Winter is Coming

Winter is coming! In Colorado, that means ski season, making snow forts, going snowshoeing and sledding. Unfortunately, it gets crazy, cold here at night so it's good to take precautions ahead of time. What does that mean when you are trying to live in a camper trailer?

I'm talking about insulation — Greg's favorite dinnertime topic. In order to move in, we needed to insulate around the bed area and in the bathroom. Check out what it looked like a month ago.

As you can see, cleaning hasn't been high on the list of priorities.

Greg has been working almost 40 hours a week, cutting styrofoam insulation and radiant barrier into odd shapes to fit into the walls of the camper. Remember that guy I wrote about in the first blog post who lived in a van with Greg in New Zealand a few years back?

Okay, okay, I'll let it slide that you haven't read every post so far. But I did want to give a shoutout to Scott for helping out one of the days so far. Having a friend offer to help during a home improvement project is a wonderful thing.

We couldn't capture every moment, but we hope this video gives you an idea of what goes into insulating a bathroom in a camper.

Not too shabby, right? I'm probably the most excited about using a composting toilet for the first time. It's a weird thing to be excited about, but when you live in a camper trailer, you get excited about weird things.

And that's our bathroom there in the back! I bet the two pictures don't look much different, but it's a start!

Also, what a lazy dog we have! We swear she did move throughout this process.

Blaize is growing impatient with all the home improvement projects. What do you mean you can't play with me all the time? Another Home Depot run? Really, guys, REALLY?

Did I mention, we moved in! Finalllyyyyyyyy. It's been a long time coming. We took the last month to work on this insulation project and even though we're not done yet, we can still sleep there at night.

I think in order to do something like this, you have to work on handling your stress in times of frustration. The way you used to do things just isn't going to cut it anymore. You have to find a new normal in day-to-day tasks.

Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed, fresh air and local hikes becomes my new best friend. Sorry, Blaize, you're cute too.

Hands in the Dirt

The new stones are the perfect prop for any pooch photo shoot.

Before we can start working on insulating the camper trailer or installing our composting toilet we need to repair the landscape around our new home. We tore up lots of dirt carving out a spot for us and want to repair it so unwanted weeds don't capitalize on this new opportunity and move in. Also the freshly dug up clay is super sticky and ends up everywhere. So the first steps in repairing the land are sculpting the dirt to fit the new landscape and mulching exposed dirt.

The mulch we are using is made from debris that settled in local creeks during last September's incredible rains and subsequent flooding. It is interesting to imagine the past lives of the tiny bits of houses, barns, trees and furniture that now line the entrance to our new home.

Sit back, relax and watch us do the hard work of gathering mulch and sculpting the landscape for our new front yard.