Author Archives: Krystle

Homemade Rosemary Pizza Crust

So, with all our moving around and what-not, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to make some of our favorite recipes, or try new ones. A couple of weeks ago I finally felt a little more settled and decided to combine our favorite pizza recipe with my new love of essential oils. I had everything ready to go into the oven and found out that it hadn’t preheated…at all. My new-to-me oven wasn’t working. Thankfully, we have a toaster oven so with some pan adjustments and about four cycles, the smaller pizzas all made it through and were consumed. The flavor of the crust with the addition of the rosemary essential oil was amazing! As soon as our oven was fixed, I decided it was time for another round of pizza-making!
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Our Journey to Debt Freedom

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Conquering Debt

If you’ve visited my blog before, you might have noticed that my husband and I have been striving for debt freedom. We have never acquired credit card debt, but did have student loan and home debts that we feverishly began working to untangle from. I’ve detailed our 5 steps to conquering debt awhile ago on the blog. Those 5 basics we used in our journey were:
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the season of change

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As the weather and season begins to change here in the Pacific Northwest, I am reminded of the season of change in our life right now. We are caught in an interval of major revisions to our path. As we welcome these developments on our dreams and goals, often sacrifice and patience is our fuel for growth. This new period of transformation is both exciting and intimidating. A shift in our reality.

Winter has never been a favorite cycle of mine; yet, every year I am enticed by the beauty and change. Death blanketed in white – melting into new life. Metamorphic alterations. Nature expresses the work of God with so many parallels to my own life. As fall fades into winter, I am grateful for the season, but also thankful it is not permanent. Rebirth is unfolding.

when it rains – it pours

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Since our move in August, events in life have become somewhat unexpected. It seems that every week some new, surprising crisis or circumstance has presented. From a burglary at our storage unit, septic backup in our shower and other plumbing problems, to mold discoveries, sickness, and an unplanned decision to move again. One beautifully unexpected event did occur amidst all the hardships… we purchased the land for our future homestead!!

We first saw this land almost a year ago. I remember posting a photo on Instagram on December 22 2013 and titling it “Feels like home.” Well, despite us really liking the property, we did not continue to pursue it until a few weeks ago, after selling our house and contemplating our plans. Even though it was no longer listed for sale, we began doing our homework…pulling records from the county office, meeting and talking to the neighbor who was born on the original homestead 80 years ago, walking the land again, scrutinizing the work that needed to be done, considering what we could offer with our current decision to never to get a loan again.

We did not even know if the owner of the property wanted to sell anymore. Brian found the number to call in our search online, and once we finished finding the answers to all our questions about the land, he called. The proposition was very like our offer on our first home (our fixer). We did do some slight negotiations, and at first it appeared that the owner would not accept the amount. In the end, we did secure the purchase and found ourselves at the title company, signing the quickest property transaction of our lives.

It will be a slow process. We have a long list of things to do, and will be building and growing our dreams as we have the cash and time. We have finally experienced debt freedom and do not intend to go back, so we will have to be patient with the journey.

a change of address

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Much has happened since my last post. We sold our 1,000 sq ft home in the city and are now residing in a 500 sq ft rental in the country while we search for our homestead. Everything transpired quickly, to say the least, and we moved on my 29th birthday. I’m just beginning to recover from the whirlwind. We are still catching up with so many things, and have a toddler who is starting preschool at home as well as working on potty training. It’s a busy season.

debt free!

In selling our home we are now debt free! We have been striving towards this for some time, and paid off my student loans earlier this year. We bought our first home, our fixer, with cash and fixed it up without any debt, which is really something we want to repeat with our next place.

early harvest

My garden had to be harvested early due to the move, although we had an amazing tomato crop for several weeks before we had to go. I did pick the remaining tomatoes (a mix of ripe and green) and have been freezing and dehydrating those, along with drying kale chips and other herbs and vegetables. My little dehydrator has been going 24/7 the past few days! Our pumpkins were ready sooner than expected this year, turning orange a week before we left. We had a tomato and peppers and some blueberries in pots, so we moved those with us, along with some strawberries I potted.

plans

We are getting back into a routine and working on our goals for the future. I’m so thankful for this cooler autumn weather (it’s my favorite season). We are adjusting to this smaller space and learning how to make it work for our family. I know that most people would not understand why we chose this path, but we are so grateful for this opportunity to escape the trap of debt (aka a mortgage) and chase our dreams!

I have so much I would like to blog about here (our path to debt freedom, preserving the harvest, recipes, living with children in a tiny home, our search for land, etc) and would love your input on what you would prefer to read about the most. Please share the topics you would be interested in the comments below!

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