Seasonal Wonderland vs. Travel Excitement

This week we've been getting creative with simple meals made from inexpensive ingredients, and the staples we keep stored, while trying to keep within our nutritional values.

Last night we had fried egg sandwiches with sprouted bread, cheddar cheese, spinach, and shaved red onion and some nutritional bang for our buck in the form of a tasty smoothie including acai, bananas, apple, carrot, mixed berries, spinach, coconut oil and flax.
Tomorrow will look something like chili made from our store of dried beans, tomato sauce and some local veggies served up with homemade bread. Yum!

One of the big changes for us is the difficulty in avoiding grains. It is simply more expensive to not include the filling and inexpensive grains and when going two unplanned weeks without income it just isn't an option.
However, we are expecting to be back on schedule with our income in a few days and we are doing fine!

The tiles in the RV floor are complete and awaiting sealant, the curtains are all hemmed and ready to hang and all paint is finished and we are ready to rehang all of the cabinet doors and reload the RV with our few belongings, which have been pared down yet again.
I have to say, once you take the leap, this simplicity thing is easy to get the hang of, and every time we let go of another "thing" it is sort of exhilarating!

As the renovations come to a close we find ourselves feeling not quite ready to leave the Wisconsin area. To say that it is a beautiful time of year here would be an understatement of near epic proportions. The trees are positively on fire with color, you can smell the drying corn fields and lighted chimneys, and for a person from Texas, walking amongst the falling leaves wrapped in a wool coat and scarf is rather like falling into a fairytale!


There is something utterly divine about carving pumpkins in the brisk air surrounded by crispy autumn leaves... something totally natural about sipping spiced tea on a walk around the block to check out the fall decorations. People around here seem to create a natural art out of their seasonal yards, with porches wrapped in dried cornstalks gathered from one of the many nearby farms and homegrown pumpkins of all colors and shapes.

Knowing the the beautiful little flurries of snow are just around the corner is crazy enticing as well! Quinn is beside himself with excitement over the idea of sledding, snow forts and snowmen. This is a little boy who has been exclaiming since he could speak that, "I like the cold, even the snow!"

I could go on and on about the things which we are reluctant to leave behind, including the prospect of actual horse-drawn sleigh rides through the woods, home-made apple cider and trekking through the snow to cut down a Christmas tree which would be decked out in antique ornaments handed down from my grandmother!

Oh, Oh! As we feel the pull of the adventures of the road we cannot help but wonder if we didn't move into an RV for the ability to be where we want to be.
Right now we are pondering another two months here in this seasonal wonderland before heading toward the West Coast for the remainder of the winter.

Tonight I am uploading pictures of the Fall Harvest Festival we just attended which included a horsedrawn hayride through the woods, picking pumpkins off the vine in a true pumpkin patch, and a made from scratch apple pie, fresh from the oven... and somehow I wound up painting faces! Unfortunately our camera ran out of storage space just before the line formed! It began innocently enough with painting Quinn's face and somehow I was hired by a line of kids and their parents ;-p

For all of the obstacles, we are having an incredible time here in Wisconsin and are most definitely reluctant to leave just yet!

We are also getting ready to roll out a new website, forums and video/photo galleries this week, so check back for that... or better yet, move your cursor over to the left corner there and subscribe to the new RSS feed!

Our internet is down for another week... did I forget to mention that fun development... so be patient as I get all of this sorted out and watch for a post dedicated especially to Verizon ;-)

xoxo