A Small Utility Room Update

We finally have the laundry back up and running! Thank goodness, because the laundry situation was getting a little sketchy there at the end. Mainly the towels. The new washer is so amazing, it is fast and the clothes come out almost dry from the spin cycle. 

The ceiling, one wall and part of the floor is complete. Dustin had meetings on Monday, and I had a kiddo with an appointment, and not much got done yesterday. We decided to have a little fun in the evening and we took the kids out to dinner at the new Mexican restaurant in town. I think Dustin might be getting a little tired after all the work he's been doing. Maybe he will take a few days off before we finish things up. 

~Lyndsay

7 Quick Takes! A Recap of Life in the Tiny House This Week! House-iversary, Christmas Break and The Great Countdown Debate!

Happy Friday and Merry Christmas!

Is your shopping done?
Are you ready for family and friends?
Have you decorated the tree and baked the cookies?

If those questions stress you out. That's ok. 
Let's change it to questions that really matter.

 Did you tell your loved ones how much you love them?
Ask yourself what was truly important this time of year?
Have you sat a little one on your lap and told them about baby Jesus?
Have you read your Bible or praised God today?

That's better! I've been doing my best to unplug for the worldy things this year, and plug into more Jesus and family. Quiet time reading with the littlest ones, reading our bibles, family dinners, lunches with Dad at work, discussing what really matters. 
I'm doing my best to focus less on the things that distract us from the most important things. 
That's why I have been here a little less. I would like to be here more, but this is a season of preteens, toddlers and ages in between. I should be watching them, because they are watching me!


1. Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

Christmas is quickly approaching. The excitement is mounting and the debate has begun once again. Do you count down to Christmas Eve OR Christmas Day??
I personally have always counted down to Christmas Eve, because our holiday festivities start on Christmas Eve.
We have a slightly split household on this. So the countdown calendar is a source of daily discussion.
It has now become a thing. If you say how many days it is until Christmas you have to specify if it is Eve or Day.

So, I ask the readers. What do you count down to?

Let me know in the comments!

So we can settle this debate once and for all. Or start the discussion at your house for years to come!


2. Just a little bit of coffee...

 This was our last week of school before our break. Actually if I am being 100% honest, we were supposed to work through next week. However, we were all starting to show sign of burn-out. It was time to call a break.
Want to know a couple signs of burn-out.

People eyes start to glaze over and stay that way for most of the day
People get antsy...kids and Moms
School gets "too hard" (Insert whiny voices)
My afternoon cup of coffee starts to look like this

  



And the kids start to leave my subtle hints, like this.

 









Yep, definitely time for a break. 

 3. Green Tree Restaurant

Dustin and I went on a date over the weekend. We visited a local place we had been talking about for a while. We have been living in our town for about 3 years now, and we have started to explore the little parts of town that not everyone knows about.(We also like to support local businesses like our own. :) ) The little restaurants and small town shops. This town is filled with so much history, and they have gone to great lengths to maintain the structures, feel and the stories.
We finally visited the Green Tree Restaurant, mainly because I friend of ours shared an article about them sourcing locally grown grass-fed beef. We had been having a steak craving, and figured it was a good place to fix it.

The food was good! We got the last two NY strip steaks of the night. The service was friendly and competent. Plus the restaurant was very clean. The best part, was the history! You can read about it here. The short story is that the restaurant was opened in that exact same building as the Green Tree Tavern is the year 1800, three years before our state was actually a state! They reopened it in 2015 as the Green Tree Restaurant.
I love history and I'm a sucker for a story like that. Pretty sure it is one of my top three favorite old places to eat in our new town. One of the other ones is The Madison, it is housed in the original Post Office building!
If you live local, or ever happen to find yourself traveling through our little piece of the world, you should make sure you try these places!

4. Holiday Bloopers

We finally took real family pictures..with coordinating clothes and both parents(Not each of us taking turns and photo shopping it in later)...for the first time since we had 2 kids!
We had already scheduled the day and then it snowed and was 20 some degrees. We were not to be deterred. At least I wasn't going to be. We planned for this, showered and everyone had recent hair cuts. THIS WAS HAPPENING!
Thankfully we have an amazing and caring neighbor and I have a kind and loving husband who tends to go along with my crazy whims.
We managed to get some good shots, but most of them are on lock down until after Christmas. Grandparent presents and what not. ;)
I am willing to share a picture with you that has made me smile and giggle every time I look at it. It is our family in a true moment of life. I'm pretty sure the blooper pics are the best.

 
 
5. Christmas Program!

Our homeschool co-op put together an absolutely wonderful Christmas Program. There was an expressive signing performance, bell choir and the older kids have put together a show choir. Have I mentioned how amazing the women at co-op are? I'm forever amazed at the talents and organized skills that come together. You put these women in a room together and things get done. I'm pretty sure they could solve world hunger and create world peace, if our Moms meeting lasted longer than half an hour each week!
My MIL even pulled me aside and asked if this was all 'just' homeschool families and 'Wow, they get a lot done!" Yep, they sure do. They take their job as education facilitators very seriously.
The program was amazing and entertaining and Anna only screamed, cried and threw herself in the floor four times. Two year olds are such a fun filled crowd. I'm calling it a win!

