The Start of Summer

I cannot believe it's already the middle of the year. Last time I blogged was right after Christmas, and I was sitting here in this ol drafty farmhouse freezing. Now the opposite is happening! It's not officially summer until tomorrow but here in this old house that has no central a/c, it's felt like summer for some months now. 

We're coming up on our 1 year anniversary of our move to the mountains of NC. A whole year! It's flown by, that's for sure. I never imagined this time last year that in a few weeks I'd have packed up the essentials and moved to NC, very spur of the moment. But despite some trying times, it's all worked out and we're both very happy with our decision to move here. 

Life here in our old farmhouse has been going well. The cows returned to the front pasture in late April! I love seeing our cow neighbors. We've started looking and other areas we might wish to move to in the next year or so. I so love my old farmhouse, but the rental company we're dealing with is anything but efficient, or helpful, and they really don't care if this house falls into complete disrepair. Our porch literally has holes in it, and soft spots that aren't safe to walk across, and even though they've known about these issues since last fall, they haven't bothered to fix them. 

There is a long list of things they need to maintain but they won't, and we don't want to shell out anymore money that is absolutely necessary (and removable upon our departure)so we're looking for other places. Our lease is up the first of October but we may have to stay on after that until we can either find another suitable rental or until we can purchase. 

In the meantime, we've stapled screen to the outside of the window frames so that we at least have some breeze coming through. And my mom came to visit a few weeks ago and she and I planted flowers in pots, and installed a gate on the front porch so that the puppy can go outside alone. The back yard is fenced in but with the ever growing snake population, I don't like her spending a lot of time out back. 

And speaking of puppies, sadly my Mr. Marty went to heaven back in early April. It's still a huge, raw hole in my heart and I miss him every single day. He was acting perfectly fine up until 2 days before we had to put him down. One afternoon, he started pacing the house and wouldn't settle down, so after 2 hours of this, and him yelping when I picked him up, I decided to drive to SC where our vet is so he could be seen the next day. After x-rays and an ultrasound, it was discovered that he had a very large tumor the size of a 20 oz soda bottle on his kidney. It was inoperable. I had to make the heartbreaking decision to have him put down the next day. Gosh, I cry just thinking about it. But, I knew that was what had to be done. I will never not miss my boy. 

The girl puppy is doing well and we'll be celebrating her 14th birthday in August. She's a bit lonely without her brother here but she and I are constantly together so that helps. 

My Etsy shop is continuing to do well, though I wish they'd stop 'testing' all the time, as each time they run tests, the views and sales seem to vanish, but I'm plugging along as best I can. And a couple of weeks ago, I opened a new shop just for the vintage books. With the amount of books I have, it would easily overwhelm the regular shop so I opened a new one just for them! DogEaredBooks is slowly growing but hopefully soon it'll be filled with all sorts of great vintage books. I also started a new blog just for the books, which can be found here: VintageDogearedBooks. If you're on Instagram, I'm at @myvintagewhimsy and @dogearedbooks. Look for me on either of those accounts, where I offer special flash sales and discount codes to the Etsy shop. 

I hope everyone is having a lovely spring and that the summer will bring lots of memory making opportunities!! 

Leaf Peeping and Farmhouse Organizing

When we moved to NC in early July, we were in the middle of one of the wettest summers on record. I think that first month we were here, the rain topped 20" for the month. August was pretty wet too, and we had hoped that despite all of the torrential downpours, that the leaves would still be brilliant this fall. Well, sadly, they aren't that spectacular. In fact, the leaves that didn't just fall off while still green are spotted with fungus and mold and the colors are pretty muted this year. 

Having said all of that, leaf peeping even ugly spotted leaves while living in the mountains is still pretty awesome. My mom came up this weekend and we took a short break from house stuff on Saturday afternoon to take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Some of the mountains were still really green, while some were completely naked already but there were some patches of color here and there. The views were awesome either way!! 

I am still in the trying to get everything organized and put away phase of this  move and while I'm mostly done, I am waiting until it's all complete before taking pictures. It's been a slow process and I had hoped to be all done by now but life happens. 

I have been busy getting both Etsy shops back up and running, concentrating mostly on my Christmas shop, since it's only 2 months until Christmas. I cannot believe how fast this year has gone by!! I am excited to bring all of my Christmas decorations up from SC in the next few weeks and get busy decking the halls. It will be the first Christmas since 2009 that I've really been able to decorate the way I like. I don't think I did anything in 2010 (separated from the ex and I think he may have put the tree up) and then in 2011, I was living in the small apartment so no decorations. I did put up my white tree last year in my office but that was it. This year? Yeah, I am going all out!! There is room for my white tree, the main room tree, a mantel, a huge front porch with tons of rails. I know the man is going to think I've lost my mind but hey, it's what I do. lol 






 

My Someday House, Finally!!

Guess who is living in a nearly 100-year old farmhouse? That's right -- this girl right here. Hi!! I have been MIA for nearly 18 months after my move to SC and lack of anything of interest to write about but I am back. And I am living in a new-to-me farmhouse and I am in love. Both with the house and with a really nice man. I'm also in a new state, living in the mountains of NC, which I have always wanted to do and life is going amazingly well. 

Soooo, long story short, I met the nice man in March, while we were both still in SC. We fell head over heels, madly in love and when July rolled around, he was offered a job here in the mountains of NC so of course, we both up and moved, quite unexpectedly I might add. One thing led to another and we ended up borrowing my parents 34' RV camper and spending the summer in an awesome little campground, ran by the sweetest ladies, while we got acquainted with the area and looked for a house to rent. 

