You Had Me at Cornbread

Last night was tough with wind gusting from the south at 35+ mph, rattling the garage door in the cabin room that is now the girl's bedroom.
When we ordered the 14x 32 building we thought we could build loft sleeping space for the girls.  The 10x14 apace that is now their bedroom was intended to house the UTV.  Once we saw the building (and our 16 year old's reaction to climbing into the loft) the plans began to change.
Now we wish the French doors that we are planning to replace the overhead door with were here already.  The noise of the rattling kept us up all night.
So I was cooking breakfast little later this morning than I had planned.
We had a busy day of deck building planned so I wanted breakfast to be quick.  I am very happy with my new camp chef stove and the griddle plate I bought to go with it.  So eggs and Bacon this morning were a snap.
Now I don't eat carbs, but I always serve them to my family.  Yesterday I made cornbread for breakfast and saves the leftover for today. 
Marissa appeared an the front porch while I was frying Bacon and inquired about the menu.  I mentioned that I had saved yesterday's leftover cornbread and how it could be warmed...
"You had me at cornbread" she interrupted.  I laughed then wondered if she had even seen Jerry McGuire.
It was a good day, but that moment with her clever comment on the front porch may have been the highlight.
Or perhaps it was driving the UTV with loads of dirt to repair the road to the dam with Steph at the wheel.
Or maybe it is sitting inside right now with all of us devouring the ribs that Alan cooked on the big green egg while waiting for the football game to start.  What a good and simple life.

We bought the Camp Chef to complete our outdoor kitchen

The Floating Deck and Sidewalk

A tiny house with a large covered front porch and an even larger back deck.  The back deck will have an outdoor kitchen since the kitchenette in the cabin doesn't have a stove.

We hope to celebrate Thanksgiving out here with the family, which means we need to start on the deck immediately.

The ground is rock solid from the drought this summer.  Digging is nearly impossible, but the floating deck system we saw at Lowes looks like it will work.

Here's a link to the website where you can get plans and calculate the supplies you need.  We ordered composite from Perkins Building Supply to match the composite that Joe Terpstra used on the front porch.

Stephanie using the front loader to bring composite over during the sidewalk construction

Alan constructing the sidewalk

The front porch that Joe built.

We believe the "weekend project" touted by the website to be somewhat misleading, though.  IF you build a small deck, and IF you have 2 men with some basic carpentry skills it might be a weekend project.  We bit off a much larger project since we wanted to get up out of the mud.

It's amazing.  No rain all summer, then right when we move in, we're walking in mud.  The sidewalk which is now finished is wonderful.  It connects the two buildings.  I often go out in my slippers since it stays nice and clean.

The Big Green Egg for Our Outdoor Kitchen

I emailed Joe Rider at Stone Age for a recommendation about our outdoor kitchen.  I love his products and needed the name of an installer/mason out in our area.  He gave me a recommendation, but after talking with the installer, I was not confident that we could meet our timeline or our budget.

Alan mentioned that he wanted to take a look at a Big Green Egg especially since our friend Matt Marcacci at The Hill told Alan how much he loved his egg.

We discovered that not only was the egg a smoker (which is all we had intended), it was basically a wood fire oven and more.

This thing makes the best wood fire pizza you have ever tasted!

We bought our egg at Everything Barbecue in Oklahoma City.  The salesmen were very helpful and we ended up buying the Extra Large egg with the cart.  We also bought the baking stone and the rack extender so that I can bake two pies at once.

The salesman didn't realize he talked us out of buying the Weber grill station that Alan was in love with.  We realized we didn't need it.  The egg would do almost everything we needed except boil water or provide a gas grill option.

If you plan to drive off with your egg the way we did, be sure to have PLENTY of strong backs around.  It is very heavy.  Also, be careful about storing your baking stone.  Ours was left tilting against something and ended up falling over and breaking.

The Big Green Egg uses hardwood charcoal and special lighter fluid or an electric starter.  You don't want to use Kingsford or lighter fluid in it since that will taint your food.

They sell a starter at the egg store, but we bought an inexpensive one from Walmart that works just fine.

With the egg as our wood fire oven, our plans for the outdoor kitchen have changed.  We have decided to wait until we build a bigger home to do the stone work which keeps the budget more appropriate for the cabin.

We've decided to cover the corner of the deck for the kitchen which is slowed the construction while we look for plans.

The Sold Sign Out Front

We did it.  We sold our house.  A lovely family with 6 children fell in love with our home.

