Our new old farmhouse

This is the house that we are trying to buy! Isn't it lovely? I haven't been able to get any inside pictures of it yet because it is still being occupied buy the current owner. The house was built in 1918, and the gentleman that lives in it now moved there as a very small child with his family in 1936. We went out to see it again and finally got to meet him this past weekend. He took us all around the house and told us stories about everything and everyone having to do with the place. We will be the third owners of the house. 

Several things having to do with buying the old place are still a bit up in the air. There is another appraisal happening in two days and we'll know more after that. Very importantly, the old gentleman is selling and he has accepted our offer! So far so good! The house is quite dated and a bit run down on the inside so we'll have a lot of work to do once we are there to get everything in working order. But we are all very excited at the prospect of turning this small farm into our family's home-place!

 I'm a little nervous about the whole timing thing... we have to be out of this house by the 16th of August, and and we are still not sure when we'll be able to close on the farm house and move in there. (More and more often lately, around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, I lay in bed in just a tiny bit of a panic wondering if being temporarily homeless with 5 children, goats, dogs, and rabbits, is really as bad as I imagine it to be... I pray fervently that we don't have to find out!)

It finally happened...

We chose contentment, indeed happiness to just be here in our little house on our little piece of land in our little neighbourhood were we have lived for the past 6 or 7 years. We decided that since we were not really going to ever sell our home, that we would begin to "homestead" much more seriously right here in our little backyard. Rodrigo and I talked and planned for weeks and months, just how to best use what God had given us to work with here. We planned on how to make our large family feel most comfortable in the small confines of this house. We talked with the (oldest 3) children about these things too, we asked for their ideas and input about everything we were considering. We talked about what we needed to get rid of, sell, or giveaway. We discussed what we would need to build, buy, plant, or breed and raise to become as self-sufficient as possible.

We were positively sure that putting our house up for sale was totally pointless, because no one was really buying houses just now. Our house had a 6 month contract on it with the real estate company, and we had so many showings. For 5 months, at least once a week, sometimes as many as 3 times in a week, we would have to maniacally clean everything in the house, and make sure everything was totally spotless and leave. Everything was scrubbed, polished, dusted, and straightened to perfection or as near as I could humanly get it. And then a bunch of total strangers would go traipsing through our home, never to be heard from again. I hated it, but I knew that without all of those strangers snooping about my house, we would never get to sell it. But as the weeks wore on I felt more and more resentful at having to prepare my home for something that would never happen. Rodrigo encouraged me just to hang on and finish out our contract with the realtors, so I did... but I wasn't enjoying it a bit!

In the meantime we decided to go ahead and start really living here again. We began to implement our homesteading, self-sufficiency plan. We bought fruit trees, 7 of them, and planted a mini orchard, with room to add a few more trees next spring. We got meat rabbits and started breeding them to eat eventually. (At the moment we have 10 adult rabbits for breeding, several of whom are pregnant and one with 5 babies.)

We planted a bunch of veggies in the flower beds since all of our dedicated gardening spots had been reseeded with grass, to make our lawn more desirable to potential home-buyers. *rolling eyes* We made plans to greatly expand our gardening area next year!  And we decided to go ahead and get a couple of dairy goats!! 

Yes, I finally got my milk goats. We have been talking about it for ages, reading, researching, talking to people who had goats, and finally Rodrigo told me that he thought if I was ready to start milking them twice a day that I should go ahead and locate a few. No sense wasting our lives waiting for something that may never happen he said, better to live our lives that way we want right now while we are young enough to enjoy it, instead of waiting for "someday" only to realize that someday either came too late, or never came.  Thus Daisy and Larkspur were welcomed to our little homestead in the neighbourhood! (I'll post more about them soon! I love my goats!!) 