Finally, after nearly 3 months of living in the camper, we found a suitable house and put in our application and waited anxiously to hear if we were accepted. Thankfully, we were, and within 2 weeks, we were signing the lease and preparing to move in. That happened this past weekend. The man had to work Friday so I drove down to SC, helped my parents load up the trailer with all of my worldly goods that have been sitting in their garage for the last 18 months and then Saturday morning, we made the 3.5 hour trip back up here. Spent a couple hours that afternoon unloading and finished up Sunday morning. 

Needless to say, I am in the middle of unpacking hell but it's all coming together nicely and much quicker than I thought. I have a huge (to me, anyway) office and I am sooo ready to get everything put away and get my business back up and running. 

So, our 100 year old farm house sits on a hill, on 2 acres of land and has an amazing view of the surrounding hills and mountains and we have cows for neighbors. It is so quiet and peaceful here and even though the house is only 1500 sq ft or so, it's got plenty of storage and feels much larger, especially after sharing 300sqft with the man all summer long! 

I have to get back to unpacking but I leave you with some photos of the new place. It is so me -- from the wooden walls to the built in china hutch to the painted floors. It's truly my 'dream house' even with its quirks! I hope to get back into blogging on a regular basis once I've unpacked and organized. I'll need to warn everyone that there will be lots of cow pictures. I'm completely in love with our bovine neighbors!! 

Floods and Family

Hey guys! I haven't been around much lately - did you notice? haha Things have been kind of busy this month so I haven't had much time for blogging. So, the snow has melted and a few weekends ago, the great Monsoon season started. It was a lot of fun. NOT! Once again, our basement flooded. You know, I'm not sure why we don't just go ahead & fill it up with water and have our own little indoor swimming pool. lol But seriously, this is what the backyard looked like on Saturday, 13 March. Will didn't get home from that week long overseas trip until 5:00 that morning and then we slept for a few hours and woke up to this:



So, we had the pleasure of spending the entire day cleaning out the basement and trying to get the water out. The ground was just so soggy from all of the snow melting that water started seeping up through these hairline cracks in the basement floor. I hate our house. HATE IT. It's a piece of poo. I wish we had known there would be all of these issues because there's no way in hell we'd have bought it. Obviously. I don't know if I'm more pissed that the home inspector didn't see any of these things when he did his inspection or that the person that sold us this house did such a shoddy job with his "repairs". Either way, I just want to sell this dump & get the heck away from this money pit.

The only good thing that came out of the flooded basement was the forced spring cleaning! I took a truck load of stuff to the thrift store to donate. That felt great!!

Last weekend, Will's aunt and uncle came into town & stayed with us for a few days. His aunt wanted to go to a concert so we went & it wasn't really my style but it was nice to get out of the house. As you can see in the photos below, I was feeling pretty good by the time the concert started!



I promise Will wasn't nearly as intoxicated as he looks in this picture. He just doesn't take very good pictures - he always looks drunk!! I, on the other hand, was as intoxicated as it appears. Hey, I had to do what I had to do to get through that concert. Don't judge me!!



Will had to fly again on Friday so I had to entertain his aunt and uncle - we had lunch together and then did a little shopping at the Home Depot to finish buying supplies to finish off the deck. I took them to my favorite local restaurant for dinner that night and had a deelish meal of crab legs.



Will and his uncle worked all day Saturday on the deck and then we all went out dancing on Saturday night. It was on Sunday morning that I started to realize that I'm not as young as I used to be. I felt like crap all day Sunday - too much beer on Saturday night, I guess. Considering I go out *maybe* 3 times a year, I guess my once-in-a-while night of imbibing too much is okay. Thank goodness I didn't have to really function on Sunday though. lol

And while we're talking about families, I'm heading to SC this weekend to see MY family!! Yaaay! I'm so excited. I haven't seen them since last September, which may not seem like too long ago, but we usually see each other every couple of months. This is probably the longest I've gone without seeing them since I moved to MD back in 2006. Will and I have been trying to figure out a time when we could go down there but his schedule at work has been insane since December. He told me on Monday afternoon that he was finally able to take some leave for next week so we're off to SC on Saturday.

I cannot wait - I'm definitely going to take a day trip to Charleston since we haven't been back there since 2007, and I want to go to Myrtle Beach too. I haven't been there since 2004 which is crazy to me seeing how I grew up only 60 miles away from there. I probably won't even recognize the place.

My favorite steeple in Charleston:



My favorite Charleston picture ever - us on our wedding day sitting on a limb of a several hundred year old oak tree. Awww!



So, we're heading to SC in a few days but in May we're going to Tennessee!! Will and myself, the two doggies and my mom & dad are renting a cabin somewhere in eastern TN. It's a little getaway for my 30th birthday. Will is probably going to be working on my actual birthday so we're going a few weeks early and we're spending a week there. Aside from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the mountains of Tennessee & NC are probably my favorite place on earth. I just love it there. Marty likes it there too. This was in 2004 when my mom & I went for a few days. Well, Marty went too! This was before we had Scarlett. Anyhow, Marty so enjoyed riding in my Mustang. He was such a good boy and look at how handsome he is!



That picture just cracks me up every time I see it! I miss my Mustang too. It would've been great to have convertible this past weekend when it was 75 degrees outside.

Anyhoo, I need to finish packaging up an order & printing postage so I can drop it off at the Post Office. Then I get to come home and start packing for my trip to SC! I hope you all are doing well - I haven't had time to stop by any of my favorite blogs lately but I will try to do that later today!!