Third Times The Charm

This is how our home looked when we first set eyes on it in June.

It was advertised as a "banging buy on the water that won't last long!" And it didn't. It was only listed 3-4 days before we found it. Our realtor was amazing and had way more information than we could have possibly needed to base our decision. We did a quick walk through, checked out the yard, counted over 20 palm trees, and told her we wanted to make an offer.  We were literally leaving for Ohio the next day, so we were in a hurry to get our papers signed. We had looked at 2 other homes that weekend, and this one was the clear winner. It was a third trip to Florida to house hunt, and the third house we had seen that weekend.

ADD Remodeling

So when we made the move to Florida we purposely looked for a fixer upper. I'm obsessed with DIY stuff, and really a total home remodel is the ultimate DIY project.

And sometimes all that DIY stuff isn't the way to go, but we're neck deep in it now, so there's no going back! Thankfully I have this awesome husband that's in to it, too, and he's sooo patient with my ideas, projects, and total derailments.  If we did things my way 100%, nothing would get done because it would totally look like someone with ADD remodeled the place. LOL

And no, I don't have ADD, I just get sooo excited for the next part, I can barely wait until we're finished with what we're working on. So while we're laying new subfloors, my mind is already moved ahead to cabinets, counters, and what light fixtures will we be putting up - but we're totally not ready for any of that yet. So to keep me happy, we call it "research" and "price comparing" or "data gathering".

Remember in school and those dang diagrams you had to make for language arts - the brainstorming ones? That's pretty much what I'm doing every day, all day. I go to work, I'm thinking about the house. I get home, I'm on pinterest pulling ideas for the house.  Then I fall into craft ideas, DIY furniture, etc and I'm off again with some half baked idea of what we could do.

Excitement. That's all.

So to keep myself in check, we find little DIY/crafty projects that I can take on mostly on my own. (Mostly because sometimes I require help operating saws.  Sometimes I pretend like I need help because it's more fun working together on a project.)

So, an example of what keeps me happy...the coffee wall space.  It's cute, but the wall it's on will eventually be ripped out, so it's super temporary.  But it was a fun couple hours project E and I completed together on one of my days off.



I will forever be grateful for pushing to move ALL of our extra/surplus cans of paint with us. Due to that decision, we've painted nearly every room of the house without having to buy paint. By using the paint we had left over, we have saved a ton of money on walls we'll be ripping out and hanging new dry wall on later. Meanwhile, we were able to give all of the walls a much needed refresher.

Here's a before and after of the fireplace corner of our front room.

Before



After

I scrubbed all of the walls and painted them a light blue in the living area.

Before

After

So that's the first things we did to the house to make it more homey. We didn't go full into remodel until just a few weeks ago. We've started in the laundry/kitchen area and are working our way from one area to another. Just because I like some things to be nice, I've played with the decorating, etc.
More to come in a few days.


Well, it's been a while, and we've made changes!

Has it really been two years since I've posted here???  So much has happened and changed since my last post.  The biggest change being we bought a home in Florida!!

 

Yep, that's right, we moved to Florida! We sold the farm and moved over 900 miles away - to a warmer climate and no snow. Ok, that's not totally true - there was one day where some snow fell from the sky last month, but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. And there was two mornings that we woke up to frost on our cars, but today it was 86 degrees so a couple days of frost is worth bearing!

 



I plan to be back to blogging regularly soon, but for now I'll share one of the first pics I took when we arrived here in August of 2015.  Later, I'll share details of how the move came to be (totally God's doing and lots of answered prayers.

 

 

This is actually our BACK yard, but our FRONT door.  And what you don't see is behind where I stood to take this pic, a canal that is connected to a local lake.  To the left, where that door is opened, is where our driveway is.  That fence is now gone.  One day on a local sale group, posted free if they remove it, and boom, fence gone. It was wonderful!

 

Over the next few days I will be sharing some of our current and upcoming projects, before and after pics, and any new adventures we fall into.

 

OH, and some things that never change - I still have five chickens. Bantam Chocolate Orps.  We'll be adding bees soon, and we're making plans for raised beds.

So stay tuned, there's more to come!


Today I washed the baby furniture....

What ? I washed the BABY furniture?! 

Yes, I washed the BABY furniture......

Baby Doll Furniture that is !!  Gotcha!  LOL

I just want to say I am so so so thankful to whomever it was that came up with Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I am even more thankful for whomever made the dollar store off brand that only costs me $1 to buy and magically removes crayon, dry eraser marker, nail polish, and permanent marker from white Biddy Baby doll furniture.  So thankful I could kiss them!

But I won't. Kiss them that is.

But that is how I spent my day off today.  Cleaning doll furniture and doll houses and princess castles.  And making my princess happy.  Make that BOTH of my princesses happy.

Wealthy and Canning Carrots

I tiptoed into a new venture today with my canning.  Baby carrots!!

