Life as we know it...

It's been a hectic week around here. I can't remember when Mike has done so many paintings - one right after the other! A couple were paintings Leanin' Tree asked for but all the rest were just inspirations he had and they're all terrific!

While he was on a roll, I asked him to make me a tiny painting of our new house that I could use on the Open House invitations. It turned out better than I hoped for.

I've spent the better part of three days working on note card designs for Healing Reigns and finishing a story assignment for Living Cowboy Ethics, a new magazine being published by the Paragon Foundation. The story deadline was today so I've been getting by on very little sleep. Writing in the middle of the night is always better than trying to do it during the day. There are too many distractions - like the carpet layers who turned absolutely everything upside down yesterday! I worked at the laptop in Mike's studio but it just wasn't the same.

The weekend will be dedicated to finishing our taxes - argh! It's a chore I loathe so much it makes my stomach ache. Once they're done and mailed, I'll be a much happier person!

This has been one of those ordinary, back to the grindstone working weeks. It's been grueling but productive but I'm definitely ready for a Saturday break!

Getting Down to Business

We finally have most of our boxes unpacked and both our work spaces set up.

I have to admit I was a little more than worried about the space Mike was going to convert to his studio. It's a nice big room the previous owners used for a game room. The deal is, for a painting studio, Mike likes tiny, claustrophobic cubicle places to paint in. It's weird.

When we lived in Indiana, he pitched a tent behind the garage and painted in there for about two months while the studio was being built. He absolutely loved it. I couldn't stand to be in it longer than fifteen minutes - it was simply too small and cramped.

His initial idea was to close off a small area toward the back wall of this great big room and make that a painting studio. However, with new assignments from Leanin' Tree and an already strained budget from the kitchen remodel, he decided to wing it in this big room. His solution? He set up his easel in the very back of the room and when he's working, he turns off all the lights except for those right at the easel. Since his back is to the door, he can't see the expanse of room behind him so he feels comfortably confined.

If he went to a shrink, I'll bet they'd tell him this strange need to burrow in to get creative has something to do with trauma while he was in the womb. He likes low slung roof lines on tiny cabins and compact recreational vehicles. I like tall, tall ceilings in big rooms and nice spacious motel rooms. Somehow, we manage to compromise and work it out though.

For now, my office is in one corner of our guest bedroom - at least until next spring when we'll build another room out in the garage or down at the barn. For now, this is just fine. The ceilings are high, there's a wonderful window right next to my desk that looks out on one of the ponds so I have a nice view.

The guest room/office also has an over-sized walk in closet that was perfect for my filing cabinets and sewing machine. It's tiny and darkish with no windows or air circulation. The dark green carpet make it seem smaller than it actually is.

I think secretly Mike covets my walk in closet.

Choosing the Country

Fifteen miles from town and almost a mile down a gravel road, you'll find a tree lined, grassy lane that leads to our new front porch in the country. The house is smaller than the one we sold in Burnet, but comfortably so.

There's a large pond in the front yard that spills over into another pond on the side of the house. Calin and Codi Ann have already caught countless sun perch (that they dutifully threw back) in both ponds. A rather large community of turtles inhabit both ponds.

At night, the frogs provide wide range of unusual songs. At times they sound like an auditorium full of cuckoo clocks out of control and other times it sounds like hundreds of tech devices on the blink. We enjoy sitting on the porch with a glass of wine and listening to them while fireflies flit here and there on the warm summer night. It's simply wonderful.

This house and this place are just exactly what we were hoping for. The postmaster in the Red Rock post office knows my name. That's nice. On our first night in the house, we had nothing to cook so I ran into the little Red Rock grocery store to pick up something and found one of Mike's Leanin' Tree posters tacked above one of the doors.

Yes, we must drive 16 miles to do big grocery or hardware shopping but it's okay. We're learning to shop better. We had to tear out the kitchen and are in the middle of putting in a whole new one and yes, it's back breaking work. But when I stand back and look at the transformation, it brings me great joy. Joy to see our vision slowly coming to life and pride in knowing we did it ourselves. There will be more remodeling down the road as time and funds allow but for now, we're thrilled with our new home.

It's amazing what can come about when we let go and let God lead the way.