 


6. Addison

Someone had a birthday at the beginning of the month. Can't believe she is 7.  She picked a gold and hot pink themed cake and decorated it herself. (With a little help from Emma and myself.)

She received this shirt for her birthday. It pretty much sums up our Addison. She whirls, twirls and always glitters. She is such a blessing to our lives and our world wouldn't be the same without her in it. She told me she wants to be an "Animal Dr at the zoo" when she grows up, but also...a mom and to adopt.
Sounds like a good plan to me!

7. 4 Years!

We purchased our 'tiny' cottage in the woods on December 10th 2013. It was one of our first big huge steps toward the debt free life we live now. It was scary and I'm pretty sure we were not entirely prepared for all the level of repairs that the house would require. I knew Dustin could totally handle anything this house threw at us, but I am definitely positive that we didn't see some of it coming. 

You can read more about how we found this house here.

This house has changed a lot over the last four years. We have changed as well. The kids are growing, our lives and views on things have changed so much. I struggle to even remember where we came from or even who we were before starting this journey. The old life seems so foreign to us now. We try to sit and recall a time when credit was a part of our lives, before the tiny house project, before we learned to downsize and live small, before we really truly asked God what he wanted for our lives. 

We can't do it. 

Will we always call this house our home? I'm not sure. Forever and always are very solid and sustaining words. We are here because God placed us here. No one can say He won't move us again. 

It is funny how life can seem so mess, scary and disorganized when you are in the thick of it, but when you come out the other side of situations...you see how His divining grace was leading you through it the whole time. We were the ones not fully trusting in His will and grace. 

2013

2016 after porch completion

Blessings!
~Lyndsay

7 Quick Takes! A Recap of Life in the Tiny House This Week! Tiny House Before and Afters, Minimalism Meltdown and A Little Math Humor!

1. Three years

Last month officially marked three years of us living in our tiny cottage in the woods. The kitchen is almost finished. Waiting on hubby to finish up a few minor details. Then post for it will be going up. This time of year always makes me curious to go back and look at what it used to look like around here. Are you ready to be blown away?

Here is a before and after and a couple of during photos.

This is now our dining/living

This is now the kitchen/bath

Before we started to rebuild

Before and after

After the front porch was finished

 I'm planning a room by room tour with before and after pics for everyone. There will also be videos, because some of the rooms are hard to take pictures of. A typical issue with really small houses. :)

 Looking back I can't believe we lived here through most of the renovation...or that we did almost all of it ourselves. Many prayers went up during this process. This house was a God given blessing that required a lot of elbow grease and lots of literal blood, sweat and tears. 

2. Oh the Anxiety!

 Nothing strikes more fear in a homeschooling mom/bloggers heart than a computer technology fail! Our computer has been stricken with viruses twice this year. This is the second total wipe and start over. Praise the Lord for the invention of expansion storage to save all of the school stuff and blogging/vlogging media.



The patient seems to have survived. This post is being typed on it.


3. Pumpkin carving and the great pumpkin walk!

 We went to a local pumpkin walk. They let kids come and carve pumpkins during the day, and then in the evening you get to walk through all the lighted pumpkins that are lined out through a field. The cool part to this is the fact that you get to walk through some Native American mounds that you typically have to walk around the perimeter. They had over 250 pumpkins carved and all aglow along the path. It was really neat to see. (I forgot my phone at home. No pictures.)
The funny part was hearing Anna shout "Pumpkins!!!" every 5 feet! That didn't get old after about 50 pumpkins. Nope, not at all.

We also carved pumpkins over the weekend. I did get to take pictures of that!




 4. Cinnamon sweet potato bites

 A new kid friendly post went up on the blog this week. Cinnamon sweet potato bites.
My kids love them. However, a friend told me she tried it but swapped out the sweet potato for butter nut squash. (Something I had also considered trying) Apparently it didn't going over too well. She said one of her children ran to spit it out. Guess I will be crossing that off of the 'recipes to try' list. Thanks for saving me the time S. :)

5. The season of excess has begun!

We all went out to run some errands over the weekend. We went into Menard's to pick up some items for the house and the office. Menard's is already all decked out for Christmas. Not that I am against getting a jump start on holiday shopping. (Some years I try to be finished by Thanksgiving.) I do have to say though that I will never stop being shocked by the excess and even the sheer size of the items that they sell for Christmas. What benefit will anyone ever have from a caterpillar that is over 6 feet long?

*Sigh* **Deep breaths**

My minimalism is showing.

They also had a HUGE gorilla that we thought for sure Anna would love. She is crazy for Curious George. Nope! She CRIED and wouldn't take her suspicious glare off of it until we left the aisle!



