Cabin porch winter decorations for our tiny house in the French countryside

I can tell you what Olof would do. He'd have it finished by now. Oh no, I don't want to do this anymore. Good morning everyone. It is the end of November and it's getting really cold now here. It's really starting to feel and look like winter. We're going to have a kind of party with the village. We are all going to decorate the village and then in the evening we're all going to light them all together. So everybody's putting Christmas decorations up at their houses. We're all getting together with glue wine and hot chocolate and cakes and just having a nice moment together. I hope that I can share that with you. I don't know if I can film but I'll definitely try share that vibe with you. And also they say it might snow and I'm getting this déjà vu of a video I did last year when I said they say it will snow and then it never did. This time we're crossing our fingers that it does because we want to shoot some footage for the videos that we're making for our cabin tiny house. We believe it is a place I mean that we would love to go to year round. Any season would be nice in our opinion. So we're trying to show the cabin in all four seasons. We've already shot some footage of the vineyards in Bal. Olaf and I went out a few weeks ago with the professional camera and the drone and he took a lot of really beautiful shots of all the colors and it's so beautiful. So we're hoping it will snow but when it does we need to get a couple of things ready around the porch. Olaf is working on the interior. We can't film any of that yet it's not nothing's finished but we will be able to film some of the exterior. But there's a couple of things that I need to do. So I've made a list a to-do list which is very unlike me. I never work with to-do lists. I'm not very organized generally. This actually shows you how unorganized I am because this is in three languages. So it says petit bois which is for the windows. I'll show you. I'm just going to take you along with all these projects that I'm trying to do today and tomorrow. This is lights. Of course we need to sort out the lights. I have solar lights that I want to hang on the porch. I think that will look really nice especially when it snows. And I'm going to do a DIY project. I'm going to try to do that myself. I think I'll need Olaf's help. This says hangstool. There's your first lesson in Dutch. Hangstool which is a swing chair that we're hanging on the porch. And it says, and Olaf is not going to like that, tree. That's talking about the tree that I showed really quickly in another video. The tree that we've been needing to cut for months that we still haven't done. But now I'm happy we didn't because I'm hoping to get maybe a tree trunk, a piece of trunk, that I can use for decoration. So hope you enjoy. So this is what we call the petit bois. And they go in the windows. I painted these earlier this week because we changed the layout and then we realized we didn't have enough. So I bought new ones. I just need to find the old ones and I have really no clue where they are. And Olaf is not here. He's gone to the hardware store. Wait. I think they're there. Okay so let's see how many we have. One, two, three, four, five, six. I need eight more of these and then we can install them on the exterior and then we'll deal with the interior later. Let's start painting. I've actually started marking all of our paint cans because we've got so many projects. So we have so many cans. I paint everywhere and it's all in my head. And we won't get this done because I need Olaf to install them because these aren't made to be installed the way that we have imagined. Which is of course always what happens. I always have ideas that are different from how you're supposed to be doing things. So he needs to make some adjustments to them. I'm so happy to have such a clever husband. He's just able to do whatever I have in my head and fix things and everything turns out exactly the way I imagined. All finished. And in case you're stressed out because you're counting 12 and I only needed eight. I've only done that four ones and those four. And I've only left these. They are still in our primer coat. So these two sticks would stay in place so I can paint both sides at the same time. And talking about those sticks, we're going to use those for the next project. Let's go. And the next project is here somewhere. So there should be more of those sticks. There they are. Okay, I wanted to make a star that I want to hang to the side of the tiny house. This one's all broken. And we got these from the wood that we're using for the siding of the tiny house. And they put this in between so, you know, to have airflow for the wood staying dry. It's early. I put it underneath. No, see, this is where I need someone. That's not gonna work. See what happens if I do this. Yes, this is it. Oh, that was easy. I only needed to change this one. So they're all glueable. So they're now