Time Flies

WOW...Time can sure fly by without even realizing it.  I feel like it was just a couple of weeks ago I wrote the last post here and it was 2 years ago.  So needless to say A LOT has happened since I last wrote.  I will give a quick run through (trying to touch on a little of everything) and then I WILL write again talking more on some of these more in depth.  I can say this "Paper Cowgirl" is truly becoming more of a True Cowgirl...we now have 23 hens, 2 roosters, 5 turkeys, 2 dogs, one show calf and two beautiful children.
So first off, the children...

Now 12 & 6

Can you believe it!!!  It is hard for me to believe and they live with me:)  Lauren is going into 7th grade (third year back in public school & she had a great transition) and getting ready to be involved in MANY things.  She had a great 6th grade year with straight A's, because of her hard work she was one of only 4 students in her grade that made straight A's ALL year!!  She also made the BETA Club!  During her 7th grade year she will be enjoying her second year of band (she played the flute last year and is wanting to try percussion this year), she will be playing volleyball for her first year and her biggest adventure is a show calf.  Meet Scarlett...
 

This is when she first started working with her.  (More on this subject later)

Austin will be in FIRST grade this year.  He absolutely LOVES school and is so excited for it to start again.  He also had a wonderful year last year with having the highest GPA (not sure how you have one in Kindergarten) of the boys in his class.  He loves to read and tries to spell everything.  He is loving living in the country and is growing up so fast.  He is quickly learning many "Cowboy" things and wants to be a real cowboy when he grows up (no Paper Cowboy for him).  He is excited to help his sister with her cow anyway he can (he really wants to show a pig but has to be 7...almost there).

Austin and his Kindergarten teacher

On to the house.  We have done a lot of work in the past two years.  We now have flower beds that go around three sides of the house, we built a deck out back and we are slowly getting grass to grow so we don't have so much mud:)  Our biggest project that was just finished was clearing the front fence line of all the over growth, ripping out the old falling down fence and having a new fence with entrance put in (and a side yard fenced for the show calf).  So I will go through a quick blast of pictures here to give you some visual updates.

 Just a reminder of what the house looked like when we moved in...

Here is a recent picture with all the flower beds around it:)

Here is a picture of the back before..

 .

And now with the deck.

 

I love all the space we have to hang out and entertain now

 

We will move inside now (because I am excited to show you this) and then go back out for fencing pictures.

 

Remember this wall I said we wanted to take out...(notice the corner of the entertainment center on the left)

  

Well, with help from my parents...WE DID...

Once we cut the sheet rock there was no turning back...

 

View from the kitchen to the Living Room...took us a while to decide how to frame it but once we found this old barnwood we knew it would be perfect...

View from the Living Room...we also decided to use the barnwood to make the TV wall more interesting (that is the same entertainment center pictured above...the flowers are where the saddle was)  It opens up the house SO much.  You may also notice the living room has been painted (thanks with help to my wonderful mom!!)

Back outside to the fences.  So those that have been to the house before know we used to have a pretty thick tree line right at the road.  This offered a nice bit of privacy and some block from all the road dust.  However, there was also a fence in the thick of it all which was falling down and was no good for use.  We still eventually want cattle and will need a working fence for this to happen so we decided to just have it all cleared to make way for the new fence.  Many people would wonder why we would take out the above listed benefits of the tree line but in the end I LOVE how clean the property looks now.  We will in time plant crape myrtles and other things to add some of the privacy back but without all the crazy growth like before.

So here are a couple of pictures before the clearing...

 See all the thick crazy growth...

And after...

This one was as the guy was clearing the trees...

This is now driving up to the house...

 

Our second entrance....

The main entrance...

 A little hard to see but you get the idea

And here is the new "side yard"...we borrowed the neighbor's cows to mow and test the new fence for a couple days:)

We are so happy with all the things we have accomplished in the last two years and it seems like no matter what we get done there is always a list a mile long of more to do.  

I hope you have enjoyed this little catch up and tour around.  I will write again soon because I didn't even get into the chickens (that is truly a whole nother story to tell with more chickens, another coop, hatching babies, turkeys...).  I will catch you up on that and more on Scarlett next time.

Until then there is always something to get done...

