12/18/2011

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday...  we didn't do any of the traditional Christmas shopping this year.  I don't think either one of us has ever shopped on a Black Friday.  Small business Saturday was a new thing this year, but that sounds more appealing to me than Black Friday.  We didn't do any Christmas shopping this year at all.  The house will be our Christmas present to each other.  We may not be in it by Christmas day, but the house is a gift we've been waiting for years to have completed.  We're still looking for some few odd pieces of furniture but just haven't found what we want and can afford yet.  We still need a dining room table & chairs with maybe a matching china cabinet, plus we'd like one of those portable kitchen islands with a couple of bar stools for it.  Then it would be nice to have a recliner for Drone too.  At some point in time, I would also love to have a rocking chair.  Other than hanging up a few Christmas cards received, we have done no decorating.  No tree, no lights, no doo-dads.  That itself seems kind of strange.  We haven't sent out any Christmas cards, either.  

He is putting a lot of work and time in, but he does that on an every-day basis -- Not just in working on the house, but cutting firewood, splitting it, and then stacking it for the mobile home and the house both this year.  Then there are the farm chores, which are also a daily thing.  We did get the meat saw blades, so we'll be butchering 3 fat hogs pretty soon.  It'll be nice to know the freezer is full of meat and also great to have them off of the feed bill.  We still have 3 of the little 13-week-old feeder pigs, with 2 advertised for sale and one left to keep for our freezer for next year.  

The drywall is at the point of only a little hand-sanding left, which he figures to have done today.  Then he'll be waiting on a paper/tape machine then, which should be delivered any time now, and then he'll be prepping the windows, etc., for texture and paint.  I haven't been able to spend a lot of time in there due to the drywall dust, but it's looking great!  Almost every time I go in there, I walk through every room.  He asked me one day why I did that, when he was working in certain spots and not in every room every day.  I told him I was picturing the rooms finished and where the furniture will go, where pictures and wall hangings will go.  I picture where I will organize things in the pantry, in the wall of cabinets that will be there in the bathroom, all the cabinets in the kitchen to organize dishes & gadgets, etc.  I'll be able to organize the canned goods by contents & dates when we move everything over to the new pantry.  Just looking, planning, and dreaming.

Soon, and then I'll be very busy arranging, packing, unpacking, and organizing.  Soon. 

12/8/2011

Thanksgiving was great.  We didn't have all of our adult kids there, but a bunch of them made it, along with grandkids, in-laws, outlaws, and lots of fun and TONS of good food!  Black powder season (for deer) starts on the 17th.  We'll be butchering hogs soon.  Right now, we're waiting on new saw blades for the meat saw.  Seems like winter should be the slow time of year, but that hasn't really been the case around here, at least not so far.  He does have all the drywall taped, mudded, and mostly sanded now.  Then it will be on to the texture, and today we ordered a paint sprayer.  Hope everybody is doing okay. 

11/17/2011

Time Flies.  All the drywall is up in the house, and it's all taped!  He has been doing some of the mudding and sanding already too.  So, now all the walls and ceilings are up, and the drywall is on it's way to "finished".  We'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner in it, and our son & daughter-in-law will be bringing the youngest grandson with them to visit for the holiday (and deer season); so they will be our first "guests" to sleep in the guest room.  The furnace is installed and working, so they should stay nice & warm.  

Firearm deer season started last Saturday, and we've already put a deer in the freezer.  He did the last of it, the ground meat, yesterday, and we packaged that up for the freezer.  Then I spent the rest of the day on cleanup.  Still have to put it all away today.  My knee still has some swelling, but has been doing pretty good.  I believe that's all the news for now.

10/31/2011

My knee surgery went well last Friday.  I am confined to taking it easy for a while, though.  In the meantime, all the ceilings and walls are up in the house.  He started the tape & mud process on the drywall yesterday!  Yay!  Hope everybody has a Happy Halloween!