Another porch . . . another chapter

When I opened the email from realtor Linda Beber last Monday, I expected to see the standard automated display of new listings in the Bastrop area. This one, however, was different. There was a note from Linda that said, "We need to schedule an appointment to see this one ASAP!" And she was right.

What I saw was a lovely, southern style home with a wraparound porch perfectly situated to view the large pond in the front yard over a glass of sweet tea or dry merlot. There's another pond along one side of the house, just outside the guest room window.

The whole peaceful setting is at the far end of a long, tree lined country lane and sits on 5.5 acres of wooded land. The inside of the home is as charming as the outside plus there's an extra large bonus room in the garage that's been finished out into a rec room. It will make an ideal studio for Mike! The oversized garage is plenty big enough for us to enclose another separate office for me. It is almost scary perfect.

Only once have we looked at a place one time and gone straight to the office to write an offer and that was the ranch in Indiana. This was the second time. And it's a good thing we did. Our offer went in on July 3rd and was accepted late on the 4th. By Friday morning, there were 5 back up offers - all at full price. God is good and we feel incredibly blessed!

We've been so happy in this house. The act of packing it up has been so depressing to me because I haven't found anything that warmed my heart like this one does. Now I have, so packing will be a joy.

Knowing the family that bought our home is equally enchanted with it makes that transition even better. They have four children who will enjoy the pool, the chickens, the playscape and the big clawfoot tub. The house will develop that rich patina that comes from laughing, loving children as they grow up. And we'll move on to another porch and another chapter.

Sometimes I wonder if we really pick houses . . . or if they pick us? I'm inclined to go with the latter.

The realities of renovation - crunching the numbers

And so . . . we made the trek over to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where our oldest daughter and her family live to take a look at the grand old house she'd sent us photos of. And believe me, she was a grand lady in her day. A big Spanish style home with a red tile roof and a lovely litle courtyard out front (where the chimney was falling away from the house). Years of neglect have taken their toll and while she's still very much redeemable, the purchase price doesn't support the redeeming.

In the beginning, we made up our minds to forge in, rip and snort and bring everything up to date. It's what we do, what we've done for years and what we love. It's easy to get caught up in the fever of breathing new life into a place until you start looking at the numbers. When the cost to make a house merely inhabitable combined with the purchase price equals an amount greater than the overall value of the property - well, you have to draw the line.

We had to draw the line. As most renovators know, older architecture quite often translates into huge expense when it comes to modernizing an older home; like putting in a central heating and air conditioning unit. Because of the partial flat roof, the cost to add CH/A to this place was nearly $15,000. All new wiring and all new plumbing were another $15,000. Then and only then could we start the new floors, paint, new kitchen, etc. You get the point. We'd be in so far over the value of the property that it just wasn't a good financial decision.

We were so bummed. The owners live out of state and purchased the property as an investment - they're not motivated to sell and since they can't see the deteriorating condition of the home, they're not willing to budge a dollar on their asking price. While we could afford it - it wouldn't be smart so we had to decline.

So with our house sold and scheduled to close on July 30th, we're on the hunt again. We've got our eye on a couple of nice places around here and will take a look at them tomorrow afternoon and Friday morning.

We would have loved to have moved closer to Staci and her family but at the same time, we would have been sad to leave the lush beauty of the hill country. We were deflated for about fifteen minutes; we got a glass of elderberry wine, sat on the big old porch and drank in the beauty that surrounds us here. Then, we were over it and ready to move on.

The Renovation of Us - a clear new day

I picked up a book a few weeks ago called "Gringos in Paradise" by Barry Golson. Golson wrote an enchanting article for AARP about the many boomers who are moving to Mexico where their retirement dollars handily provide for a much richer lifestyle in a laid back, climate friendly area. Golson and his wife fell in love with a little village on the Pacific coast of Mexico while doing the research and ended up moving there in their own journey of reinvention.

The book appealed to me because I'd read Golson's AARP article and was intrigued that so many fellow boomers, now in their fifties, were on a quest for a simpler lifestyle, re-inventing themselves, so to speak. It's a topic Mike and I have discussed repeatedly over the last few months.

We've really struggled with finding a new home; one with ample space and at least some character. We're hopelessly addicted to home renovation so if it needed work and the price was right, all the better! However, in our part of Texas, everything in our price range needed a fair amount of work and the price was never all that great. The payments and reno costs were manageable on our income but only if we kept up our current workload so we could afford it long term.