New house tour

So, I know it has been two weeks since my last post but it is better than years:)  In the last two weeks...we have gotten more cleaned up outside and the chickens got their yard so they can go outside now.  Always something going on around here.
Last time I got you all caught up and told you we got a new house and promised a tour so here I am to show you around.

Just a remimder of what my new house looks like from the front.

It is so cute I just love to look at it:)  Sometime it still feels like a dream that I live here.

So we will start this tour at the back door...what is the saying...Backdoor guests are always best...the way the driveway comes around it brings you right to the backdoor so if you come to visit this would be the way you come in.

When you walk in you come right into the dining room.  I love all of my chicken decor on my blue walls.  When we moved in all the walls and ceilings were the same color and this is one of two rooms I have decided paint color on.  I am very happy with my choice (I better be right?)

To get a visual of the lay out I will fill you in on where ecactly you are standing in all the pictures...so around the corner on the left of the picture you can see our door way, the back door is on your right and the kitchen is behind you.

You have now turned around and here is the kitchen.  One of the things I really liked about this house was the cabinets.  I was really excited when we (when I say we I mean my mom and her fitting of everything) unpacked and ALL of my dishes fit in these cabinets (in our old house I had dishes in 3 hutches).  I love all of my Milk Glass and other old dishes!!

Here is a better view of the kitchen.  The center piece is the bottom of one of the hutches I was using.  I like it as a little island.  I am going to paint it red and wax it and put a chalkboard on the back (I will write about that when I start that project)

This is a close up of the rugs I have in front of the stove and the sink.  Speaking of stoves...I LOVE my gas stove.  I am so happy to have gas back!!

Here is a good picture of my "island". 

As you leave the dining room you pass this little spot in the halway right outside my door.  The table is handpainted by my mom.

And now we are in the master bedroom.  Here is my vanity and Mike's "office".  I love all the space we have in our room.

Turn around and here is our bed.  The headboard is a design of mine out of an old door that my dad made for me.  I painted it and Mike put lights up under the top.  I love it!!  We have old pieces up on top from Mike's grandparents house (one is a stagecoach being held up by a gunman and the other was made by his dad)  The hope chest was his grandparents and the end tables are both old sewing machines (I love antiques and things with history).

Here is the other room in the house I have painted...our bathroom.  I went VERY bold in here and I am so happy I did.  The sink was from the previous owner but I have always wanted a vanity like this.  Our only complaint is the sink is TINY to fit in that spot.  We are thinking of getting a bigger bowl that would sit up higher to allow for a bigger one.  Anyways, the tub is huge and it is a jacuzzi corner tub.  It is very relaxing (and I am not a big bath person).

As you round the corner in the bathroom you get to the toilet and shower.  The full shower (no bathtub bottom) is so nice.  Mike found our towel racks and toilet paper man at a western store going out of business.  I like the fact that I have never seen them before at someone elses house and you can't just go pick them up at Lowe's.

Out of our room now and around the bottom of the stairs you come to the living room.  I have not decided on paint color in here yet.  We are going to make a walk through from the dining room to here (will show you that wall in a minute) so I am going to wait until that is open to pick a color.

Here is the right side of the living room.  I am so happy that we bought a house that already had hardwood floors and features I wanted in my forever home.  It made it seem like it was almost made for us (there are definitely things I would change but some of the features are wonderful).

Here is the left side of the living room and the wall we are going to open up.  To get to the kitchen from here you have to go around the bottom of the stairs, down the hall and around the corner.  When I am in the kitchen cooking I am completely cut off from the living room so we will have a more open floor plan with the opening.  The table you see in the left of this picture is where the TV is.  There is a little inset there and our TV and stand fit perfect.

Here are the stairs (and Jessie's favorite place to sleep).  The left side of this picture is the front door and behind the stairs is the hall that takes you back to our room and the dining room.

For today I will end the tour here.  This is looking out my bedroom door (stairs going up at the top of the picture and the dining room and kitchen in the background).  I still need to give you a tour of the upstairs (the kids floor) and the front porch (a very relaxing place to be).  Right now we are working on a headboard for Lauren's room so I will wait until that is in to show you around up there.

I hope you enjoyed the tour and if you get a chance come out for a visit yourself:)
Gotta go check on those chickens....

Catch up

WOW!!!  It has been A LONG time since I have written.  So many things have happened since September 2010 when I last wrote.  I will do a quick catch up in this post and then really get going from today.  In the past year and a half the kids have grown like weeds, we bought a boat, we sold our house and we bought a NEW house and land!! More about that later...back to the kids.

