I am what you can call a lazy blogger. I haven't posted in about a year, I will not offer up a carefully edited selection of excuses, I just never seem to get here often enough. That said I will get on with some of the latest projects we have or are about to undertake on our crumbling beauty. My husband rebuilt our basement entry this fall, the old entry had collapsed so we had a pit that you crawled into to gain access to the nether regions of our house. The new entrance is in one word solid. He constructed it with used railway ties, huge spikes, and some rebar for good measure. The finished product is lovely and practical and now I can easily navigate myself down to the under-ground portion of our house.

Blizzards and Woodstoves

I had intended to start today with some photos of around our house.... but, yesterdays blizzard started a fervor of work on our etsy shops, which continued into today. So instead I will share a few pics of items that we just listed in Twagy, (That was a Good Year), our vintage clothing shop. We make most of our household income from our collection of online stores, and although it is great to be self sufficient financially, it does require a certain degree of dedication and discipline. I find working on days when the snow is blowing and the daily high temp is -19 much easier then when the sun is shining and it is above zero out. Heating our house entirely with wood heat is a blessing and a curse, and is in no way romantic. The romance of rural living, and our ideas of a cozy fire can be over rated when it -28 outside and you live in an uninsulated mid 1800's house. I am not complaining I love our house, and I would not trade my lifestyle for one that is easier. A photograph of me sitting beside the wood stove with the dog laying on a rug beside me would certainly translate visually as an image of contentedness, but the truth behind the photo, it is more of a physical struggle between myself and the dog for the spot where the most heat is. Every year we get a little bit better at keeping warm, we add insulation, we stop gaps, and to my great joy we have installed a super charming little wood burning stove to our bedroom.... which is were I am sitting right now. Yes a fire in the bedroom is romantic, and even better it is warm and cozy. Even though I live a pretty rustic lifestyle, or maybe because of it, I fall for all the dreamy notions of the cabin in the woods, the little cottage by the lake, the A-Frame ski chalet.

I love the spray foam insulation...insulation is our friend.

To quench any cabin lust you might be feeling...take a visit to Cabin Porn.... http://cabinporn.com/

About The House or the Graceful Demise of the Rural Farmhouse

I have a love of old houses that borders on dangerous, peeling paint, broken windows, sorrowful decay, all set my heart pounding with desire. The first time I saw this house I was almost speechless, and each time we drove past on our way to somewhere else, I felt a tug of longing worse than an addict in a dry spell. Six months after arriving in rural Nova Scotia, we surrendered to my passions and bought this proud and shabby 1860's house. The yard had waist high weeds and a small patch of what had once been a garden, there was no running water or electricity, but I was blind to any flaws or impossibilities. Now four years into this grand adventure, we have some creature comforts, we also have adjusted our ambitious dreams so that they may live a little closer to reality.

It took two summers to paint the outside, hours of battling the persistent black flies, scrapping, sanding and filling. The deeper I got into the project the more frightening discoveries surfaced. There is dry rot, sagging beams, rotten window and door sills, the list grows and becomes more daunting every day luckily I am rather impervious to the idea of impossible. Some would call my persistence a character flaw, others might call it gumption, I think the reality is that I just don't take to being told it can't be done.