One Year Ago - What's Next?

It's hard to imagine it's been a year since we sold our house and began this odyssey of  "What's Next?".

Bittersweet...we miss the old place!

We are still very happy that we sold and moved. Still, it's hard for me not to think of all the things I would be preparing in the old gardens, what would be sprouting, getting excited for the upcoming season. Spring is the hardest because you're anxious to start moving and start warming-up. It's the season of renewal and growth.

Glory days in the old veggie garden

So, what's next? We are pretty sure that we do not want to stay in the D.C. area. No one moves to D.C. to kick back and relax or to retire. It's too hectic and expensive. And the traffic...don't get me started!

Retirement priorities!

We have our eyes set on Ohio - preferably the Columbus area. The area has a job market that will support us into retirement and it's pretty cheap to live there compared to here. Taxes are decent...not the best, but better than many. Retirement is decent there as well. We knew that we did NOT want to go back south (too hot) or even much further north where we would experience much of the same lifestyle - hectic and expensive.

The Buckeye State is lookin' pretty good to us!

Plus, when we went there last August, we really liked the "small town community" feel that many towns/neighborhoods had. We like the thought that our next house will be "our forever home" and we'll get to retire eventually...but more importantly, we'll be able to afford to do what we WANT to do versus what we HAVE to do as far as work. I want to make my soap company a legitimate business that would support us, and we couldn't do that if we stayed in the D.C. area.

We're going out to Ohio in May to do some scouting...if everything goes according to plans, we'll be looking into buying a home there later this year!

Soapy Friday - No Soap This Week

Just got back from L.A. last night for work. The work was stressful, but the location was cherry. I didn't want to come back.

Goin back to Cali, Cali, Cali...

The hotel I stayed at was right at the beach across from a marina. I could hear the seals barking out in the water.

Follow the barking seals

The kittehs are glad I'm back but did NOT pull their end of the packing while I was gone. Total slackers.

We watchin' you

There IS no soap for this week because it's all in boxes...well most of it. To be continued. Lastly, I need a moment of silence for a dear friend that I lost this morning.

Goodbye Ruskie...we had 6 beautiful years together. You will be missed.

R.I.P. Ruskie

Gratuitous Kitteh Monday

Ugh. This is the quiet before the storm.

Chaz is taking a moment of solitude in an afternoon sunbeam…

Meditating Kitteh

We loaded and unloaded 2, 15 ft. U-Haul truckloads of “stuff” this weekend into the new place and we are both incredibly SORE today. We are positively out-of-shape. There is certainly a huge yard-sale on the horizon once we are back in a real neighborhood.

Our “big move” isn’t until May 12^th, but I’m in L.A. next week, so there’s a week lost out of that time. Our goal is to only have the movers move the big stuff and packed boxes, so we are taking care of all the loose odds-n-ends, most of the basement, and the garage, plus all the packing.

This is certainly better than the 4-day packing blitz we did in Florida for sure, but it still sucks.

“I LOVE MOVING”…said no one ever!

New digs

Beautiful, big kitchen...a must have!

The house we are moving too is really nice and it’s practically brand new (3 yrs. old), but we have found upon closer inspection and from talking with the neighbors, the owners had 3 dogs (golden retrievers) and a cat. There is HAIR EVERYWHERE! They did not do a post, move-out clean and the floors are disgusting, not to mention a suspicious odor is coming from one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. So, a total house clean, with professional carpet cleaning is being done this week. There are other things that need to be addressed as well, but I’m too tired to go into it.

I’ve never understood why people buy homes and then not take care of them. Why spend so much money and then watch your property values go down the drain?

Anyway, as usual, we will leave this house in better condition than we found it.

Soapy Friday: I'm Gelling (Sort of), Are You?

Happy Friday everyone. Posts for Ye' Olde Blog will most likely be a once-a-week thing for the next couple of months due to all the chaos of moving. We start packing this weekend.

