New Fence

I received my Xmas present early!! If you have been reading my blog for awhile you know I always ask for "weird" house projects or furniture as presents,lol:) This christmas was no exception.I wanted to fence in our new yard .Hubby would say the property was my present as well but I consider that a family gift we will all enjoy. Anyway,getting a permit for this property was a pain ,since this is technically a front yard on another street ,we couldn't add a 6 ft privacy fence.We could only add a 4 foot picket fence that was 50 percent open and at the corner of the neighboring driveway it had to be 3 feet in height for 15 feet(distance) for a vision clearance. At first I was really freaking out because we have the dogs and I would always have to be outside if I let them play in the yard(they could possibly jump over the 3 foot part)but then I realized I always wanted a victorian picket fence and it was the opportunity to have it.I love the movie Practical Magic (dream house) and saw a photo of their yard and it had a white picket fence!! We purchased a cedar french gothic picket fence.I will probably leave it the cedar color only because I can't imagine having to paint the fence every summer.I have enough of my front porch to touch up painting every other year,lol! Here are some photos of the new fence! I can't wait until spring so I can actually enjoy my present!!!! For now I am happy to rake the leaves and just stare at my new yard from my kitchen window!!!

Dreams come true !!!

I haven't written in a while.Life seems so busy for me lately! The older the kids get the faster time flies.We had a great Thanksgiving weekend,our daughter and her family came to stay with us over the holiday weekend so that was great. We also had a Thanksgiving miracle!! About 7 years ago I wrote about a house behind our garage being torn down.

We dreamed about that empty lot for years.We wanted to purchase it and add it to our property so we could have a real yard.I tried to find out who owned it and called the city a few times.Then a good friend of ours became our neighborhood Alderman and she found out the city owned the lot.To make a long story short it seemed out of our reach ,so we just kept thinking one day we will purchase it.I still called it our lot every chance I had to talk about it.So here is where the story gets interesting.About a week before Thanksgiving we get a letter in the mail that the empty lot is going to be auctioned off the following Monday and if we were interested in adding it to our lot we could bid.It was a sealed envelope auction so you only had one bid.For the next five days my husband and I were trying to come up with a number that would make sense to us and that it would win!!! Also the two houses next to the empty lot received the letter as well.The blessing for us was that the two neighboring houses were renters and we thought the owners wouldn't necessarily want more upkeep.Of course we weren't 100 percent that they wouldn't bid but we were hopeful. Well our prayers were answered and we won the bid!!!! We bought our dream property lot at a a great price!!!

We are so happy.We are in the process of getting a fence permit to add to the property.We really have to work fast as it is getting colder here.I will add more photos after the fence is up!