Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2015October 31, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I cannot feel my body.

Strike that. I CAN in fact feel my body. Every single muscle. They’re all yelling at me for not getting off my butt and keeping active on a regular! Three days ago I woke up and decided it’s been awhile since I’ve jogged, so I went. I totaled 2 miles, and this elevation was a big adjustment! Then two days ago I went to work with Ben 🙂

Another free day came up on Thursday, so we decided to use this beautiful weather and put it to use!

Originally, when we foamed the trailer, we only put about 3/4 inch of foam on the roof, and it seemed to do the trick… that is until the cold front started creeping in. It really needed more, so we added another 2 inches or so, coated with silicone and threw some gray granules on top. Again, foam is Ben’s profession, it’s what he wakes up to go do every day, so I was his “helper”. I basically tailed the hose and carried it behind (it’s a rather large hose… you’ll see below), cleaned up the job-site, taped up wind blockers and back spray, blew off the roof etc etc. Like an assistant.

The rather large snake on the ground is the foam hose and on the end of it obviously is the spray gun. It’s nice to have someone tail the hose and keep it out of the way, especially on a small surface. *Below* Boots are wrapped and taped so I don’t have to buy new ones 😉 and my dusk mask is on to breathe the clean air while sanding the walls inside down.

We really did end up getting a lot done on Thursday. It was a full working day, from about 10 AM or so, until 6:30 PM. We finished the roof which was the most important on the list. We will need to foam the bottom just a little more but that can be saved for another day.

Almost only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades, but we ALMOST finished the drywall. I am getting MUCH better at drywalling 🙂 We still had the front of the trailer, the ‘V’, to mud and tape still, and we had to frame the door and put in the bull nose and trim it up a bit. We were SO close… but we ran out of drywall mud. I HATE having to stop a project due to lack of supplies! But alas, such is life and all things are never ideal. Good news is I have the mud now, and after I finish the drywall up, I already have the painting supplies ready to go next!

At FIRST, I was very nervous on the roof. I didn’t go up last time but this time I wanted to get even more involved. I wouldn’t say have I have a fear of heights, cause I don’t, but I DO have a healthy respect for high surfaces that doesn’t have a railing on it.

The paper you see taped around the perimeter of the trailer in the first of these above three pictures is to help block the foam from spraying over the side etc. Last time I taped the paper around the top perimeter with both feet on the ground. (I’m kinda tall). THIS time I did it with both knees on the roof! Yipee! And THEN — by the end right before we coated the roof with the silicone, I went back up top and I was able to blow it off and walk around with confidence.. The extra foam did help as it made it more of a sturdy surface too 🙂 In between I had to also work around and trim the sides with a knife after the foam set in. No wonder my back hurt.

But seriously. . . I am really REALLY enjoying this process. It’s also nice not being on a timeline and worrying about a budget and a deadline. This way, we are able to work as we can afford it, and still live comfortably in it in the meantime. The work itself is very enjoyable, like I said, I am getting better at drywall! This third time I do it I may be just perfect. HA! It’s not easy, and this really does have a learning curve, but we are winging it and so far its working! I can’t wait to start our next project and we’re not even close to finishing this one!

It’s been a little over a month and I would recommend it over and over again if someone had asked my two cents. After moving twice (one across country) in less than 4/5 months, it’s taking a bit of time to bounce back up on our feet– as you can imagine– but bouncing we are and it’s great! 🙂

On that note, I’m going to get ready to go out and enjoy my Halloween! I love Halloween and all of the scares 🙂

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October 26, 2015November 5, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

My nose is very very sensitive to smells. Not in a bad way, I can just smell you, or that thing, or “insert scent here”, from a mile away. If it’s a dank enough smell it might send my gag reflexes going.. Courtesy of my mom’s side of the family 🙂

My favorite smell is the wind. I loved gym class growing up in the fall and spring time when we were able to go outside, because when we would come back in… You can smell the air, earth, and wind on your skin and hair. It’s a different smell than lined dried clothes, but that one is still ranked up there.

My second favorite smell is pine, actually, probably tied for first. But that smell, the pine and the needles covering the ground and the way it silences your footsteps. It reminds me of going to the Upper Peninsula Michigan when I was a kid to visit my grandparents camp on Lake Superior, and my other grandparents home. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve gone to the UP but it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL country up there, gorgeous! They call it Gods Country up there for a reason. Anyways, I digress, I love the smell of pine.

SO!

