Homeless?

We originally planned to live in the living quarters of our new barn while our house is being built because the barn will only take 3 weeks to complete. However, due to literally every title company within an hour of here (including NE OK and NWA) being 4-6 weeks out on completing abstracts/closing on properties even for all cash buyers such as us we’ve unexpectedly had a delay in being able to start the barn/house build. It’s also rained heavily for a week in our area so that would have postponed foundation work anyways. Prior to this we had planned on staying with family for 2 weeks while the barn was being built because we expected to close on the new land the same day that we closed on the house and a separate parcel of land that we owned which would have given us a week to live in our old house then 2 weeks to kick it with family between living in our old house and moving into the barn. This delay in title company turn arounds has changed several things for us though. We have decided just to move into one of our rental properties while the new house is being built. The tenets are due to move out of it next week so it just makes the most sense to settle into there for the next 4-5 months since there’s a 3 week hold up on starting the barn. We are repainting the whole rent house and putting in all new flooring but that will only take a few days so we should be able to move into it within the next 10 days. I’m excited to decorate it for Christmas and to get all of my homey decor up. It’s a cute little house that Brian and his papa built totally themselves a few years ago so living there will be special. We are under contract to buy land from a long term family friend of my parent’s and my late papa (my papa worked cattle on the land that we are building on 😭😍) so we tossed around starting the barn before we close since we trust the seller that much but ultimately decided that we aren’t in a rush. I think that my husband was partial to living in the house that he built with his papa, to be honest which is precious and fine by me. I’m just along for the ride and enjoying this journey full heartedly. It’s been neat to have this time close to our parents while we stay with them. If I’ve learned anything in life it’s that time flies by and we aren’t promised tomorrow. Cherish those moments and opportunities with your loved ones. Make the best of it. 

I, of course can not waittttttt to start seeing our new ranch go up but I also promised myself to take everything minute by minute and to enjoy the process. Taking my time to make decisions on things, big and small. From where I want plumbing extras for things like pot fillers and dog wash areas to what light fixtures and hardware that I want to paint colors and window placements to secret pantry rooms and a storm shelter bunker in the closest. All of it will be overly thought out and considered. The little 3 week delay from when we originally should have been starting things isn’t ideal but it’s also given us new opportunities to over think things and to live in special places with the ones that we hold dearest. I can’t imagine a life without our families this near to us. Family is truly our everything. It’s our source of our greatest happinesses. Nothing touches it or beats it. If you don’t have this kind of undying love and closeness with your parents and grandparents, my heart hurts for you. And if your chose to throw it away when you have loved ones who would die in a second for you — you are a miserable human being. You will never, ever go wrong with being near your loving and genuine family. Fancy things, materialistic things, and even spouses-friendships will pass you by but a family that loves you is the greatest thing if all.  I can’t tell you how deeply we’ve considered moving to Colorado. I mean, no bull shit - real deal considered it. Justified to ourselves being ‘a plane ride away’ from our loved ones or having a never ending ‘family always welcome to vacation here policy’. But ultimately our hearts couldn’t do it. Not full time. Not weeks, hell even days, without being with them. Brian sees his parents every single day and has all of his life with the exception of when we are on holidays. I see my parents weekly at the very least. We couldn’t live without that consistent interaction but honestly, we wouldn’t WANT to. I wish that all of my family members realized the value of the lives that they are neglecting. Their loss, for sure. 

Moral of the story is simple, plans can go astray but it’s in your control to make the best of it and if you have the opportunity to stay close to important people, don’t be an idiot and throw that away. One day those people will be gone and the regret that you’ll feel could very well ruin your life! 

SOLD!

(It’s hard to see in the first picture below but behind those trees is our creek with a stunning rock wall. This is our back yard area and we are clearing out most of those trees so we can see the rock wall and water better from our back porch-windows.)

