Leaving Suburbia for the Big Woods: A Family Adventure: Talk of Simplicity or Not

Where do I start? I've been posting pictures on FB of my family's new adventure moving from the northern suburbs of Chicago to a, how shall I call it, homestead? No, that doesn't work. Farm? Nope, only one small outbuilding that was run down and full of chicken poop. I have called it our "Dimond in the Rough", I'll get to that later. For now I will call it a house on a hill in some woods in Wisconsin. Anyway people have been telling me over the past 6 months they love seeing my pictures on FB. They love seeing how our house has changed, the improvements we have made to it, and how we have fixed it up. They say "You and Matt move fast. You've done so much with your place. I love your chickens. How many rabbits do you have? You got ducks, Angela! I love your posts and pictures. The kids must be having so much fun!" And some have said, "Angela, you should write a blog to document what you have done, people will read it."

So, here it is. A documentation of what we have done. Mind you I am not a writer. Nor am I an expert in anything you may see me post. I will say that I am having a lot of fun with this new life. If you are interested in watching me in my many experiments and in the words of many friends over the years; please join me in "ADVENTURES WITH ANGELA". (add reverb) ;)

Over the years I've heard a lot about homesteading, life in the county, sustainability, a simple life, raising chickens and prepping. For a girl that grew up in the suburbs of Chicago it all sounded like nonsense. Life was simple in the the burbs. I had a beautiful, modest, house, a husband, 3 kids, a dog and a cat, a big car and a little car and a yard. That was the good life. We were happy. What is there to prepare for? I knew where I needed to go to get food, clothes and fun. My life was simple.
My life was good.

I've been married 15 years. That's a long time for a girl that moves along really fast. I'll start with a quick recap. I met Matthew, while in grad school doing teaching observations (he was the sexy teacher across the hall) Que. Hot for Teacher., when we were 24. It was May 28, 2000. We went on 3 dates; the 3rd was my cousin's wedding, he was a last minute +1. In July of the same year he proposed marriage on a pier in Door County, WI. Very sweet and romantic.

This is a picture, of a picture, of a reenactment that we did for Matt's grandparents.

He moved in to my apartment. We got married March 17, 2001 and found out on our wedding day we were going to have a baby! (That's a story in itself but...I'll talk about that another day) We bought a house in May, 2001. November 28, 2001 we had our first daughter. We moved into our next house in 2003, had our 2nd daughter in May 2004. (She was supposed to be born at home....but that didn't work out) Moved out of the that house in 2005 and built a new house in an awesome community with an HOA and a lake, paths and so many possibilities. We had our last daughter in June of 2006. (She was a "Oh MY Gosh, It happened again!)

Lets do some math. 3 kids, 4 moves, 3 houses, 5 cars, several pets all in 6 years. It went by fast! We move fast!

Now fast forward to 2014. All this talk of the above mentioned lifestyle started swirling in my head. I decided I wanted more. Since we first met Matt has wanted land. Land to play on, bike through, ride 4-wheelers though, build trails and hunt. I wanted chickens and ducks and rabbits and bees. I wanted to be able to have a huge garden. And I wanted to be more self sufficient and rely a little less on society for my families needs. None of this could be had in our associations. Not of it was allowed. We couldn't even park our camper in the driveway for more that a day or have a shed or plant a tree without asking first.

We had been in the community for 9 years, had obeyed all the rules, made great friends, I gardened, manicured the yard (we thought it was so big because we paid a premium for it), Matt did fix-ups around the house. Our kids were busy with school and extra curricular activities....We were living a busy suburban family life. But....dun dun daaaa....I was getting tired of nosey neighbors and the strict rules of an HOA. And we were living in Illinois. If you don't know about Illinois here is what I will tell you. There are 3 things wrong with living in Illinois: the weather, the taxes and the politics. We were paying so much in taxes to pay corrupt politicians. I couldn't see what benefits we were getting for all the money we paid. The schools were good but otherwise......anyway we were getting ready to move on. We started looking for a new home.

Illinois was not where we wanted to be anymore. It was too expensive and cold! We thought about going south; its cheaper and the weather is better. But we both work in Illinois and maybe switching jobs would be too hard. We agreed on looking across the border. Wisconsin it was. We would move away from high taxes and hopefully the politics would be, a little, better, so much for the midwest winters..... And the commute to work could be about the same.

For many months I looked for a great home. We were not picky about updates or size; only that it was across the border. Of course the price had to be right, it had to have space for all the kids, it had to have trees and it had to have land.

We found a home fairly fast. It was an amazing house with 5 acres, a huge outbuilding, a greenhouse and a pond. We started packing and were due to move in January 2015. AWESOME! Take a deep breath now. Boom! Financing fell through because the bank guy screwed up!!!! Depression, for me, hit hard! I couldn't even unpack so Matt had to do it. It sucked. So we redid our master bathroom to make us feel better. It worked for a little while but I kept looking.

Because of the circumstances with losing the last house we needed to rethink our budget and our strategy. I'll discuss this in a future post in detail but for now and at this point in the story it was necessary for us to decrease our purchasing budget significantly. I looked and looked and visited many homes for sale. I used apps on my phone: zillow and realtor were the main two. Matt was frustrated by my insistent search for a new home because of the money we had just put into the master bathroom and the fact that he had just unpacked that last boxes.

In October 2015 I found a couple that would work; one was a foreclosure that needed a lot of work and was priced too high. We loved it but with all the work that it needed it was well beyond our budget. We kept looking. Over Christmas break we had friends over, who also want to move to Wisconsin, and we were talking about houses. She asked, "Did you see that 16 acre house on the hill?" We replied, "Yes, but it needs so much work to be livable and the bank has it overpriced." We pulled it up on Realtor.com and checked it out together to tell them what we saw on our walk through. To my surprise the price had dropped significantly! We had to see it again! We had to see if we could make it work. We called our realtor and set up an appointment for the next day.

We closed on the house in early February! But we couldn't move in. The house was a mess! The carpets were black with dirt and pet stains. The white walls were yellow and full of handprints. It smelled and the basement was full of mice. We needed a refrigerator, a new oven, a washer and dryer and a new hot water heater. The roof had leaks, the heating was not working, there were broken windows..... the list goes on.

And this is where the story will begin.