What’s been happening up at our new home?

July 3, 2015August 20, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

Big improvements! First we got the first layer of stucco applied and then all the lights and ceiling fans went in! Do you know how stucco is made?

Well, I didn’t until I saw the men applying a special mix of concrete, sand, and who knows what else to the outside of our house.

Then they slap this mixture onto every surface of the house. This is only the first layer. After this dries and cures they’ll come back to add the second coat with the color in it. We have chosen a terra cotta color for the outside of our house. Can’t wait to see it! And speaking of color…

the wildflowers are at their best up there right now! I cannot get over how much of a difference six inches of rain can make!

We have millions of these yellow flowers plus native Lupines, and Indian Paintbrush!

And this mystery flower is a lovely purple, my favorite! Thanks to my botanist friend Jan we now know this is the Showy Four O’Clock, (Mirabilis multiflora). It only blooms in the late afternoon and then all night. I’ll try to get a better photo of the flowers in bloom soon.

In the meantime, here is a great photo of it! Isn’t it amazingly PURPLE?

In the disturbed land around our new home we already have hundreds of volunteers. Lots of sunflowers that will bloom a bit later, etc.

Inside we have most of the tiling done…

Then it’s time to finish the kitchen and baths, and we FINALLY have a move-in date!

The end of July we are out of our rental and into a whole new world up in the foothills. I’m already fantasizing where everything will go in each room.

Now comes the FUN part!

Click on photos for full-size views, and follow us on TWITTER!

A New Way Of Cleaning Your Clothes

June 26, 2015July 1, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Please note: I have chosen to participate in a campaign for Proctor and Gamble. I received free samples and will receive a fee for posting here, however the opinions expressed are my own. I am in no way affiliated with P&G, and do not earn a commission or percent of sales.

Great innovation means more than just creating something new – it means improving our lives. Our latest adventure is building a passive solar home in a rural area. We plan to use a natural source of energy, thus we plan to reinvent the way we warm and cool our home.

Procter & Gamble has recently reinvented the process of cleaning our clothes with Tide Pods and Gain Slings. These revolutionary new laundry pacs provide excellent cleaning and freshness, with minimal time and effort.

Tide Pods deliver maximum laundry cleaning with great design, performance and convenience. Their cleaning power delivers the stain fighting clean I need to look my best. Having one product that cleans, brightens and fights stains makes doing laundry so much easier.

I have always loved the fragrance of GAIN. Now there are Gain flings! These offer a great long-lasting scent experience, thanks to a 3-in-1 benefit; Gain detergent with the added cleaning power of OxiBoost and the odor fighting power of Febreze in a convenient, pre-measured pac.

Gain Flings come in three different scents. Not only are the pacs easy to use, but thanks to their great smell, I know I can fill my world with an awesome scent, so important especially in the summer!

Like any household cleaning products, it is essential that you keep these laundry pacs away from children. Be sure to seal the pacs up and then store them far from pets and kids.

As a member of The bLink Marketing Network, I participated in this sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Proctor & Gamble. The opinions and text are all mine.

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Is this what’s really happening to us now?

June 7, 2015June 7, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Are You Willing to Fight For Your Dreams?

May 13, 2015March 3, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my midlife struggles, is the need to be willing to fight for my dreams. This journey began for me back in 2004, when I lost my job and then spent months in introspection.

I focused on this question: What do I need to happen before I die?

I concluded that for myself I needed to find ways to believe in love again. I so wanted to find one genuine love in this lifetime. This book is a summary of what I learned in this process. I fought through a lifetime of tragedy and disappointment to change my perspective and find new faith in the power of love. Then I found a great new partner within a few months.

With Mike I found true partnership where we are able to work successfully together towards shared goals. One of his lifetime goals was to build his own solar custom home with an incredible view. This is the goal we have been working on for over a year now.

So many obstacles have arisen in this process. Leaving behind our life of 20+ years in Fort Collins was our first challenge. I wrote about that extensively in my memoir of this entire experience. Suffice to say this kind of change is never easy.

We moved into a 100-year-old little house in Walsenburg and put much into storage last June. It took five months just to get a proper slab completed in this rural Colorado county.

We noticed every step of the construction process was costing much more than we had budgeted. We found that our contractor was not taking bids for work, but simply using his regular sub-contractors. At that point Mike decided to take over the contracting part of the process. He took bids from both local and Pueblo companies and cut over 30% off the cost of the electrical and stucco work. Our builder was not happy.

This week, after almost a year of struggle, we were finally ready to complete the inside of our home. We have collected everything we need to complete the kitchen, baths, trim, etc. The response from our builder? I may be able to get to that in a few weeks. I went ballistic! In response he hung up on me.

Luckily Mike apologized profusely, and so we’re back on track again. It will all get done, and we will move in sometime in July, more than a year after we moved here.

I tell you this NOT to discourage you from pursuing your own unique goals, but to warn you that pursuing dreams can get ugly sometimes.

You must be willing to fight for your dreams…

How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?

It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!

Remember: WHATEVER YOU’RE NOT CHANGING, YOU’RE CHOOSING.

Paradise is Personal

May 4, 2015October 18, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

“Paradise is where I want to wake up every morning… where I can be the way I want to be.” — Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture

When we were certain we would not be able to work full-time again, Mike and I began considering our options back in 2013. Where would we find our own inexpensive paradise?

After a quick trip down to Cuenca Ecuador in September, we decided to take a closer look at southern Colorado. Mike had an idea that the Huerfano west of Walsenburg might be a good place to begin our search, so we came down here and camped at Lathrop State Park. As luck would have it, we drove right into our first Octoberfest that fall!

Between the fantastic mountains views, the friendly people, the mild climate, the dark skies at night, and the completely reasonable land prices, we decided to research Navajo Ranch further, and the more we learned, the more we liked this area. It had its own water district, electric and phone service already present, and lots priced between $10,000 and 15,000. We returned in December to look at specific lots.

We found it difficult to distinguish one lot from another and hard to tell which lots were for sale. But as luck would have it, the only one we got out to look at more closely was the one we ended up buying in January 2015!

Then all we had to do was go back to Fort Collins, sell our home, and say goodbye to our life of 20+ years up there, a task that turned out to be far more difficult than expected.

**To read the whole story behind our great leap of faith, check out my Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar and please follow us on TWITTER!**

Drywall, Thunderstorms and Libre…

May 2, 2015December 28, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

We experienced the most intense thunder storm yesterday in the foothills west of Walsenburg in southern Colorado. A half inch of rain in an hour and the lightening was amazing! We have lots of great progress up at our custom home. Who knew drywall could take a few weeks?

We found an excellent local man, Ron Pino, to do our drywall. He started out working with his Dad when he was only six! He works alone and is doing an incredible job for a very reasonable price. He’ll start texturing the walls today and then we can begin painting the interior.

Not the most exciting part, but it all has to get done!

We have been collecting all the parts we will need to complete the interior of the house. You try to sit down and think of EVERYTHING you need to finish a house inside. It’s tough! Luckily Mike is extremely detail oriented… thank goodness!

In the meantime we met a woman who is one of the original members of the Libre Commune north of here. Libre was established in the early 1970s as an artist community, with lots of unusual dome homes. There are still some members in the area. If you have any interest in this topic, check out the book Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture.

We are invited to go visit some of the original homes up there! How cool is that?

Yes, we are keeping busy meeting new people everyday, and enjoying a different view of life on the long and winding road into rural America…