Moms, it's OKAY that your house isn't spotless!

As Mom's I feel like some of us pressure ourselves to keep the house clean, try to be the best Mom to our children, the best wife to our husband's, make a good dinner and likely manage countless other things throughout each and every day. I just want to tell you that it's okay to not be perfect. It's okay to not be YOUR vision of perfect. It's okay to not be someone else's vision of perfect.

One thing I think we should all consider is that a lot of times the pressure we feel is self-inflicted. We have these expectations of ourselves and it is this unnecessary weight that we're adding to our lives. Yes, things need to be taken care of, yes there are countless things to clean all the time. Yes, I wake up some mornings and look at my fan and am disappointed in myself that I haven't dusted it yet since I first noticed it needed it. And along with that, many other things could use my attention.

This morning this was weighing heavy on my heart as I woke up feeling the pressure of "the world" on my shoulders with all the things I've told myself I need to get done. For me personally, I always give myself way too much to do for a period of time. I set very high, unrealistic expectations and then I end up disappointed when I can't achieve these super human accomplishments. It is this vicious cycle and I've tried for years to get myself under control, to set more attainable goals. Because you see, I am a goal setter and a "go-getter", I have to have goals to focus on or if I don't I get stagnant and if I get stagnant then I can easily slip into a depression. I figured this out in my early 20's and so my coping mechanism has been...being a busy body. And it works! But if I could just wrap my head around setting realistic goals then I would feel like I'm really winning at life!

So I'm writing this for you as well as for me. I have much to learn still and I hope that through my trials I could possibly be an example to others. And most I want to let you know that you aren't alone. The chores will always be there, you aren't a failure because you didn't get it all done today, it's okay that you didn't do your hair today. What really matters is did you love your babies enough today? Did you feed them SOMETHING (even if it wasn't some glorious meal you slaved over for 2 hours)? Did you hug them and tell you loved them before they were off to school? These are the things that are really most important in life and I think we need to really try to focus on those more. and in the meantime, I'm going to be over here trying to wrap my head around setting more realistic goals for myself on a daily and long-term basis!

XoXo,Elizabeth

P.S. Love yourself today! Give yourself a break! Most anything can be done tomorrow...

#littlefarmbigdreams #momprobs #momproblems #housecleaning #goals #perfectisntrealistic #dontbesohardonyourself #lifetip

May 2018 we bought a historic home in the city!!!

We sure did not ever expect to buy a house built in 1910 in the city of Pocahontas, with a population of 6000! Lol! Our dreams of moving to Arkansas were to be in the middle of nowhere and live off grid or almost off grid and have a very simple life. But when you put a mother in a desperate situation she has a STRONG desire to provide a home for our family! So I found this house for sale by owner, seller financing and it was big enough for our family of 8!!!

The woman was willing to work with us on down payment, which was necessary since we had just recently closed on our land and paid a down payment there and not only was Chad's painting business still very much in the early stages but I had actually lost my real estate job in March, right after we closed on our land!

In this video I explain the whole process of house hunting, how we found the house and how everything went down

We are so grateful to have found a home that works for us and honestly I've been an old house lover MY WHOLE LIFE so I loved every inch of this place from the moment I saw it! It is 3 stories, built into a hill, with a walk out basement, a huge attic, real hardwood floors, central heat and air, a 2 car carport and a TINY backyard!!! Lord a mercy, I will get to the yard issues in another post but for now let me show you...

Here is an empty house tour from before we moved in!

Because even though we had bought it and actually closed on it...we still couldn't afford to move. It took every dime we had to be able to pay our down payment and it was 2 hours away from my Mom's so any time we came over to clean up, do yard work or anything it was a 4 hour round trip commute for us and in my 2010 Excursion we have (that is a major gas hog) that meant every trip over cost us $50+!!!

From the back of the house it looks so huge!

I love all the window casings and tall baseboards!

The kitchen is mostly original, or close to it and very small! There isn't much counter space to work with but we can make it work!

The main floor hall bathroom has a transom over the door and I absolutely love it! It allows light into the small, dark hallway!

The built-in cabinet in the dining room speaks to the age of the house and I absolutely love it!

This is a HUGE 600 square foot attic that is usable space! It has carpet, wall coverings and an AC window unit so the boys want this to be their room! We can easily fit 4 boys up there!

She needs some work and some much needed love but we'll be able to get her in shape and add some sweat equity!

