A Productive Week

I don't know if a home is ever finished being made into a home. A family and their needs and desires are ever changing. It is the house that holds all these new memories, feels the labor of hard work, sees the growth and changes of a family, and feels the wear of time, that becomes a home.

Eric had Clemson spring break this past week and this allowed us to teamwork together to nail down several projects.

We are always dreaming and planning up ways to serve Ellie and please our happy home desires in our new forever home. Productive ways to benefit our busy and active lives. Beautiful ways to bring respite to busy and tired bodies. We had a week of productivity.

Before we ever put the old house up for sale, before I ever got officially pregnant, Eric and I have possessed hundreds of books for the desired and dreamed of baby that would be Ellie. My sister, grandmother, mama, and friends have all given books for that little girl. But we never had a single place to store them, before. Even after having Ellie, we never had bookshelves for these books. Then we decided to finally sell the house as we had always dreamed of, and we decided to wait to purchase shelving. The books lived in open cardboard moving boxes for a year. Then, we finally had the money to purchase proper shelving for our princess's playroom for her many books and toys. Books actually are her favorite toy, truth be told. When the bookshelves arrived to the house, I wasted no time carrying them piece by piece up the stairs to the playroom. Ellie helped me to assemble the shelves. Eric bolted them to the wall for safety. We went from books all over the floor to an organized playroom for Ellie. She loves them and so do I!!

The next thing we have been really mostly excited about is beginning to tame our new yard. The yard is a big living space for us. It is as important as the home interior to us as we spend most of our time home outside, playing. After construction, the ground has to heal. It has to recover, grow, and constantly be groomed. The very edge of our shoreline is trashed with logs, briars, brush, and overgrowth. I have been working, swimming, chopping, sawing, pulling so so hard many days to create a big pile of wooded mess. Eric and I got to finally see a week of sunshine and were able to burn the pile. Due to having soaked in the lake for goodness knows how long, and then two months of rain, the logs are still wet inside. They were taken down and broken down a lot, but will still need another round of burning. That is fine though, because we still have so much to tear down out there. Then the grass. We imagined for the first year here we would have nothing but red clay. However; the grass actually grew in quite nicely before the start of fall in 2018. While more grass needs to grow, we actually have a better grassy yard than we anticipated. The sod up front is greening up with the warmer weather. I cut the grass. This wouldn't seem like such a huge accomplishment on any other given day, yet, with 2 months of rain and no mower working at the time, the grass grew so tall it no longer stood straight. A lot of it was nearly my knee height. Not to mention this ground is still healing from construction...meaning we still have rock, some debris, unwanted soil, even some nails! Yikes! It is a more daunting task than normal at this time. Once the grass was tamed, Eric and I worked together to plant 50 cypresses along the property to give us even more privacy on this quiet spot of land. They are also just insanely gorgeous. We began mulching the front yard around the big trees. Soon we will plant some flowering bushes in these spots to accent the yard. We have designed plans together for the backyard and will start on that next.  We want a garden back there, a pebble "patio" for the Adirondack Michigan chairs and fire pit,  more trees, and a playground for Ellie.

Eric is constantly working in the garage as time allows to build hanging shelving. The bike rack is next. He didn't quite get to this.

There really is something deeply beautiful about seeing the fruit of your labor. Labor put forth as a team with your spouse is all the more special. Our home is a reflection of us and our dreams and our joy. So thankful for the time we had together to accomplish this. I can't wait to knock out more of our dreamy projects soon!!