OFF TO THE FARM TO BEAT THE RAIN

Trying to beat the rain today.  We have some big storms offshore slowing drifting this way.

I am not sure if I'll need to mow, but the plan is to try that.  Also need to start packing up some stuff inside the house.  Might not be so bad if it's overcast and stays a bit cooler today.  Also running to a market nearby the farm to get some dried peppers for a meal tomorrow (or Monday, ha).

More posts later this long weekend.  Tomorrow we have another new house adventure, more on that after.

Hope y'all have a great start to the weekend!

STAKEOUT DAY BONUS NEW HOUSE UPDATE

 So Tuesday was a special day.  If any of you saw our Instagram post you already know.  It was stakeout day!

2nd Man and I took a 1/2 day off because at 9am, we had to meet a guy out there to do our site evaluation and then stakeout.  We left downtown at 8:07 and got there at 9:01.  Pretty good timing, ha.

What they do is evaluate the site to see where the house will sit, what direction it will face, what needs to be cleared, what do we need to do ahead of time, etc.

It was hot.  Ugh.  And humid.  Double ugh.  And we were trying to beat the rain!

We talked and walked around.  He had our architectural drawings and scale maps/satellite photos, etc.  Once we had things more or less decided, he started staking.

What he likes to do is not only put the "footprint rectangle" stakes in, but he likes to shape the outline of the building (as much as he can) so we can visualize things.  That's kind of fun.  Above is standing in the 'future driveway', looking along the front side of the house.  Here, you can see where the front porch, the kitchen, the hallway, the study will be...

...and here is the guest room, the master bedroom closet, and the master bedroom itself.  The rest of the house is inside the footprint of the existing house, no real way to section those off but this gave us a great visual representation of what we'll see.

Here is something that caused us to make a change.

The entire footprint of the new house was moved forward about 10 feet.  The reason is in the picture above.  The circle is the old septic tank.  It will be removed, of course, and filled in, they have to do this often.  The issue is, the original footprint would have put the master bedroom floor over it.  Chances are, there would be no issues but you never know about settling.  He suggested it would better to have the slab 'outside' of that area.  We decided to move the whole house forward by about 10 feet but our front yard is huge, so no issue there.  Plus, this gives us 10 more feet of backyard which is where our orchard area is so hey, more planting area for me?  Ha.  No, nothing new with roots close to the house but we can have some chairs back there for deer watching!  Or a hot tub?

Hmm...decisions decisions.

Here is the back corner of the garage.  We also moved the house over a few feet so that our existing driveway can run almost right straight into the garage.

As you can see, that puts it a bit closer to some brush so some clearing will need to be done ahead of time.  But it's OK, because we wanted to clear this area anyway.  The tree is still about 20 feet away (hard to tell from the angle) but we'll have some of those branches trimmed.  There is also a large "hackberry" tree just off camera that will need to come down because it's too close the house if it ever fell (and with our changing weather patterns, you never know).

Overall, we had a blast and are so excited.  The guy told us that of all the properties he has seen so far this month, ours was the best in terms of house location and few issues.  Our driveway, culvert, etc. were fine.  He said most of the time, people point to a densely forested area with bushes and poison oak and snakes and brush and they say "we want the front door there and the bedroom over there".  Meaning they have LOTS of work to do first.  Our only bullet point list is to trim a tree, cut some bushes, cut down a tree and, oh yeah, remove the house.  They are about two months away at this point from breaking ground.  Next step is a soil sample for them to be able to engineer the slab.

It's happening!

NEW HOUSE TEASER WINDOWS

 If you remember THIS POST last week about our door choices, we didn't realize we had some options for windows.  

The biggest choice was the one that makes the biggest difference in appearance and that's the lites inside.  

The builder uses double paned insulated windows throughout and we are fine with that (better insulated from weather extremes).  But you get a choice of what goes inside those panes.  It's more commonly called 'divided lite'.

These were the choices:

Our previous house in Houston was a craftsman style bungalow and that would have been a no brainer for the prairie style.  But with us wanting to go for a farmhouse vibe, something that looks old but new, we narrowed it down to the 2 over 1 and the 4 over 1.  The 4 over 2 and 4 over 4 both look a little too formal.  The others are a colonial style.  So in the end, we chose 4 over 1, this way we have a little decorative element on top and have a clear view below.

Here's a look at what it will look like on an actual house from the inside.  Pretty cool.

And here it is from the outside (different color of course) but with the barn shutter look like we'll have.

Another feature we opted for were windows that tilt inward for ease of cleaning from inside the house!  We chose white just for ease of color matching and blending with the exterior and interior.

