So, to anyone who did not receive this card, I appologize. Here we are, at our best:

We have been busy. Taking it easy. But working as well. The past few weeks have been amazing. We got into our house, as you know, a day before our pronounced 6 Month deadline. We are now happily keeping warm at night, and have a place to keep out the dust! As well as a place to cook some amazing meals. We have been having fun. People ask us what we do. We make some art, play board games, play cards, scrabble of course. We read too many books. Sometime one a day. We write our friends who don't write us back. We take long walks, and the cat comes with us too! We watch movies, listen to music. We do everything any one does, for the most part, but out here, surrounded by no one and with the utmost peace and quiet.

Here are some updates, picture wise:

A tree in our yard... came into bloom?!

A christmas story: A few weeks ago we got about 4 inches of snow! It was cold for a whole 3 days! It has been in the 50's and 60's everyday since! WHAT A WONDERFUL WONDERLAND, NORTHER NEW MEXICO!

WWII is in heaven (as are we):

We've cooked some AMAZING meals:

Sometimes I feel like it doesn't look like much.. but I know I'm wrong! Eventually, this room will be inside. It's so cool that we could enclose it first, and move in so soon.

We've been building a tire platform. We will put our cistern on this in a few weeks. It will be either a 2500 gallon cistern, or 3200 gallons. We need to get what ever fits best. Either will suffice. In the future we're going to add another cistern too, to have about 5 or 6,000 gallons.

We even had a few friends visit. I made these coffee addicts some coffee cakes!

Hiking around! We went a couple of miles! The cat came the whole way!

We have accumulated an couple cows worth of bones. It is turning into quite the collection.. and we're not even sure what we're doing with them yet... More to come soon, I'm sure... up next: GETTING THE CISTERN!

The long and winding road....

It has been a month since an update, possibly more. I have excuses, and only a little regret. It has been cold. It has been dirty. It has been restless, uncompromising, anxiety-ridden. It has been harder than any other feat I have ever set my mind on. And as usual, it has paid off.

Dain and I finished the tire walls, the roof, the front facing windows, the attic insulation, all in the past few weeks. We woke at sun rise. Made breakfast while it was too cold to eat it, sometimes it would freeze before we could eat it, and than went to work. Non-stop, sunrise to sunset, every day. The cold got us going, but at times was painful. The day light here is so limited that we did all the work we could before the sun went down, and were restless and cold in the evenings.

Needless to say, it was all worth it. Every freezing cold minute of it. It was getting down to ten degrees or so at night. We were bundled up in a tent covered that was covered in blankets, us under even more blankets, and the cat on top of us, trying to keep warm for herself. It was cramped and not the slightest bit enjoyable.

Here is a picture of Dain, one of our last nights in the tent. Notice the jacket he is sleeping in.

I will go in chronological order, from the last blog post until now. Even though these days of hard work are over for the next week or so.. (we are officially on vacation)..

First we made a form out of cans in order to pour our bond beam across the roof. This took about eight hours of insane labor. Our neighbor friend came over and was more than a help. It would have taken us three days without him, instead it was just one HARD, LONG, long day. We were able to collect enough water to mix our cement, and were able to borrow a cement mixer as well. It was an awesome amount of work, but it paid off. The last picture is from above. It is where the cement was poured. All our work was so constant and happening so fast, that I was unable to take a few extremely important pictures. BUT, i will have other pictures, of other rooms in the future, so no worries. That said, there is no picture of the bond beam. Just picture that can wall full of cement. It also had brackets and bolts put in it, which is how we connected our trusses to the bond beam.

A birds eye view of the bond beam with the wood bolted to it, and a bracket (where we will eventually attach our posts for the attic). >

Than we started building trusses. Each truss ended up costing only the price of the screws we used. These were built from scrap wood from a local saw mill. We have used a lot of this wood so far, and are getting good at making it work for us. These trusses hold 20 inches of fiberglass insulation (another thing that never got photographed because it happened so fast). Almost done building them.. it took about a full days work to make three of these. We were going at it non stop. Skipping lunch, skipping breaks. It was insanity and joy. Sweat and tears. Blah, blah and blah.

From And finally, it became a room!

The cat was the only one enjoying herself. She loved this jungle gym we were building her..

We finished the trusses and quickly went and spent a small fortune on cedar lumber for the front face (window frames) of our room. We built this wall in about seven days, the other three walls.. well, they took over five months.. (they are the tires, of course).

And in about three days we had all of our glass cut, doubled up, and put into it's frames.. whew..

Here is a picture of our current unfinished ceiling. It is simply holding the insulation in right now. Later I am going to do some wood work, and put in some tin tiles. And possibly a chandelier... of the DIY sort.. of course, who do you think you're reading? The current "roof" is just wood, with three layers of thick plastic on it. It will probably be there for about the next three or four months, until we get the hallway/greenhouse built, which is going in front of this room.

And thar she blows: And moving in hasn't been as fast as it was the when we moved into the cabin, but it has been more than satisfying. It is about 70 degrees inside of this thing all day, already, even though it's only half buried so far. And it hasn't gotten below 40 degrees yet. This is a COMPLETELY UNFINISHED ROOM! We are SO going to have a constant PERFECT temperature, all for the price of A MILLION HOURS OF MANUAL LABOR! Unbeatable in the long run. >

It's like a studio apartment in the middle of nowhere. Or, heaven. It is so amazing. I feel so accomplished. And now, time to get a job!

I am cutting this "short". I need to get off the computer, out of the library, and back to my slightly temperate, slightly temporary home.

PS- Please send me your address, that way I can send you a lovely card.

Such a blogger Deadbeat!

We raised roofbeams and the pictures didn't get up here! That was weeks ago.

Update: We have roofbeams. A fully poured eight by eight inch bond beam! We will have roof insulation tomorrow! 60R, whoa overboard! We have the ENTIRE front of our room framed off for it's windows! We own a door! It isn't hung yet! We are three days away from living in the room!!

THREE DAYS AWAY! Five days before our six month estimation/deadline (that will be december 4th!)! I am so tired. I promise to post pictures. I promise. I will do it as soon as we put our glass up.

P.S. It looks beautiful!

Wraping up phase one

I have been an extremely disfunctional blogger. I barely have time or energy to put clothes into the hamper, let alone drive to the library, sit down for an hour, organize pictures, upload them, and then tell my two to ten readers what we've been up too.

But for the sake of those two to ten readers, here you are. A nice, clean, fresh update about what goes on in rural northern New Mexico. The land of enchantment.

I roll out of bed tired and roll back into bed even more exhausted every day. I roll with only a little gusto. Though, it is all worth while. Soon, possibly even sooner than our first estimation, we will have a finished house and home. Five years from now, HERE WE COME.

We are nearly done with the tires (JUST ONE DAY AWAY!) for the first room, which will eventually be my bedroom. We have also gotten started on a can wall at the top of the room, which will be where we pour our bond beam for our roof.

Pictures Roll:

This is about two weeks ago.

We are using cardboard for our outer insulation, our "thermal wrap". This will save us a few thousand dollars. Collecting the cardboard is easy. One dumpster fills our truck to the brim usually. It's just a little more time consuming.

more cardboard:

piles and miles..

The cardboard is two feet thick, and wrapped in a couple layers of plastic for protection. It will be the height of the house, eventually. This is all experimental on our part: WISH US LUCK. >

The look of insanity:

About 30 tires away from finished (with room one), 250 down I believe.

Can wall to hold the bond beam. This will be plastered over eventually.

It's getting bigger every day. Slowly but surely.

FRIENDZ VIZIT

It's Tarantula season! This is on a walk by the river, at the white place.