And just like that, SOLD! We have closed on both of our properties that we listed and are under contract to close on our new property asap. We are spending our last few days in our current home before moving in to our temp home and I won’t lie, with all good things ending there is a sense of sadness. I knew that the end would suck. I did my heavy grieving and accepting early on in this journey so for the last several weeks I’ve rarely been sad. However, as expected now that it’s over, there is some emotional vibes floating around as we close this chapter of our lives. All of the ‘lasts’ are always hard. We will miss parts of this place. (The steep driveway and long, rough dirt road NOT being among those misses Hahaha.) 

With that said, the excitement for the new chapter is heavily on our minds. We finalized the barn & house plans with both builders which was exciting to say the least. We scheduled the fence/entry way builder. We break ground on the homestead within the next 10 days and should be moved in to it sometime in March. We have already begun to purchase things for the new house such as must have fixtures and furniture pieces that I didn’t want to risk going out of stock. I have made a few house plan posts but things have changed several times since then. I find new ideas that I love and want to implement almost daily. The bones of the home have not changed. The floor plan is the same. The layout is the same. The over all decor design is the same. But several of the little details have changed. I am beyond pumped to say that Brian agreed to painting the house-barn white and doing cedar accents on both. 

I’m basic. I love that authentic 1800s-1900s farmhouse exterior. Two story, block houses with lots of windows, white siding, and big porches. I’m a sucker for old, classic architecture like this:

However, Brian wanted to go very woodsy and log. Literally the dude wanted stained wood walls inside, stained wood walls outside, stained wood ceiling panels, wood floors, stained wood cabinets, stained wood trim. Wood. Wood. Wood. Woody, wood, WOOD! To. Much. Wood. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do like wood accents for sure. I specifically love the contrast of a warm toned knotty looking wood against white ship lap or a light colored wall but I don’t like wood overload so we found a nice compromise. I wanted to paint our kitchen cabinets a distressed off white and my husband did not. I also wanted to paint the exterior white but he wanted wood or log looking siding. The compromise was one of us gets the kitchen and one of us gets the exterior. He wanted the kitchen more so I got the exterior and y’all, I. Am. Pumped. 

It’s going to be so clean cut and pretty but still have rustic flair. 

We are doing the barn and the house in white siding with vertical batting every 12 inches. It will have stained cedar shutters, trim, and beams. I’m doing canned lighting on the porch ceiling with goose neck black barn lights on both sides of the front door as well as beside the laundry room door. I’ve also thought about doing stained tongue and groove under the porch ceiling. The barn will have two windows on the front (one on each side of the door) with cedar shutters on each side and a cedar loft window above the front door. On the side of the barn that meets our back yard there is a 12’ by 40’ climate controlled dog whelping room/she shed. It will also have two windows on each side of the front door. We will do cedar flower boxes under each window rather than shutters. The back yard is going to be fenced in using pipe and cattle panels. We talked about doing black chain link but need the fence to double as a dog safe yard that cattle can’t break since our show cattle pen will meet the back yard. It will also meet the cattle run that gets cattle from certain paddocks on the back of the property to the pens at the front of the property. 

I hate the looks of an added side garage and for our specific home site doing a garage on the back of the home would not have worked at all so we opted out of doing one. We are doing the laundry room/mud room on the barn-entry side of the house though for obvious reasons. The laundry room meets the kitchen so it also made sense to move it to that side of the home for practicality of loading in groceries and babies. 

This is our floor plan but we are reversing it, making the formal dining another bedroom, extending the nook and laundry room wall back 6’ to make the kitchen, laundry room, and dining area bigger, and the front door will not be inset. There also won’t be a garage. We are doing the bonus game room as a homeschool/play room. The attic in the 3rd story has tons of space for storage as does the loft in the barn. That was a huge deal for me. Plenty of storage. 

This is exactly what the house will look like but all of the windows will be black and there will be cedar shutters on each side of them. 

The barn will look very similar to this but we aren’t doing sliding doors on the front. It will be a regular exterior door that matches the house doors because the entire barn has central heating and air so we needed a sealed door. 

We are painting all of the pipe black around the house and at the entry way. We talked about doing white but I wanted something different than we’ve had before and our windows in the house and barn will be black so I think it’ll all look nice together. 

