Mood:
caffeinated...that dawned into a dark and stormy morning. The writer sipped her cup of hot spiced tea and contemplated the silliness of such literary rules that state "You can not start a good story with the phrase, 'It was a dark and stormy night'". What if it it was, in fact, dark and stormy and it was night? Can't very well start a story saying "It a damp and dreary opposite of daytime..." Some rules are good rules of course, such as spelling, punctuation, and proper use of grammar (although tenses are wiley little things and difficult to keep under control). For if the writer doesn't follow basic rules of comunication then it's difficult for the reader to understand what is being said. But silly rules about how a writer can or can not begin a story are rather inhibiting I think. Setting the stage for the reader is perfectly acceptable, as it helps to draw the reader into the story with the characters and experience what is happening.
Anyway, today is Presentation Night for the families in our Homeschool support group. Our boys are going to recite Psalms 23 as a cooperative Trio. (Our daughter is still a bit too young for presentations like this, so she will just sit with us and watch her brothers.) It was their idea what to do and how to do it. They have been practicing hard, and I think they will do a great job. I'm going to make my Great-Grandma Terrell's recipe of Frito Pie and take some kind of bread (I haven't decided yet what kind) for our contribution to the pot-luck meal. My husband made it home safe from his business trip last night, so he will be able to attend with us as well. I am happy for that.
We're having classic Northwest weather here this week... "If you don't like the weather in the Northwest, just wait 10 minutes". Dark, thick thunderstorms that dump buckets of rain in a raging downpour for 10 or 15 minutes. Then the sun comes out! Gotta love the Northwest! I think the person who wrote the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider" must have lived in the Nortwest. That song actually makes sense here!
Of late, as I've mentioned before, I've been daydreaming wistfully of owning a small self-sufficient farm. Somewhere that we could have all the milk, meat, vegetables and fruit we'd need year round grown right on our own property. Land is always so outrageously expensive here though that it's not exactly a realistic daydream. But I keep hoping... then yesterday I saw 18 acres of land (no house on it mind you) for sale for just over $100k. My first thought was "We could put a 5 bedroom MFH on that!" but then my friend's words about how they are often improperly installed, how they degrade faster than a frame-built house, and how they have a lower re-sel value echoed in my mind and I became discouraged again. (I'm stubborn though... so I started looking at how much it would cost to build a house on that land.) I found a couple of neat sites of companies that help a person to build their own house for less than what it would cost to buy one from a contractor, or in many cases even to buy a previously owned home. I wanted to share these links with you, in case someone else might be looking for a glimmer of hope shining in your dark and stormy night. Maybe that glimmer is the porchlight of your new home in the distance. =)
Partner Homes
U Build It
I would probably use the first one listed there, Partner Homes, if I were able to persue this fantasy at this time. Their service seems very buyer friendly, and they did a good job on their website at least of making me believe that they really are interested in helping people get into the home of their dreams, despite financial difficulties. They explain things really well, and I was encouraged by what I read.
The only think about their website, was that I didn't like any of the floorplans they had available. And by the time I was done looking at all the ones that I thought should be large enough to have 5-6 bedrooms (we have 4 children, and would also like to have a home-office remember, so a 3 bedroom home, no matter how many square feet it is, is just not going to work for us much longer!) and discovered almost unanimously that even their 3000-4000 sq.ft. floor plans STILL only had 3 bedrooms, I got discouraged and started thinking to myself "I can design a better floorplan than that...." so I got out my PUNCH! Professional software again and played with it the rest of the afternoon.
I did see some pre-drawn designs on this other website, Home Plans, that I liked (and could happily live in) a few of the floorplans they have. But the phrase "A man's home is his castle" kept scratching at my brain, and I just had to tinker with my software again. I'm still not completely satisfied with the design that I came up with, but I think I did pretty well at getting 6 bedrooms into 3700 sq.ft. considering that professional architects had trouble getting 3 into even 4000 sq.ft. I would prefer to have the washer & dryer in a mudroom, but they ended up on the back wall of the garage in this design, so as I said this is NOT the "Perfect" dream-home yet. I do think I could do better with a bit of redesigning. But thought I'd post a couple pics of the floorplan anyway, just for kicks.
Blessings to you all. Hope you all have a wonderful day and a peaceful weekend.
-Sparkling
The first picture shows the floorplan of the ground floor and a front view rendering of the house.
The second picture shows the floorplan of the second floor and a rendering of the interior from the front entryway, ground floor.
