Pictures of the homefront

Finally, as promised, here are some pictures of our new home. Welcome to the Birches!

The front of our house that faces the driveway.


Two views of the back of the house and deck, which is a great spot for entertaining.


Our kitchen is through the front door. A good amount of cabinet space and a dishwasher!


Our woodstove which is on the opposite side of the kitchen from the cabinets. You can also see into the kids room from here and the door to the bathroom where our washer and dryer is located.


The living room/dining room area looking from the living room to the dining room, kitchen around the corner, office and stairs to loft bedroom at your back.


Love the fireplace and stonework.


Our bedroom on the second floor. Is a loft (excuse the unmade bed but that's the way it always looks!)


Now for some outside shots. An amazing solid stone bench. The stones are just stacked on top of one another, no mortar and let me tell you this thing does not move.


View of back yard from deck.



A firepit complete with benches. Matt's handiwork with a chain saw, of course.


Named as our guest cottage. There is a room inside the building that takes up most of the space. That is where we are attempting to clean out and put a bed as well as some wall and shelf storage. We are also looking into options of heating it with a wood stove. The other space is used for a small woodshop, a chest freezer and animal proof trash storage.


The back of the cottage overlooks a small brook. There is also a narrow covered balcony in the back known by the previous owner as the gentleman's deck.


For a more detailed description of the house and property, see previous post.
We are so blessed to live in this beautiful place. Thanks be to God!

Watch out world!

It has finally happened...our satellite internet was installed today!! My world is changing! I just had a web chat with a friend, a web chat! I couldn't even download a picture and now I am chatting. Crazy. So expect pictures, videos, madness.

For example, we are storing up like squirrels here. We ordered 5 cords of wood for the winter which is being delivered 1/2 a cord at a time. I don't even really now how much a cord of wood is but I am learning. Here is a picture of one row of our wood stock which is 1/2 a cord. There is another row behind it and several stacks of wood in the back that are waiting to be split.


Here is Tristan taking after his daddy hefting logs bigger than himself.


We also picked up a bushel of pears yesterday. The orchard was in a beautiful spot right at the base of Greylock Mt which is the highest mountain in Mass. Here a a picture of 3/4 of the bushel stashed our oven to ripen for canning. I have to keep reminding myself not to turn on the oven or we will have a lot of baked pears instead of canned pears. More pictures to come of the canning process itself later this week.

Cool sewing patterns, anyone?

I am on a search for a company that makes easy to moderate level of difficulty sewing patterns that are somewhat hip and not something that my grandma would wear. A bonus would also be if they had small petite sizes (like 4 or smaller). Anyone have any company suggestions? I look forward to the brainstorming!

Long trip home and still no satellite

Sigh, just an update and the reason why I haven't blogged in a bit. Still, no satellite internet. Sigh. Long story short, we canceled service with the company because of promising something they couldn't deliver and not showing up several times when they said they would.

We went with a new company and they were supposed to install today. They called while we were in PA to say they don't have the equipment yet. 2-3 weeks. I am not getting my hopes up but I will keep blogging in the meantime. And delight in the day when I can post pictures and download my email in a reasonable time.

We returned yesterday from our first trip back to PA since we moved in April. It was a good all around good trip but bittersweet. It was so uplifting to see family and friends and spend time laughing and hugging and visiting. But also disheartening knowing that these people are not a part of our daily life anymore. I can't just call them and get together for dinner or stop by their house on my way home from wherever. We have lots of friends with kids and it was hard to think that they won't grow up playing together. And that our godson won't grow up really knowing us.

I have not once questioned whether we made the right decision to move here. This is where we are meant to be, I am sure of that. God has good work here for all of us. But what we have left behind is significant and will never be able to be replaced. I am not always very good at keeping in touch but there are too many important relationships for me in PA to be lazy.

It did feel , however, so right to come back to the peace and quiet of our home, our woods. I love the city but this land, this house, this mountain feeds and soothes in a way concrete, buildings, and busy-ness cannot. Still settling in, still transitioning to this new place and new life.