Its fall!

What a gorgeous day it was today. The leaves moved in the breeze all day long. The sky was filled with clouds and had that sweet smell of a coming rain. I threw dinner in the crockpot (it ws horrible unfortunatly!) and salivated at the smell all day! :) Now tonight, we have our first fire of the season.

Really does it get any better than this? Autumn time is the best time of the year. It makes me smile and take time to reflect. I dont know what it is about this time of year, maybe that everything is getting ready to hunker down for the cold, but there is something so utterly comforting about it.

If only there was someplace in the world where fall existed all the time. You would find me there on a covered porch surrounded by huge trees, watching the leaves dance and fall to the ground. Dinner would always be made on time and it would always smell and taste wonderful, and you would never find me frazzled or stressed but calm and welcoming. Ahhh if only fall happened all year round.

Its fall!

What a gorgeous day it was today. The leaves moved in the breeze all day long. The sky was filled with clouds and had that sweet smell of a coming rain. I threw dinner in the crockpot (it ws horrible unfortunatly!) and salivated at the smell all day! :) Now tonight, we have our first fire of the season.

Really does it get any better than this? Autumn time is the best time of the year. It makes me smile and take time to reflect. I dont know what it is about this time of year, maybe that everything is getting ready to hunker down for the cold, but there is something so utterly comforting about it.

If only there was someplace in the world where fall existed all the time. You would find me there on a covered porch surrounded by huge trees, watching the leaves dance and fall to the ground. Dinner would always be made on time and it would always smell and taste wonderful, and you would never find me frazzled or stressed but calm and welcoming. Ahhh if only fall happened all year round.

Pictorial Update

Okay just to start, here's a good one just to make you smile. The kiddos have figured out the spider on the swing. :) Its great fun to watch!


The new downstairs storage room as seen from the bottom of the stairs.

The new storage room from the door. This room isnt complete yet and we have decided to wait until spring to finish it. That way we will know for sure if we have indeed stopped the leaks. In the mean time all food is up off the floor and away from any potential leaking area. The black corner you can see in this pic is where one possible leak is. I will water the lawn tomorrow and see how well it works.

The kiddos tearing up so wood that was patched into the kitchen floor. Amazingly they managed to get a good amount torn up with those chisels and toy wood hammers. :)

The new dining room. I loaded this pic in the wrong order so you get to see the after before the before. :) This back wall is the old pantry. By tearing the pantry wall out we were able to gain about 6ish feet to the existing dining room. This allowed us to expand the table to actually fit our family without sitting on each others laps! :) There will be much more to come with this area but as it sits today we satisfied with it for now. Next up, reconfigure the lighting a big MUST!

The pantry space before the wall came down. This space used to be filled with all of our food storage items.

The wall before it came down. This small space is home to our dining room table, computer desk, and school room. The extra spaced we gained here will make a HUGE difference in the effectivness of this space.

And that is all for today. Dean woke up and put in an 8 hour day doing this. We have a lot more to do but it is time to turn our attentions to some other projects and more importantly school. After the holidays we will start working on all this again.

Pictorial Update

Okay just to start, here's a good one just to make you smile. The kiddos have figured out the spider on the swing. :) Its great fun to watch!


The new downstairs storage room as seen from the bottom of the stairs.

The new storage room from the door. This room isnt complete yet and we have decided to wait until spring to finish it. That way we will know for sure if we have indeed stopped the leaks. In the mean time all food is up off the floor and away from any potential leaking area. The black corner you can see in this pic is where one possible leak is. I will water the lawn tomorrow and see how well it works.

The kiddos tearing up so wood that was patched into the kitchen floor. Amazingly they managed to get a good amount torn up with those chisels and toy wood hammers. :)

The new dining room. I loaded this pic in the wrong order so you get to see the after before the before. :) This back wall is the old pantry. By tearing the pantry wall out we were able to gain about 6ish feet to the existing dining room. This allowed us to expand the table to actually fit our family without sitting on each others laps! :) There will be much more to come with this area but as it sits today we satisfied with it for now. Next up, reconfigure the lighting a big MUST!

The pantry space before the wall came down. This space used to be filled with all of our food storage items.

The wall before it came down. This small space is home to our dining room table, computer desk, and school room. The extra spaced we gained here will make a HUGE difference in the effectivness of this space.

And that is all for today. Dean woke up and put in an 8 hour day doing this. We have a lot more to do but it is time to turn our attentions to some other projects and more importantly school. After the holidays we will start working on all this again.

A little change up

I was tired of trying the two blog thing. One or the other always got ignored and then I felt guilty because there is so much to say. So now I have merged my two blogs together again. Those of you who come to read about the garden may have to wade through pics of the kids, those who only want the cute stuff will have to slog through garden and cooking. Sorry deal with it. :) Hopefully I can get into the swing of things and blog everyday like I want too.

