Our first farmhouse Christmas

My son found these while exploring the woods near our property.
Merry Christmas, y'all!

Lumber for the house arrived on Christmas Eve (as did the last delivery of kitchen cabinets that I ordered from IKEA—after a less than efficient ordeal).  We estimated what we would need for the joists and walls both upstairs and down and placed one large order with Home Depot.  It helps that my husband works in construction and knows Home Depot’s processes and orders a lot of materials from them, but they give at least a small discount on any really big orders.  Also, the delivery fee is nominal and you can order as much as you want for one delivery, so we ordered as much as we could think of to maximize our delivery.  The order actually arrived Christmas Eve morning and floor joists started going up that evening as soon as my husband and father-in-law could get to it. 

We had a wonderful first Christmas in our new home.  The kids were concerned about Santa being able to get in, however, since we do not have a fireplace (yet) in this house.  We plan to build a fireplace into our plans—not only for Santa but also because every charming farm house should have a proper fireplace or even a wood-burning stove or pellet stove for heat.  (I am doing some research on pellet stoves right now.  It might be the economical and environmentally friendly solution I am looking for as we try to keep our house a little warmer.  More on how much colder it is out here later.) 

Our girls both got new bikes since their favorite past time since we moved out here has been riding up and down our road just for fun or to check the mail.  They love that they no longer have to wait for me to come outside with them if they want to ride their bikes.  I love that for them too.  My son got a home gym set up that he keeps in the carport—a great outlet for burning teenage testosterone.  Like just about every other day that we have been out here, everyone ended up outside by the end of the day.  The kids were either riding bikes, playing with dogs or cats, or shooting bb guns and/or pellet guns.  My husband and father-in-law were outside putting up more floor joists.

No rest for the weary.  Presents got opened and everyone went right back to work.  This was the progress as of Christmas dinner.

As I do every year, I spent my afternoon preparing Christmas dinner.  My current kitchen is considerably smaller than my old kitchen and has only one oven and a stove that is not on my list of favorites, but we made it work.  Besides, the best part of Christmas dinner is sharing it with family.  I do look forward to preparing Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner in my new kitchen next year though!

My suburban kitchen had a 36" 5 burner cooktop and top of the line double convection ovens.  This does not.

The red is now gone in favor of white.
Soon the cabinets will be gone as well.

Notice how inconveniently located the dishwasher is.
You can't cook and clean up at the same time as the dishwasher opens right into the oven.

Soon there will be double ovens and full counter-depth cabinets on this wall.  We also plan to expose the ship lap behind the paneling and install open shelving on this wall.