glueable. Or I need to screw them. What would Olaf do? I can tell you what Olaf would do. He'd have it finished by now. Because he would have thought it through before actually putting everything out. He plans everything. But I'm so wanting to do this without having to disturb him because I want him to focus on getting the tiny house ready. I think I could glue this. I could take that tacker thing that he has. That nail gun. We call it a tacker in Dutch. I think it's a nail gun. See if I can find that. Who would think making a star is more complicated than it looks? Normally, this should be level when you put it like this. And it's not level at all. Now you know why Olaf builds a tiny house. And I built these kind of things. I'm gonna hang this and film so I can see how it looks. What does it look like? Is it okay? Like even the simplest things, I managed to make them really complicated or mess them up. Okay. And this is where Olaf does all the electricity. And I pick the light fixtures. I don't wanna do this anymore. I have a system for this, for our Christmas tree lights. But this looked so organized when I took it out of the box. I thought, oh, I don't need to do that now because this can't possibly go wrong. This is gonna be a while. Let me go get the camera right there. Okay. So just tell me, please leave a comment saying this happens to you every year when you're putting your Christmas lights up. So you know, like when you're putting those, the lights in your Christmas tree, and then you start really well. And then at some point, they all get tangled and you just throw the whole thing in the tree saying, yeah, that looks nice. Just that looks perfect. Don't do anything. Don't touch it anymore. It's fine. Do you hear that? That's midi. That's the church bells. Saying it's midi, meaning it's noon. And I'm still working on this. Oh boy. I've taken it out to be in the sun because I was getting cold. I have officially given up. I could really not untangle that bit. I just threw it on there and then kept on going that way. Okay. I'm definitely going to go set up this. Done. Another job done. Let's hope they've been able to charge enough. I kept it hanging there for now so we can test it tonight and see what it looks like. Time for coffee and cake. This is a simple apple pie. It's a really simple recipe that I found on a French lady's website. She lives in the US, I believe. And she said it was a perfect recipe for what she called a potluck, which I've never heard of. But that's when all the village people come together and everybody brings something. And that's exactly what we're doing next week. So I'm going to bake that. I am cutting a butternut squash and I'm going to make a tarte selée. It's like a pie. Okay. Let's go out on the stage while we can still see where we're going. The boys just came home and they took the apple cake. That is actually called a good day in French. So around four or five o'clock, but it's five thirty now probably. When the boys come home, they eat something sweet because in general the French have dinner maybe at around eight. We usually have dinner anywhere between seven and eight. Olaf just finished up at the tiny house and he told me the lights are on. So we're going to see what it looks like. I wasn't able, I wasn't able to test it before I made that because it wasn't charged. Maybe it was charged. Huh? The lights are broken. No. So the lights were broken and so we need to replace them and we tried to get them off. That there will be light in the grange. So we tried to take them off and we couldn't because they were all tangled. That was a Halloween. It's November now. It's too late. Anyway, so I had to go back to the and get new ones that Olaf put on for me. I said you do this now and I think it looks really nice. So this is how it turned out. We'll have to see if it looks like a star when it's dark, but we're going to hang this. Not now because we're officially all going to hang our Christmas decorations during the illumination. So that is the party that we're having with the village. So I'm going to just put this somewhere and then we can put it up next week. Okay, I've prepared as much as I can. We need to hang the swing chair. That bench or whatever that's called is actually not going to be on the porch. That's for inside of the cabin and it's been sitting there because Olaf is still working on the inside at the moment. He's done all the insulation. He's now building the wall between the bathroom and the living area. And I wanted to put the petit bois on the windows, but we've got other stuff to do. So hopefully we can still do that tomorrow. Well, this is all the snow we got. Olaf is still working on the inside. It's not entirely the effect that we were hoping for. And it didn't snow in the days after that and we couldn't put the petit bois up because we couldn't use the glue at these cold temperatures and it was extremely windy. But we did say let's just make some footage and I would love to share that with you now.