Miss Thang is being chill, though. I know they know something is going on.

Chillin' Thang

It's Cherry Blossom time here up in D.C.! The trees are at their "peak" over today and the next day or two. It's fun to go see this amazing display of beauty....once. In order to make the most of it and the crowds, you really need to get there before sunrise. We did this the first year we moved up here.

Cherry Blossoms in D.C.

Getting excited about prospects for our new "home". It's a rental, but has very high potential for us to buy if we decide we like it and the neighborhood down the road. I mean, look at this basement! It's finished and it's ALL MINE! No carpets = a perfect soaping studio.

So many possibilities!

Speaking of soap...

I remade some of my 100% olive oil soap (aka Castille soap) and used tumeric to color it. I try to keep my olive oil soaps all natural using only essential oils (EOs) and natural colorants.

The EO blend I mixed as called "Sunset" and was a beautiful blend of grapefruit, tangerine, ylang ylang, litsea cubeba, and rose geranium. I wanted to color the soap a sort of orange/rust to compliment the citrus notes in the EO blend and look what happened:

I'm gelling...sort of

This is called a gel ring. When a soap "gels" after it is made, it heats-up either naturally or is forced to heat-up using a heating pad, insulation, or even an oven. "Gelling" a soap contributes to more saturated colors and less chance for soda ash. Soap crafters either prefer to gel all the way or not at all, as a partial gel (like in my soap) can be distracting and take away from a beautiful soap design.

Neither a good mother, nor from Marseille

In my case, I think it contributes and makes it more interesting. I tried to gel this soap by putting it on a pre-heated heating pad and then turned it off, as I was afraid it would overheat. I guess I should have left it on.

BTW, "Savon de la Bonne Mere Marseille" means "Soap from the Good Mother of Marseille" which I am neither. I need to make my own stamp.

Standard Time Change

I don't even know why we still do the time change thing, it messes me up so much. The last couple of days, I've been going to bed at like 8 p.m. at night and waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. The cats don't like it either, as they are pawing at me for dinner at 4 p.m. and are howling by 5 or 6.

The only good thing about changing back to standard time is I start my day earlier and feel like I get more things done, but still.

Summer Blueberries and Blueberry Pie

Hope you all had a fabulous Fourth of July weekend! Up here in D.C., it was overcast and rainy most of the weekend, so many of the fireworks displays were canceled. That's okay as far as I'm concerned because an overcast day is a perfect day to pick blueberries!

Hubby and I went to a local u-pick farm to pick these beauties, but the farm is so small and unmarketed, we like to think of it as "our farm". The owner primarily works with the state cooperative extension office as a volunteer to grow certain varieties of food and report his experience back to them. They provide equipment and funding and he grows lots of great food, which he then donates to the local food bank!

90% of what he grows is non-GMO and organic, like these blueberries:

He does sell some of what he grows to farmer's markets and restaurants, but I think he primarily does it for the fun and tax break. We come to this same farm for our asparagus, rhubarb, and whatever else he's growing at the time.

During our visit, we had company via the farm chickens. They were so friendly and amusing to watch.

They stayed by our sides the entire time. These chickens have it made, let me tell you! Free run of an organic fruit and vegetable farm - I think they were tired of the blueberries and were hoping that we'd throw them a bug or worm.

Hey, guess what? CHICKEN BUTT!!

It dawned on both me and my husband that we have never picked blueberries before this. Such an awesome first for both of us. We ended up picking 15 lbs., which were taken home and frozen for future treats. 

Yesterday, I made a blueberry pie. It was a bit of a disappointment because the filling turned out to be runny, but there were no complaints when served with a side of vanilla ice cream!

I'll have to try another recipe, or maybe I'll make some blueberry coffee cake, or some muffins, or a blueberry cobbler, or some blueberry ice cream, or.... :-)

The Garden in June

It's occurred to me that since we moved here, I've never given a full tour of our property when I talk about the gardens or yard. We bought this house as a foreclosure 4 years ago (Eeek! That long already?) and it's definitely been a lot fun, hard work, and learning experiences.

