Dave’s Lunch

Well, we are surviving in the trailer without any major difficulties (save a few leaky window corners).   On the ‘glass half full’ side – it’s very easy to keep tidy.  As long as I keep up with it, it’s not a big hassle.  No storage of course, but we keep bulk items in the shed on the other side of the driveway and can restock easily.  On the flip (glass half empty) side, it is prettymuch impossible to cook a decent meal onaccounta there is no counter space.  So one-dish casseroles have become my friend.  We have an outdoor BBQ too, but used it sparingly during fire season.

What?  You say – This is the 21st century girl – what about a microwave?  Well I fried the microwave.  We borrowed another one.  I fried that too.  So now we are using a toaster oven for small stuff.  Of course we still have the trailer oven and stovetop, but am trying to keep the clean-up at a minimum so I don’t use the oven much.  This may change.  We’ll see.

The cats are adapting, as cats do.  This is Dave – he gets his own dinner.

Jake took a video of this as well, but it’s too gross what with the bone-crunching and gut-slurping sounds.  So I’ll just post the still and you can imagine you’re own sound effects.

Trailer Living

Well, we’ve moved out of the (money sucking) rental and are finally located on our OWN property! Despite the minor inconvenience of the small living quarters, this location feels so much better. For one thing, it is warmer! The mornings are lovely and breezy and it warms up nicely in the afternoon.

Here is a picture of our trailer in the trees:

Cute, eh? It’s pretty crowded with John and I and the 2 boys but we’re learning to organize our movements so we aren’t always running into each other. The cats are in and out, they do what they want. The chihuahua is in charge of everything, and John has fenced off a yard area for the BBQ and the laundry and all – so Chico is able to go in and out without taking off into the woods.

So here we are!

Is The Winter Finally Over?

It’s two days into Spring and already we (on the mountain) are warming up nicely. There is still some old snow stuck in the higher elevations among the tree shade, but Timberon snow is all melted away.

We have about a month left to go in this rental, I need to give notice next week and we should be out by the end of April, and in to the trailer. That will be a year since John broke ground on the house.

Since I last blogged: the propane is in and hooked up, we have a big new tank outside in the yard. The electrical is (still) almost finished. Maybe a couple more runs up the hill for our electrician – he lives down in Alamogordo.

Income is trickling in from my eBay business, an auto parts store. John bought some old shelf stock and we have been cleaning it up and selling it. Seems to be doing well, and we made out initial investment back quickly. Now it’s all gravy.

I did take some more pictures of the inside of the house and I will get them up on my website today. Not sure if I have a link here somewhere, but if I don’t, it’s at
www.nanbiz.net/loghome.html

Better get to that now . . .

Nan

Slacker checking in . . .

You know, I have such good intentions when I blog – gonna write something several times a week. Gonna document everything. Gonna be on top of it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

So here it is February and my last entry was October? You may smack me now.

Arright. So we’re still in this rental. Kind of expected to be in the log house by now, but of course, all the best laid plans . . . you know the drill.

The roof is almost on, but we had to stop when winter hit and everything became icy and slick. Didn’t want John sliding off the roof. So the Eagle panels with the Titanium covering are keeping any weather out – it just looks unfinished. The back side is still unfinished. John and Birdman (resident helper) have been working on the inside. Running electrical w/an electrician contractor. Putting in the windows (the windows are REALLY nice – Andersens double paned argon filled), building the kitchen island, installing the bathtub and shower basins. Puttering. He did get the wood stove installed with the chimney and they have been running that the whole time, so it stays fairly warm in there during these cold days.

And now here we are at crunch time. We have limited funds left and we have to get out of this rental because it’s just taking money that we should be putting into the house. Today we bought a nice 5th wheel that we will stay in while we work on finishing the house. It’s going to be tight – with two teenagers – but it will be on-site, close to the house, on our OWN property and we can have close access to the house and will probably get things done much faster.

Lets hope so. Because if we thought this mobile home rental was small – just wait until we are 3 or 4 weeks into the trailer! That’s OK. Gotta do what we gotta do.

Fast-Forward to The Present

I’m calling myself caught-up on this blog, even though there’s a gap of like 3 months due to my procrastinating ways. Most of the time has been spent settling in, figuring out shopping, starting the kids at school, being fascinated with the ever-changing weather, and generally sucking in the clean mountain air and smiling a lot.

Here is a current picture of the log home. It’s coming right along.

Pretty, aint it? The metal roof is next to go on. It was delivered yesterday and will go on next week.

And, in the backyard, some local wildflowers.

~Nan