One morning a few weeks ago, our discussion came down to the bottom line. What, exactly, did we each want in a lifestyle. After a contemplative silence, our unrehearsed and candid answers surprised us both. It was an epiphany, of sorts.

We admitted that we wanted a nice home with room for visiting friends and grandchildren sleepovers and one with ample space for each of us to work. But the prospect of taking on another long term mortgage, not to mention the ever escalating Texas property taxes, was daunting. Stifling and stagnating, actually. The more we talked, the more we realized we needed to make a major change in our home search.

We both longed for more time to stretch ourselves creatively and tackle projects we'd stuffed away, shoved to the back burner for lack of time. For instance, Mike has some awesome outdoor sculpture designs that live in his sketch book for lack of time to do them. He's also been dreaming of painting a few oversized, really large paintings and has great ideas for some innovative home decor lines he'd like to develop.

I have all kinds of articles and book ideas shoved to the back of my brain like a squeezed shut accordion just waiting to be released. So many that it would take me a week of frantic pondering to figure out where to start if I actually had a week to ponder.

Mike has written a wonderful children's book, "Gimli," about a young Canadian goose with a broken wing who is cared for by a multitude of delightful farm animals over the winter. It sits waiting for me to edit and for Mike to illustrate - for several years now.

The reality is, right now we must commit to a certain amount of commissioned work in order to pay the mortgage, the utilities and property taxes, which leaves no time for the heartfelt creative work we long to do. Make no mistake - we're both enormously grateful we have the long standing, active contracts that do pay the bulk of the bills. However, what time is left from those commitments ends up dedicated to other jobs, both large and small, to supplement our income.

Suddenly, it seemed so clear to us; we're actively selling ou r house so moving on is a given. But, we don't have to jump right back into the same situation we're in now -a big mortgage and high maintenance house. We started rethinking our strategy and ended up with a major overhaul. A reinventing of us with new priorities . First, we would look for a place with lower property taxes, lower monthly maintenance (payments, insurance and utilities) and something reasonably near family. Because I was raised in a children's home, having a home, not a mansion or a castle, but a nice home is important to me. A fixer upper is fine as long as it can honestly be fixed up!

So okay . . . I think we found it. Or actually, it found us. It's a lovely old Spanish house (which was secretly what I had been hoping for), complete with a red tile roof, a large courtyard, an extra building for a studio and a detached garage. It's been vacant for a few years so it's in dire need of serious fixin' up but that's okay. It's so affordable, we should have enough left over from the sale of our current house to totally gut and renovate this place with very good quality materials. It's 2200 sq. ft with an additional 918 sq. ft. basement (wine cellar) AND even with our modified, conservative housing budget, we can pay it off entirely in 7 years.

We're headed out Tuesday to take a look see in person - and no, it's not in Mexico, but this photo of it sure makes it look that way. We also have photos of the ceiling falling in, the wood floors buckling and a ton of peeling plaster - but I'll save those for a renovation blog post, should this all work out. It's bad but believe it or not, we've renovated much worse.

We're excited - every bit as excited as we were about the Mullin place. And that feels so good.

A new idea for finding Shangri-la

The hut in this painting is looking pretty darned good about now.

After two months of house hunting, we sometimes find ourselves fantasizing about selling everything and moving to a remote little hide-away somewhere. A simple, little cabin in the hills or a hut on a private beach is sounding better every day. I mean, why the heck do we need all this stuff anyway?

Honestly, I think house hunting is about to get the best of us. We keep hoping to stumble onto another Mullin house (the one we lost to another bidder) and frankly, that's going to be hard to do.

In the last two weeks we've looked at two houses we like. One in Wimberley, a wonderful, laid back community with an artsy fartsy energy that we both really like. That place is at the top of our price range and will still need some work to make a studio in the garage, update the kitchen and tone down some of the teal paint. It's also on a smaller lot than we have now but the entire backyard is enclosed with a tall privacy fence. We lived in Wimberley for seven months before we bought this place and we really liked it.