The house sits on 4, heavily wooded acres, which is about half cleared for the house and yard. As foreclosed properties go, the house was a great financial investment, but unlike many foreclosures, it was in great shape. However, the outside was a hot mess and when we first moved in, we had to hire a bush-hogger to come in just to mow the back yard!

Over the years we've spent the most amount of improvement costs towards improving the property - mostly in tree removal and bringing the once, bush-hogged, weed and tick farm back to a lawn.

Okay, so let's start the tour!

First the front of the house. I love the stone work and the front porch. Since we moved in, we replaced the front walkway, repaired the lawn, removed trees, painted/stained the porch, and replaced the gutters.

Looking to the right of the garage, we have my sweet little garden shed. This wasn't here when we moved in either and we needed a place to park the mowers (plural) and garden/yard stuff. The veggie garden is on the other side of the fence. 

The woods behind the shed are our property too (2 acres). We keep it wooded because we do have a neighbor next to us and during the summer we don't want to see their property. 

Going through the garden gate to the backyard, this is what we see. The veggie garden is to the right where the mulch starts. 

It's fenced in, as I think the previous owners had a dog, which I'm sure was a dog's dream! This has turned out to be HUGELY in our favor, as every one of our neighbors also have dogs and the fence keeps them out. :-) Surprisingly, the deer don't come over the fence, even with the veggie garden.

Now, walking to the back of the property and looking towards the house. My new hosta garden is going in the shaded, mulched bed on the right with the trees. The veggie garden us up to the left (out of sight) by the fence.

I spend a lot of time sitting on that porch just watching the world go by and enjoying nature. 

From that spot turning toward the right, we have our drain field for our septic system. When we first moved in here, I wanted to put my veggie garden over here LOL! You should have seen the look on our septic system maintenance guy's face when I asked if I could do this. :-)  I was so naive; I had never lived in a house with a septic system. 

You can kind of see my other neighbor's house on the other side of the fence (on left). They have the exact same house as ours and we're the only 2 houses like this for miles. The rest of the properties around us are mostly older, country homes. The wooded area behind the fence to the right is our property too. 

Lastly, walking to the right, through the drain field and to the right of the hosta garden, we look back at the house. You can see the shed in the distance.

It just amazes me how good the grass looks. When we first saw this back yard, it was waist high and mostly weeds and bramble. Every year in the fall we've been giving it lime, fertilizer, and over seeding. We've aerated it and dethatched; we keep the grass tall - 3.5-4 inches - in the summer to help protect it from heat stress. In the spring, we hit it with another batch of fertilizer and crabgrass control. I spot treat for weeds when I see them.

I love to walk around out here barefoot. 

So that's it! We rarely deal with the wooded parts of the property unless there are trees to be taken care of. We've had over 50 trees removed and probably a dozen stumps ground since moving in. I think this is the first year where we won't have our tree company come out, unless there's an emergency (knock on A LOT of wood!).

But mostly, I am here, taking it all in, usually with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in my hand...

Visit to Lynchburg, VA

I wasn't here yesterday to post my usual, Monday kitteh post because hubby and I were wrapping up a glorious, long weekend in Lynchburg, VA. After the whole ordeal with the cats, professional development, and stuff going on around the house, we needed a break. Once we found a pet sitter that would come out to the boonies where we live, we were ready to go!

We've wanted to go down to the Lynchburg area to visit some of the local sites for a while. Lynchburg, VA is about 45 minutes south of Charlottesville and a beautiful little town surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's a college town too, with Liberty University, Lynchburg University, and Randolph College as the big hitters. We like going to places like this, as college towns seem to be more active and modern, with interesting places to eat and drink.

