BYE BYE BIRCH

Saturday Murph and Denny tackled a big project on our radar, tree removal. We had a group of birch trees on the west side of our house that were always cause for a little concern. The birch seemed pretty weak and were generally taking over the side of our house. So Denny manned the chain saw while Murph did the pushing and I went and got my hair done so I didn't have to watch any trees land on my loved ones or our house ;) We are glad to have a few less leaves in our future, more light in our bedroom and a cleaner look to the house in general. This makes me even more excited to the exterior done because now we will be able to see it! Thanks again Denny for helping us out.

Summer: LOTS of tree going on here

Before

After

THE COUNTDOWN IS ON

This week we got a call from our siding guy letting us know the product we wanted for the exterior of the house was going to go up in price. After some discussion we decided to go in and get a contract signed to have the work done next spring / summer to lock in our price. We picked out the stone, siding, shakes and roofing and modified the original design I posted awhile back. Let me just say I am getting so stinking excited!

What do you think?! I initially wanted to wrap the posts in stone, but after seeing the cost we decided to just go up the front of the house the entire way across. We landed on a black roof too, which makes me happy, especially since the exterior guy said it will wear the best. I also added in some black barn lights, and other goodies to our porch area. Murph got me some great planters I can't wait to stick out by the front door next spring and I am thinking a little red bench would be perfect out there too. I also got the go-ahead to get rid of the octagon window HOOOOORAAAAYYYY! so I made sure to mock in all new double hung windows since those will be coming in another year or so too. Changes are coming and I am going LOVE pulling up to this beauty :)

FINDING CONTENTMENT

For the most part I think Murph and I are pretty great together, we are polar opposites on lots of things, but that seems to work in our favor. This week we about lost our minds together, no seriously we did.

One of Murph and my hobbies is perusing Iowa Realty's app on the Ipad. We look at houses, get ideas for our dream house, laugh at terrible paint jobs and tiny yards and respond harshly to the realtor comments on the property ... it's a good time. This week though, we fell in love. I will say we fall in love with a house a month and usually we forget about it ... not this house. This house checked all of our boxes, and I mean all of them, ok it was only a 2 car garage, but it didn't matter.

• Walk-Out Ranch
• Over an acre in size
• Mature trees
• Large deck
• 3,000 sq feet +
• 4 bedrooms +
• Room to grow a family
• Room to improve it and make it ours
• Good condition, liveable for now
• Located in a neighborhood in the country

It even had some great bonuses:

• Pond
• Basketball hoop 
• Room for an art studio in the basement
• Room for a man cave in the basement
• In a small school district but easy access to interstate
• I could have multiple dogs here

I could go on and on, I mean just look at her:

So what was the harm to just go do a drive by? Well the harm is that you fall even more in love! We drove out of town about 10 miles and I swear to you we found a slice of heaven, in fact I think the mailbox already had our names on it. There were deer lying peacefully in people's yards, it was quiet, we couldn't see into the neighbor's windows and did you see that POND that would be in our YARD ^ oy vey. We got really excited, I found a video tour online and lo and behold it was even more magnificent than the photos showed! We crunched numbers, we talked logistics, I looked into school ratings and then we got REAL.

Yes, this is exactly where we want to "be", it's where we truly see ourselves going ... one day. But soon we were canceling cable, tearing down and remodeling a kitchen, finishing 1/2 of a basement, asking ourselves what heating 4,000 sq. feet costs, looking at the cost of a riding lawn mower and an invisible fence and it was clear we weren't moving here ANY time soon.

I looked at Murph from our couch and said, "we are home, we are blessed to be in this house, we can live here for a VERY long time, we need to find contentment". While websites like Pinterest and blogs provide endless inspiration I find myself soon thinking that they are the standard. Parties must be fully decorated with calligraphy, dinners become 4 course meals, and soon we are talk ourselves in to homes that we could technically afford, but not truly enjoy. It's a scary place to be. 

