the house. In short: the living room was not a selling point. We still have work to do in the living room (a fireplace? shelves surrounding the big window with a window seat?), but it's better than it was. AND we have our sectional that we've been lusting after for years.

 

Spare Room :: Revealed

I wanted something bright and cheery with slight whimsy.
Sherwin Williams (we were quite frustrated with Benjamin Moore at this point) Optimistic Yellow fit the bill.
As you can tell it came across much darker in the room than on the swatch - which was my hope!
This is the sewing room (sewing?! What's that?!?)/guest room/spare playroom/greenhouse - an all purpose room :)

 

Our Bedroom :: revealed!

We always said we wanted a sage or grey/purple room.
Two rooms ago we had the sage, our last room we had grey/purple.
We were ready for sage again.
I thought I remembered it being Benjamin Moore's Saybrook Sage.
I was wrong.
But that's what on our walls and we're happy with the results.
I would like a slightly warmer green (I think this is too minty) but I don't dislike it enough to paint AGAIN!

 

What do you think?

Pictures :: hung

We have piles and piles of framed prints to hang.
It's overwhelming.
I started with this montage and it gave me courage to tackle a larger stack.

 

There's still a very impressive pile of pictures to hang ... but this is a good start.

dining room :: revealed!

Knowing from the walk through before moving to our house that the current wallpaper was busy and dark, I felt confident about a darker color in the south facing dining room.
We chose Benjamin Moore's Dinner Party which seemed like a perfect dining room name.



You know how when you buy a car and then start noticing that car everywhere (well, that hasn't happened with our scion xb, but you know what I mean), the same thing has happened with red dining rooms! Who knew? And I love how the color seems to go with EVERYTHING! I love it with the darker colored furniture and with every single thing we want to hang on the wall. I love this color so much - but with a healthy amount of self discipline I've resisted painting the entire house Dinner Party.

 

 

Painty Pants Be Gone!

 

Painty Pants have been through a lot with me. From the chicken coop, to the kids dressers and shelves (that we haven't used), to our original bedroom when we first moved, and every.room.in.our.new.house.
It was time.
To let go.
Say Goodbye.
So one last hurrah in the last room I painted - a picture to document the rips (many!) and the paint stains (even more!).
And then I hung them on the back of our bedroom door.
Because I'm not quite ready to say goodbye, apparently.


Internet update: still no internet.

7 moving tips

This is how I imagine our moving experience:

 

This is the reality:

 

Having said that, I have a couple of tips for moving (not that I have that much experience with this or anything like that).

1.) Pack books in small boxes - all that paper is heavy!
2.) Focus on one area at a time when packing (one closet, one bedroom, etc)
3.) Whenever possible leave items in drawers for moving transport. ie no need to unload dresser drawers, move the dresser full. If it's too heavy you can slide the drawers out and move them one at a time.
4.) No matter how much you purge and only bring what you absolutely have to, you'll find yourself wondering why on earth you decided to move this or that when unpacking boxes at your new house.
5.) Move all boxes into as little space as possible at the new house. That way the whole house isn't strewn with boxes. Bring one box at a time to the room it belongs in and unpack it completely before moving on to the next box.
6.) When unpacking, focus on one room at a time. I find that the bedroom is the most important. If at least I can sleep in a place that isn't cluttered with boxes and feels somewhat "settled" I'm a much more settled person.
7.) Old house mess stays at old house. Dust, vacuum, clean whatever it is - ie no dusty shelves or desk or table or etc comes to the new house. We're not moving dirt.


What advice would you add to this list?

moving

 

See the before and after? There's the empty truck and the full truck - it doesn't really do it justice, I don't think, because the coop blocks everything.

The plan was for me to drive our car with the kids and follow Ren Man in the truck.
The plan did not work so well because while I was sobbing and exchanging last minute hugs with friends and family my dad was helping Ren Man pull out of our driveway (yes, he backed a 24' truck INTO our FENCED driveway!!) and Ren Man took this as a good opportunity to leave. When I realized he wasn't slowing down I jumped in our car and he was one light ahead of me ... apparently that's enough distance to create a 45 minute gap on the highway.
After catching up with the elusive moving truck (add fog, rain, and a wiper that blurries the windshield) Farm Girl announces she has to go potty.
Goodbye moving truck.
We never saw it again because we passed the exit Ren Man got off to refuel the truck.
We arrive at our new house about 5 minutes before Ren Man.
I came into the house crying.
I was doing good after the first 1.5 of the ride.
This is our dream.
We're finally really doing this.
Something I've been yearning for for years!
But it's also reality so that means it's not all idealistic and perfect (have I mentioned playgroup in RI? Or the library? for example ...) I think my father in law was a little taken aback. He was all excited to say "hi! You're here!!!!!" and I was all "boohoo".

Now it's just overwhelming packing and 1,328 things on our farm to-do list.
Moving into someone else's house is way harder than moving into an empty house, I realized. It's not only moving all of your items into their new spots ... it's figuring out how to do that in a fully furnished house. And we thought we were narrowing down what we had ... it's still a ton more than I thought it would be.

Also, we're still in limbo a bit because the plan was for the in laws to build a house this summer.
It's now looking like that's not going to happen.
At least not this year.
Or is it?
So if we knew we were co-housing for 6mos we'd unpack and organize one way.
If we thought it was indefinite we'd be unpacking and organizing in a different way.
It's all up in the air (and all over the floor, and stacked in towers, and spilling out of closets ...)
The progress is s-o-o-o slow.
In normal time, I'm sure it's progressing fine. In Sarah time ... well, you know.

And ... I started going to help milk. It's going well. I just need to figure out how to tell if the udder is empty. I'm told that's the hardest part. In Sarah-time though, I should have it all figure out!

Bees are delayed a week (we're okay with the delay, because of aforementioned 1, 328 things on the to-do list). Chicks come next week (yay!) so we need to make space for them in the barn.

We're anxious to get plants in the ground but it's been rainy (flooding is more accurate) so we're sitting on our hands (and waiting for the soil test results to come back!).

Lastly, we need to contact our mentor through NOFA to make time to go see them. They have a pregnant pig for us to purchase so we need to figure out where the pig can go.

Blogging is not so easy to squeeze in with all these to-do's. Did you like the highlights of the to-do list? ;)