Old City Cemetery
Our first stop was the Old City Cemetery and Arboretum in downtown Lynchburg. We were there at the perfect, peak time of the year, as the place was entirely in bloom with old garden roses. Their heady scent was the first thing we smelled when we got out of the car. Heaven!

This is a garden cemetery, which is a wonderful and beautiful thing to behold. Many of the antique roses growing have been there for many, many years and serve as a historical record for the types of old garden roses planted in the 19th and 20th centuries.

There were walls and walls of them. So beautiful and hauntingly romantic. My favorite was a hybrid multiflora purple rose named "Veilchenblau". Oh, to have such things in a garden!

Besides the flowers of course, the cemetery itself is a wonderful, historical landmark with many of the graves dating back to the Civil and Revolutionary War. But you can tell I was there for the flowers!

National D-Day Memorial
After the cemetery, we drove west of Lynchburg to Bedford, VA where the National D-Day Memorial is located. The memorial is located in Bedford, VA as this town had the highest number of deployed casualties lost on D-Day than any other town in the United States. Of the 30 men who were deployed from this tiny, southern town, only 7 of them remained alive after the invasion of Normandy in 1944.

Blue Mountain Barrel House Brewery
Virginia has hundreds of local wineries to visit, but their breweries and distilleries are becoming more and more numerous and popular. We didn't plan to visit this brewery, but just saw the sign on the side of the road and decided to stop in. We are glad we did, as Blue Mountain Barrel House Brewery has the most amazing beer! Our favorite by far was their Dark Hallow Stout, which is aged in bourbon barrels. It was like drinking an after-dinner "bourbon beer".

The day we visited (actually the whole weekend) was really overcast and rainy. It seemed like you could reach out and touch the low-hanging clouds on the Blue Ridge Mountains. Blue Mountain Barrel House is located about 30 miles north of Lynchburg.

Local Cheese Farms
Besides wineries, breweries, and distilleries, Virginia is starting to get a reputation for making great cheese. What with all those lush, green mountains and pastures, it's no wonder.

The highlight of our trip was a visit to Caromont Farm in Esmont, VA. We didn't get any pictures at the farm, as it was too rainy and muddy, but we did bring home this:

The holy grail of goat cheese! Let me tell you, we have had some amazing goat cheese in our time, but NONE of it has compared to what these people make! We first tried and bought their cheese from a small cheese shop near where we lived and were hooked. In fact, we haven't been able to find it since and made a specific point to visit this farm. Fortunately, most of this can be vacuum-sealed and frozen. A visit to Caromont is not for the faint-hearted or lack of conviction. The farm is about 30 miles north of Lynchburg, deep in the woods, and at the top of a mountain. We were glad we had our truck!

Lastly, that large, red wheel of cheese in the middle came from Our Lady of Angels Monastery, which is about 15 minutes outside of Charlottesville.  Yes, this is a real monastery where nuns make this gouda everyday. There are no pictures again, as it's really a ring-the-doorbell-and-buy-some-cheese sort of thing, but it is worth it. When we were there, they were doing construction to expand the monastery, plus it was raining - AGAIN - so maybe next time we can get some pics.

Besides all that, we also managed to visit a few wineries and eat some great food. Lynchburg, VA turned out to be the perfect, little mini-vacay that we both desperately needed. We'll definitely be back!

Spring Happenings

Happy Friday! With all the chaos going on with the cats, painters at the house, being sick, and general spring busyness, I haven't updated you on what's going on with our house sale.

We were all set to put the house up on the market last month after we had our upstairs ceilings and trim painted, but then we changed our minds at the last minute. When I sat down and thought about it, we would be basically selling our house and moving to be closer to a job that neither my husband nor myself have right now!

Right now, I work from home and my husband's job actually transferred him to an office location that is closer to where we currently live, so that didn't make any sense. On top of that, we would be moving to a much more expensive area without an increase in our income, so that didn't make any sense either.