So anyway I have brought over some cool links for educational fun stuff (ie free!), books lists, etc. I will have to link to all my housekeeping sheets again as I lost them all in the transfer. Blogger isnt letting me change a bunch of stuff today so the look will change again here soon. Bear with me.

So up next:

a 6wk organizing challange my friend Dallas shared on her blog, my meal planning all up and going, cute pics of the kids and a poor sweet frog, and with any luck the finished basement.

Check back later this week and I will get on it! :)

A little change up

I was tired of trying the two blog thing. One or the other always got ignored and then I felt guilty because there is so much to say. So now I have merged my two blogs together again. Those of you who come to read about the garden may have to wade through pics of the kids, those who only want the cute stuff will have to slog through garden and cooking. Sorry deal with it. :) Hopefully I can get into the swing of things and blog everyday like I want too.

So anyway I have brought over some cool links for educational fun stuff (ie free!), books lists, etc. I will have to link to all my housekeeping sheets again as I lost them all in the transfer. Blogger isnt letting me change a bunch of stuff today so the look will change again here soon. Bear with me.

So up next:

a 6wk organizing challange my friend Dallas shared on her blog, my meal planning all up and going, cute pics of the kids and a poor sweet frog, and with any luck the finished basement.

Check back later this week and I will get on it! :)

Food Stuffs

Okay so dont mind the picture. We have given up on plates today and were just eating pieces right off the cookie sheet! :) But I had to share because this was a very yummy breakfast. No it isnt cake but it is close enough. Its a Frosted Banana Bar . It came up on allrecipes when I did a breakfast search. I read the first couple ingredients and figured "Sweet I can use the bananas up." I didnt however continue down to find that it is frosted. Not the thing my kids need in the morning! This morning we made them anyway and they are soooo yummy! Next time we will leave off the frosting because these could totally stand on their own with some fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Anyway give them a try, and dont feel bad when you abandon plates too. They are just too good!



The days (or 2) efforts. 5 pints hamburger dill slices, 10 quarts spicy dill pickles (Oh these are incredible!!) and 8 pints fresh salsa. Not all is pictured here obviously! The kitchen smells incredible right now. All I want is some fresh toritilla chips!

Food Stuffs

Okay so dont mind the picture. We have given up on plates today and were just eating pieces right off the cookie sheet! :) But I had to share because this was a very yummy breakfast. No it isnt cake but it is close enough. Its a Frosted Banana Bar . It came up on allrecipes when I did a breakfast search. I read the first couple ingredients and figured "Sweet I can use the bananas up." I didnt however continue down to find that it is frosted. Not the thing my kids need in the morning! This morning we made them anyway and they are soooo yummy! Next time we will leave off the frosting because these could totally stand on their own with some fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Anyway give them a try, and dont feel bad when you abandon plates too. They are just too good!



The days (or 2) efforts. 5 pints hamburger dill slices, 10 quarts spicy dill pickles (Oh these are incredible!!) and 8 pints fresh salsa. Not all is pictured here obviously! The kitchen smells incredible right now. All I want is some fresh toritilla chips!

Progress is to slow for me!

Dean has been working all week on the basement. What a task! He has been busy with stairs, drywall, water-proofing, electrical, etc. In my mind of course everything went very quickly. The reality is I have no idea what it takes to tackle a project like this! :) Thankfully Dean does. He is plugging away with probably half of what needs to be done.

This is a shot from under the stairs. This is our problem wall. We (he) coated it with a tar like substance. It needs about 4 more coats and then we will be painting it with a special paint that will help keep any moisture out. He also filled all the cracks on this back wall with a special cement filler that is supposed to stop all leaking. After all of the goop and goo used on that wall water will have to work pretty hard to get through. Next spring if everything goes okay we will frame the walls in and put up drywall. We wanted to get through one season of dryness before doing anything like that though.

This is the bottom of the new stair case. To have the correct rise and run the stair case ended up being 2 stairs (I think) longer than the old case. It makes a much nicer descent downstairs now. I asked Dean to put up this halfwall and so far I really like it.

The finished upper flight of stairs and landing. To correct the rise and run we also ended up with an extra stair here. The old stairs were put together in an ummm....interesting manner. When Dean started to take apart the landing everything came apart together. Nothing was attached. No wonder I felt like I was going to fall each time I went down!!

Dean working on putting the stairs in. This part went pretty quickly considering Dean had never build stairs before. The look great and more importantly they are sturdy, safe and not rotting! What more could you ask for in a stair case? :)

Progress is to slow for me!

Dean has been working all week on the basement. What a task! He has been busy with stairs, drywall, water-proofing, electrical, etc. In my mind of course everything went very quickly. The reality is I have no idea what it takes to tackle a project like this! :) Thankfully Dean does. He is plugging away with probably half of what needs to be done.

This is a shot from under the stairs. This is our problem wall. We (he) coated it with a tar like substance. It needs about 4 more coats and then we will be painting it with a special paint that will help keep any moisture out. He also filled all the cracks on this back wall with a special cement filler that is supposed to stop all leaking. After all of the goop and goo used on that wall water will have to work pretty hard to get through. Next spring if everything goes okay we will frame the walls in and put up drywall. We wanted to get through one season of dryness before doing anything like that though.

