my new life in the countryside - making a house a home

It is a warm, sunny spring morning here. The birds are so talkative right now, busy finding mates and making plans for the warmer months. It feels like nature's symphony outdoors. As you can see, I recently found this very sweet sewing box while shopping at a second-hand store. One of the legs was broken that could easily be fixed, and so I got it on a good deal. While I will not use it for sewing, it accommodates all my art supplies really well. If you're a crafter or artist, you understand how a box that properly organizes all your things is a treasure. I've actually spent some time shopping in the nearby town recently, which feels strange because I don't really spend much time out of my valley, much less purchasing items for my home. It's very exciting and feels very different. My fiancé has encouraged me to really make this place feel cozy, and even though I was only looking for a couple thrifted items, I did find some cute little knickknacks. I also received some lovely gifts from you and some family members in celebration of the house warming. Thank you, all of it has been so comforting during this shift in my life. One of my favorite low-budget ways to decorate is just to decorate with books. You can find interesting looking books almost anywhere secondhand for very little cost. I like to get ones that I'm both interested to read, but also others that just speak to me. Their covers may be intricate, or the stories that are told can teach me something about the people who lived in the past and their perception of the world. Next time you go to a thrift store, maybe look out for some fun books within a specific color scheme or style. I find it always adds something really unique to the space, and you can usually get a lot for very little if you keep an eye out for deals. So far, I don't think there's any secret to decorating a space in a very inviting and unique way, except that it takes time. Over the course of years, instead of being in a rush, you can find so many fun and interesting things that are both affordable and can be easily repurposed or upcycled. I have kind of just ended up putting all my plants and some of my favorite things in this corner because there is a lot of construction renovations going on in the other part of the house. You could probably see, I'll have to turn the camera, but there is a doorway being cut into this wall because the stairs from the first floor are going to meet this floor, and that is where Luke's father is working on it today. So it's a lot of things happening in the house still, so it definitely is a space of transition and a little bit of chaos right now, which is really exciting and wonderful, and it's starting to feel like we are getting really close to having a more completed home, and it has been so beautiful to see how hard Luke's father and Luke have been working on the space. I did get really excited the other day, though, because I went to an antique shop because I was looking for a rug for the back room, and I found an old vintage ice cream maker, which is really exciting. My eyes looked at it right now. I actually have it right over there. It is a beautiful kind of green color, and it is in very good condition on the inside, and so I'm really excited next week to try to make some different types of ice cream, because definitely if I'm ever in a time of great change and many emotions, ice cream usually resolves 95% of it. So I'm very excited to try out some new ice cream recipes and share the process with you. It'll definitely be an experiment because I have never used a vintage ice cream maker before, but I'm excited to learn. Anyway, about a month or two ago, I asked for questions on Instagram. First, there were some more personal questions. One was, um, how are preparations for the wedding going? You know, I actually have to say so far, there have been challenging, sometimes a little bit stressful times in the process of planning, but overall, the wedding is going to be very small and very simple, and it's actually going to be on a little farm not too far away from here, and it's going to be a lovely sweet little venue, and it has not been too hard to plan, but there's always those moments where you feel a little bit overwhelmed, but yeah, definitely keeping it simple has really helped. Yeah, we're very excited. It's just going to be very close family, and I think it will be absolutely beautiful because it will be in May, and there's going to be so many beautiful flowers out, and we're going to have a little local string quartet come and play as well, and yeah, it's going to be a beautiful day. So far, it has not been too stressful, but we also are still a ways away, so that may change. I have already found my dress. I found it for a few hundred dollars at a little wedding boutique when I went to visit my sister in Houston. She and I went to go wedding dress shopping because she loves that experience, and I wasn't so sure, but I ended up enjoying it very much as well, and yes, I found a sweet simple little dress. I don't know if it was meant to be a bridesmaid dress or a actual wedding dress, and it has embroidery on it as well, which I really liked, and it had some floral elements, so I will no doubt show you at a future point. I noticed there are some new people here recently, so feel free to introduce yourselves in the comments and tell us what country you're from. I always think that's really exciting to see all the different places people around the world are tuning in from. It's always really interesting, and I think it has a very lovely way of bringing us all together. Sadly, my microphone briefly stopped working while filming this, but I still wanted to wish you a lovely week, and I will see you very soon, and I'm sending my love.