Lastly, we really believe that people are going to be holding off on making a big purchase, such as a house, until after the Clowntown-Reelection-Circus that is going on right now. I think this year's election is making a lot of people nervous, including me and my husband.

So, we are staying put for another year (at least). Our neighbors, who have the exact same house model as us, weren't happy to hear the news, but they haven't budged either. Maybe they are thinking the same thing? Either way, I've decided to let it go and there's nothing we can do to change what happens with our neighbor's property.

Maybe I'll finally get to see some of these gorgeous Bearded Irises that I bought 3 years ago thrive and bloom! I bought them in the fall and for the first year, they lived in pots and didn't bloom. The 2nd year, I planted them in an area that didn't get very much sun and they didn't bloom. Last year, I transplanted them to our backyard where they get full sun and they finally bloomed but were devastated by iris borers.

I was able to save most of them and treated them with grub control pesticide granules (systemic) when they broke ground a few weeks ago. They all seem to be doing well and hopefully, we'll get more flowers this year! I'm not one to use pesticides, but when it comes to my beloved irises, all bets are off!

Bugzooka!

Say hello to my leetle friend, the Bugzooka:

When we first moved up to Virginia from Florida, we were used to bugs. I mean, we encountered just about everything with four legs or more down there, so we were like, "Bring it, Virginia!"

But I wasn't prepared for how annoyed and disgusted I was going to get over ladybugs. Not just your average, cute, garden ladybugs, but Asian Ladybugs that invade your home every winter, no matter what you do.

At first, I found them to be sort of charming. especially when we were renting and only a few of them came into the house. I thought, "They don't bother anyone and they don't bite or cause damage, so come on in, cute little ladybugs!" But for some reason, the house we live in now is like a magnet and on warmer winter/spring days, I can count 20 of them in certain parts of the house.

They seem to especially like the window area in the laundry room:

Enter the Bugzooka, which is a plunger-type, suction bug catcher that takes care of these critters in a second. No more dragging out the vacuum; no more using a million wads of tissues to catch these things, which by the way, will crawl right out of the wad the minute you throw them away. You just lock and load, press the button and....WHUMP...the Bugzooka sucks up the bugs and stores them in a see-through compartment at the tip. When you are ready, the compartment comes completely off and you can take it outside get rid of the critters or do what I do and flush them down the toilet.

Now it's fun to catch bugs! This will even take care of the scary wasps and hornets that somehow get trapped in our screened in porch; however, the suction reservoir has a size limit on the bug you catch, so no Florida cockroaches. Besides, a Florida cockroach would probably take the thing out of your hands and hit you over the head with it!

7 Design Trends We Need to Leave Behind in 2015

Happy New Year everyone! If you've followed along for the past couple of months, you'll know that my husband and I are selling our home next year and moving back to the "burbs".

I'm looking forward to starting a fresh pallet, design-wise, but it got me thinking of some popular design trends I would love to see left behind in 2015:

1. Keep Calm

Stop telling me what to do!

from ebay.com

2. Animal Heads Everywhere

I'm looking at you, Target.

It's time to retire the faux antlers.

from Target.com

3. Industrial Decor

Unless you live in an abandoned factory or in a Restoration Hardware catalog, large, rusty pieces of machinery parts don't belong in your home. 

from architechtureartdesigns.com

4. Pallet Furniture

Just. Stop.

from spaceshanty.hubpages.com

5. Tiny Houses

Aren't these essentially trailers or mobile homes? Why is this a thing?

from curbed.com

6. Shabby Rustic Farmhouse Chic

We are not elderly women who live in vintage farmhouses.

(cough...Joanna Gaines)

from decoracion.facilisimo.com

7. Crazy Gallery Walls

Keep Calm and Dial It Down.

from rachelschultz.wordpress.com

Are there any design trends you would like to see left behind in 2015?  

I hope that you, your families, and friends have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2016; Happy New Year everyone!