The House on the Hilltop - Part One

Here it is the end of October and I have yet to do a post on our house under construction!  It seems like the days just pass in a blur and I'm sad to say I've spent most of the past year looking forward to having the house complete so we can move in, instead of enjoying the whole building process.  I realize now that building our home all by ourselves is a huge undertaking that really needs to be documented in a way besides just pictures!  So, I'm going to do what my daughter has been telling me to do  for a whole year now and I'm going to BLOG about it.  Even if I am starting a year late! 



I love this picture - it is my daughter and I the day that we "found" our farm!

A little history on our farm.  We found it by accident when we came out to visit our daughter and her husband in 2005.  We drove to the top of the hill, looked at the view that was around us in every direction and said, "this is it".  It was ours 3 months later!  We had to wait 5 years until we could retire and move to the South (you can read about where we moved from, here).  Once we actually moved, we had months of work ahead of us in getting our water and power up the hill as well as excavating and installing a septic system.  We decided early on that we would do all the work ourselves; from excavation for utilities to site prep to construction.  So it is a long, slow process and even though we've had our stressful moments days, it has been a very enjoyable process. 

Septic system excavation, August 2011

Septic tank in ground as well as leach lines, August 2011

Site prep, October 2011

Help from our son on getting the site perfectly level, October 2011

 Digging footers, October 2011

Placing plumbing and footer walls, October 2011

Concrete workers doing the pour on the house part of the foundation, November 2011

Final pour on the porch part of foundation, November 2011

Due to the fact that utilities took longer than we anticipated, and problems arose with the water pump (needed to get water up the hill), and building a pumphouse as well as a small shed for storage of tools, and also that we changed our mind on house plans a few times, we didn't complete this phase of construction until November 2011.  Once this was complete we stopped construction until Spring 2012.    It was a great winter working on the farm clearing dead trees in the woods, mowing, and working fence. 

Our pretty drive through the beautiful woods

Post to be continued in The House on the Hilltop - Part Two

Fall On The Hilltop

Even though we aren't anywhere near moving into our new house yet, our porches are finished and I enjoyed doing a little Fall decorating on one little corner of my big wrap-around porch.  I figured as long as I stayed out of the construction zone it would be okay!

I loved using the old mailbox that I nabbed for cheap at a roadside junk sale a number of months ago.  (You can read about that post here.)  It made for fun decorating with my Fall things!

I did a little hiking around our farm for some Fall foliage and really loved the piece of wood with the moss growing on it.  It was my favorite find of the day.

Can you see that awesome huge pot next to the mailbox?  My son and daughter-in-law found it on their eight acres of land when they bought their place about a year ago.  They gave it to me recently and I am so in love with it.  It looks gorgeous full of these beautiful Mums.

I also did a fun Fall display at the entrance to our Farm.  I've never had much luck at making a scarecrow.  They are always so heavy after I fill them with straw that they won't stand up straight.  I love this lady!

She stands up nice and tall and has weathered several heavy rain storms in the last week and she's still as sprightly and happy as ever! 

I happened on an awesome blog post on how to make her...  I don't think I will ever make another scarecrow any other way.  It was such an awesome idea.  You can read the great tutorial here.

I think maybe we made her head a little too big...  oh well, she's perfect to me!

I hosted a Fall Ladies Lunch on my porches last week.  We had about 15 of us for an awesome lunch....  I planned it all out in my head and it was going to be like this:  these amazing tables decorated beautifully out on the porch overlooking the hillside and the beautiful Fall colors.   Instead, it rained buckets of water and was so cold and miserably wet that instead of having lunch on the porch???  I set up my gorgeously set tables under the scaffolding, inside the house under construction.  Therefore, my pictures were terrible.  I do have this one at least.... gives you a little glimpse of the Fall table decorations!

However, I learned a great lesson.  Fellowship with wonderful ladies is just as wonderful under 30 feet of scaffolding as it would've been on the porch! 

And here I am with my darling grand-babies.  There is nothing sweeter or more precious than these little girls (even pumpkins, mums, lunch on the porch, or rainy days)! 

Happy Fall!