Exciting New Happenings!

Almost four years ago we left a place we loved- the house on the pond where we’d lived for five years- for a place that called to us- the Meadow. (Click here to read/ watch all about it.)

Living by the pond in the Haeringer house was life-changing for our family. Each and every house we’ve moved in has taught us new things… each one has developed new passions within us, forced us to take on new habits, and has helped us grow creatively and shift our perspectives on life. That house introduced us to geese (two of them conveyed with the property lol!) living on land, and true beautiful architecture with soul. We felt compelled to move to the Meadow, even though it wasn’t easy to leave the house we loved so much. We knew we would be throwing life into the madness of construction, once again, but we also knew about how dreaming of something and making it happen fills us up and lends a beautiful sense of adventure to our lives.

After moving to the Meadow for a few months until we could move into our newly renovated “temporary” house we started the renovation/ rebuilding of the meadow house. What we thought would be a year and a half construction project turned into an almost four year project. Our “temporary” move became rather long-term and the years ticked on by. After I had completed the architectural & interior design plans for the house itself, I spent much of my time throughout the years pouring over garden and landscaping books, planning away on the gardens and grounds at the Meadow for this very spring.

Now that we’re back at the Meadow in our (almost!) finished house, I CANNOT HANDLE how close we are to things blooming around here!! I’m so excited and also still feel like a bit of a pent-up race horse because it’s not quite full bloom time.  

The girls and I sowed seeds in February and we put them in cold frames in the garden a couple of weeks ago.  We’ve also got seeds directly sown in the cold frames so we’ll see how that goes. This is our first time trying cold frames so I’m hoping I’ve been timing things okay.

Our new baby embden goslings, Primrose and Snowdrop, arrived four weeks ago as day-olds and we are so in love!! Life just feels right with geese in it and it makes me teary thinking about our old geese having been killed on this property (we think it was an eagle or two from the nearby Potomac River though the hawks do seem aggressive around here compared to our old house only a few miles away) and finally having geese again. I missed having such sweet little loves in our life. They’ve imprinted on us and follow us everywhere with so much trust. 

It’s not lost on me that we failed our last geese, Love and Story, when they were both killed by an aerial predator in broad daylight after having never had any issues for 5+ years free-ranging geese during the day. Even though geese are generally considered safe from aerial predators, we now know that’s not the case for where we live. It was a heartbreaking wake-up call that moving this close to the river meant fiercer predators to worry about. Love and Story were such sweet, intuitive animals who loved to be with their people. I’ve felt a heartache since it happened and having Primrose & Snowdrop these past few weeks has been healing. It feels kind of like a thawing out of sorts. I have some fear about something happening to them again but more optimism that we’ll get it right this time.

We’re in the process of designing a large aviary for the goslings and will only allow them to free-range outside of the aviary with supervision or in a goose tractor -a protected pen that can move around to fresh grass each day. For now, they’re living in the chicken coop/ run and following us around wherever we go. We bring them inside every now & then because we’re obsessed but they can only come in for short jaunts 😉 😉

Now that the house at the Meadow is mostly finished and we’re living here again, I’m excited to be back at a point where I can blog again, post new recipes each week and get back to regularly posting videos on our Youtube Channel!!!

I have an amazing team helping me now with everything and each week we’re able to add a little more to the schedule- woohoo!! We are dropping brand new episodes of our MEADOW series every Thursday (check out the preview below)…

…And house tours of homes we’ve designed on the first Saturday of every month…

We’ll be adding more interior design how-to’s, HOMEWORK videos, and cooking videos for my favorite meals. If you haven’t yet subscribed to our YouTube channel, be sure to check it out and subscribe here! If you want to go back and check out the Meadow series from the beginning / episodes 1-24 click here. To view the newest episode- episode #24- where we get the house photoshoot ready for my one day Rugs USA collection launch, watch here.

…And finally, each week we’ll be sharing a mood board on the blog to go along with each MEADOW episode linking to our favorite products – many of them from our shop Lauren Liess & Co.- along with outfit details & inspo. I get lots of questions about what products we’re using in the house, where things are from etc. so we’re compiling it all here in a clickable board each week :

click on the images above for links!

I hope you’re having a happy start to spring!! I’d love to hear what you think about the new changes around here and if you have any ideas for how we can make things better, we’re all ears!

xo,

Lauren