Isn't it SO CUTE!!!

So Lauren is now 10 and Austin is 4.

Lauren is finishing up her second year in the online charter school and Austin loves to work in workbooks and have his own school.  We have had two great years with Texas Virtual Academy but next year Lauren is going back to public school.  She will be in 5th grade and I think she is ready and I know she is VERY excited about starting in a new school.  Austin will hopefully start pre-k in the fall and is so happy to go to school like Lauren.  They are absolutely loving the new house.

About the new house..we first started this last summer.  We put our house on the market but in 6 weeks we only had 1 showing.  We were very discouraged so we took it off the market and decided we would stay a couple more years (HA!).  After much discussion we decided it really was the time to sell if we wanted to get out and still get close to what we wanted for our house.  So we once again got the house ready and put it back on the market the first of January.  We were expecting to hopefully get and offer and move around summer time.  Everyone told us to be patient and that it was really a hard time to sell.  Fortunately for us, by the beginning of February we had an offer.  They wanted us out by the 6th of March!  Talk about moving quickly.  Luckily, I had been looking at houses and we had one we really liked but it was a short sale.  The issue with that was with as quick as we had to be out of our house, buying a short sale can take months which could leave us without a house if they rejected our offer.  We accepted the offer on our old house and put in a bid on the new house.  This began the beginning of a LONG 6 weeks. We boxed everything up and put it in storage.   My parents were gracious enough to allow us to invade their house for the wait to see if we got the new house and then to go through the paperwork process.  There were many days when it looked like we were not going to get the house.  It was frustrating and exhausting but in the end it all worked out and now we have this beautiful new house on 10.5 acres!!! 

This is an arial view of our land

We moved in April 6 (Good Friday) and have now been here two months.  It is so nice and peaceful out here and we have so much we want to do.  In our first two months we have rented a tractor to mow and clear out some land, put up a windmill, built a chicken coop and started a flower garden. 

Austin liked riding the tractor

Every farm needs a windmill

My chicken coop!!  (Will write about this build later)

So, I hope you feel caught up as to what's been going on.  I am going to start writing about happenings around the farm and life in the country.  I will let you in on a tour of our new house, building the coop, starting the chickens and all the other adventures we have going.

It seems funny to me now...I named this blog Paper Cowgurl years ago when I was doing crafts with paper.  It now seems fitting to have this as my blog name seeing as I have always been a "Paper Cowgirl".  What I mean by this is I have ALWAYS wanted to live in the country and be a farm girl but have always lived in a neighborhood in a city.  I would wear my boots and when I was younger would go to Uncle Nelson's farm and help him and be a "Cowgirl" for a week or so but I would always go back home to the city.  Now here I am on 10.5 acres starting the real life of a farm girl.  Up until now I have only been a cowgirl in my dreams (a paper cowgirl).  We are starting out with chickens (21 to be exact) and eventually want goats, a pig and hopefully down the road maybe a couple of horses and cows.  So I hope you will join me on our new adventure of this "Paper Cowgurl" becoming a real true country cowgirl:)

Until next time...I have chickens to check on...

A boy and a Train

Being a mom to two children is always an adventure. The fact that they are six years apart and in completely different stages of their lives and that one is a boy and the other a girl only adds to the fun. For the most part they get along pretty well with each other but they can also rub each other the wrong way. With that being said it is good for them to have their own time and be able to do what they want. This weekend Lauren spent the night with my parents (where she has all her "girls" and gets to learn many new life lessons from my Mom) and had some new experiences.
While she was gone Austin and I hung out most of the day and then Mike and I took him over to see some train cars that Van Alstyne is trying to restore for a park. I love how such simple things excite my children! Austin was so excited to go see trains and that Daddy was going. When Lauren was in school Austin and I hung out all the time but he hasn't had a lot of time with Mike and I without Lauren. So yesterday was really fun for him.

He was so excited to stand by a train

He was more excited to get in!!

I'll let you walk through this little picture journey of him roaming around the trains and sitting different places on the second train...

Austin wanted to take a picture of us :)

As you can see he enjoyed his time running around a train and being a boy.  I love the little things that make a child so happy.
 
Until our next adventure...