It goes without saying that this year has been strange for everyone due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While it definitely affected us, we were so lucky to make it through the year alright. Greg was able to work from home since March and he’s been loving his short commute to the office in our basement. We have 5 acres of land, so even though we can’t go out into populated areas and do things, we are so fortunate to be able to spend time in our yard without worrying about being near anyone. We are homebodies and don’t go out often anyway, so we didn’t get cabin fever as much as some others. I am so incredibly grateful that we spent the year healthy, together, and with our kitties.
Here are some highlights from 2020!
- The biggest highlight (that I’ve been clinging to all year) was our honeymoon in January! We are so thankful that our trip occurred before the pandemic shut down travel. It involved lots of planning: Greg had to coordinate three weeks off from work, we had to book lodging at a different place almost every night, and we had several international and domestic flights. Since we had already waited two years to take our honeymoon, it would have been a huge bummer to have to postpone our trip. I feel so bad for everyone who had trips planned for this year. Greg got so lucky using all of his vacation days before the pandemic hit – who knew? We still talk about our trip all the time and how magical it was. Everything went so smoothly; the pacing and ratio of planned activities versus downtime was perfect. I highly recommend visiting Australia and New Zealand when it’s safe to travel again. It was an unforgettable trip and well worth the long plane rides! You can check out my blog posts going over the details of each day along with videos documenting our adventures.
- We were invited to four weddings this year and obviously those plans were derailed due to the pandemic. Two friends had small ceremonies that we were not able to attend. Another friend postponed her wedding until 2021. In September, one of my friends was able to have a smaller version of her wedding in Nebraska that we were able to attend! The wedding was outdoors with plenty of social distancing and it was so awesome to get to celebrate safely!
- We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary at home this year. We exchanged gifts we made: Greg made a beautiful wooden wall hanging that looks like mountains and I printed a huge album I made on Shutterfly using our honeymoon photos. Then we picked up a pizza from our favorite place in town and watched our favorite Star Wars movie: The Force Awakens. Our annual order of halfmoon cookies arrived a day late due to Labor Day, so we enjoyed those the next day. To round out the celebrations, we went on a hike in Shenandoah National Park over the weekend and got to see three waterfalls.
- We continued to work on home improvement projects this year. Our twenty-year-old refrigerator stopped working while we were on our vacation in January, so we bought a new one when we got home. We didn’t love our old one anyway, so it is a nice improvement! We lightly renovated our guest room by adding new baseboards, installing white shiplap on one wall, replacing the outlet and switch covers, and painting the walls, ceiling, doors, hardware, and trim. We also bought ourselves a king-size mattress so we could put our old full-size mattress and bed frame in the guest room. Our new mattress is super comfortable (our old one was too), and Greg is planning to build a bed frame for it. For now, it’s on the floor! During the summer we installed our second, and hopefully last, drywell in our yard. Greg spent lots of his free time in his workshop building his workbench, a router table, and lots of other useful things!
- Greg grew out his hair and beard! What started as him not shaving or cutting his hair during the “Two Week Lockdown” while he worked from home in March, became not shaving until the pandemic ended, which at this point does not have an end in sight! We both like it so he will keep it for now.
Last year I wrote a post about my goals for 2020:
- Start our flower farm: grow/sell
- Stay active (pilates, run, hike, stretch/splits)
- Make time for reading, writing, and crafts/art
So, how did I do?
When I got home from our honeymoon in January, I dove into the online flower farming course I took from Erin at Floret. The videos and resources are so well done and thorough; I had a great time going through the course. The first activity was to make a vision board! Luckily, I had a stack of magazines my mom had given me over several years that I hadn’t gotten a chance to look through yet. Most of them were Country Living Magazine so I had plenty of pretty flowers and farm photos to cut out for inspiration. It was really fun to put it together and hang it on my wall. Erin makes a vision board at the beginning of each year and I might do it too! In the spring, we successfully tilled and planted the flower beds I planned and most everything grew really well! I took lots of videos and notes so I can make improvements for next year. One thing I really battled was grass growing up through any empty holes in the landscape fabric so I will attempt to avoid that in my plans for next year. It was very satisfying seeing the seedlings grow in their trays in our sunroom throughout the spring and then watch them flourish and grow tall in the field. The cats loved accompanying me as I harvested and I loved having them around. I sold two bouquets to one of our friends so I officially made a sale! I plan to grow a lot more next year and have a solid outlet for sales.
I did a great job at staying active this year! I followed the free Blogilates calendars on her website and used her videos to work out every day! Even when I missed a day due to travel or visitors, I completed the videos over the course of the next few days so I ended each month with a calendar full of check marks! I felt very accomplished each month and even each day as I completed the workouts. I really enjoy Pilates because it is challenging without being intimidating to me. I don’t put off doing it and it still leaves me sore each week.
I would still like to increase the amount of time I spend reading, writing, and doing crafts/art. I was able to finish few books this year: “Me” by Elton John, “Jurassic Park”, and volumes 4-9 of the graphic novel series “Saga”. Since I spent lots of time out in the flower field planting and pulling weeds, I listened to a few audiobooks via my local library. I listened to “Outlander”, “White Fang”, “Pride and Prejudice”, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”, and all five of the books in “The Selection” series. I’m up to 3,500 words on my latest short story/wannabe novel, which isn’t very many, but I worked through an outline with Greg and I’m loving the direction it is going! I did a few crafty things this year, but I would like to experiment making some art using the dried flowers I saved from this year’s crops!
2020 was a wild, different, and scary year for us all. I hope as we move onward we can also move upward, applying what we learned this year to make the world a better place, even if we just start at home.
Thanks for reading!
-Rebecca
Flourish & Blogs 