With winter just around the corner, we're doing all the things to get ready, stocking our woodshed with wood, getting our garden cleaned up, and packing lots away in the freezer. I can't believe how fast our summer went.

I am looking forward though to being able to settle down for the winter and bake, sit by the woodstove, play games and watch movies.

Fresh bread and oatmeal

Lately, my girls have been making breakfast and lunch quite often. They make eggs, pancakes, omlets, grilled sandwiches, rice, pasta and several other tasty things. The past few days they have been making mini loaves of bread. We bake a lot of our own bread out of the book Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day, so we almost always have bread dough in the fridge. Here are some pictures of their loaves from this morning (one is cinnamon and the other two are white). They have been turning out wonderfully, and I'm so proud of them for being so motivated to do so much baking.

Frosty Morning

Just a quick shot of the hore frost that we had covering every tree around when we awoke this morning. It was so beautiful. The winter has already seemed so long, but today was a nice break at around 30. Unfortunately we are headed back to a deep freeze for the next week.

We made homemade pizza tonight and watched some of season 6 of Little House on the Prairie. I guess there are some redeeming qualities that come from these cold winter nights. Hunkering down and being together as a family is such a nice thing.

I guess I can handle another month or so of the cold:)

Life is just too busy

I have had such good intentions of blogging at least a few times a week, but life has had other plans for me. We have been working on scraping and resealing our little deck that is off of one of our second floor bedrooms. It isn't technically a deck, but looks like one, and it has been in dire need of a new coat of sealent. It's been leaking into our school room on the main floor everytime it rains. It's been a bugger to get scraped clean, but thankfully we will soon be done with it, and then on the the next task. It will probably be something keeping us busy in our yard, stacking wood, harvesting our garden, putting a new storm door on the side of our house, building a sandbox for the kids. Everything we do here though has an element of joy because of our thankfulness for being here.

The farmers have been harvesting the soybeans from the fields surrounding our farm. It is so beautiful to look out over those golden fields. I am constantly thanking the Lord for giving us this beautiful little chunk of land. Each day as I hang my clothes and look out over the field I think about how many years we have longed for this. The timing that is the Lords is just not ours. It's easy to be impatient over the things that we desire, and hard to wait for what we think would be right for us to have, but we just don't know why God doesn't grant us the desires of our heart when we want them. He sees the big picture that we do not, and we just need to rest in His perfect plan for our lives, (and live a life that is pleasing to him and within his will, so he can bless us.)

We are in the full swing of school as well. We've been studying insects, doing math, reading Little House, doing history, phonics, handwriting, astronomy, crafts and much more. The days just don't have enough hours in them. I'm going to start making bread with my girls and count it as their home ec. I got Artisan Bread in Just 5 Minutes a Day, and it looks like such an easy way to have nice crunchy loaves of fresh bread. You make a big batch of dough and leave it in the fridge until you are ready to use it. When you are ready, you take off a 1 lb. hunk, let it rise and bake it. The girls have been doing so much cooking. I am so thankful to see them be so self sufficient in the kitchen.

As the weather cools and we are inside more often I will try to be better about posting. I'm anxious to show some of the side of the road finds that I'm fixing up for our house. I found several pieces of vintage furniture when our town did curb side clean up a few weeks ago. We like to say we're goin junkin when we go out. There aren't many things more fun than goin junkin as far as I'm concerned :)

Thanks for reading! I appreciate it, and I'll soon be back with some fun pictures of my little farm house for you to see.



Kari ><>

Progress

Here is a little peek into our dining room and living room. I painted both of these rooms as they were dark green on the lower half of the rooms, and seperated by a cabin style border. The green (a whole can was left by the previous owners and is now on the walls of my son's room) was nice, but I tend to paint everything white or cream. We will eventually have to refinish our floors, but for now that is low on our list of projects.

What has been taking up most of our time here has been our garden. We moved in at the end of April, and decided to put in a 60' x 80' garden in a spot that had been sod. It is a constant battle to keep the weeds out, and it went in very late, but it feels so wonderful to finally be able to have a large garden. We planted 50 heirloom tomato plants, 4 varieties of corn, 5 varieties of potatoes, herbs, swiss chard, okra, peppers, beans, beets, radishes, onions, carrots, cucumbers, zuccini, goards, pumpkins blackberries, strawberries, and a small asparagus patch. We also put in a small rhubarb plant that we brought from our old house. I never thought I would enjoy using a tiller so much. I am doing alot of weeding, but I enjoy the upkeep, and standing back at the end of the day and seeing the progress that comes with hard work is very rewarding. It is something that I hope my children will someday look back on and be thankful that they experienced. We have also been building bean tee pees and tomato cages out of large branches that we have been cutting from our property. We hoped to make enough for all of our 50 tomatoes, but after making 3 we relized that it just wouldn't happen, so we are in the process of using posts and rope. We have just started to get zuccini, radishes and okra. I'm soon going to be making salsa full time as I think we will have alot of tomatoes.

Lastly, is a picture of our barn that we just had painted. It is so beautiful, and I often just stand and look at it unable to believe that after all of our years of longing and praying for a place to grow our own food and have a few animals, we at last have been granted our prayer. There is ALOT of hard work that has come with it, but we know that the Lord has placed us here for a purpose. We thank him daily for the gift of this farm.

Looking back

Hello there. It has been a busy week, and I have been wanting to take pictures of our new house to share the projects that I am working on, but havn't gotten around to it, so for starters I thought I would show a picture of our little cape cod that we lived in for 12 years. (We've just been in our farmhouse for 3 months now.) This was our master bedroom, and it was my favorite room in the house. We tried 3 greens before we settled on this one. It was such a restful place to be, and I may paint our bedroom in our new house the same green. We painted the old original plankboard with primer and then Behr porch and floor paint, and it turned out just the way we hoped it would. Our new home has wood floors throughout, and all of the original trim and doors, so I will not be painting any wood here. I'm going to have to figure out how to mix some more painted furniture in with my wood pieces as I love a cottage feel.

I will work hard this week to get some pictures taken between all that I have to do around here, there is much weeding to be done, and I hope to paint the old set of wicker that I just picked up at a sale in town for only $15. I was so excited as I had just sold mine before I moved. (I was very overwelmed with the many things I had to move, and I just started selling things figuring that I would find others once we were settled.) Well you can imagine that I was thrilled to pull up to a sale and spot the set with 2 chairs, a loveseat, and a table made from a vintage window and old table legs. I may even put it in my schoolroom and make some pillows from a few vintage tablecloths.

Well, thanks for stopping by, and I'll look forward to posting again soon!!

My first post

Hello there, as one who has spent many hours reading blogs, I have decided to start one of my own. I am excited to have a spot to post pictures of our projects that we are undertaking around our farm, and share my experiences with homeschooling, cooking and decorating my home with my thrifty vintage finds. I also look forward to having this spot to look back on the progress that we make as we try to restore the our farm to what it once was. I'm excited for this new opportunity, and I pray that I can encourage and bless others along the way.