Making Dreams Real

On New Year’s Day 2014, each member of our family made a vision board for what we wanted in our lives. On my board, some of the cut-and-paste words were “Make Your Dreams Real”, “Life is all about choices”, “Bright Ideas”, “I chose the good life”, “I count my blessings”, and “Blogger”.

For those who doubt vision boards – read on.

In August of 2015, we sold our home in suburbia and began our search for life in a new, more rural area. It took us several months, but we found a place in northern California that just spoke to us, as they say.

We purchased our 5-acre property, with a home and outbuildings that required lots of work, and the ‘fun’ began!

Living without a functioning kitchen for six months was a challenge; going from 4 bedrooms and 4 baths to 3 bedrooms and 1 bath (the other was torn apart) for even longer made life interesting!

We finished the inside remodels, then spent a massive amount of time on back-breaking landscape and outdoor fire-proofing work, and now we’re gearing up for repairing and replacing the siding, and painting the outside of the buildings.

It’s been exhausting, yet we now have the property we’ve dreamed about and talked about for over 20 years.

We have a ranch home on property.

We have trees – really big trees!

There’s a shop. A guest house (currently occupied by my father-in-law). A garden and an orchard.

Our chickens have a walk-in coop, our bunnies have their own shed with a custom hutch, and we have room to expand our animal family.

We made a scary choice to move away from our childhood stomping grounds to an unknown town and a home that needed repair, but “Life is all about choices.”

We chose the good life and we count our blessings every day.

We are making our dreams real.

So many friends and family have asked “How’d you do that?” and “Where did you get those?” that we decided to write a blog. (It’s a huge learning curve, so bear with us!)

We plan on sharing projects, both big and small, and stories of some of the wacky things that happen when you live on 5 acres with pets, livestock, kids and wildlife.

We’ll pop in with a recipe or craft idea every so often, too.

Snippets of life at Cluckberry Acres.

We hope you’ll come back to visit. And we look forward to hearing from you, too.

Oh, and give the vision board thing a try – it really does work!