A whole new world...

No...not a post about Disney songs; although, life has felt a little like a fairytale lately.

We have moved. We still live in the same town, but a little further up the hill. It's a little weird to explain everything that has happened in the past month, so I'll sum it up simply. We had the opportunity of a lifetime, so we took it.

We have spent so much time over the past few years downsizing and simplifying, but we seemed to have hit a wall. If you have followed our journey for any length of time, I'm sure you noticed our struggle. We found out, that there is a point where downsizing becomes an obsession very similar to consumerism. This seems to happen whenever we become too dogmatic about a singular lifestyle or worldview. When we begin to believe that the way we are heading is the only way...the road gets a lot more dangerous. We had outgrown our small home.

We began to notice how small our home was becoming a a year or so after we started the Compact. We had downsized and simplifies so much, but we still could not fit in our home. The more our children grew the more difficult it became to function on a daily basis. But we were stuck. The market had fallen out beneath us and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

Then, we tried to re-finance. Ouch! We had lost more than we could have imagined and we were not going to be able to afford our home much longer. It felt so wrong. We couldn't afford a home that we couldn't live in. How can you make that work?

Well, we were offer an amazing opportunity by someone very close to us. Now, we have a new (to us) home that fits us perfectly. It is not extremely large or ornate. It is just the right size. Big enough to live easily, small enough to require a constant check on our consumeristic nature. Our children have more usable room to play, we are closer to school, we have room to create...we are HOME.

I wish I had picture to share and I wish Carolyn could chime in, but we still don't have internet access (hopefully next week). But suffice it to say, we're starting a new leg on this journey. Keep in touch and we'll fill you in more soon.

Also, thank you all for the support, prayers, thoughts, emails, etc. They have been a welcome blessing in trying times.

Free salad- and other good things

Oh the joys of having a garden! Go ahead and say "I told you so!", because I wasn't sure it would be this cool.

We have enough lettuce for a salad every day! And enough spinach for my smoothies. And soon, we will have green beans, tomatoes and strawberries!

I am astounded at how prolific our little garden is. Even with my inexperience and lack of knowledge, I've been able to get so much food out of this little patch of ground! Imagine how much we'd get if I knew what I was doing!!!

I'm also enjoying Lemon Balm- it grows in very small amounts in strange places in our yard. I dug some up, stuck it in a barrel with good soil and POW! We have quite a large bush of this herb!!! I've been making tea with it and learning more about its uses. It seems to be good for immune support and relaxation? Well, whatever it does, I like it alot and it seems to soothe me.

I love growing things!