They lived in the backyard and slept in a little plastic "barn". Rodrigo was not happy with the "barn", and stated that the goats needed their own shed, purposefully built just for them. We spent a couple of weeks researching exactly what type of housing would be best suited to our needs as well as theirs. We wanted something large enough to house them, a place for milking, a few kids next spring, and even to house a small flock of laying hens that we wanted to get. (Remember, we got rid of our lovely chickens when we decided to put our house on the market? We thought having a flock of chickens in the backyard would scare off prospective buyers, Haha! We had tons of "prospective buyers" just no actual buyers!!) So materials were acquired and work was begun on the new goat shed. 

So basically everything we did, pretty much seemed purposefully designed to scare off any house hunters in the area. We still had showings, but in the 5 months that it has been on the market we didn't have one. single. offer. Not even a really low offer, nothing, zero, zip, nada! I didn't even care anymore, I kept asking Rodrigo if we could please just break our contract with the real estate company and get on with life. I was sick of having all of my books and pictures in storage. I was sick of paying (!!) to store books and furniture that we could be using. So a couple of weeks ago we had one last showing. A few days after that the realtor called Rodrigo. It was July 4th and we were picnicking with the kids at the lake. 

Rodrigo was out in the water with the children paddling them around in one of our inflatable kayaks. When I saw who was calling I didn't even answer the phone. I had no intention of cutting our fun short to run home and clean, for yet another showing! Rodrigo had the day off and we were celebrating! Later, after we were home that evening, I remembered the missed call. I told Rodrigo that he probably had a message from the realtor and that he might want to check it. No message, so Rodrigo called him up to find out when they wanted to show the house. I didn't really even like the guy, so I surely didn't want to talk to him! Ro got a funny look on his face when they started talking and went out to the porch to talk where it was quieter. He came inside in a few minutes and told me that we had an offer on the house!!! 

It had finally happened! Now, after we had decided that we would choose joy and contentment. We made up our minds to be truly grateful to God for all the wonderful blessings He had given us right here, and make the very most of those gifts. After we had invested so much more of ourselves (not to mention time and money!) into making this house of ours exactly what we wanted~ a functioning homestead. Someone wanted to buy it?!?! And so now we are in the midst of looking for a new place to call home, we had completely stopped house hunting for ourselves since we were sure we would have no reason to need another place! We close on this house on August 16th. So we are feeling a bit of pressure to hurry up and find somewhere to live! And to make things feel even more adventurous not only do we have a family of 7 people to worry about housing, we have 2 dogs, 2 goats (that must be milked twice a day!) and 15 rabbits to deal with now as well! 


What an adventure! 

Flower Pounding Card Tutorial

Flower pounding is one of my favorite spring crafts to do with the kids. (Of course you could do it year round but my favorite flowers to use are in bloom during the spring and early fall.)

First you have to gather your supplies. You’ll need paper or something else to use as your background. We were making cards so we used heavy card stock. I wouldn’t recommend normal copy/printer paper as it is probably too flimsy. You can also pound your flowers onto plain white cotton or unbleached muslin and frame your picture.( I’m sure there must be a way to fix the color well enough to become wearable, washable art but I am not sure how. I know that some of you ladies out there, who regularly dye your own wools and fabrics using natural dyes, must know of a way to fix the color, but I just haven’t learned how to do that yet. If anyone knows how I’d love to learn! )

• Paper or cloth for the background
• Hammers (one for each person who wants to pound if possible!)
• A hard flat surface (that won’t be damaged by hammering on top of it)
• A basket (to hold the flowers you gather)
• Scissors (to help remove stems and pick flowers)
• A small scrap piece of cotton fabric (to lay on top of your flowers while you pound) We used an old scrap of a threadbare sheet. You can also use tissue paper or paper towels in a pinch, but the fabric will hold up better to repeated pounding with the hammer.
• Flowers and leaves!!! (Flat open faced flowers work the best. Pansies and yellow daisies are my favorites. You can experiment with all types and colors of flowers; you might be surprised at what works and what doesn’t. Fern leaves are also beautiful to use in this craft. Colorful fall leaves look gorgeous when pounded too.
• Pencils, markers, crayons, etc. (to draw and write in your cards)

Now go outside with some enthusiastic children and gather your flowers and colorful leaves. Get lots!

