Our 2025 Plans

Well, I planned to write this post back at the beginning of the month and here we are, January 22nd, and I’m only just getting to it today. I’m sure that sums up our year this far.

We kicked off 2025 with an epic New Years party at our home for the first time, and had the largest brush fire I have ever seen thanks to our neighbor. We then, shot off fireworks at 9pm because who are we kidding, everyone wanted to be home early.

Next, we kept the kids from starting school after the holidays for just a little bit longer, and drove up to PEI for a long weekend of exploring the north western side of the island. It was so much fun to explore as a family and my kids are getting to be expert road trip little buddies so even though many of our plans were canceled due to weather, we made the most of it. I think thats why we love PEI so much, It is so family centred and so even with bad weather, they can still find the fun and bend with the changes.

But then we came home… and the 2025 plans began.

I feel like I have told you many times, we are HUGE 90% club people. If you walked into our home we usually have about 6 projects that still all need a good day of work each to be finished. Our goal for the cold months is to get all of those finished up. This means trim finished in our upstairs hall so we can paint, staining and sealing our new oak stair railing. finishing the wood ‘backsplash’ in the mud/laundry room, sealing our mudroom brick floors, and a few other touch ups.

But then the fun happens.

Back in the fall before christmas, Jeld-wen delivered 8 beauiful new windows from their new 8500 series. They are to replace most of the windows in the original 1879 portion of the home. Unfortunately, we were unable to gather a team to help Rob get them installed right away, but we are planning, weather permitting, to get those installed towards the end of February! eek! our boys currently can’t even open their windows so this will be huge.

It also launches the theme of all of our 2025 projects in this home.

OUR EXTERIOR!

We have big pland for the exterior but there are a few things we want to have done asap. This is the year to get started on them. And even though we may run out of time to get to all of them this year, we have developed a list and which month we would like them to get started.

The Back Porch when we bough the home

First up, our back porch. Its how you get to the kitchen from the backyard and when we moved in, it had a ramp as the previous owner had a wheelchair. We took the ramp off the first spring in the house and decided to not put any money into the structure as a whole because it was in good enough shape to stand up for a few more years if we pushed it and then would need to be ripped down and rebuilt. This is that year. We are going to do it ourselves and possibly change the shape slightly.

Once that is done, it will be time to paint. We have gone back and forth on color for the last 2 years, but after dreaming of a white classic farmhouse my whole life and going bold and black with the last house, I think we’ve decided Star Acre needs to live out my creamy white farmhouse dreams. It is in rough shape with peeling paint and hasnt been touched since the mid 90’s. Its a bit embarrasing which is probably why I never show you it, but the home itself is GORGEOUS and has such a presence from the driveway.

While we tackle these projects, we will also be building our out building in our backyard. This will be a simple single sloped roof 12x10 building that will house our chickens in one side and be a garden shed through the rest. OMG it will be fabulous to have storage for our outdoor stuff and a proper stand in coop for our girls. Its going to be a slow process as we are hoping to use my dad and grandfathers lumber for as much as we can to cut down on costs that they mill in the family water powered mill. The goal is to have it done and the chickens moved in by end of June.

The rest of summer will consist of gardens. You may remember last year we dug out a 25x40ft vegetable garden. But, didnt plan for the fact that it was mostly rock. This spring we are hoping to finish clearing the rock, adding the topsoil it now will need brought in, and then adding fencing before it is time to plant in our area. We know it will be alot of work, but are so excited to hopefully grow enough to not only feed us all Summer and Fall, but also preserve for most of the winter.

Wow, its alot just typing it out!

Our goal is to document more of the process on Youtube and socials so stay tuned for daily progress on all of those.

Thanks so much for continuing to follow us. We love each of you so much!