All of this talk about smells is leading somewhere. I went to the car wash the other day and they gave me a free air freshener, looks homemade somehow, and I picked the pine scent, but it looked like they also had an “air” smell. Next time. But my car smells so good I could live in it.

That was all.

NEXT order of business!

–SO. I HATE waste, and I really have been trying to minimize my carbon footprint, but in our current situation we don’t have a fresh water tank / running water set up in the trailer. (It will be coming just not yet). In the mean time we have been buying water either by the gallon or just recently in cases of water… and I KNOW I KNOW that is really bad for the environment, so this is why I’ve been looking up ways that I can recycle and re-use the bottles we will end up going thru!

My favorite ideas from one of the lists I found were…

Little greenhouses / Planters for plants
A vertical plant stand which you can use your grey water for it to grow plants like lettuce etc. Something that will be good for the kitchen etc.
Curtain/ Door sheer by painting the bottom of the bottles that are cut off
Making designs from the different colored bottle caps

http://www.boredpanda.com/plastic-bottle-recycling-ideas/

http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2015/06/31-creative-ways-to-reuse-plastic-bottles.html

45 Ideas of How To Recycle Plastic Bottles

(All of these links found in a simple google search)

Maybe I’ll think up a few new ideas to use the bottles for, but I don’t want to recycle that many away, it’s more of a challenge to be creative and see what I can come up with.

Altho sometimes I tend to get obsessive and that’s all my time will end up consisting of… hope that doesn’t happen this time 🙂

Colorado the Beautiful *

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I crave fall like some people crave chocolate. Cold crispy days that leave the tip of your nose red, running and just a little numb; when your cheeks are rosy and pink, a winter jacket is just too much but one layer isn’t quite enough.

I crave these days. The past few days here in CO has been what I’ve been dreaming of since last fall closed down for the winter to move in. I don’t even mind the rain… I am half convinced I could live in a place like Seattle with constant rain and I wouldn’t get depressed, but I don’t have any plans to move there anytime soon so we can’t know for sure yet. But anyways, the last two days have been steady with a light fall of rain, not to windy, not to heavy, fading in and out just enough so Ben couldn’t work and we could get out and explore CO some!

Our mission Tuesday was to head blindly into the Rockies for the day and just figure it out, as we often do when we do some “Sunday driving”. We spent a few hours on back roads winding and twisting and since it was bad weather we couldn’t see beyond the base of the hills and mountains to about half way up… still didn’t take away any of the magic. We came across some signs for a trail head about an hour and a half into the drive so we pulled off and went for a 3.4 mile hike. It was gorgeous and I was BEYOND ecstatic to be back in the mountains again. I promise my soul belongs in the mountains, it just does. So anywho, it was an awesome chilly day with a great hike, the rain didn’t bother us at all and the hike followed a river the whole time so that was pretty cool.

This was a pretty cool church we came across in the mountains not much else around but it…

On Wednesday we decided to head down to explore other parts of CO, so we headed southwest to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. That hike ended up being about 2 miles and was very cool! I didn’t realize (I don’t know where I’ve been) that CO has cacti and had some desert to it, the Red Rocks Amphitheater was full of red rocks obviously :p but it was really big smooth rock formations, and the amphitheater is almost built into the rocks. As you’re hiking along the trails you wouldn’t necessarily notice that there is an amphitheater there if it wasn’t for the signs, random parking lots and enormously big ramp to walk to get to the top.

From the top of the amphitheater, awesome views!

We could’ve used those two days “off” to work some more on the trailer, but we’ve been here for a couple weeks now and I’ve been just itching to get out and go! BUT, I have made some improvements on the trailer since then! I was able to find some individual stack-able drawers for our clothes! YAY! When I went to buy them, I went right back to the clearance spot where they were, and there was only 1 left! I was so sad, buuuut then I turned around and they just re-arranged the place J SO I got all 5 and an extra collapsible box so we have some more organization in our lives!

The white stack-able drawers are what I found to be useful to hold our clothes 🙂

My summer wardrobe (the little of it that exists) is slowly being cycled out and my fall and winter clothes are being brought into the trailer. Like I said… I crave this season so I am STOKED! We’ve had some cold nights so we’ve moved the electrical heater into the trailer. It looks like fan and it adjusts on and off with the temperature in the trailer which is very nice for those times we leave it on all night. As you can imagine it doesn’t take much to heat a small space like that, so that is an excellent feature… it does heat up like a sauna rather quickly. Of course that’s wouldn’t always be a bad thing as saunas are basically amazing, but not for sleeping. But EVEN BETTER the heater fan we use is a Vornado VH2 and we got it at a garage sale for $5. Ben insisted that it would be useful, and it has proved to be so far! WIN!

