Today has been a marvelous fall Sunday. Fall is my favorite time of year, and it was such a pretty day. The time change made it easier to wake up and catch CBS Sunday morning, a lovely show that always leaves me with a feeling of hope! Andy Rooney from 60 minutes died yesterday. RIP Andy. I’d never heard of him before today, but after I watched the tribute to his life, I was sad he was gone. There was a great line from one of his bits: “I wish there was something we could take that could cure us of stupidity!”.

I grabbed brunch and then headed to the gym for some exercising and swimming. I don’t believe exercise should ever be punishment, but I had to push myself to get going today. Once I was there, I loved it, but beforehand it was like talking to my five year old self saying, “Sunshine, you’ve spent 8 days straight in front of a screen, and it’s time to move!” With any project that I’m passionate about, it’s easy to let myself be totally consumed by it. So part of the challenge is going to be taking care of myself and maintaining balance in other areas in my life as I work on this. Probably easier said than done!

There’s been a lot happening this weekend. The Avondale Brewery opened for business, the Moss Rock Festival was Saturday and Sunday and the uber important Alabama-LSU game last night (poor Alabama).

We checked out the fun Moss Rock festival yesterday. It takes place on the common green areas of a development called The Preserve in Hoover. My mom’s boyfriend, Carl, says they name developments after what they used to be, which is definitely true in this case. Moss Rock is a nature preserve that, up until about 12 years ago, was 650 acres of forest. 400 acres of forest were cut down and developed to create the 680 homesites in The Preserve. Luckily, the city bought 250 acres, leaving them mostly intact, and created an official nature preserve. This protected the area with the boulders that climbers love and some beautiful waterfalls and hiking trails, although it’s not nearly as pristine as it once was. Now there are silt fences and cleared areas along the trails and often there is construction happening at the trail head. That seems to be the backwards way we do things, cut down 400 acres, develop it, name it The Preserve, and then have eco-friendly festivals there. Even so, Moss Rock is still one of my favorite places to go hiking with Stevie-D (my loyal pup). It’s only a mile or so from my home, and after a rain, the waterfalls are gorgeous. The festival is also a great annual event with some talented artists and vendors with green products.

I ran into Stephen Guesman at the festival. He owns a company called Greenworks Design/ Build that helps people make their homes more energy efficient. He worked with me on the design of my current home and will likely contribute some to this project. He lives in a modified yurt off the grid in a community called Common Ground in Blountsville, AL. His house is powered completely by solar, and his water comes from a well on the property. A few weeks ago, they had the annual solar tour at Common Ground, and I was happy to be able to make it this year. I got to see some really cool possibilities, and soon I’ll write a more in-depth post about everything I learned with photos of the different homes we were able to see.

Tonight, I’m hanging out looking at house plans. After a while, my brain feels like it might to break, but I love it still. It’s like trying to piece together a puzzle. The biggest decision I had to make before we could move forward was about the garage. The lot is narrow,(50×126 feet) and there is no alley access, which makes a garage difficult. Initially, I wanted to have an attached garage, so the first design we worked on with Rebecca, my architect, had a drive along the right side of the house and then you turned left across the back of the house into the garage. Once I saw it on paper, I realized how much that separated the backyard from the rest of the house. With that scenario, I would only have about 25 feet of backyard and would have to cross the driveway to get to it. Rebecca had some really cool ideas to provide other outdoor spaces on the side of the house, but I think I’ve decided that I can handle walking a few feet to get to a detached garage. The easiest most affordable option would be to have the garage on the front of the house, but since the lot is in a historic district, I don’t think the historic review board would go for it. I didn’t want to finalize all the plans and then have them not approve the design. You can’t go before the board until you have drawings with all the elevations, renderings, and actual material samples, and by that point, the plans would be nearly finished. So I’m going to choose my battles and save everyone some time. A detached garage it is! The backyard will still be small, which is good because I don’t want more than I can take care of, but at least now, there’ll be an area of about 50 feet by 30 feet for a patio off the back of the house, a small veggie garden and plenty of room for Stevie-D to run around!

I’ve attached a photo below with a picture of the initial drawing, so you can see the visual of where we started. Rebecca and I are meeting again this week to work more on the design. I’ll keep you posted on the progress, as well as officially introduce her to you!

Also, a big thank you to Keith Gugliotto for helping with the website yesterday and for making computers seem a little less scary 🙂

Hasta pronto, amigos!