We are so very relieved!  Living (or not living) in a 4000 sq ft house part time while trying to sell it was a chore.    Keeping it ready for showings caused us to develop a daily ritual.  In fact, we have pretty much stopped cooking at the house altogether.  I have been buying a lot of prepared foods and paper plates. Of course we are eating out more, too.  Yuck.  But now it's over.

On the day of the showing to this family, I had re-affirmed my commitment to selling this house.  We staged the house as if we knew the people already.  There were fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, a favorite game staged in the game room.  A Disney movie played in the background.  There were so many things I did that I don't want to post them here, but if you contact me I'll send you a list.


Our realtor, Alexis, is sending me a picture of our closing to upload.  I hope to have it soon.

The Cabin is Delivered

Our home sale is about to close, but we will not be homeless.  Our cabin was delivered on a hot August day with record breaking temperatures.

The dirt pile Joe created when he built the stemwall for the house.

We're not sure about drinking the well water because we haven't had it tested yet, so I drove into Carney to pick up bottled water for everyone.  Jeremy had his sons out helping but no one had packed water.  The temperature was 103 F and the work of setting the cabin on the stemwall required patience.

After an hour, I realized the water bottles were sitting in the sun, so I moved them to the shade of the building.  I didn't realize that Alan had been moving gravel into the area with the tractor.  Within 2 minutes of setting the water in the shade, Alan drove over them.  I heard an explosion of plastic and turned around to see him sheepishly say, "I thought it was trash."

I hate to doubt my husband, but a part of me believes the 10 year old boy inside wanted to see what happened when you drive over water bottles with a tractor.

Regardless, it was my fault for setting them there.  Back to Carney for a case of water.

By 6:30, the building was secure.  Jeremy and Joe (our carpenter) headed home.  We headed back to Tulsa to pack.

A Tiny House?

I've spent some time looking at sites like Mother Earth news for cabin and "do it yourself plans."  We are still plagued by our work schedule.  For the same reason we couldn't remodel the house by ourselves, we won't be able to build a small cabin ourselves.

I really like the Tiny House Blog.  It inspired me to think even smaller than the Field's cabin.  I went back to the Better Built website and started looking through the standard buildings they had.

We stopped by Better Built to talk to them again about just buying a standard building and having someone else do the finishing work.  I had a sketch of a floorplan for the 14x32 (the largest standard building they build).  I knew from my blog research that we needed to think through concepts like window and door locations as well as wiring.

This picture shows the "main" area of the building.  There is a dividing wall between the main area and the garage.  By increasing the pitch of the roof to the max they would allow, we hope to create a small loft for the girls sleeping area above the kitchen and bath.

The garage area is 10 x 14 and will house the UTV (which we PLAN to purchase, but haven't).  They are including a 6x8 door in the garage.  We'll also frame in a small space in the garage for the water heater.

We hope to have this in place by the time school starts.  We still aren't sure about whether the girls will attend a private school in Edmond or Perkins-Tryon.

A Log Cabin, or a Better Built Barn?

Our house is for sale and it's time to talk about building a new house out at "the ranch."  We've decided to quit calling it "the property."  I believe in speaking positively to achieve your goals.  Calling it "the property" means that is all it will ever be.

For two years we've been labeling wine as "ALDEN Ranch."  (I had hoped it would influence our ultimate achievement when we settled on the name back in 2009.)  Here we are, at ALDEN Ranch, without livestock and without a house.

We've toyed with building a log home and have had stacks of Log Home Living magazines lying around the house for years.

I've contacted a few companies featured in the magazine including Satterwhite which is very eco-friendly because they use dead standing timber.  I really like their concept, and some of their homes are beautiful.  I also looked at Coventry and a couple of others featured in the magazine.

I'm nervous about the decision. I'm not sure we can afford to do this right now.  With our home sale pending and an uncertain economy, I hate to commit and create more debt.  Quite frankly, the whole reason we are moving is to change our lives.  I know that we will work hard at the ranch, and I'm not afraid of hard work, but there is something so appealing about owning our land AND home.

I called Ernest at Better Built to see if they have done any custom construction and they have indeed.  The Fields family (of 10) have moved out of their Sapulpa home into a custom cabin  that isn't more than 800 square feet.

Jeremy arranged a visit and we stopped by.  What an amazing family.  They have 2 lofts (where the children sleep), a small kitchen, a bath for the kids, and a master bedroom with bath for Mom and Dad.  This looked like a perfect arrangement.

Unfortunately, the cabin has to be built on site because it is too tall to be transported on the trailer like the garage was.  They told us that they just couldn't build on site for us, and that they didn't have the staff to do the custom work.

We are disheartened and disappointed.