blue shutters

When Don and I were house-hunting, weekends took on a new pattern; searching online, taking long drives to see houses and measure distances, having long discussions about what we wanted in a home, what we could do without, how far from town we could live. When we decided to stop looking, weekends resumed their random, peaceful pace.


Since buying the house, though, we have a new pattern: Lowes/ Home Depot. Work on house. Make house plans. Sears. Work. Plan. Repeat. Suddenly, there isn't enough time to do everything we want-- we're looking forward to weekends not just as a respite from our jobs, but as the time we need to get all these things done. I guess we have a new couple's hobby, called House, and it turns out to be fairly effective about keeping my mind off of other, less joyous stuff.


It's almost overwhelming because there are so many things that we've wanted to do 'once we had a house'. I've been gardening in containers for years and years now, putting very little if anything into the ground. Now, I can plant a real, in-ground vegetable garden out back and flower garden to the side... I just need to decide how much garden I can handle. My idle ideas about keeping chickens and bees are suddenly a real possibility. Inside, it was always, "if we owned this place, I'd put a vent-hood over the stove/ add wainscotting in the kitchen/ rip out those carpets"-- and now we do own this place. Where to begin? Which plans were fantasies (the skylight in the kitchen) and which are we actually going to do? So we're making concrete plans and jumping into about six projects at once, and life is suddenly a bit chaotic, but in a fun way. I've started a new blog to keep track of everything re: the house and garden, so that I can keep it mostly separate from this one. I just can't wait until this weekend, this autumn, and next spring!