The other house is a little less money and has almost the same square footage but it's on a bigger lot than we have now. It's out in an older, well maintained country neighborhood near Marble Falls, just 10 miles from here. The house reeks of smoke and cat litter boxes but is still quite nice. It would take some new paint and carpet and the studio building there would also have to be insulated and air conditioned. It's an older ranch style home, rock and wood, with nice patios and gardens and very tall pine trees on two sides.

Its a hard call. We love the Wimberley area but we also like the country environment.

I'm seriously thinking of just putting everything in storage for the summer and renting a cabin on a lake or in the trees somewhere - no remodeling, no nesting in, just flitting around from one place to another every month until we find our own Shangri-la. We could stay on a lake in Texas in June, maybe something in the mountains of New Mexico in July and Wyoming in August. Then come back here in September. Of course, with gas prices continuing to skyrocket, it would take all our down payment money to do that much traveling but it would sure be fun.

Maybe we'll realign our priorities and decide all we really need is a little cabin with high speed Internet, a few things to make it look homey and the plasma TV.

Freedom.

House hunting is for the birds

How cool is this? We forgot to bring this hat in off the porch and a passing swallow or wren decided it looked like a good place to start a family. This picture is from a couple of years ago but it still makes me smile.

In a way, it reminds me of our own hunt for a new home. On Monday, we got a contract on this house; a fine young couple with four little ones from Cedar Park. It's contingient on them selling their home so we probably have a good two months before we have to move. It's a good thing too since A) I just had pretty major surgery and can't lift anything over ten pounds for another four weeks and B) we haven't found a new home yet.

We've looked at quite a few, fromWimberley to Bandera to Brownwood and back to Marble Falls. The one in Marble Falls is in the lead at the moment. It's only about 20 years old - which is young compared to what we usually look at - and has been somewhat abused. It's the product of a divorce settlement and once the split took place, it was left to fin for itself. There are broken windows, curling laminate floors, funky stuff on the ceilings, some brutal black and blue paint and zero landscaping. The reason it's in the lead is because there's a wonderful fishing pond in the front field plus it's just around the corner from a good friend of mine. Did I mention that it needs a LOT of work!

We're still lurking around the real estate sites hoping the perfect place leaps off the page at us soon. We've seen several that were just perfect - but either not in our price range or not in the right location. Oh well, something will come along just in the knick of time - or we'll get warmer on the Marble Falls place.

It's raining again today. We've had one wonderful rainy spring and the vegetation (including our yard) is lush and green and beautiful. I can't remember when the wildflowers were this beautiful. The lakes and ponds and streams and creeks are filling up again and it's glorious.

I just love spring.

A Porch side seat to the Marshall Tucker Band

It figures. We had been so sure (and so ready to make an offer) on the neat old house in Bandera. It had most of the things we were looking for and what it didn't have, we could add. So away we went yesterday with every intention of sealing the deal.

We're not home inspectors but after all the money we've invested in them, we're pretty danged close. As we walked through the house one last time, Mike ran water in the bathtub - which took a very long time to drain. Not a big deal - that can be fixed. He ran water in the kitchen sink to check that drain and discovered it drains fine - right outside the kitchen window. A new pipe had been routed through the cinder block wall so it runs along the side of the house at about waist level, wraps around the corner of the house and deposits itself on the ground just by the driveway. Weird, especially since there's a septic tank right there. Still, that too could be dealt with.

Next, we ran down the the breaker box. We found it. Not good. Not good at all. In fact, if it is indeed, the main box for the entire house, it would take almost half our remodeling budget to rewire the place, which would pretty much eliminate either the kitchen or the master bath project.

As we stood out in the front yard discussing the issues, we realized we were raising our voices to be heard over the noise traveling up the creek canyon from Highway 16. We could hear motorcycles and 18 wheelers speeding up as they headed out of town. It was pretty loud.

The backside of the house has a beautiful pastoral view of horses grazing near an old barn and just beyond that, the lights of downtown Bandera. We asked the realtor if she thought the noise from the community's many cowboy festivals and parades would echo as much as the traffic did. Her reply was, "I'm not sure but this would be a good weekend to find out. We have a huge bike rally coming to town because the Marshall Tucker band is playing at the new outdoor amphitheatre downtown."

No offense to Marshall Tucker (I was a huge fan back in the day) or to the 11th Street Cowboy Bar. In fact, if we move to Bandera, I'm sure we'll shuffle across the dance floor a few times since they have some of our favorite entertainers booked there. However, when it's time to go home, it's time to go home and if the concert is in your backyard, that could be a problem.