Now there were also a couple of windows a bit different.  The window in front of the kitchen sink, is a large picture window (still double paned) but it does not open.  Our choices for the divided light in that one were limited as you can't have "two over one" when there is no "over one" on the bottom, ha.  In the end, we opted for this look, 4 lite:

It mimics the upper portion of all windows and keeps it cohesive since it's on the front with all the other windows.  We figured no division might look odd since you can see this window from the front of the house when you come in the front door.

On the back side in the dining room, they also do large picture windows but they are just solid pieces of glass (for views) with no division.  We're ok with that (side note, this is the dining room window from our actual plan and exactly the way it will look for us).

We didn't feel the need to add any extra windows in the house, except in one spot...the garage.  In fact, we made a few changes in the garage, so stay tuned for that next in the next installment, 'garage teaser'.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Wow it's hot here.  Hoping the forecasts are true that we've hit the hottest part of the Summer and now it's going to be "less hot", ha.  Time for some good food and Hobart!

Last weekend, 2nd Man made meatloaf, for the first time since we changed our eating habits.  First up we had a salad (as we usually do now).  Since we were going with an all-American type meal, we opted for an American salad blend, iceberg, shredded cabbage and carrots, tomatoes and a simple vinaigrette. 

This is a quintessential American meal, ha.  Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.  He took his meatloaf recipe and changed it to be more healthy. Since we don't really eat red meat anymore, he made this with ground chicken, ground turkey and ground Italian sausage for some extra flavor.  We use the ground chicken made with white breast meat and no skin so there's almost no fat, the ground turkey is also the 99% fat free version (as opposed to the 94% version that has ground skin) and then the ground sausage has only lean pork.  He loads it up with mushrooms and carrots and green bell pepper and even used whole wheat bread crumbs.  Then some mashed potatoes using evaporated milk to remove that fat and a spoon of greek yogurt for some extra creaminess.  We topped it with some heart healthy butter.

It was SO good.

Here's Hobart (last night actually) posing for the camera, ha.  We have a sofa table behind the couch and we keep "his quilt" up there for him to sleep on.  He jumps up on the couch on his own and then, because his jumping is not like it used to be, we give him a boost up there where he sleeps for a couple of hours.  I sit on this couch and reach back to pet him while he's sleeping and this time, he was looking at me like he was saying "thank you".  Because...

#notspoiled

SOME MORE SMORES STUFF

Or would that be s'more s'mores stuff?  HA!!

Remember last year I found this caddy for our future (now, soon to be) firepit?

Well as fate would have it, I found some more stuff that goes with it!  "After Summer" clearance deals!

A s'mores "maker" and four telescoping forks.

This is called a s'mores maker.  You open it up fill it and it gets them ready to eat.  

Here are the instructions.  You put the graham crackers in the top and bottom with the clips, put a chocolate bar in the bottom portion, put your toasty, hot marshmallow on top of the chocolate and then close it together.

It presses them and squeezes the marshmallow down and, presumably, since it's hot, it melts the chocolate.  Then you just lift them out and enjoy.

A good thing is the maker fits inside of the case we got last year, so that's nice.  One thing that doesn't fit are the extendable forks for roasting those marshmallows.  But that's ok, they can hang out near the caddy, ha.

They are extendable to 36" long and here's the best part about them...  

...the handles glow in the dark, ha!!  I left them outside while I was taking the pics and when I brought them inside, I noticed the handled lighting up and had to get a pic. These will be fun on a dark night around a fire pit!

NEW HOUSE TEASER DOOR CHOICES

 Who knew you had to choose doors and windows?  I mean, we just thought, yep, it comes with doors and windows, how much do we need to decide?  Apparently a few things, ha.

First up the doors:

Of these three designs, we liked the first one, the horizontal smooth the most.  Didn't really like the roundtop either plank or without.  Kind of ranch or log cabin vibes.  We thought the horizontal smooth that we liked might just be a bit contemporary.

Then we were shown three more.

The 6 panel textured was nixed right away, too formal.  So in the end, it was the last one, the two panel square top smooth.  The design looks like the doors we had in our last house and still conveys old.

2 Panel Square Top Smooth ✅

We had to decide on two things after this choice; hollow core vs solid core and then 6 feet or 8 feet tall.  With our ceilings being 9 1/2 feet, we felt 8 foot tall doors would be nice and large and make a great statement.

8 foot tall ✅

Then it was a no brainer for the other choice, we wanted solid core doors.  Our house in Houston had them (being built in the 1920's) and our apartment has a couple of hollow core doors, and we just don't like the lightweight feel of those.  With them being so much taller, it would be noticeable in the feel of opening and closing a door.

Solid core ✅ 

Then we were told "but wait, one more thing...what kind of doorknobs do you want?"  In a perfect world, we would have loved glass doorknobs like we had at our old house.  They didn't have that option though.

