More exploring: we found the place to plant our garden

Explored our backyard more today during sunset. Not only was it nice to just spend some time with Luke, but we started planning out where the garden would go in the spring.

Here's the spot.

Underneath the hay is rich, dark, black soil. Perfect for a garden. So excited...but it will be a lot of work. More than I can probably comprehend right now since I've never had my own garden before.

We found some old pallets that had been left in the yard. Two are in fairly good condition...so I may do some sort of DIY with them in the future. We'll see. I'll have to make sure the wood isn't rotted through from being rained and snowed on.

Anyone have gardening tips for two people new to this sort of thing?

New home: new space: new storage

So, the place we moved into just a little over a week ago, feels like home. Not sure why it feels more like home. Maybe because it's a more permanent housing situation. It could be because we have more land. That way, we feel that we can go and explore when we need a little breathe of fresh air from life's busy, fast-paced lifestyle.

I also attribute feeling more nested to the fact that it is smaller than our last place. (Why would I be okay with that??) Well, it's more cozy. There's less stuff we can keep around so it feels less cluttered. And, it's our tiny, white house on top of the hill. Okay...a small hill.

Since we did downsize is storage space and amount of bedrooms, we had to figure out how to store our belongings in more creative and effective ways.

Meet our kitchen. It has limited counter space and half the amount of cupboards. Part of the storing dilemma was solved by parting with things we didn't really need.

Do we really need 30 coffee cups?
No.

The other part was finding a DIY, inexpensive way of expanding our storage space.

Here it is:

I found a wooden table top that's foldable at a garage sale for $10. Easy to transport or take down. Also it matched the color scheme to the kitchen quite well. Then, I deemed this as our refreshment table. It's where we make coffee in the morning, store tea and other household appliances as well as wine.

Next, these two baskets were found at Goodwill for $5 each. Absolutely love the color! Good for storing tea and coffee.

Then, the wine rack. This was a recent find. Only $4 and it just matched the design to our kitchen, plus we had a place to put our wine (and an excuse to buy more wine! :) ;) )

This was a fairly recent find as well - a wooden chalkboard. I have yet to buy chalk, but I thought it'd be a perfect way that Luke and I could write notes to each other. Or a good place to write the grocery list down so we don't lose it. Little bits of paper just never work. And if a magnet is on the fridge...I always knock it down.

Absolutely love the feel it's given my home so far and extra space to store things without it looking messy or tacky.

What ways have you found that works great for storage and is nice on appearance?

New house brings adventures

Finally took a walk around the property with Luke. We now have 10 acres that we are renting. It's not far from downtown either. It's like our little oasis in the city. :) Exploring near dusk is always fun and I've never taken photos in low light without some sort of artificial light to help. So, this was a new experience in many ways!

Please come visit us! :)