 Make sure you take time to smell the flowers and enjoy being in the sunshine with your precious little ones. Enjoy the feel of the dew wet grass tickling your toes. I always try to remember that I will have these sweet boys under my care for such a short period of time, there is so much fun and learning that I want to share with them before they grow and start families of their own! I want them to have happy memories of their childhood that they will want to recreate someday with their own children.

Once you have a bunch of pretty flowers gathered in your basket you can set to work.

If you are making cards like we did, then you’ll need to fold your paper in half and decide which side you want up and how the card should open. Then lay your paper our flat and carefully place a flower face down in whatever position pleases you the best. If the flower you’ve chosen has a large stem on the back or a very juicy part where it connects to the stem you may want to carefully cut that piece off. I find it easiest to do this by laying the flower where I want it and holding it’s petals in place with my left hand and carefully cutting the juicy part off with scissors in my right hand.

Then without disturbing the petals as much as possible lay your tissue paper (that’s what we used) on top of the flower holding it in place with one hand while you lightly tap on top of the flower with your hammer. Little ones may need your help holding the flower with tissue paper over it while the tap with the hammer. Tap all around the flower, hitting it with your hammer as flatly as possible.

Once your tissue paper looks wet all over on top of the whole flower carefully peel the tissue paper back and peel up the pounded flower.

 And there you have it! Your flower should have transferred all of its pretty color onto your paper. Continue adding more flowers and leaves to your art until you are pleased with the outcome! You can add stems to your flowers by pounding or drawing them on with colored pencils. This craft is as much fun in the making as it is enjoying the final product!

Goals for today ~Update~

We are back from a lovely weekend of camping in the mountains with my parents. (Blog post about that coming soon!) This morning the sun is shining and I am feeling the need to get stuff done! I am (slowly) trying to get my house in order, a very belated spring cleaning if you will. I am feeling overwhelmed by piles of stuff everywhere. I long for clean open spaces. But paradoxically I love collections, and sweet little vignettes of kitschy cuteness sitting out where I can pass by during my days and enjoy them. And just to make it even more fun, I am a lazy perfectionist. I want to have everything just so... and if I don't have hours of uninterrupted time to fix everything how I want it then I often feel like why bother starting! (And we all know that with a nursing baby in cloth diapers and three little and not so little boys, home with me all day long, I have hours of uninterrupted time everyday HA!) I am travelling with Claire in just a few weeks (June 20th!) to go visit family in Guatemala. Her passport came in the mail last week and our tickets are bought. I have so much I want to get done before then, so I decided I need to make a list! Lists always help me stay on track! This is today’s list, I plan on sitting down this evening and making a more comprehensive list to cover big projects I’d like to have done before our trip.

Today I’d like to get the following done:

• Air out sleeping bags Boys helped with this and the tent!
• Set up tent in drive to dry out (it rained as we were breaking camp yesterday…)
• Wash all clothes from camping (So glad it’s sunny, no need to use clothes drier!)
• Wash sheets from beds
• Get everything off of clothesline before early dinner and put away (I often find myself dragging when it comes to actually getting the clothes from the basket and into their places! Some days I contemplate moving somewhere that is warm all year and becoming nudists… sure would save time doing laundry! ;-P) Boys put away all of the clothes, I'm still considering banning clothing though!
• Weed at least 2 rows in garden Only got one row totally weeded, but the "good" thing about weeds is, if you leave them alone, they'll still be there the next day waiting to be pulled!
• String twine up/around bean house posts
• Collect dandelion blossoms to make fritters for lunch We decided to use squash blossoms and cosmos flowers for our fritters... They were wonderful! The boys' favorites were the cosmos flower fritters!
• Mop whole house
• Grind flour
• Make bread
• Read about how to get rid of potato beetles that are eating my eggplants
• Really deep clean kitchen
• Dinner fixed early (Logan has baseball tonight)
• Harvest lettuce
• Search berry patch for any remaining berries
• Let chickens wander in yard and eat bugs for a few hours before dark
• Transplant last few plants into garden
Plus I got the leak fixed in the boys pool.

