First Winter at the Homestead

Now that the holidays and the cookbook shoot have wound down, I’m able to properly sit down with my head on straight and give you a long-awaited update on the homestead. I intended to do it sooner, I just severely underestimated how much time the actual moving and unpacking would take. (Like wow. I was very ambitious and inaccurate in both my packing *and* unpacking estimations.) And then it was Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and then cookbook gig. Also there are still dozens of boxes in the basement and garage. But you know, I feel like it always takes awhile to really get settled in a new place, so I’m not in a rush. At this point I’m of the camp that it’s good to live in a space for a bit before unpacking everything, so you can get a feel for how you move through and use every room, and arrange furniture and all your bits and bobs accordingly.

I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but we were finally able to sell our Portland home in late October, and had to move out by November 1st at 5 pm. And on November 1st at 5:05 pm, we were loading the last random bits of our things into my parents car (my and Jeremy’s cars were already full to the brim). We’d done the whole “movers + moving truck” thing earlier that week, but overestimated how much of the last little scraps from the garage we’d be able to fit in our car, so it was a last-minute hail Mary that my parents were able to drive over from the neighboring town and help us fit all that last random stuff. You never really know how much stuff you have until you have to pack it into boxes and haul it around. Yikes! Hopefully this is the last time we will move, pretty much ever.

And so we drove up our winding gravel driveway, unloaded the last boxes in the pouring rain, and collapsed on the bed. Even though it was a REALLY insane day, that first night sleeping in our bedroom at the homestead was the most settled and relaxed I’ve felt in so long. No more mortgage applications, no more house showings, no more decisions to make on homestead details. We DID it! We were here! Inside the home we’d been imagining and working towards for YEARS. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of anything than the fact that we were able to get this house built.

Which seems like a fitting time to thank the **truly amazing** people who helped make this home a reality:

• Our incredible builder Philip from Hainline Construction for finishing the house beautifully and on budget
• My friend + interior designer Sam Struck for the warm + welcoming interior design
• Our landscape designers Resilience Design for helping with all the exterior planning
• Our architect Dylan Lamar for designing such an energy efficient home
• The amazing women at Churchill mortgage, who were there with us from the construction loan to the final mortgage

So once we were all moved in, we started to work on little projects on the inside of the house. I knowwww. It’s brand new—what more could there possibly be to do?? Well, once you’re physically in a space, you start to envision little design or furniture things that might be nice in certain spots. With the build, I had a hard time envisioning what the spaces would feel like until they were actually done and I was standing in them. So now that we’re here, all those little ideas are sprouting and it’s been *really* fun to dive into some interior projects during the cold season Read More