6. Odd but delicious

 Last winter our friend Sarah fed us lunch. Sarah has this knack for taking a few simple ingredients and turning it into something absolutely amazing! We decided that we are never quite sure if it is the food or the company that makes the meal so great. Probably both!
 She served us this delicious chicken noodle soup, but it had Ramen noodles(not the seasoning packet) in it. (Hers were the gluten free kind).  She said she had them and just tossed them in.

 Alex has mentioned this soup off and on since January. He has even asked for it to be on the monthly meal plan. I kind of put it off, just because it is simple and we basically always have the ingredients on hand. I think we had it once in the spring.
This week our co-op  was cancelled due to so many people being sick. Well, it turned out to be a blessing. The oldest three came down with something. Cough and cold symptoms with a low grade temp. Nothing major.

It was the perfect day for a pot of soup! I tossed our typical chicken and noodle basics in the pot, but stopped just short of putting the typical egg noddles in. I grabbed some Ramen noodles and tossed those in instead.
It can seem like an odd combination, but it goes over big with the kids. Sarah probably has no idea what she started last winter.

I made 4Qrts of soup and there wasn't a drop left by mid afternoon! Alex is already asking me to make more.

7. Say Perpendicular!

  The weather was so beautiful the last part of this week. It was really hard for some of us all of us to stay focused. We tried to power through and this is where we ended up... In fits of giggles over math terminology. We closed the books and went out to play shortly after I filmed this video. Obviously their brains were done for the day.

Hope you have a beautiful and blessed weekend!

~Lyndsay

Kitchen Renovation Update

 Well... A lot has happened around here in the last 11-12 months. It is honestly too much to tell in one post. I'm sure it would exhaust all of us. 
So, I will start from right here, and fill you in when appropriate. Sound good? Good!

 The tiny house renovation has slowly moved forward, sometimes at a shockingly fast speed. Other times it is like pouring molasses in January.
Yesterday was a big day though. We painted the kitchen! 
This poor kitchen has been the most used room since moving in, in September 2014, and sadly it was left for one of the very last rooms.  

 The last room will be the utility room. It has been the most used room since we moved in. Also, it is the most cluttered. It holds everything from the other rooms that are being worked on. This house is also very void of closets...so it holds a lot of stuff. Even though we have a lot less belongings than most Americans...there is still more than we need. 

See that blue? We mixed it ourselves!

Now, onto the kitchen!

 See that ceiling above my head? The husband did that! We helped.
We helped him while he burned the boards. Our job as to put out the fires when they started on the wood. Then we helped hold it in place while he sanded. Lastly he coated them in a stain.
We are very happy with how it turned out.
The wood ceiling was a big improvement over the unfinished drywall and the light bulbs that dangled out of the recessed lighting holes for about 2.5 years. 

Now, onto the paint. 

We do all of this with cash. We live completely debt free. It is a great way to live.(More on that in another post) However, it means being patient and having a budget and a plan and we also choose to pinch all of the pennies! 

On that note, I feel the need to tell you that this color we used...was our own color mixing.
We had some light blue left from the dining room, about half of a gallon. We wanted a blue for the kitchen, just not the same blue. We were feeling especially budget mindful when we went paint shopping on Saturday. We did not need a full gallon to do the kitchen and the thought of buying another full gallon to only use half...just wasn't something we were wanting to do.

We use the slightly more expensive paint, the one that is better for your health. Low fumes, won't damage your lungs. Etc. Also, it is a bit more expensive. Ouch. It is worth it for the knowledge that we know our kids(Especially the asthma ones) aren't breathing the fumes. 

The hubs decided to just get a couple other sample colors to add to it. He is pretty good at mixing paint colors, so I went along with it.

I'm really glad we did it!

We purchased two sample containers. It was the good brand that we like.
One was a sea foam green, the other was a dark blue, almost navy. I never would have picked up the navy, for fear of making it too dark.

However, clearly the husband knew what he was doing.

It turned out great! 

I said a little prayer over the bucket before starting. I asked for enough paint to finish the kitchen...and... a bit left, for touch ups, would be a nice bonus..provided He was feeling generous! 

Well...my friends, there was more than enough paint to paint the entire kitchen. Plus it filled one of the sample containers to the point of overflowing!
What a great blessing!

The kitchen is now painted a beautiful, original, shade of blue for $7!

The husband also worked on the trim yesterday. All of the windows and doors are now trimmed. Next is the wainscotting.  Once he is finished putting it up..then it will be my turn to paint, paint paint.
The dining room paneling took over 12 hours, spread over 2 days. It was exhausting, but so worth it!

All of the trials of this little house have always been more than worth the work. The literal blood, sweat and tears poured into this 100 year old cottage in the woods has been life changing for us. 
  
The uphill struggles we have faced in this house and along our journey to become debt free were not easy. But they also tried, changed and formed us. There is much more taking place in this house than just renovating a house. So much more than making a house a home.

God has changed us here...

I'll be back soon to continue the updates on the family, the tiny house and our homeschool life. 
It is ever changing and it is good. :)

~ Blessings~

Lyndsay