We have maybe the most perfect Halloween house out there. Literally every single time we have someone new working on the property one of the first things they ask about is if we’ve seen ghosts here. Before living in an antique home, I had no idea how many people (especially, and hilariously, the largest, burliest men who we’ve hired to do various work here) truly believe in ghosts.

Last April, we purchased twelve egg layer chicks from our local feed store. One of our Welsummers turned out to be a rooster. This was a stroke of luck for us, because we’d wanted to try out having a rooster, due to a lot of problems with predators. Now that we’ve had the rooster for about six months, I have a good idea of the pros and cons to rooster ownership to help you decide if you, too, want to get a rooster!

Remember Monday, when I whined about how my living room is where all the furniture I don’t know what to do with has ended up, and how it’s crazy I haven’t done anything with this room yet? Well, your (two days) of patience has paid off, because here are some of my ideas of how to address the many issues in this room and make the room look cozy and … good.

Right now, our living room (which we call our ‘keeping room,’ since originally that’s what it was – the combined kitchen and living area of the colonial house with its giant fireplace) is a mish-mosh of things we’ve bought, furniture that we purchased with the house, hand-me-downs and items from our old apartment. Altogether, it’s a bit of a mess! Now, I’m trying to decide on what to keep, what to get rid of, what to purchase and what colors to incorporate.

Last weekend we did a quick project after stumbling upon these beautiful blue arrow junipers. We’ve been discussing ways to add both year-round color and a little more structure to our gardens. We’d considered planting and shaping boxwoods, yew or juniper by the entry posts to the kitchen garden, but on seeing the beautiful silver-blue of these junipers, we pulled the trigger.

Hard to believe that it’s almost time here in New England to plant garlic and shallots again. It seems like I just harvested them, but planting time is October, and lots of vendors sell out of fun varieties early.

I drew up this little map of what I’m doing this year:

One big goal of renovating our kitchen is to be able to remove clutter. A real culprit for gathering clutter is our current built-in range hood surround, which has a four-inch deep shelf that goes all the way around its rim, and a two-foot long bar for hanging pots and pans. For our re-do, we’re looking to simplify and get rid of the potential for mess. Here is what our hood looks like now:

This month we decided to bring our home up to ancient Roman standards, and get water. In our house. From the government. Yes, it turns out that in this, the twenty-first century, you can finally get water to your house, from your town! I joke, but initially I was actually pretty torn about getting off of well water.

I’m always on the prowl for inspiration for our house and finding others who have restored their antique homes. There are so many amazing ideas out there!

So, it’s a bit embarrassing to share a lot of these photos.  There’s a lot of good about having eight acres, but there is also a lot of work!  This year we’ve experienced an absolute explosion of weeds and grasses.  In part this is because it was so darn hot for the month of August that I wasn’t in the garden weeding as frequently, but mainly it is because serious weed prevention hasn’t been done in a couple years, and the landscape fabric and mulch laid down years ago has finally ceded to nature … Therefore, we have a number of landscaping projects we’re looking to do late in the Fall and in the Spring.