I was really surprised that we managed to get everything on my list done today! It feels good to be able to cross all of those things off of my list! Now I'm off to get cleaned up before dinner and time for Logan's baseball game!

Needle felting with kids

Yesterday on our way home from the park I picked up a few craft supplies. One of the things I got was a few needles for felting wool. This is something I've always wanted to try, but for some reason until today I never have. I sat at our table in the evening and played a bit with roving and one of the needles just trying to get a feel for what I was doing and how it worked.  (Wool roving is a piece of wool which has been combed, drawn into a clump, and then twisted slightly to hold the fibers together and to prepare them for spinning or in our case felting!)

Matthew stood there watching me transfixed. He wanted to know what types of things could be created by doing needlefelting, so I looked up a few pictues on the internet to show him the endless possibilities. (a beautiful blog full of lovely original art works is Softearths World) He asked me if he could try needle felting something.

I gave him his choice of roving colors and a needle (with warnings about extreme sharpness!) And let him felt to his hearts content. The first thing he made was a heart with a little arrow in it.

This morning as soon as we had eaten our breakfast he asked if he could make a Little Red Riding Hood.

Ummm... sure! I haven't even attempted anything this ambitious yet! But I wasn't about to stifle his creative urges! I adore how confident and innocent he is. No-one has ever told him he can't draw well, or that he can't paint well, or sculpt well or given him any sort of negative critisism so he is utterly confident that he can do whatever he sets out to do! So off he went to make Little Red Riding Hood.

Come meet the family!

OK, a bit about me and mine. I was born in Florida and grew up mostly in Tennessee. As a child I was homeschooled by my ever patient parents. I was allowed to run wild through the woods, explore the fields and play in the creeks to my hearts content. They instilled in me confidence, trust, the ability to love wholeheartedly, how to think for myself, and a strong sense of family. I had a truly wonderful childhood, full of travels, experiences, affection, learning, and magic!

Growing up I always loved dancing and animals, so it seemed like for me the natural choices for a career would have been one of those typical little girl answers like ballerina or veterinarian. But if anyone ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would always answer "a mommy!" I wanted a huge family (At the time the biggest families I knew had three kids apiece...) I wanted at least 7 children and a farm to raise them on.

Fast forward a decade or two. I met the one! He is my Mr. Wonderful, my hero, my protector, my personal comedian, my best friend, my confidant, my favorite dance partner, he is my tall, dark and Oh so handsome! And he loves children just as much as I do! Before we got married he always told me that he wanted to have at least 5 or 6 kids too! Together we have 3 great boys and one tiny little girl (so far!) that we are homeschooling.

I am having the best time being a parent! I think I've got the coolest little kids on the planet!

Right now our oldest is almost a teenager (!) Logan is my great intellect! He is constantly reading and experimenting. His thirst for knowledge is never quenched and I hope he always remains that way. Often he surprises me with the things he comes up with!

Matthew is our creative genius and super energetic little dynamo! His days are spent, painting, drawing, building, and creating all sorts of interesting things. Of course that is when he isn't propelling himself on some wheeled device at top speed!

Ethan is little Mr. Charming! He never meets a stranger. He is one of the most loving, generous people I've ever known. He loves to help out in the kitchen, and claims that he wants to be a "cooker" when he grows up. :-)

Little Miss Claire Rose is a sweet easy baby. Her laughter is infectious, and her dimples are positively precious! We thank God daily for giving us such a wonderful miracle as our sweet little Claire! The whole family is smitten by her!

Well I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about our family. I'll be back soon!