Wakin' to a winter wonderland

We went to rock out with the Avett Brothers on Halloween night then raced home to beat the anticipated snow storm.  Woke up Sat morning to this postcard beauty.

Bebe isn't sure what to make of this, Api just yawned and went back to bed.

The beauty of fall...

A few pics from our house, the next couple of days are peak here.  Squint at the 3rd one and you can see our cabin peeking through the trees.

We went to vote yesterday just around the corner from the house and were greeted by this stunning view of the Smokey Mountains to our west.  If our house were up another 25' higher we could see this out the back windows.

We always wondered what was over the other side of the ridge behind us, this is it.

And this is looking at our neighborhood from the ridge at the firestation behind us (where the picture of Pisgah was taken, facing the other direction)

Fall is creeping in

It amazes me how much change there is in one day, we get up every morning and venture out to get the paper and it's a wonderland of color "hey that tree was NOT red yesterday!"  Another week to 10 days and we should be at full peak.  Here's a little taste from this weekend.

The first taste of fall

Temps were in the 40's last week, that was enough to kick the trees into gear.  The dogwood and sourwood are beautiful red, just yesterday the tops of the birch and oak started to yellow.  The sourwood right off the deck is the same burst of red you see at the top of the driveway.

I have been searching for a place to get a long range shot of the cabin in it's woodsy surrounding, found this spot squatting in a neighbors driveway, I think it will be a great place to take pics of Christmas lights.

At the exit ramp closest to our house they planted a field of sunflowers, people were pulled over all down both sides of the ramp to take pictures they are so pretty.  I hope to go back tomorrow with a better camera, the old phone cam doesn't do them justice.

Who ya gonna call?

I know you call an exterminator if you have bugs, but who do you call if your house is infested with aliens?  I'm thinking Sigourney Weaver

The funny thing is we have lots of boards cut from this same tree so this little face is all over the house.

Attila earns her keep

Our first egg!!!

Meet the new girls!

Buffy the Insect Slayer (she is a Buff Orpington)

Attila the Hen (she is a tad bossy)

Lacey Underall (she is a laced Wynadotte)

Hildegard (she is a German Hamburg)

Foodie? not!

Ok I am not one of those people who takes pictures of all their food, but we found wild blackberries growing on our lot so I picked a bowl full and made homemade cobbler.  Our first "living off the land" food!

One more step in slaying the Mud Monster!

We had the folks at Beams's Lanscaping come sod and mulch the back yard, it really looks like a home now!  They also planted the giant Crepe Myrtle tree I bought before realizing it took 3 strong men to lift it out of the truck and plant it.  oops!

Tonight after work we are heading to the nursery (again!) to buy the last 3 shrubs we need to finish off the other side of the house.  Maybe soon we'll get a weekend where we can rest!

We have internet, like real people!!!!

Finally after 7 weeks of waiting we have real live high speed internet!  And of course on that note our laptop is dying so we had to order a new one yesterday.  On the inside we have finished hanging all the window treatments and put in some bookcases next to the fireplace.  As usual lately all the work has been on the outside.  We got the garage doors in and the drive and parking area blacktopped, what a huge difference.  I can actually get up the driveway now, and one big step in taming the mud monster!

On the "garden" side of the house, the A/C unit was slowly sliding down the hill so we had it drug back up where it belongs and started building a brick wall surround to hold the dirt in place.  Bought some shrubs and trees to line the wall over there and try to stop the erosion, spent Saturday planting half of them.  Sunday we got to play with our new toy, a brush hog mower.  Boy is that sucker a workout, my arms are killing me today and Bob got shredded by bramble thorns.  It sure looks better along the road and the neighbors stopped giving us the "so when are you going to mow your weeds" look.  This weekends escapades will be planting the rest of the bushes and trees, sod for the backyard and next week our little barn shed is being delivered, woo hoo!  We have our first Tampa friend coming to visit this weekend so I will have no more excuses not to clean the inside and take some pictures :-)   More notes coming soon!

Well it has been a very busy couple of weeks.  We learned quickly when you live on top of a hill you have to deal with the magic of erosion.  We planned to spend the summer slowly landscaping and instead furiously stuffed all that work into 2 weekends and a lot of evenings.  Hopefully now we can survive some rains without sliding down the hill.  We can't take credit for the fence and retaining walls, all we did there was write the check.  They really dress the place up though and with the new plantings it is starting to feel like home.

Hey Mom this picture is for you, thanks for the rockers we love them and use them every night!

And meet our newest family member Apricot.  Bebe doesn't like her much yet, lots of hissing and snarling but they get a little better together every day.

And Kellie this ones for you - no way we can get a garden planted this summer but we had to have the sacrificial tomato plants!  I'll let you know how they turn out.

and so ends 3 weeks of radio silence

We have officially arrived in Bakerville.  We came up the last week of April in my truck pulling a UHaul, all went well until we tried to get up the massive hill on our drive.  Little truck said no way!!!  Lucky for us, the septic installers were at the house picking up their excavator.  They offered to tow the trailer up for us and acted like it was nothing at all.  Another example of the awesome friendly folks we keep running into every day.  The PODS folks tried to deliver our storage units in the middle of that awful storm that came through, the winds were so high they were afraid of them blowing over so they left.  Another driver came back the next day with a bigger truck and dropped them off with no problems.  We hired an unload crew to bring all the boxes up the many steps to the cabin, money WELL spent! The movers showed up Tuesday with the real furniture, after 10 days of sleeping on an air mattress and sitting in lawn chairs we slept like the dead in a real bed.  At this point we are probably 80% unpacked, we have found the grocery store and Lowes and are starting to get into the local groove.  The internet/cable company threw us a last minute curve when they said our house required a construction crew and therefore a permit, blah blah and it would take 4-6 more weeks before we had high speed internet and phone.  In an act of desperation (and necessary employment) we signed up for a year of HughesNet which was just installed this afternoon.  Finally we can pay some bills and say hi to family and friends!  So, here are a few pics of the house as we arrived (before it became Box-a-palooza) and as we start to make it a home.

Sunrise our first morning here :-)

Our fabulous kitchen! 

Starting to look like home

Our neighborhood from the deck

Time is flying, starting to look like a real house!

Got some new pictures last night, the stain is going on, tile floors inside are wrapping up.  The crew is installing the stairs off the deck today and finishing the fireplace.  The well hit good water right away so that was a good thing.  We still don't have power but maybe we can get a 500' extension cord and run it to the neighbors?

On a sad note, we lost our precious little Dreamer this week.  God bless you sweetie, we'll miss you.