This year my focus has been on less. Less makeup, less clothing, less stuff, less stress, less spending, less hustle and bustle, and it has been hard but very rewarding. I am slowing down, I am spending more time being content and doing the things that matter to me and Murph the most. We are prioritizing and attacking problems together and while we would LOVE that house in the country, we know now isn't the time, and that we have more than we ever need right here on Hawthorn Drive.

So we decided to delete the apps, and I vowed to quit stalking the ARL website for a second dog, because yes, even our mutt WillyDog is enough. When the time is right I know we will leave this house, we will find our slice of heaven with woods in the back yard but in the meantime we will remember this life is more than enough, this place in time is more than enough, and we are so blessed to walk down this road together.

HALFSIES

We did it! We ran the Des Moines 1/2 Marathon on Sunday, and we are both glad it's over :) This is the most I've trained for a race and I am spent, I think Murph feels the same way. For the last 10-12 weeks our Sunday's have been filled with long runs, my alarm went off at 5a too many times, I snoozed that same alarm too many times and my body has hated me for most of it by retaliating with stiff and sore muscles, but I am still glad I did it.

We were both not happy with the initial weather predictions for the day and when I checked my phone I saw this:

That's right 13 MPH winds. WHAT?! But we bundled up and headed downtown.

Both of us felt like we had great runs! Murph killed it clocking in at 1:41:29, with a pace of 7:45 min / mile. Overall he finished 416/5,169 (top 8%) and in his age division he was 51/262 (top 19%). Compared to last years results of 1:42:37, with a pace of 7:50 / mile. Overall he finished 366/4,257 (top 8%) and in his age division he was 283/1522 (top 18%).

He looks fast, and oh, so handsome too :)

I was super happy with my end time of 2:07:23, and 9:44 min / mile pace. I was planning on a 10 min / mile pace so beating that by 16 sec / mile was amazing for me. Overall I finished 2375/5,169 (top 46%, hey it's better than 1/2 of the people!) and in my age division I was 224/572 (top 39%). Compared to my longest race before this which was Dam to Dam in 2010 (only 12.4 miles) I ran in 2:13:41 with a pace of 10:45 min / mile.

Happy to be done, clearly swinging my arms in front of me though, wasting energy, right Murph?

And the obligatory funny I look like I am walking photo, haha

I am not sure how people do marathons, nor do I really ever want to find out because I was so stiff and sore after the race it was humorous. I also don't know if I will run a 1/2 again, I think 10k's might be my race of choice :) 

WE BE DREAMIN'

As we finished the inside of the first floor up we moved onto a more pressing matter that needed some of our attention, our roof. After getting several estimates, talking to painters, siders, roofers and anyone else that may want our money we determined we have a big ... no huge project on our hands. Long story short we've got this glorious crap siding on our home that is in bad shape and will need to be replaced because when the roof comes off we will sustain significant damage to it. We've also got some rotten window frames due to poor maintenance from the previous owner, so eventually those will need to go too. So we are in the process of saving up for an overhaul. We know we will be at Hawthorn Drive for a long time so we think putting the money and energy into an exterior we love to look at is worth the work. This week I came up with a little mock up of what we may be looking at in a year or so.

Oh man, she looks so sad in this photo

Just a bit different!

So a few changes are on deck aren't they? Our tentative plan includes:

• New roof (I'm lobbying for a dark charcoal gray), soffits and fascia
• New gutters, see how we have none on the top level and see the rotten fascia it's caused
• New James Hardie siding (most likely in neutrals, but I dream of a deep gray/blue too) and shakes above the 2nd story windows
• New trim everywhere, matching the style we put on the bottom floor of the inside of the house and take out the beveled garage door corners, they make me gag, oh yeah make that white too, I don't know why but garage doors the same color as the house make me crazy too (personal preference!)
• Add 5 ft of stone to the sides of the garage doors and the columns
• Beef up the columns and remove the railing (our "porch" is so shallow we are hoping this will allow for some room out there)
• New exterior lighting, maybe a gooseneck barn light style?

I also would add to my "dream" list

• A new Craftsman styled door with some glass in it to add to the lack of light in our front room
• Replace the weird random octagon window with a single normal one, this will add more light and balance out the windows too

Man I'm so excited just thinking about the possibilities!