The Daily Rave

[Tybee]

The slipcover fabric sounds wonderful. And you already know the chair works for your family, and that's important. I remember you disliking the couch you bought and if you haven't replaced it, you could always do that instead. Because it was never comfortable and did not meet your needs.

Your house meets your needs, and you have always approached these questions very thoughtfully. In terms of sheer coolness, your house is way cooler than a McMansion in Bend, Oregon. You are a native New Englander, born and bred, and you have a wonderful place on a wonderful lake in New England, and that is an incredible success story in terms of living how you want to live. It's also completely congruent with you are are, and that is priceless.

[iris lilies]

Catherine, good for you to drill down into what is really important.

I am in the enviable position of being able to “ afford anything I [really] want” but much of that is about past years of exercising frugality and restraint in buying, honing my ability to recognize what REALLY makes me happy when acquiring stuff.

So the stuff I REALLY want tends not to be very expensive, relative to what I COULD spend on the thing.

[sweetana3]

Every time I think about buying a new house, it comes back to I do not want to clean more space, furnish more space, pay the taxes and utilities on more space, leave our special city area, etc. I might think leaving our city would be "fun", but I do not want to take my husband away from his important volunteer "jobs" which keep him happy and healthy. So regardless of having the money, it would not be a good thing to do in any way except to give me something to do.

So I really need to stay away from Zillow. Just as bad for me as HGTV.

[rosarugosa]

You made a good decision, Catherine. And we at SLF are all impressed with your lovely home, and whose opinion could possibly matter more than ours?

[happystuff]

Good for you, catherine. You are continuing to discover and hone the life YOU want to live!

[Tradd]

Catherine, you WILL have to tell us the in-laws’ reaction to your small house and your interactions with them.

[catherine]

Thank you, all, for your kind words of support..I will definitely report back, Tradd! Sweetana, I also have a love/hate relationship with HGTV! rosa (and all), the great thing about SLN is I truly don't feel the need to "impress" you guys--I think I've aired all my dirty laundry here, and that's what's great about it.

[iris lilies]

I thought I might watch a whole lotta HGTV when we finally moved to Hermann where we have cable tv. But, I don’t. Watching too much of that stuff DOES make me feel like my funny old house is shabby. Not good! So I tune into You tube videos and Instagram accounts about cottage decor that is more to my liking, kinda shabby or at least non-trendy, and purposely so

[frugal-one]

Every time I think about buying a new house, it comes back to I do not want to clean more space, furnish more space, pay the taxes and utilities on more space, leave our special city area, etc. I might think leaving our city would be "fun", but I do not want to take my husband away from his important volunteer "jobs" which keep him happy and healthy. So regardless of having the money, it would not be a good thing to do in any way except to give me something to do.

So I really need to stay away from Zillow. Just as bad for me as HGTV.

Ditto as far as having more space!!! BTW... the people who were so anxious to buy our house backed out. It wasn't said but I think they were not able to afford it! They talked about moving to a less expensive county. Kinda sucks. We did have an appraisal and have an idea what the house should sell for. We are having another realtor come next week (who we will probably go with). It just doesn't make sense to try and sell it ourselves in this scenario. Have been doing major purging. One day I had trouble walking... I was up and down the stairs and out to the garage so many times! This house has so much storage it was unbelievable how much we had tucked away. I used it all at one time. We plan on major garage sale(s) and will have an auction for the big stuff. It will not break my heart to move to a warmer winter climate and smaller abode! We can always travel in the summer if it is too hot there. We will rent in the interim. Fingers crossed all goes well!

[SiouzQ.]

My hummingbirds sound like little wind-up whirly-gig toys. I've heard that the same ones tend to come back year after year during their lifespan. It does seem like they are not shy around us when we go out onto the porch. I can stand within two feet of the feeder and they will fly around me to get to it.

Also, our nesting dove pair are very used to us - their nest that they use year after year is in the eves of our main porch. They are completely used to our comings and goings at all times of day. The second set of eggs just hatched and their little heads are finally peeking up out of the nest. It's funny to watch them try and get the guts up to learn how to fly - it actually takes a few weeks. They start getting too big to sit in the nest and will finally walk onto the beam and just sit there dumbly while the parents try to coax them with their whoo-whoo call from the fence on our property line.

I love having the time to see all of this!