I don't have the pictures of the options, there were colors and round knobs and curved levers, but in the end, we chose this style:

It's a lever style with a square backing.  Contemporary but also kind of old school in a way.  One advantage is that when your hands are full, you can use your elbow to open a door.  Hey, you never know!

We could always upgrade later to glass doorknobs and swap them out after we close and move in.

Square Plate Lever Style ✅

Oh, and what color?  We have decided on black doors.  We know, probably not for everyone but with the colors we chose for the interior rooms, we think black doors will look pretty.  Kind of like this:

It looks cool, even when paired with wood furniture.  It's kind of new and old at the same time.

Here's another look.  Again, clean, contemporary but classic at the same time.

Black doors ✅

The color we chose is Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black.  It's a black black and will be very dramatic.  As luck would have it, when I was looking for photo examples of black doors to show y'all, check this out:

This is our door style WITH the lever handle like we chose AND in Tricorn black.  Wished they had a wider-angle picture but hey, we'll have it in real life in a few months and then you'll really get to see it, ha. 

Anyway, that was our door journey.  Next time, WINDOWS.  Who knew there were so many choices for that too!

FOLLOW YOUR HEART VEGENAISE REVIEW

New house teaser coming soon, sorry it's been a busy weekend and yesterday was crazy.  Had this post ready and it was easier to put up.

We've made a few recipes lately and mentioned the heart healthy mayo that we found.  Several of you have asked what we used.

I bought it on a whim one day after looking at the label and wow, are we glad.

It is called "Follow Your Heart Original Vegenaise".  Now of course, we're not vegans, but this just fits perfectly into our new way of eating.  I will admit, one of the things I missed, a lot, is mayo.  When I saw this, I figured, well, let me try it.

We were so surprised when we opened it.  It looks like mayo and is just as creamy and spreadable.  No difference in texture or appearance, maybe slightly whiter as opposed to an off white (because those use eggs with yolk).

We wish we could convey how much this tastes like mayo.  If you gave this to me in a blind taste test, I would think, it's not my usual brand, maybe like the difference between Hellman's vs Blue Plate vs Duke's vs this. You'd think it's mayo for sure, you just wouldn't be sure what brand.  It's not too sour, not too sweet, it's hits the right, mild, pleasant taste spot.  We think it tastes amazing!

Per TBSP.:  0.5 gram of saturated fat vs 6 in the mayo we used to use!  Sodium is 70mg, less than normal and 0 carbs.  No dairy, no eggs, no cholesterol and no preservatives.

It's more expensive of course (why is everything good for you more expensive, sigh) but we don't use much so it lasts us a while. 

Of course, we're still adapting things like this to our moderation method of eating and so we don't eat it regularly of course.  Because it's made with oil (and has to be) it does still have fat, so we have to watch that (moderation) but regular fat you just have to watch the totals for the day and a smear here or there won't hurt.  The good thing for us is that when we change a recipe that has used mayo, now we can use this.  For example, the casserole I made that used 1/4 cup of mayonnaise I can now substitute this.  1/4 cup is 4 TBSP so this adds only 2 grams of saturated fat vs 24 grams (!) of the regular mayo.  That's a win/win.

Of course, there is that occasional sandwich where mustard just won't do. 

But it sure is nice to have that tomato and mayo sandwich on occasion (it's a Southern thing, LOL). 

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Another week has flown by.  It's hot.  But there's always time for good food and Hobart!  The other night was our anniversary and while we'll go out later for a special dinner, every dinner at home is special, ha.

2nd Man made oven roasted pork chops that we marinate in this orange pepper seasoning for a couple of days before,   It's so good.  Then he used to make white rice with corn and jalapeños and now he's adapted it to brown rice with the same ingredients and it's so yummy.  We started with a salad too, we eat salads with almost every meal now.

We had to have dessert for the special occasion, so for portion control, we had cake balls and I bought some Halo Top ice cream (only 1 gram of saturated fat per serving, which was 1/2 the pint, we only had 1/4, ha).

Hobart was unimpressed.  There were some towels on the floor for laundry and he found them and took over.  Slept there for a couple of hours and it made me have to wait to do those towels later. We let him because...

#notspoiled

LUCITE TUBE TRASH TO TREASURE

 Didn't finish the post for the new house teaser so I'll put this up that we had ready to go.  We'll resume regular new house updates next week.

Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

So recently, I found this.  What is it?  I'm not exactly sure!  Ha!  It's a long lucite tube, I know that much.  Almost 5' long (tall?) and about 12" in diameter.  It's thick lucite too, a good 1/4" or more thick.  You know when you see something and you just KNOW it could be useful?  Well, yeah...

