Tidings of Joy

Merry (belated) Christmas! While it always seems the Christmas season gets busy and a bit overwhelming, our goal was to keep the true meaning of Jesus' birth at the center and enjoy some fun traditions. Here's a little snapshot of some things that happened this season.

Christmas Cookie Decorating:

I tried something a little different this year. While trying to have our family eat a little "cleaner" and eliminate food dyes, we used natural coloring for the frosting (still had red & green sprinkles).

I sprinkled in spirulina for the green, cinnamon for a reddish-brown, tumeric for a yellow/orange, and kept white, white... I added in a little nutmeg to each.

And guess what? They actually tasted really good! The boys would agree.

 

Cracking Black Walnuts:

Instead of chestnuts roasting over an open fire, we were cracking our walnuts by a closed fire. Ryan collected some walnuts last year, dried them out and we got a little morsel of delight. Those tough little buggers put up a fight, but we won in the end.

 

Tuck helped too.

Gift Giving:

This was the year I told myself I wasn't going to do homemade gifts, then I went to a class at our health food store on natural gift making, got inspired and this is the result.

4 batches of soap

3 flavors of lip balm and hand balm

2 varieties of bath teas

and pure beeswax candles. 

(tidbit of info: I just found out that beeswax candles purifies the air of toxins in your home the same way some plants clean the air, neat - huh?)

Ski Vacation:

My parents (generous) gift to our boys (birthday & Christmas are 1 day apart) was skiing... in Vail! Watch out they can stop, turn and look for any little jump they can go over. It was a great break and beautiful spending time in the mountains around Christmas.

 

Tidings of Joy:

This wreath popped up on our doorstep. Thank you Uncle Bill for the decoration!

Our chickens are in full production (even with sub-zero temps)! S-man got creative with his sled to collect them all.

 This is how we roll...to celebrate Christmas with Ryan's family (they're only a mile away).

We arrived a little cold and wet :)

Christmas night broomball game on our backyard ice rink. (sidenote: dollar store brooms make the game called broken-broom broomball ;)

Have a blessed New Year!

Corn Harvest

 

The vision of this project started about 5 years ago when Ryan stumbled upon an old beat-up 1940's 2-row corn planter. He's been working here and there getting it fixed and use-able. This last spring, in preparation for future livestock, it was used to plant corn. This is the story:

My forestry loving husband has a sweet spot in his heart for farming. Before we moved here, he had plans of somehow, somewhere, someway being able to farm. The Lord really blessed us with being here now and able to easily use the land Ryan's grandfather had farmed years ago. There is something really special watching two little boys helping their daddy, by covering a little seed with dirt that will eventually become corn they will feed their pigs. Something you rarely see nowadays.

As the corn was growing, Ryan had a vision for a corn crib. With no official plans, he put together a pretty awesome one. It reminds me of Charlotte's Web, and it fits perfectly in the back of our property. It also works well as a hide-out for the boys when there's no corn.

Tuck helps daddy

hiding

So, from what "they" say - the corn harvest was late this year and there was still a lot of moisture in the corn, I'll take "their" word for it. We started harvesting at around 8:30 am and were done around noon on Thanksgiving weekend. And thankfully, we had some extra help from family that was in town.

Thank You Theresa and Whit!

The little boys who helped plant the little kernels were awesome pickers... for about an hour. I don't blame them, it was pretty cold.

cousins overseeing the operation

actually kinda fun to pick

 

 Yes, boys and girls... this is what the real deal, non-GMO organic corn looks like, beautiful isn't it?

With a matter of hours, the field is picked, the Bear aka: our truck is loaded, and we figured we have enough corn to feed 1.5 pigs. I wonder where we can find half a pig ;) ?

Thank you to our corn pickers - Whit, Brian, Sam, Theresa, Tammy, John, Bob... we owe you a pork chop dinner :)

room-by-room: bathroom #2

This picture looks familiar, yes that's bathroom #2, the header picture for bathroom #1 (I had best of intentions of putting both bathrooms in one post, darn power outages). So, here we go!


The original bathroom was not terrible, it just needed a little facelift. The tub (pictured below) is one of the only original things left in the house.

bathroom before

 

tub before

 This bathroom had both a tub and a shower, separate from each other. Since we have 3 (young) boys, and already have a stand alone shower downstairs, we decided to eliminate this bathroom's shower, plumb the tub area for a showerhead, cap the shower area's plumbing and turn it into a much needed closet... yes, this house lacks closet space, it's made for us to get creative! Follow that?

Under construction

old shower, new closet

vanity area left, closet right

The vanity... we were going to try to salvage it, maybe add a coat of paint and make it like new. Well, it was pretty nasty, so we went on to plan B - buy one... until we realized how much they were, seriously Ryan should go into the bathroom vanity making business, they're so expensive, at least the ones we found from the Big Box store by us. Time to get creative - yes! I had to really convince Ryan of this idea, actually I had a little help from his mom, which helps a lot! And this is what transpired:

We bought this table from an auction for $10 I think. (the auction was at The Coop, before Ryan's parent's owned it). We've been storing it in the barn for about 6 years now, just waiting for that special use. Well, we found it!

Don't worry guys, you can use your power tools, us girls like to use hand tools. Thankfully, the table was pretty easy to separate and cut through with a hand-saw.

I used our hardwood floor sealer on the top of the vanity, and painted the underside and legs. This table has beautiful detailing, I think the paint really brings it out.

Ryan sees the vision and is on board, and power tools come out :) Legs are chopped off to correct height. One half of the table is used for the bottom, the other side for the top. A whole is cut out to fit our semi-raised sink, the vanity is mounted to the wall, sink and faucet placed, plumbing is hooked up, and we have an amazing one-of-a-kind vanity!

 

 The mirror is replaced and we bought a medicine cabinet to the left (because if I'm going to be honest, the real hesitation with this vanity is there is no place to hide or store stuff, which is a legitimate concern... BUT we have a very large storage space now right next to it) and so the medicine cabinet adds that extra bit, too. There's also a little built-in area we will add shelving too. The vanity will store our towels, always looking nice rolled-up and pretty - wishful thinking?

 

The closet area. Maybe one day will be cutely organized.

Subway tiled shower-surround, wrap around curtain, and still need to paint some areas :)

We decided to put slate flooring in with no grout lines. We love it! Since slate is a natural stone, the tiles vary in thickness, so it doesn't create an even surface. I hardly notice it anymore, but it's not for someone who's looking for a perfectly even floor. I sealed the slate with 4 coats of a concrete sealer, just to be on the safe-side there's no water seeping through.

I love it's bright and cheery-ness! We have a few small things to do in our bathrooms, but it feels so good to be this far along, and the little things might take us a while to get to :)