She is a beauty but she sure does need a lot of work! And I can't wait to put all that time and energy into her!

xoxo,

Elizabeth

#newoldhouse #oldhouse #bigprojects #moving #newfamilyadventures

We bought land in the Arkansas Ozarks in March 2018!

We enjoyed November 2017 through January 2018 looking for land in Arkansas! During that time I was still working from home 40-60 hours as a Realtor/Transaction Coordinator for a team in Arizona and Chad wasn't able to find local work so he was unemployed most of that time. Thankfully in February we were able to find him some painting work with a friend of mine and after a month of that that lead into us starting our own painting business, #bigbuckspainting and that was good for us! We didn't make a ton of money at it but projects came often enough to keep Chad busy and bring in an income which was a huge relief we needed at the time.

We were fortunate enough to find out 5 acres outside of Pocahontas, Arkansas for sale where the seller was willing to do seller financing and so we didn't have to qualify for a traditional loan. If we would have to do that then we wouldn't have been able to do it so it was a huge blessing for us!

Here is the video where I talk about the excitement and worry of writing an offer on the land,

In this video we take our subscribers out to the land for a full walk thru for the first time since getting our offer accepted. We are IN ESCROW!!!

The day we closed on our land! It was an awesome experience! Now we have land, but no home!

Being land owners was a huge goal and accomplishment for us but it still didn't solve any problems for putting a roof over our kids heads or allowing us to not feel homeless. Granted we had an awesome safe home over at my Mom's but we were eager to get to our own place and settle in, 5 months after moving to Arkansas!

The process of relocating across the country when you don't make a ton of money or have a ton of money saved up...is hard and it takes some time. We sold almost everything we owned to move to Arkansas cheaply and that was not only to save money but also because we were 100% on board with living in a camper for a year. But as time drug on we realized that wasn't going to work.

We toyed with the idea of buying a shed to convert to a tiny home/cabin on our land and you can see the video tour here where we toured a 14x60 shed but in the end we realized that wouldn't work for us either because it was going to cost us at least $5,000 to get that onto our land and the utilities we needed put in but that huge cost was primarily due to the water costing us $2000 to bring it in from the city, when a well would have cost us $10,000.  And that would be an empty shell of a cabin delivered to the land, not livable. So again we went down a rabbit hole and did more research to try to find a way to be on or near our land, before the boys started school again in the fall so we had about 4 months to figure something out.

In our next blog post I'll update you on what we figured out!

xoxo,
Elizabeth

#newland #newhomestead #arkansasland #arkansas #arkansasbackwoods #homestead

November 2017 we moved to Arkansas!

Hey everybody! I haven't written for this blog in a very long time but I want to try to make that a new normal thing again and so I thought I would start out by catching you up with a few of the major highlights! Throughout this time we did continue to record YouTube videos and share those on our channel, which you can find here;

Our YouTube Channel; LittleFarmBigDreams

In June 2017 I started making plans and publicly sharing on our videos my desire/plan to move back home to Arkansas! It took awhile and we went through many ideas between camper living, living off grid and whether to buy a new or used RV and all these different grand plans!

Here are some of our YouTube videos of the actual move itself!

This was our last day in Arizona packing up and getting ready to hit the road!

After a brief stop in New Mexico to see Chad's 4 kids we hit the road for the final leg to Arkansas!


When Chad, the boys and I left Arizona we were fully intending on moving to my dad's 100 acre farm within a month or two, after we found a camper locally! Our home base to prepare all of that was going to be my Mom's home in Blytheville where she had JUST enough room for us but not enough room for us to all get too comfortable.

After our first visit to my Dad's land and then the unexpected loss of my grandfather (my dad's father) our plans to move to his farm were put drastically on hold, if not permanently. Many people didn't love the idea of our plan although my Dad was good with it but we didn't want to make waves in the family after just moving back to Arkansas so we chose to consider other alternatives first.

It was fun checking out other properties for sale, although we weren't sure how we were going to pay for one but we began searching nonetheless, utilizing a local realtor who knew the area very well!

Below are the only two land options where we filmed and shared videos of the properties, these were our favorite two.

21 Acres with an off grid tiny hunting cabin but over an hour away from all of our family

AND...

5 acres of raw land, mostly wooded with no utilities or structure

In the process of hunting for land we were looking for campers and that wasn't going well. Any we could find that were affordable needed too much way to buy outright and put all this money into if we were also going to be building a cabin so why spend money building 2 homes when we just needed one?!? And then in order to find one big enough for all 8 of us (when Chad's 4 kids visit) and that didn't need any work, even if it was older, was ranging from $8-15k even in Arkansas. Even though that is cheaper than in Arizona, we just didn't have that much money saved up AND we needed to buy some place to put it!