I feel like we are gaining some more order and footing in our lives. It’s a hard thing, change. I’ve said it once and I will say it a thousand times! BUT, it feels oH! So good when things start to chill out and the new routines start to feel “normal” again. (I hate that word, normal. It’s not a real thing.) But for lack of a better… “normal” is nice sometimes.

I picked the right Starbucks to sit at this beautiful afternoon. I’ve been writing this post for a few days, but the weather has been too awesome to stop and finish it. Now that I do, the sky is very clear, and I have a nice widow seat facing the snow peaked mountains in all of their glory, and my mint tea which is bomb.

The mountains are beautiful today, I may have to go explore some more 🙂

**fyi. I started this post on a Thursday and finished it on a Sunday. So if it was confusing that is why 😉

Back in Business.

October 15, 2015October 15, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

So I’ve been gone for a while.

My family had to say goodbye to my Grandmother so I drove “home” for a little over a week. With all the change going on, I felt the need to have some familiarity back in my life, so it was a very nice trip spent with family and my nieces and nephews I don’t get to see on a regular basis. Prior to heading to Illinois I was with Ben on a job out-of-town for about a week… He was able to fly to Chicago for the service and drive back to Colorado with me. The drive wasn’t all that bad, especially since we have some friends who live exactly halfway so it’s always a good excuse to stop in and stay awhile 🙂 (The drive there all by myself was all that bad. It really was.)

Needless to say not a whole lot of work went into the trailer while we were gone.

HOWEVER.

The best part is that it actually felt like coming home when we got back. That familiar feeling of coziness, and I am so happy. When change is constant it seems easy for me to get down because there is nothing really familiar for me, but having even a tiny space, and my items filling that space, is familiar enough for me. 🙂

Until we get the walls done, we are limited to what we can really do for storage. We have several options we’re looking into that I am very excited about. BUT in the meantime we NEED something that has a little more organization. It KILLS me that we may get something only to not use it after a short time because the permanent structures will be put in and our temporary set ups will no longer be needed. But what we have now (a tall shelf and an end table that holds storage in the inside) was already around us for a few years (and bought second-hand) and anything else we may get will be useful for our storage locker so it’s not all a waste. I don’t like being wasteful so everything we have or will get I try to use and re-use if possible.

This is our current storage situation. This shelf was bought from a thrift store for $5 when we first moved to Washington 2 years ago. I’ve tried to get rid of it because it’s not the cutest, but it’s proved to be very practical and has paid for itself over and over again so I don’t even fight it anymore. I then bought the cloth storage boxes from Target on clearance so things have a place, and it doesn’t look put together so haphazardly. (If it doesn’t already)

The two black buckets (if you can see them on the shelf) are my “sinks” for washing dishes. So far it’s proving to be a decent system. Of course it’s more of a chore and not as quick as it normally can be, but we do the best we can with our current set up. I’ve gotten so used to the convenience of having everything right at hand, it has become a challenge to see what other ways I can get things done. 🙂

Where washing dishes are concerned, I just boil some water so its hot, wash in one bucket, and rinse in the other!

This is what we are thinking for a permanent structure for shelving. Something that is customize-able and is forgiving with change. I like the idea of everything having an open shelving concept which is great for when we’re parked, but when it comes to hauling the trailer around I don’t know how but something will have to be tweaked.

The next order of business for better living is something for our clothes. I am officially tired of living out of a suitcase. I’ll keep doing it IF I have to, but this weekend I am headed out to buy some simple stack-able drawers I found at Target on clearance. I’ve searched some thrift stores, but those are always hit or miss, and I’ve been missing lately.

When I got back from my trip I spent the whole next day getting everything in (better) order, and bringing out some of our things that have been packed away. This monkey I got for Ben when he was in the hospital. We don’t have any babies so he gets to come along with us and just hangs around. 🙂

I also love to have paintings or signs up around the house, so I was able to hang this very fitting sign (it was a wedding gift) up in the trailer by some bungee chords, and my dream catcher that I got from a farmers market in central Washington. (Notice my breakfast cooking on my “counter”)

I am looking forward to being back in Colorado and picking up where we left off!

The adventure continues!

dynomadic life

Dynamic Design. Nomadic Nature.

Month: October 2015

Happy Halloween!

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Colorado the Beautiful *

Back in Business.