tour de house: part 1

Hello friends and family, since everyone is so far away and ya'll been asking for a virtual tour of the new home, here you go!  This is the view from half-way up our driveway.  You see all those tall things growing up towards the sky?  Trees! Wheeeeee! {I will never under appreciate trees again after our 6 years in Nome.} That other large thing is a lawn...also, very novel.

Now...down to important business.  Here is the detached garage/ stable, also know to some members of the household (namely me) as Tara's Pottery Barn. 

Here is the side of the detached garage.  All those dead looking things that the moose were nibbling the other day are raspberry bushes.  You should have seen how indignant Sadie was when we moved in late this month after her last visit in summer when the raspberries were in full swing.  Its a good thing there are lots of frozen high bush cranberries all over the place to forage on. 

  

Looking towards the house from the garage...I guess you would call this the back of the house.

 Here are the steps that we use to get into the house.  This is the most boring literal tour ever.  Give me a break...I'm pretty brain dead by the end of the day right now.  Also, if you come to visit, this is the door you should knock on. 

 Woodshed.  Now sporting two cords of firewood that Loren bucked up from various downed trees on the property.  Much more to do. Wood stove in winter=soooooo nice.

 

This rock garden that wraps around our front door is filled with the most beautiful low-maintenance landscaping.  A ton of golden globe flowers, blue delphiniums, a lilac tree (if I'm remembering right) and a few delicate ferns.  I don't think I would change a thing. It is lovely in summer.

 The downstairs of our house has a second garage (home of Loren's eventual man den) and the most eighties fabulous basement. ever. I will post pictures in part 2 of my home tour series which I will originally title "what's inside" in unnecessary quotes.

 The whole downstairs front of the house is composed of lovely sun rooms.  There is so much light in here.  I think we maybe bought this house just because the light is so good...okay... I lies... it was for the basement.  I have a thing for old linoleum.

 This is my favorite tree(s) on the property.  The picture doesn't do it justice.  It is the whitest of white birch trees and what I get to look at while standing at the kitchen sink.  Loren and I like to refer to it as the tree of Gondor, because we are big LOTR  geeks like that.

View from the deck adjacent to the sun room.  A nice little place for a salad garden I think.

 Stable and raspberries at the back of the garage...and onto the five lovely acres that really sold us on the place.

 Raspberries growing all the way down the hill into the pasture.  That big clump of sticks in the middle is a huge rhubarb patch.

 Sadie will be your tour guide heading down the hill into the pasture.  Never mind, no she wont, because she would much rather ride the four wheeler with dad.

 

We decided to keep this one little machine for hauling stuff around on our mini-farm to be.  Thank you NAC for your reasonable back haul rates!

This pasture used to belong to Jake the horse.  Now it is quiet and overgrown with lovely grass and ready for a big vegetable garden, some wild flowers, maybe a quiet bench to sit and read on... and probably some sort of fence around the vegetable garden because there are some moose who like to frequent the place.  I'm all for sharing my yard with moose, but not my produce.  Oh, and a lot of this needs to be left wild and wiley for little adventurers (and our dogs, who are in a seventh heaven with all this space to romp around in)

But right now it is a quiet spot for a winter walk--and maybe a good place to build snowmen or go sledding if we ever get any snow. 

That concludes part one of tour de house.  We love this place.  It felt right the minute we stepped foot on the property and the previous owners have been so helpful and kind in giving us an in-depth tour as well as answering our ongoing questions about various aspects of the land and house.  They really loved the place and put a lot of TLC and mindfulness into their time here, and at the risk of sounding like a huge hippie (okay, I kind of am) it has a really good vibe. The neighbors are awesome, and it is just the kind of place that makes you feel good in your heart about letting the small ones grow up in.

And even though it is far away from my family, Loren's parents are close by and his brother and his wife live just down the street. We have been very much enjoying our Sunday waffles with them--and Sadie and Dimitri are pretty much the cutest apple-cheeked two-year-olds you could wish for (except for maybe baby Eli in a couple years and his mystery cousin...slated to arrive any day now!)

And since it's November, and a good time to count your blessings, can I just say I am very, very thankful to be where we are? 

I truly am.