Beginning again....again

Two years ago, I sat down and started a blog.  Three clicks, a few fill-in-the-blank answers, a whole day agonizing over what to call it and it was done.  I spent hours writing out my first blog post and a welcome to my corner on the internet and then I published it.  A month later, my husband heard back from a job he applied for and before I knew it we were involved in interviews, specialized training, a house search, packing, cleaning, closing on a house, more cleaning, unpacking, school registration and then a job search for me.  By the time the dust settled again, I had completely forgotten about my little piece of the world wide web....and then a domain renewal charge came across our credit card statement this week.  Oh, yeah!

Something to note:  I loved our first home together.  If you read my first post, you will see the sentimental fool that I am!  Living in my grandparents' home was an incredible gift that I can never repay.  That little home had the Dr. Pepper stained carpet from when my shy husband surprised me by making his move and I kicked my drink over in shock!  It had the walls that had been scrubbed until the paint started to come off and the marker didn't (our B only did that once).  It had the love of my grandparents and my parents soaked into the framework along with the cries of our sweet boy - he was what our doctor termed a "highly reactive baby."

In the last eighteen months, we have survived new jobs for both my Hubs and me.  Our son has found his place in the local school and started to find new activities with new friends.  We bought a house and a new septic line (wasn't that getting thrown into the deep end of home ownership) and still had to call a plumber last week.  We haven't made this place a home - nothing like what I felt in my grandparents' home.  I've been looking for the inspiration to create something amazing out of this place and I think that this blog may be it.

There is no Mulberry Tree in this yard, but in my heart that is what I'm aiming at creating, so....
See you 'round the Mulberry Tree.

Welcome to The Mulberry Farmhouse

Go ahead, grab a drink (my favorite is an ice cold fountain Dr. Pepper), take a load off and let me introduce myself.  My name is Stephanie and I'm also known as Stephanette - a strange combination of my first and middle names that my Mom only uses when I've been particularly good.  I live in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas with my husband that I call Cajun Man and our five year old, B.  We're surrounded by family, mostly mine, and enjoy the chance to cheer on our niece and nephews, help in my parents' garden and run out to Great Grandma's for dinner.  I'm known for being entirely too sentimental, a perfectionist plagued with more than a touch of OCD (a personality trait that I've learned to embrace and hate in equal measure), and a procrastinator.

We call my paternal grandparents' farmhouse our home.  The original portions of the house were built by my Grandpa for my Grandma before they brought my Dad home from the hospital in 1943.  It stood on the family's homestead in the middle of a farm and together they worked hard.  In the winter of 1963-1964, they decided to move their home to town and added on, making it the home we now enjoy.  They lived and worked here together until 1999, when Grandma's Alzheimer's Disease made it necessary to move into a nursing home.  Grandpa stayed on until a series of strokes in 2001, when he moved in with my folks.  The house stayed empty until I moved back home and then my husband joined me in 2006.  We are so fortunate that our family decided to purchase it and it remains in the family.

Some of my favorite memories were made in this house and both of my grandparents were inventive.  Grandpa could help you build anything and Grandma was known for her biscuits and homemade noodles.  She taught me calligraphy at the kitchen table my son eats his supper at and canned award winning pickles in the kitchen I prepare our meals.  I know that she smiles whenever I drag my sewing machine out for a new project and the other night I caught myself rocking in her kitchen rocker thinking, "How would Grandma fix this?"

Their way of life was to decide what to do, learn to do it, and do it themselves - long before DIYing was popular and resources were available.  As an adult, I've learned what a necessity this is.  I live in a place where I can't always run to the store, shipping is often expensive and the supplies I find to work with are rarely what the tutorial asks for.

So, c'mon in.  If you pass by the Mulberry Tree in the front yard, grab a handful of berries and we can share the triumphs and the tragedies that make up our life.  I hope you'll stick around to see how it goes.  Don't worry.  'Round here, once you're in, you're just a part of the family.

See you 'round the Mulberry Tree.