Jumping in Head First...

The end of 2010 was marred by some type of viral infection that knocked me for a loop from the day after Christmas until today. My fiancee's brother, his wife, and two children were all sick with the virus and still attended the Christmas celebration at my future mother-in-law's anyway. Her brother's wife kissed me on the cheek and thus polluted me with the virus. Nothing my fiancee' and I had set out to accomplish during the time we were off from work between Christmas and New Year's was accomplished, although she did make some progress of her own on some other projects.

We are counting down to our wedding on March 18, 2011. There are many things to be done directly associated with the wedding, so that has been taking a lot of our time. The final step in the process required by the Catholic church is meeting with the deacon who is marrying us to discuss the results of the FOCUS evaluation. We have gone through the Re-marriage Seminar already. That opened our eyes to a lot of aspects of our relationship we hadn't discussed, but not surprisingly were in agreement on.

We are more determined than ever to get our house in order, clear out extra miscellaneous stuff, and start our homestead before the big day. That is no small task to be sure. Combining lives and possessions, even though we've lived together since June 2010, has been a lot of work. She has belongings at both of her parents' homes that we have slowly moved to our home. My own pack-ratted belongings that have been amassed over two and half decades took up most of the storage space in the house I purchased in 2002. Down-sizing and simplifying what we own is a huge priority.

This year will surely be the start of establishing our life together and making the house, our home, and moreso our homestead. Our little farm in the city, in Terrytown a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana, will be the focus of our efforts. Our primary goal is to better utilize what we have to supplement our income and make our life a little more self-sufficient. Sustainability and frugal living are the goggles that color our vision for this year. Some of the many topics we'll focus on this year:

• Breeding bearded dragons, various tortoises, and box turtles
• Raising feeder insects
• Operating aquaponics micro farm
• Composting with black soldier fly larvae and worms
• Building chicken tractor for egg production
• Clearing backyard of useless plants, trees, and shrubs
• Farmer's market participation
• Indoor aquarium aquaponics
• Turtle pond and tortoise enclosures
• 4300 gallon aquarium completion and operation
• Breeding fish
• Our experience extreme couponing
• My HubPages writing
• De-junking our house and subsequent garage sale
• Creating storage when you're space challenged
• Grid-tied solar power