Fence like this is the plan for our back yard. It’ll be roughly 1 + acre in size so I’m super pumped about having a big safe space for the pets and kids but most of all I will be able to have free range chickens in the front yard. I could cry ha. That was a major life goal for me but our dogs kill chickens badly so it wasn’t possible without a big fenced in yard. We will still pen them up at night for their own safety but the builder is making us little white coop that matches our house with a 12’ by 20’ run area. 

As for the inside, I won’t get into specific decor designs today but I will say that we are doing rough wood rafters and beams over tongue and groove, stained this warm tone. It will match the trim, cabinets, and flooring. Mismatching wood colors is a huge turn off for Brian and I. The walls will be very light beige/off white (with high gloss because, kids). I’m doing a huge island that seats 6, a farmhouse sink, a pot filler, rock back splash, and a 6 burner gas stove. I go back and forth on a copper sink and vent hood. I’m undecided on a barn door on the laundry room because I will lose some wall space for my Target highlander cow picture in the dining room if I do a sliding door but we will decide that once I can do exact measuring to see how it’ll look. I will for sure do barn doors on the master bath and closet though. We will get into those special touches and decor design in a later post. There’s sooo many little fun things that go into making a home your style and unique to you. I LOVE IT! So much so that this is our 3rd time doing it hahahaha. 

This is what the foyer, kitchen, dining, and master suite ceiling will look like

The living area ceiling inspo



We are doing the banister out of the same lumber that the rafters are made out of with black coated rebar similar to this. 

All around kitchen inspo but with a massive island and a pot filler over the stove. 

The living room and dining room layout of the exact house plans that we picked


Guys, it took more than anyone knows for us to take the massive leap of faith and sell our (my) dream home. It was hard. We spent a year disagreeing over it and even after we agreed to list the house, there were brief moments of insecurity and regret but we prayed hard together and trusted God. We knew that His will was all that mattered and that He would only allow this to fall into place if it was best for our family. Now that it’s here and we are on page one of the next chapter, I can say with all certainty that it was worth it already. It feels so right. It literally flew by and went smoother/faster than anyone of the title people and the realtors have seen. God. That’s God for you. Six weeks from start to finish. No bumps. No hold ups. Flawless. Right now, especially with Covid that’s unheard of. 

If you are wanting to make a huge change but comfortable where you are so you let those dreams go, don’t do it. Don’t let them go. Don’t be complacent. If your goals and dreams are in reach but the leap is scary so you don’t jump, JUMP! God’s got you! 

A purpose driven life

“Raise them Kind” 

I have talked about this before but in the last 3 years my husband and I have made a huge effort to be extremely mindful of our relationships and our lifestyle choices. We have worked hard to try and live an uplifting life with positive interactions. This has even went as far as me cutting out certain family members. Family, friend, foe it didn’t matter. If they were not genuine and encouraging, they weren’t welcome in our lives anymore. We have found that who you allow in your life makes more of an impact than one might think. It can have a ripple effect on to basically everything in your world. The way that you budget and spend money. How you talk. Your mood. Things that you post or say. Choices that you make. What you wear. The list is endless and changes for each situation but the reach of influence is undeniable huge. It’s soooo important to be picky with who you allow into your world and we want our children to grow up understanding this. Understanding that’s it’s okay and HEALTHY to let people go that cause you more harm/stress than good. It’s okay to avoid meaningless or negative relationships. It’s okay to say ‘no’. 

It really started for me when my papa Jerry passed away 3 years ago and began with me finally blowing my top in regards to an ‘internet friend’ whom I had ALLOWED to constantly bring me negative feelings/thoughts. She was always over compensating for things that I’d talk or post about. There appeared to be this constant and overly obvious need for her to prove herself to me and to make me think that she has more than I do, to the point of me catching her in lies multiple times about things that she said that she had but didn’t. It was more complex than just the comparison aspect of the situation and went on for dare I say years before I broke. After you lose someone who is so important to you in such a shocking manner, you realize immediately how much petty drama on social media with someone who most likely isn’t capable of being a genuine, real friend is NOT worth it. 

