Life at the "Farm"

So, here we are, old house sold, settling in to life at the new place. I intend on posting before/after pictures of our place here pretty soon (whenever I figure out how to upload some pictures. :) ) Our remodeling is almost complete - mostly just a little bit of finishing up in the master bath, and maybe hanging some double closet rods. We've organized, cleaned out, and reorganized our storage building several times....the reality is we have too much stuff, and/or, we have too small a building. Either way, the things we are getting rid of can be easily reacquired if we decided that after all, we really DID need them!

We did a fall square-foot garden, and it did OK. A lot of the seeds never sprouted - not sure if they were too old and not viable, or if it was some other factor. BUT, the things that did sprout did relatively well - some decent-sized radishes, some small carrots, small swiss chard, and small turnips and greens. Not too bad for a garden that we basically ignored! We started a lasagna garden plot that we are going to let cure over the winter - cardboard, leaves, manure, compost, and some hay we shoveled out of our neighbor's barn. Our neighbor says that the manure is a penny a pile - he pays US to take it! LOL! No shortage of that around here. I'm hoping to make it much bigger than it is now, but at least it is a start. I want to take a whole section of our yard (1/4 acre or so) and plant a big corn field....we'll see if that happens this year or not! We have a barn that needs some repairs that we hope to turn into a cow/chicken barn. I'd love to get a jersey for milk and a calf for beef, and of course LOTS of chickens for meat and eggs! All in good time, I suppose.

We are about half-way through Almost-6-yr-old's 12 week phonics program. We are using ACE, and we really like it. Even the 4-yr-old is picking up on some reading. We've met a few families out here that homeschool, and it has been fun getting to know them. We just this week went Christmas caroling at a nursing home close by. None of our kids are shy, so they all were hugging and kissing all the residents and striking up conversations. We all had a great time! (This post was originally written at Christmas time, but blogspot was having trouble posting it....The picture above is of our new floors/paint job before we actually moved in. )

Garden and Animals

Spring is not only here, but it has gone so fast that summer is approaching!  Our garden is in full bloom now: green tomatoes are hanging on the vines, corn is about as tall as my 4 year old, squash plants are enormous and starting to get big yellow blooms, green beans, purple hull peas, cream peas, cantaloup, okra, coming up nicely, watermelon looking a bit "iffy" but hanging in there, we even have some peppers and an eggplant!  In the square foot garden we have some red swiss chard, a few strawberry plants, different herbs, one little lettuce plant that is trying to grow, some turnips, and a whole box of carrots!  Our neighbor, who has been keeping our chickens due to lack of adequate housing at our place, has given us a hen along with her 7 chicks to keep in our chicken tractor!  They are so adorable, and the kids love watching them play!  We've spent way too much time chasing chicks and putting them back into the tractor, though, either because they got under and through the cracks, or someone little opened the door when they weren't supposed to (hmmm.....).  There has been talk of getting a calf soon, whenever the next time our neighbor hears of one being available.  And speaking of our neighbor, he's been going through some animals lately. :)  He decided, due to expenses and one horse always getting into mischief, to get rid of one of his horses, and his other horse has been grazing at the church property for months now (sounds great to me...goodbye lawn mowing for the men of the church!).  He first got the most gigantic mule I'd even seen!  He was a nice mule, always friendly to us and the children, but always running from our neighbor.  Not fun when you want to ride him. :)  Then, he sold that mule, and got a milder tempered mule, who proved to be gentler, but not quite gentle enough.  Now, he has a mule that was trained to be ridden by a 7 year old!  We'll see how he does, but the children are so excited about getting to ride him one day.

Something's Cooking.....

I'm not very technologically gifted, despite being married to a computer technician, and long story short, my many attempts to upload some pictures of our progress have been unsuccessful!  So, I'll just begin, then, with news that needs no picture: we're expecting number 5!!!  We are so excited to watch our little family grow and feel so blessed to be able to do this again.  And all the kids are excited as well!  I'm about 6 1/2 weeks, and definitely nauseous, and so very tired, so many things will be on hold for a while, but for such a good reason. :) 

Almost Debt-free!

We are scheduled to close on our house next week, and we may be able to close before that. We are so excited! I think we may go out for a debt-free steak dinner to celebrate! But I won't count my chickens just yet....:)

The Makings of a Quilt

My little guys, now almost 4 and almost 6, are about to grow out of our toddler size bunkbeds my husband made them (well, at least the almost 6 year old). So now, it is time to make some quilts for them and get them some regular size bunkbeds! I made the quilts for their toddler bunks a while back, and I loved how they turned out! You just can't find store bought quilts or comforters of comparable quality. I even checked online and found some cotton quilts at Kohl's, but they, even at a half-off sale, were still at least twice as much as it would take to make them with all new materials. The nice thing about homemade quilts is that 1)They are made of cotton, which doesn't pill and lasts longer than polyester, which most store-bought comforters are made of, 2)The edges are made with a binding that is 4 layers thick and cut on the crosswise grain or bias, making the edges super strong. Even when that wears out, you just replace the binding, not the whole quilt! 3)It is quilted with cotton thread, much better and longer lasting than the clear thread most store bought comforters are made from. I can't count how many of our store-bought comforters have fallen apart because the quilting stitches have come out, and the cheap polyester batting has bunched up. Homemade quilts are quilted with more stitches, so that even if a stitch or two did come out, the whole quilt wouldn't fall apart.

Anyone can learn how to make a quilt! My little guy, who is 5 years old, is learning how to make a doll quilt, that he's going to give to his sister when he is done making it. Starting out with just a simple pattern makes it easier, but as you gain experience, more complex patterns are lots of fun! This is how I went about deciding how to make these quilts....

First, I decided that I wanted it to go on twin size beds. I found that a twin bed measures 39x75. I knew I wanted it to drape down only the minimum amount on all sides, since this would be for bunk beds - I found out that would be 10" on each of 3 sides. I also wanted it to have a pillow tuck, so that the pillows would be covered (I want the boys to learn how to make up a bed that way) - that's an additional 10" at the top. I also wanted to make another "card trick" quilt pattern, since I'd done that before, liked it, and wanted to do it again. I found out that one quilt block would be 12 1/2". I figured out how many blocks would be able to fit on the quilt, based on the measurements I'd just taken. After that, I took the extra inches leftover and divided it into two separate borders (an inner border & outer border).

Next was to calculate how much fabric. I'm NOT a math person, and all this calculating made my brain hurt, but it was worth it to know exactly how much fabric to buy. The nearest fabric store is 20 miles away, and they were having a good sale, so I didn't want to have to return on a NON-sale day to pay too much for fabric that I didn't properly calculate! So, after a riduculously long session of meticulous calculating that would take the average math whiz a third as long, I emerged with the fabric measurements to buy. If anyone is interested, leave a comment, and I can give you a link to the websites I've found that assist you in calculating fabric measurements. I think in the future, I will just look through my stash for fabric, cut them into equal size squares - then when it is time to make a quilt, I will already have them made up! But I wanted these to be special. :)

I decided to start on my project ASAP, so it wouldn't get put away and forgotten about. So, one night when my hubby was working late, we turned the computer screen to face the couch, put on a movie, and I started cutting squares. Not even close to being done, but got a good start! So what about you? Tell me about your quilts and quilting experiences!