It's all about porches

The first thing that captured us about the house we live in now was the porch. It's a lovely lazy wraparound porch that spans the full length of the house and is deep enough to hold all kinds of porch seating. Two dirty white ceiling fans with blades gracefully bent from Texas humidity provide the ambiance of a summer breeze when the air is thick and hot and vintage light fixtures cast a sultry romantic glow in the night hours.

It will come as no surprise then that as we search for our next home, finding one with the right porch was imperative. After months of looking and having survived a serious letdown with what we thought was the perfect property, we came across just the right porch.

The porch is in Bandera, and is attached to an old Mediterranean style home with lots of vintage windows, wood floors and a view that looks out over a creek and the town of Bandera. It sorta reminds me of something you would find in the south of France or in San Miguel, Mexico. You might not be able to see it from this photo but it's there.

Moving to Bandera would be a little like going home. I "grew up" not far from there, at Medina Children's Home which is about 16 miles away and I graduated from the Medina High School (I was even Homecoming Queen!). Mike has always loved Bandera and when his Wyoming buddies come to visit, that's the one place they always want to visit. It must be something about the Cowboy feeling the town exudes.

Since moving back to Texas in 1999, we've looked many times for a home in Bandera but have never found anything that suited us . . . until now. The possibility of moving back seems almost natural to me.

I've been to a couple of high school reunions and discovered that several of my old classmates and roommates have also moved back to the area, too. What fun it would be to have the Bakers over for dinner some 40 years after we all lived together at the children's home. I wonder if Della remembers the night we helped hoist a girl we didn't like over the fence so she could run away. She was caught about 14 minutes later and we all got in deep doo.

Or those late nights just before Christmas when we put Della, who was really tiny, in the laundry bin. Then we'd sneak the gifts from our sponsors out from under the tree and slip them to her to carefully open. If there was money inside, we took it out because if we found it on Christmas morning, we had to turn it over to the houseparents. Della was a real pro at re-wrapping.

This particular house is going to need a lot of work. We will rearrange rooms, create a modern kitchen in the center of the house and bring the laundry room inside to where the kitchen is now; turn the small 3rd bedroom into a master bath and build a pergola along the entire backside of the house to take advantage of the view. The front of the property will become a small, personal vineyard and a privacy fence will define the front yard. Yep, it will be tons of work but that's the part that excites us the most.

And everyday, when we've finished with our work, we'll meet on this fabulous porch and plan our tomorrows . . . and maybe share a glass of wine with our neighbors, one of whom, I understand, is a budding author. Or maybe we'll just sit and share stories with the Bakers, our Wyoming friends or whoever else ambles in.

Our perfect plan vs. His perfect plan

Yesterday was a stressful day around here. Our friend and realtor called to say another offer had been presented and accepted on the property we so wanted in Mullin. We knew it was a possibility because our contract had a contingency attached - that we must first sell our existing home before we could close on the new place. That's certainly not an uncommon practice, especially these days. But it does create a problem when another offer comes in that doesn't have a contingency.

It was sad news. In the last few months, we've redesigned that house a hundred times and a hundred ways. Moved the staircase, rebuilt the kitchen, shopped for ceiling fans - all that fun stuff that makes your heart swell with excitement.

We've walked the land in person but mostly in our dreams, planting grape vines, taking grandsons fishing and relaxing on the porch at the end of a busy day. We were so sure it was where we'd spend the next many years.

It broke my heart when Bev called with the news but I had to admit that if I were the seller, I'd have made the same decision. They are going through their own pain and heartache with a family member who is dying from cancer and they desperately need to get this sale done and out of the way. How selfish I felt for thinking my heartache even remotely compared to theirs.

Last night, before I went to sleep, I read this (with a small edit of my own) in a Guideposts Daily Devotion book:

"Father, may I not doubt Your ability to answer my deepest prayers in Your way, in Your time and for Your purposes." (My insertion:"in Your time.") His plan, whatever it is or wherever it takes us - is always perfect.



By the way - the cloud formation in the photo today is one we took in 2003 when we went on a cruise up the Mississippi on the Mississippi Queen. Is that awesome or what?? Proof positive that God is the master artist.