Before

Tyler and I are using these few sunny days in September to get ourselves ready for the winter. Winter out on the farm means a lot of time inside, as the drifts get so high that it is difficult to play outside much. It also means frozen pipes, and cold floors. This will be our 3rd winter in this trailer. We have slowly and surely made some improvements (all the indoor aesthetic renovations were made before we even moved in).

Tyler has also built the addition to create a bootroom/front entrance and a bedroom for us.

Our first winter here, I was pregnant with Max and we ended up having frozen pipes about 75% of the time. Waking up in the middle of the night because you have to go to the bathroom and having to walk the 200 feet up to his parent's house to use the bathroom was a pain. We had to shower up at their house everyday, do laundry and pretty much everything. We made some improvements by insulating the underside of the trailer and using heat tape, which has cut down on the frozen pipes, but it still happens about 25% of the time. Tyler's hoping to get all the plumbing on the inside of the house so we don't have to worry about it anymore.

We also decided we wanted to do some landscaping around our house so that the kids would have more area to play in. It's been slow going, but we've cleaned it up mostly. We spent time yesterday going to a few different growers in Cochrane to look into some shrubs and plants that we can plant around the house to add some curb appeal (mostly for ourselves). Here is some before pictures of our renovation process. I'll post some outside 'after' pictures when we get it all done. Hopefully it'll be before the first snowfall.

ps. I'm very proud to have a husband who can do these kinds of renovations on his own. Everyday when I walk down to our house and see the addition he built for me, I feel pretty lucky.