This is the bottom of the new stair case. To have the correct rise and run the stair case ended up being 2 stairs (I think) longer than the old case. It makes a much nicer descent downstairs now. I asked Dean to put up this halfwall and so far I really like it.

The finished upper flight of stairs and landing. To correct the rise and run we also ended up with an extra stair here. The old stairs were put together in an ummm....interesting manner. When Dean started to take apart the landing everything came apart together. Nothing was attached. No wonder I felt like I was going to fall each time I went down!!

Dean working on putting the stairs in. This part went pretty quickly considering Dean had never build stairs before. The look great and more importantly they are sturdy, safe and not rotting! What more could you ask for in a stair case? :)

Simplifing even more

Dean no longer has a job. He was laid off last week and while some might be panicing we are quite okay with it. We have some things in the works that will acutally lead to some really great opprotunities so things will be good. In the mean time it will be about the basics around here. We live that way already as most of you know but we'll be tightening down even more the coming weeks. We did go shopping this last week and totally stocked out pantry. When I say stocked I do mean stocked! We now have a 6 mo storage for our entire family which is awesome if you ask me. I will continue to work on getting a 1 year storage. I will be using the baby steps recommended on Fun With Food Storage. The ladies on that site have seriously got it together! I bought their binder and printed out all the info so I have a quick reference guide. Hopefully it wont take all that long before I have a seriously awesome pantry. Time will tell. :)

Obviously there isnt room in this small room for everything. As we speak Dean is downstairs giving our basement a little revamp and love. He is fixing the back wall that has leaked every other year, moving lighting so it is so freakin' creepy, painting, putting dry wall on the ceiling, etc. Mostly cosmetic stuff but in the end it will lead to a very nice room filled with shelves for everything. I am definatly looking forward to it! :)

I am hoping to get a bunch of recipes posted that use only food storage items. That way if any of you are sitting there thinking "Ewww what in the world could I make with food storage" will have a quick reference of recipes to try. Some very tasty stuff that is for sure.

Simplifing even more

Dean no longer has a job. He was laid off last week and while some might be panicing we are quite okay with it. We have some things in the works that will acutally lead to some really great opprotunities so things will be good. In the mean time it will be about the basics around here. We live that way already as most of you know but we'll be tightening down even more the coming weeks. We did go shopping this last week and totally stocked out pantry. When I say stocked I do mean stocked! We now have a 6 mo storage for our entire family which is awesome if you ask me. I will continue to work on getting a 1 year storage. I will be using the baby steps recommended on Fun With Food Storage. The ladies on that site have seriously got it together! I bought their binder and printed out all the info so I have a quick reference guide. Hopefully it wont take all that long before I have a seriously awesome pantry. Time will tell. :)

Obviously there isnt room in this small room for everything. As we speak Dean is downstairs giving our basement a little revamp and love. He is fixing the back wall that has leaked every other year, moving lighting so it is so freakin' creepy, painting, putting dry wall on the ceiling, etc. Mostly cosmetic stuff but in the end it will lead to a very nice room filled with shelves for everything. I am definatly looking forward to it! :)

I am hoping to get a bunch of recipes posted that use only food storage items. That way if any of you are sitting there thinking "Ewww what in the world could I make with food storage" will have a quick reference of recipes to try. Some very tasty stuff that is for sure.

Our life in Pics

Here are a few things from our life. Remodeling the basement, Gardening and kiddos. The same stuff but it changes all the time.

Fav things that have happened:

Caitlin lost her first tooth in the middle of the night. To hear the wonder in her voice at 3am made me chuckle for quite a while.

Caitlin squealing "Oh daddy this is exactly what a happy family does!" (They were having a leaf fight last Saturday.)

Lauren finally said Please instead of "eh." Her vocab is great if you can understand her.

Ian is Ian. Full of trouble and sweetness.

PS dont mind the "trash". Its actaully a bunch of boxes laid out to stop the weeds. It will be covered with mulch when we tear the back tree down in the next few weeks. I will stop the weeds if it kills me!!

Our life in Pics

Here are a few things from our life. Remodeling the basement, Gardening and kiddos. The same stuff but it changes all the time.

Fav things that have happened:

Caitlin lost her first tooth in the middle of the night. To hear the wonder in her voice at 3am made me chuckle for quite a while.

Caitlin squealing "Oh daddy this is exactly what a happy family does!" (They were having a leaf fight last Saturday.)

Lauren finally said Please instead of "eh." Her vocab is great if you can understand her.

Ian is Ian. Full of trouble and sweetness.

PS dont mind the "trash". Its actaully a bunch of boxes laid out to stop the weeds. It will be covered with mulch when we tear the back tree down in the next few weeks. I will stop the weeds if it kills me!!