” It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up” Babe Ruth.

For the past few months I have been trying to catch up on things, and blogging is one of those things. Blogging is at the top of my list when it comes to my favorite hobbies. The best part about blogging to me is all the other bloggers I have met over the years, from all over the world. That’s really cool you guys, think about that…we get to communicate and share our lives with each other even though we could be thousands of miles away.

But, as all you bloggers out there know, it’s hard to keep up with it all when you have busy life events to deal with. Every one of us has our own world we live in. What our days are like, where we live, what we eat, what we do…you know…we all have very unique qualities when it comes to how our day begins and ends.

And not one person’s life is better than the others. You could be a professional, like a doctor, or a stay at home mom, a homemaker, a shop keeper, an artist, a cook, a mechanic and a dog walker…doesn’t matter…every part of every one of our lives is important. We all play a part in making the world run smooth. We all were individually given a gift from God to do what ever it ends up being that we do.

So, I thought I share just a little bit of one day in my life, but it changes everyday, so tomorrow will be totally different. On this day that I’m sharing with you, it was a work day. My husband and I are flippers among other things, we wear a lot of hats you could say.

We take broken homes and we fix them up. This is hard work, and sometimes these homes are so broken, it’s kind of sad to me, but wow, when it’s finished, they are back to life again to live in. It’s so satisfying when that happens.

Our day starts out with me making breakfast. We have been getting a lot of eggs from our chickens so I make an egg breakfast. This is usually scrambled eggs with chopped mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes from the garden, fresh garlic and fresh salsa. But this day it will be a 4 egg omelet with mushrooms, onions and cheese. We have cooked on cast iron for years, switched over many years ago. It’s not hard once you understand that cast iron runs hot. Also, we save our oils from meat we cook, and stopped using seed oils over a year ago.

Before breakfast my husband feeds the outside animals and chickens. Then we search for the tools we will need to drive over to the property we are working on. We are both tired from the day before but we are way behind on the property and Winter is coming. Our goal now is to button things up to weather proof it. The basement is our main concern this month.

My goals are small today, we are taking things slow since we got sick and were out for over 5 weeks. These new viruses are pretty stubborn now days, they like sticking around. We bought some Mullein for tea and it worked great. I think I will buy some to package up for Christmas gifts. But ask your doctor first in case you are on other medications that could interact poorly with it. When we lived in the city we bought something over the counter, and it didn’t help, but now we have people helping us, teaching us what other options there are.

My goals are mostly clean up duty for this day. We are in the early stages of this and my husband always jokes around when someone says where do I start…”Pick a corner” he always says because every corner needs something done.

My corner today is a huge pile of glass in the front of the shop that needs picking up. Several pieces of glass replacements had broken in the last storm. It was a bad storm. The glass that didn’t break will be moved into the shop for another day. We have old windows to repair before the Winter storms come.

We will be giving a lesson on replacing glass in vintage windows this weekend. We have discovered a few windows broken in the house upstairs, downstairs, and in the shop as well. So this Saturday will be a learning experience too. Or should I write teaching experience? Can’t it be both?

Second goal is to take several photos all around the property, inside and out. I had already started doing this the day before but didn’t finish. My daughter does the video part but she is back to working, maybe I can get her to come over on a weekend and do that. We always forget the before and after part, but this time we are making sure that doesn’t happen.

Before I do that, I need to walk around the property and pick up all the garbage laying around. I mostly picked up empty plastic water bottles, but someone must have thrown a shoe out their car driving by. I found one shoe. I think it was Nike. I remember in High school Nike was the shoe to have. I don’t like the brand…and I will never promote it. They are good at marketing though…experts at it.

I try to take photos of different sections of all the buildings we are fixing up. While walking around I notice some new plants I didn’t know about before. I find some acorns and I’m happy to discover we have some oak trees on the property. As you know, I am collecting acorn tops for another one of my projects.

The day before, I did a complete walk through, taking photos of every corner inside the house, upstairs and down stairs, then I did that with the shop as well. Walking through all the shop rooms.

Afterwards my husband came into the house and did a walk through with me as I took notes on what we could do in the remodel. Removing walls to create open spaces are when things get complicated but the outcome looks so much better. There are two areas I would like to knock down to create bigger spaces. People feel calmer in bigger open spaces, when things are crammed and closed in some people may feel trapped. I’m trying to create inviting spaces. Places of peace where once broken things existed.

The dogwood is looking a little dry and I tell my husband it needs water. A local in the area told us the trees get enough water from the rain but I don’t know, I have never had a Dogwood tree before, or a Mulberry, which we also have now. I need to research these trees. In the Spring the tree was full of berries, the birds were all over that. I liked hearing them sing.

I use acorns in my felting projects. I will be back later to collect some. My husband tells me we have a huge Oak tree at our home we live in and I laugh…I guess I can collect acorns everywhere, I really need to learn more about trees.

There is a plant I will be looking up later. It’s over by the huge shed that I want to eventually turn into an art studio, but that is the last building we will be working on. That old shed was my favorite part about this old property when we first walked it before we decided to take this one on, to rebuild and make it better. I’m weird like that. The most broken of the three buildings on this property, was the one thing I wanted to rebuild the most, to turn it into something really pretty and fun for the whole community to share and create art in…the little shed.