Our local grocery had a good sale on them - 10 for $10!  So I snagged up 20 bags.  I was willing to go for more, but my husband kind of put the brakes on my shopping.  I mean, I bought a near over flowing cart of groceries for about $90 just by shopping their sales ad!   And that $90 worth of groceries will feed my family well for the next two months!  Enabling us to have meals for less than $5 each for quite a while!!

So  I spent a good portion of today canning those baby carrots. One bag is enough to fill a quart jar.  Since 7 quarts fit into my canner, that  means I'm canning 7 bags of baby carrots at one time. And I was really excited about it.

I should back up here and tell you that the absolute highlight of my week was getting hired to work at this little local grocery from where I purchased this stash of baby carrots.  I'm loving it.  I'm so happy and thrilled to be in the work force again, even if it is a part time minimum wage job. There's no shame in it.  At least I'm working.  I saw an e-card on Facebook today that said Even if everyone worked hard and went to college someone would still need to make our pizzas, stock our shelves, and drive our cabs.  Quit looking down on them and assuming they deserve to live in poverty. Can't help but to think how true that is.  Not everyone can or will be the top of the food chain.

And as for living in poverty, I don't feel poor. How does poor feel anyway? I have 6 beautiful children, a husband who loves me, and maybe not a whole lot of material things, but I'm blessed beyond measure, and that makes us feel RICH.  Richer than a lot of people out there who are basing their wealth on material things or the money in their pockets.

Like right now, my wealth can be measured in the number of meals I'm able to can up this weekend.  Wealth measured in carrots and potatoes.  And kids' laughter as they watch Madagascar 3.  That's wealth.

Did I mention I'm also rich in friends?  I have a plethora of friends - plethora, I really like that word - and I'm so rich in friends that are like family that everyone else should just be jealous.  That's right, envy my wealth of friends.  Because I've got a lot of them.   People who listen when I need someone to listen, who help me find the truth, the good, and the best in a lot of things in this journey of life.  Honest-I-am-going-to-tell-you-what-I-think-like-it-or-not friends.  And they'll tell you, if it's pisses you off, OH well.  It's just how it is. No holds bar, no pulling punches, just raw, bluntly honest friends.  The kind that they don't care if they piss ME off, but don't let anyone else step in on that or they're on you like ducks on June bugs.  Wonderful, caring, loving, honest to a fault friends.  Yep, I'm rich with them.

So back to the carrots.   I didn't know you could actually can baby carrots, so I used a search engine and found a blog post on it. You can find the blog post I found here.  They turned out wonderful.  I washed my jars and got them ready and then filled them with the carrots that I washed and drained.  One teaspoon of salt in each jar, filled with hot water leaving 1 inch head space, then processed in my Presto Pressure canner at 10 lbs pressure for 30 minutes.  Viola!  Whole  baby carrots that aren't taking up space in my fridge!  Love it!  They'll be great served as sides, in roasts, or even in stews this winter!

Yes, I realize not everyone is still canning this time of year. Even my new boss seemed surprised that I was canning when I sent my husband down for more lids.  I should mention, I cleaned them out on the last 6 boxes of jar lids in the whole store.  I don't know what I'll do after I use those up!  lol

But, as long as there are sales and I have empty jars, I'll continue to can all winter if need be.

And I'm going to continue to enjoy the wealth of our poverty.  And love. And be happy. And be satisfied.

Carving Up Pumpkins...

Not carving in your traditional sense of carving, but hollowing them out and feeding the guts to the chickens and saving the seeds for planting next year.  So I guess we were technically "gutting" pumpkins. We didn't carve designs into them as the kids had painted them a couple weeks ago (and it's Halloween today and I just don't like stuff hanging around once the holiday they're for is over so...)

It was messy but a lot of fun.   The kids mostly enjoyed throwing the pumpkin guts to the ducks and chickens and watching the poultry "football" for the best pieces of pumpkin meat. 

This Mille Fleur Cochin girl thoroughly loved the treat.

Throwing treats to the chickens always gets Squeakers started on "I need to the chickens" and she grabs the first thing she can find (in this case a blue bucket) to fill up with grasses and then throws them ot the chickens. 

I do think it's absolutely adorable!  She's so adamant that she needs to feed "her chickens", and at first wasn't too keen on welcoming Big Brother's help.

There may have also been a small - ok huge - meltdown when we told her it was time to go in and "put up the chickens". 

Today the kids are dressing up in the costume of their choice (though we still aren't sure which costume Squeakers is going to go with..she keeps going back and forth between Doc McStuffins and  a princess) and spend the evening with good friends at Trunk or Treat.

Have a safe Halloween!

Family Night

After a long and stressful week, we desperately needed something simple, fun, and low-key to finish out the week.  The kids just needed some fun, kids will be kids moments after the roller coaster week we had.

Being that it's Friday, I figured it won't hurt to let the kids stay up later than usual.

So we made caramel apples together...everyone except Squeakers who crashed hard (she also had no nap today).

The kids each made their own caramel apple with help from mom, of course.  They devoured them in no time.  

We are now sitting down to watch Monster's Inc as a family in our pj's. A fun, simple family evening and was the best way to finish out our week I think.