In our next blog post I'll share what route we ended up choosing!

xoxo,
Elizabeth

#bigmove #leftarizona #movedtoarkansas #arkansas #familyof8 #blendedfamily

My 6 month urban gardening journey so far

When we moved back to the city in late March 2017 I brought with me all my container plants from the farm. In photos I'll show you the highlights of what has been happening here these last 6 months. 

If you like watching videos...

Here is my latest Urban Garden tour YouTube video that I put out just last week!

These are my winter container plants in crates from the farm; carrots, chard, greens and broccoli.

I grew shorty carrots in crates at the farm over the winter! This batch of carrots was harvested from my 2nd attempt, which I planted a month after my first attempt. The first attempt did germinate but they didn't grow big tops on them and after 3 mths I harvested them and they were only an inch or two long. These carrots above were grown well and properly and did great!!!

Here are my container plants leftover from the farm just as we got to the new house. This is a side yard in an urban neighborhood, it is east facing and in shade from 12pm and on. 

A small succulent "garden" I put together! It brought me a lot of joy until it died due to lack of water one time when we were out of town, the irrigation line that was near it fell away from it. :(

I got a few more plants and in this photo you can see my 3 citrus trees I dug up and brought with us from the farm!

Beautiful succulent!

Grape planted in a tire raised bed! <3

I got new plants in early June to take on a new project of finally making raised beds because almost everything I had in individual containers...DIED....

I picked a spot along the side of the house and prepped the soil with amendments...

And used 8 tires to make 4 raised beds.

And I planted veggies and herbs in all of them, right away! I used composted woodchips, potting soil and amendments. I also added red wiggler worms to the soil in these beds to help have happy, healthy soil!

The very next day I made a DIY shade cloth and added bamboo fencing between the tires and the side of the house because the stucco side of the house gets really warm fast and radiates that heat back at the plants.

Then I came through and added a flower or two to each tire bed to add color and hopefully bring in the bees to help pollinate my veggie plants!

A fun shot one evening gardening at sunset!

I put together more crates to garden in because I decided I wanted to put in corn before it was too late (this was early June 2017).

I also planted sunflowers in the containers beside the milk crates. And then in the 2 end milk crates I planted okra and green beans.

Then I did more rearranging of the old small chicken coop and moved my garden shed over to the east side of the garden and used 6 old tires (and painted them this time) to put in a few more beds. 

I picked up sweet potatoes and cucumber in these beds to try to see if they would produce late in the season. 

This is what the corn containers looked like before we went on vacation back to Arkansas in June.

2 & 1/2 weeks later when we got back this is what our corn looked like!!!

Here are what my other plants looked like when we returned home. We lost flowers due to lack of enough water with the soaker hose irrigation system I setup for while we were away. They were on an auto timer and the soaker hose but I don't think they got enough water or they got too much sun.

Green beans and okra came up!

Sunflowers came up!

My corn growing in milk crates at about 4 wks old! <3 It is so beautiful that even if it never produces the way it really should...it has served a purpose to bring me happiness! <3

Basil and Thai basil are going crazy and they're so pretty!

Tomato plants sprawling!

Green beans and okra; I pulled out the struggling seedlings and left 1-2 plants in each.

Beautiful 6 wk old corn!!

I caged my 3 tomato plants.

Beautiful flowering basil!

Flowering Thai basil! Gorgeous!

The 3 tire beds on the east side, all of those plants died while were gone. So that area rested for 2 wks and then I planted new seeds. These are the purple hull cowpeas I planted popped up after just 3 days! These sturdy seedlings are only 3 days old!

7 week old corn in crates! Growing like a beast. I have fertilized it once with nitrogen.

Acorn squash seedlings 4 or 5 days old!

Basil and Thai basil going crazy! They are well overdue for a harvest!

I finally got around just this week to harvesting my basil plants!

The amazing harvest, so beautiful and smells beyond amazing!

I had a lot of fun washing and drying basil in my food dehydrator. I have a video coming up on that in a few days. Until then if you want to take a peak at what my garden looks like as of a few days ago check out the video in the link below!

Here is my latest Urban Garden tour YouTube video that I put out just last week!

xoxo,

Elizabeth