When I walk around the property I think of that story The secret garden. I love the movie too. It’s about a little girl who discovers a beautiful overgrown garden.

The shop reminds me of an old English cottage. It sits in the back behind the house. My husband starts pulling down the green vines that are growing around it and I tell him to leave it, I like it and I wonder what it would look like if the vine were to grow all on the wall and we just trim where the windows are. Then it would really look like an English cottage.

The fence will be a huge project. We will be removing it, then stain and seal each piece, to create a new area that will be fenced in, which will be more towards the back. We need to open up the view of the house, the fence blocks it now.

After I take before photos, my husband and I start collecting wood pieces that are laying around the property to burn later. We also start a scrap metal pile as well. My dad taught me all about auctions and being a scrapper. It’s probably why I’m not afraid of a little dirt.

I spend some time looking for a place to shoot. I have to find a new studio for my DIY’s. I experiment with the light and different back grounds. I practice with a Fall craft I will be sharing on my blog later. I can’t make up my mind where my photo studio will be. I may need to re-shoot photos for my Little Red House book I wrote, and I am no longer in my city studio.

If you have followed me over the years you will probably know me mostly by my little DIY photos that I stage. Back in the city where I lived, my studio was in the Arizona room where the light was perfect. All my little studio was, was two pieces of wood I found that I painted to make look rustic. Everything now in my life is a start over.

While my husband works on the yard, I head inside the house to organize some boxes of old photos that the original owners left in the shed and shop. Although the house is 90% empty now it is still a huge mess, so much needs to be done. The photos are taking up room. The original owners couldn’t get to them when they moved because this was also a hoarder home, they couldn’t reach them under other piles of things. I have three boxes to go through, one is huge, but that’s out front under the porch.

This is not our first hoarder home. We have cleaned up three hoarder homes. It’s especially hard when the owners are still there and need help moving, those were homes we did not purchase, we were just there to help others move. That was SUPER stressful.

The original owners were gone for this clean up, so it was easy to clean out. The family photos I will try the best I can to clean up and present to the family at a later date. Everything is still a mess, maybe they forgot they left all those memories behind when we bought the place. I hope they get back with us when we contact them.

People shouldn’t hate hoarder homes, they should understand that some people can not see the mess that others can. People that live in chaos like that can not see anything in my opinion…they can only feel. Maybe all they feel is hopelessness.

So be kind when it comes to broken homes and the ones who live in them. Usually there is something happening there. They just need a little TLC, just like the homes they live in…just a little tender loving care.

I came across a basket of shells and put them aside for my daughter’s class. Kids love shells and painting fish and collecting shells would be a fun project for them. I add that to my notes…make plaster fish later. My kids tell me I get distracted easily…I just tell them I am living every second, of every moment, and there is a lot to cram into days when you live like that.

This was a half day at the old house, so we head home around 1pm. I have to make lunch. Today’s lunch will be grilled chicken tacos and black beans. Dessert will be a piece of dark chocolate afterwards.

I would love to just pick up some fast food somewhere but food has changed drastically since 2020. It was bad before, but it got even worse after that date. To eat out cost too much anyway. We are trying to do things more on our own…welcome to America.

We are exhausted here in this country, the only way we know for sure if anything is okay, is if we make it as close to how God created it to begin with and that is getting harder and harder to accomplish. Making and growing our own food just puts more on our list of things to do…never a day to rest. It is easy to open boxes and push buttons for our meals…but in the big picture of things, it is not good for us to eat that way. So back to basics like our grandparents used to do.

My husband has an hour to rest and eat, then he has a class to attend with our son on edible plants by a local in the area. Each month the class fills up more and more.

My son brought me back some natural samples from their last class. Anti- itch salve, Calendula salve, and Acne spot treatment. They need some help with package design, so I add that to my list later. I have some ideas. I love designing art work when nature is the theme.

Later, after the class. my husband and son are going to a baseball game. I have decided to stay home and catch up on some laundry. I also have some organizing to do here at home with a bookshelf that needs repairing. Then I have to prep and get the meals I will be preparing for the next day. My husband cooks too, but when he has extra hard days, we all take turns preparing meals at home. But before that I try to figure out what is going on with my bookshelf, one of the shelves fell in.

Our move from the city was a hard move and some things we moved need a little tlc themselves. Dinner will be left overs if anyone is hungry, usually we only eat two meals a day now and a small snack in the evening. It’s not so much that food has become so expensive, it’s more that we don’t even know anymore if it is even actually real food here in America.

So that’s one day in our life. My favorite days are road trip days and morning walks with my husband, which I have shared here with you all. Maybe I will do another post like this but for one of my road trip adventures…I love those days. Have a beautiful day everyone, Stay safe out there and meet and great your neighbors everyday with a smile and a hello.

We need to connect more with one another, know and help one another. Yeah, there are some bad seeds out there, saboteurs I call them, just stay away from them. You need to take the step to make and build your own community, don’t wait for someone else to start it, it will never happen if that is what you are waiting for. You are the one to break those patterns now, you have to be that person that makes these changes, doing that now is more important than ever.

Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise! Psalm 95:2

Just something a little extra a day later…I looked up that plant, I put a link about it above. Apparently there is even a song written about it. It’s very popular in the south. And now I know. Something funny to add, my father loved Elvis, probably listened to this song many times. It does sound familiar to me.