...I snatched it up and took it to the farm.  2nd Man said "what are you going to do with that?"

"I don't know but I want it!"  LOL!

Hmm, mount it to a base and put lights inside?  Sealing up the bottom and try to grow something in there like a terrarium? It doesn't take up any space in the barn, in fact I put it up in the rafters so it's OK, I may not know yet, but that's half the fun.  And this time next year, I'll be out there staring at it and going "hmm..."

Any random thoughts on a use/project?

TWENTY FIVE YEARS

 Together...

25 years ago this week, we went on our first date and here we are, a quarter century later!  Where does the time go?  It's a big milestone of course, but we've both agreed to no gifts right now.  I mean, we are building a house, so there IS that, ha.

We'll have a simple dinner tonight (pork chops and corn on the cob with salad is on the menu) but soon, we will splurge and go to our anniversary place for fried chicken.  We haven't had fried chicken of any kind since before my heart attack so we figured a splurge once a year is OK.  I even asked my doctor on my last visit and, as he said, "don't miss out on what you enjoy, just do it with moderation".  I said "so fried chicken once a year?" and he said "ABSOLUTELY...once every couple of months if you want it, your numbers are very good".  We won't do that, but once a year seems fair.

For those new to the blog or missed it a couple years go, you can read THE STORY OF US HERE

A phrase we always like to say is "It's just the two of us and that's all that matters".  Family is not always there and neither of us have our parents so in the end, that's really all that matters (and sweet Hobart of course, for as long as we have him!).  

"New House Teaser" will be on Friday...

ANOTHER HOT WEEKEND IN THE BOOKS

Hot weekend.  Ugh.

I said I wouldn't mow, but I needed to get the mower out to go around the barn/shed so that I could edge, and also do the orchard area.  Since I was on the mower, I decided to go ahead and mow the driveway and the front yard.  It'll give me a head start.

It was only 30 minutes so that's better than normal.  But then I had to edge. The shed and barn were out of control so I started that.

The picture above is from a couple of weeks ago.  The back was even worse, ha.  It was a lot of work in the heat.  I had to mow first, then cut the thicker stuff by hand, then slowly edge around it.  After I edged, I had to use the mower to clean it up some more and then I edged the stray pieces and finally sprayed some vinegar around to keep the weeds at bay, for a bit anyway.

Here is the after for the barn.  So much neater.

Here is the mower shed.  Also much neater.

And such a relief.  There's something about seeing it visually all neat and clean that helps the mental angle, like a big weight off myself shoulders.

I got the orchard about halfway done but by then it was just TOO hot to finish.

When I left it was 99 degrees and felt like 111.  No rain in the forecast for the next ten days so I definitely shouldn't need to mow next weekend at all and hope to be able to finish the edging.

2nd Man keeps reminding me, this is the last August I'll be doing this back and forth with no a/c and in the heat of the day. This time next year, we'll be living out there and I can mow the driveway early in the morning, skip a day, mow the yard another day, do the trails another time.  But best of all, I can mow and take a break INSIDE where it's cold, have cold drinks ready and take a shower as needed.

Plus, 2nd Man will have fabulous snacks and lunches and dinners ready whenever I come in.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

 It's been a HOT weekend.  I did what I could at the farm yesterday and so today is staying in so we don't OVERDO it.  While I was at the farm, 2nd Man made one of our favorite meals.

We always loved a Sunday pot roast with veggies. Since we don't eat beef anymore, we have started enjoying a roasted chicken with lots of veggies.  We get a large chicken (this was a 7 lb one) and we season it but no oil.  Then we just grab a random assortment of veggies.  We chose: sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, mini peppers, garlic, Brussels sprouts, and for something different this time, fennel bulbs.

We put it all on our largest sheet pan and into the oven they go to roast until done.  We remove the skin when we eat it and it's all on a rack so the fat drains through.  Oh my gosh, it's so good and so satisfying.  We also get to eat on it for two or three days.

Hobart definitely keeps an eye on us when he smells the chicken cooking.  He might be older, but his nose still works well, ha.  Of course, he gets his own little plate of chicken (and sweet potatoes, he loves them).  Because...

#notspoiled

OFF TO THE FARM IN THE HEAT

Hoping I don't have to mow today, it hasn't rained since last week so I might be able to skip.  I want to edge because that it out of control.  I stocked up on fuel and weedeater line so I should be good to go.

Also hope to start sorting through things inside the house.  It's going to have to be packed up soon so that we can get things moving along.

This was yesterday afternoon at 4pm.  100 degrees with a feels like of 118 degrees.

It's definitely Summer in Houston!  I have a cooler full of water and some snacks.

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!