I had a bad habit of forgiving super easily and giving people chance after chance after chance despite me knowing deep down who they really are. I want to believe that people are mostly good and capable of redemption. We all make mistakes. We all have bad days. We all go through things. Some of us experience post partum issues or chemical imbalances that literally change who we are, resulting in us acting out in ways that aren’t a direct reflection of who we really are. People deserve 2nd chances. But 4th, 5th, 6th, a millionth chances? I didn’t have boundaries. I still struggle with that to some extent. If someone who has burned me countless times, apologizes and wants to be friends again my instinct is to dive back in head first and be their friend. My family and friends will tell you that when it comes to my relationships, I’m all or nothing. I’m loyal and forgiving to a fault. I’d do anything for that person and I give it my all. I fight their battles for them. I lose sleep when they are in distress. I worry. I love. I am there at the drop of a hate. I, at times sacrifice myself for them if need be. I have no issue with life long commitment and companionship, whether that be with my husband, family, or my friends. It takes a lot for me to finally give up on someone. I’m getting so much better about compulsive forgiving and welcoming back into my life though. I’ve slowly ( and for the most part) quietly dipped out of those relationships that were chronically harming my mental health. Now I am in an incredibly peaceful place of contentment with those in my circle. I am careful who I welcome in and careful who I let stay. I don’t do meaningless friendships and have taken it as far as to limit meaningless interaction too, within obvious reason. 

With all of that said, I also acknowledge that I have been super toxic to others in some cases just as much as they were toxic to me. We fueled each other’s fires and bad habits. This being the case with the internet friend that I mentioned above. I played along and allowed her games to become my games. This was partly immaturity and partly that I deeply believe that I had lessons to learn from those situations. Lessons that changed me for the better so I can’t regret my part in it. I feel like God put me in those spots to grow me. I learned from it and learned not to fall into that hole again which is exactly what I’ve worked hard to do. I have to take a step back and pull myself together here and there when bad habits want to slide their way out of me but over all I’m super proud of how true to my mission I’ve stayed. 

From working hard not to cuss as much to building my relationship with God and the people around me in an authentic way to giving heartfelt thought to every choice that I make, I’ve worked so stinking hard to live a more purpose driven life all around and to be the best person that I can be. That over all intention played a big part in us selling our home. Putting action to our dreams and goals. Not being content where we were because it’s easier and wishing that we had done this, this, or this. Making it happen rather than wishing that it was different. Traveling more. Taking bigger risks even if they made us uncomfortable. Staying out of debt and focusing on eliminating things that we do not need or use anymore. Being careful who we hang out with and where we spend our money. Being careful with who follows us on social media and who we follow. Being careful not to fall into back in to old habits on our off days or bad moods. Being careful not to take for granted how much traveling and adventuring we get to do. Being thankful for where we are at as a married couple and as parents. Being open minded when we need to be but being willing to let do when it’s time. Being careful what we say to people and that we don’t contribute to smack talking. Being careful who we raise our kids around and making sure that everyone that we hang with is an influence for the kids that we would be proud of if they turned out like them. God definitely opened so many doors for us between our church family, CC (our Homeschool community), and our new neighbors whom happen to also be ranchers with young kids. Life is indescribably wholesome and beautiful for us. Of course we have bad days. We have loss. We have stress sometimes. But over all there is no comparison to living a mindful and uplifting life. It has been the best thing that we have ever done. 

In relation to these choices, I took it as far as to clean up my social media friends lists. Unfortunately this is a super timely process. You have to remove friends one at a time manually. You can’t just easily edit your list. I get followers daily on Instagram and just as quickly as I get them, I block any accounts that appear fake, aren’t overall encouraging/uplifting accounts, or aren’t content that I enjoy. Some people only care about the follow count but I definitely do NOT. My movement to an all around positive life reflects on every aspect of my life and social media is apart of that. Just this week I blocked 60ish people on IG and removed over 30 friends on my personal FB. My Facebook is private anyways but I am still cleaning up from when I added people left and right years ago. My IG is public because quite frankly, I looooove seeing other people’s stuff. I love lifestyle blogs and vlogs. I love seeing other people’s home decor and homesteads. I love watching how other families function and what works for them. I love watching minimalists organize and getting tips and tricks to things. I love seeing encouragement and advice on those pages. There is so much inspiration and motivation to be found on social media if you look in the right places and do not let yourself fall victim to comparison. They bring me joy and encouragement. And I love returning that so I don’t hide my page. I don’t hide anything about it at all. I have nothing to hide. I do however, filter who sees it and interacts with it if I feel like they are a troll or an overall negative person or if they simply don’t have the same values that I do within reason. Block. Block. Block. This isn’t exclusive to religion or political views either. I welcome diversity and have many friends who do not believe the same things that I do as far as those topics go. I am referring to pages with drama or mean words as well as pages with hardly any followers/no posts but view, like, and follow my stuff. I do a ton of interacting with people on social media. Even strangers. I don’t just have followers to have followers. I see them all as potential relationships so I monitor that. 

If I could give you guys one bit of heartfelt and serious advice it would be to be mindful in all that you do. Big and small. If it does not make you want to be a better person or bring you happiness, take a note from Elsa and let it go. Watch how much more beautiful things are when you live a meticulously meaningful and positive life. We can not control everything that happens to us but we can control how we react to it and what we do with it. 

IT’S CLOSING WEEK!

It’s closing week and I honestly still can’t believe how fast everything went. When this started I prepared myself for a long process. I even told you guys that I ‘knew’ that this would take forever. Ha. Joke was on me. Our house was listed for under 2 weeks before we accepted an offer that was only $5000 under asking. Our closing date was set for October 9th (roughly one month away from the date that we accepted an offer) but we NEVER expected it to close then. Typically these things take a minimum of 6-8 weeks. However, we are still on tract to close in 4 days. We put in our contract that we have a week after closing to move out but we decided to get as much done as we could in advance and at this point we are about 75% done moving. My mom, grandma, best friend, and Brian’s friends have helped a ton. We have such a bomb ass support system. I love them. Major shout out to those who have helped us and plan to be here this weekend to help us finish up. Once we close the real fun begins and I can not wait! 

I legit can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be doing this. Like, seriously squeal/happy dance excited. There is something so unique and special about building your dream home and dream ranch WITH your children. Having their little hands, ideas, and plans apart of each and every step of building it from the ground up is my by far my favorite. It’s completely one of a kind. Also having the opportunity to redo things that we’ve regretted or would have changed is awesome. I am beyond pumped and ready to watch this journey unfold. I am going to enjoy the process so much. I lost the enjoyment part in our last build because I was huge pregnant. I was overwhelmed and stressed about not being into the new house by the time that the baby was born and sure enough, she came 2 short days after we moved in. We rushed the final touches. We didn’t even finish polyurethaning some of the trim work because we just wanted to move it. I didn’t do the sinks and soaker tub that I wanted. I regretted some of the paint colors and using so much carpet. I needed a bigger laundry room and playroom. A bigger/gourmet kitchen too. Stuff that I know better now about but that I compromised on the first time. We didn’t soak in the process like we should have but that won’t be the case this time and I am pumped. I plan to blog and vlog the journey from day one so that’ll be fun. 

I got asked the other day if I was sad to be leaving and honestly the answer is definitely ‘no’. I did my grieving and accepted my ‘good-byes’ when we first listed. We were only here for a few years so the house that we lived in before this was much harder on me. I didn’t expect it to be this easy. I love this home big time. There were regrets, of course but over all it is a dream. It’s my favorite house that I’ve ever seen but it is just that, a house. A building. We will recreate the favorites and make new memories. The house that built me was actually 2 homes and my parents still live in the 2nd one. The house that built my husband is still right down the road, along with my parents house. His parents still live there. But honestly, they both have talked about selling and rebuilding too which we are 110% okay with. Holding on to the concept of materialistic things isn’t what our life is about. It’s about holding on to the memories and the people that made those buildings special. If you do that, you can be fulfilled anywhere which is as wholesome as it gets 🤍 

So here’s to the next chapter in our story, a new beginning to build our dream ranch exactly how we want it in a location that is perfect for our family. I won’t say that it’ll be our forever home but I will say that we sure are going to love it.