Progress Update on the House

Let's see.  The plumbing is all tied up and has been pressure tested.  He wasn't sure about the Pex at first, but out of 90 fittings, only 3 leaked.  Those 3 were all at the bathroom sink area, and he had them all fixed within minutes.  He's decided the Pex is good.  Yesterday, he built the area for the triple-wall pipe to go through the ceiling and the roof.  After that was put in, he started to put up the rest of the sheet rock for the kitchen ceiling.  Today, it's raining.  He was glad to see that, as he wanted to check to make sure the vent pipe through the roof was not leaking.  It wasn't.  (I knew it wouldn't be.)  The house is really coming along nicely, and it looks fantastic!

Home Again, Home Again.

Made it home from camping in good order.  We did leave early and ended up with 5 days off, which was wonderful.  Good friends, good conversations, good food, good weather -- all adds up to good fun.  Did some shopping (or at least looking) in a block long area of flea markets in Billings.  We found a dining table with 6 chairs that we liked, but the pickup acted up, so we drove on back to the camp.  We were going to look at the Crane flea market block too, but did not manage to do that with worrying about the pickup.  It did not act up once all the way home.  Strange.  There were 12 little piggies born to the little red sow on Friday, 10/7/2011, while we were gone.  Our son was taking care of chores for us, and he called (very excited) wondering what he should do.  "Nothing" was the reply.  There was nothing for him to do, as the sow had everything under control.  ;-)  

There is sheet rock up in part of the bathroom of the new house now, and the sewer vent lines are all being tied in too.  The house is looking very good.  I will try to take some photos of the sheet rock that has gone up so far. 

October 4, 2011

Well, I'm still trying to figure out how I can comment to comments.  and I still don't have it right apparently.  The house is coming along nicely.  All the walls and ceilings are up except for the bathroom and kitchen.  He is in the process of tying up the last odds & ends on plumbing and electrical so he can move on to ceilings & walls in those two rooms.  We're going camping this weekend, though.  He will have a much-deserved 3-day weekend off. 

Comment to CW

Carol, I have been trying to comment to your comment, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.  LOL  I'll get the hang of this blogging stuff sooner or late.r  I was in the process of deleting old archived posts when iPower apparently deleted all of our files a day early.  Ah, well.  We'll remember them.  We'll see you here and on PL, I'm sure. 

October 1, 2011

Good Morning, Folks!  The coffeepot is on.  Guess we're full-time here now, since iPower decided to delete all our files a day early.  That's okay.  We'll remember it.  LOL 

Goodbye to the old and Hello to the New!

Tomorrow will be the last day that the website and the board will be up, so we switch over to the blog full-time on Sunday.  Hopefully, folks will still be able to find us.  We've had the website up since 1998 and the board since 1994, so it's been a long time.  We really hope our folks will stay with us here.  The nice thing about the blog is followers can ask questions or make comments directly on the blog instead of having to send an e-mail. 

First Fire in the New Furnace!

He got the cold air return installed for the furnace on the house and built the first fire in the furnace this morning.  The walls and ceilings are up in every room now, except for the kitchen and bathroom.  The house is really looking great.  He has done an amazing job on it!

Homesteading

I have some of the homesteading things moved from the old website and updated here now.  Hope to have a lot more done over this next week, since we don't have any appointments scheduled or plans to go anywhere till next Saturday.  Keeping fingers crossed!  In the meantime, he has made a LOT of progress on the house too.  So, all is good in our part of the woods. 

Getting Started

I've gotten a start on moving some of the most pertinent things from the website to here.  Sometimes, it seems as if we have so much stuff going on.  Lee is working hard to get the house finished inside before Thanksgiving.  Then we've had doctor appointments and all kinds of other things going on too.  Hopefully, life will slow down a little after we get moved into the new house.  Our website has been online for a little over 13 years, so it was hard for me to let it go.  Realistically, I'm hoping we can keep this blog smaller and easier for people to find information on homesteading, self-sufficiency, and preparedness. 

Moving....

As we've been building the new house, we've stopped to review a lot of things.  There is a lot of *stuff* we won't be moving to the new house.  Our website hosting package is set to renew on October 2 of this year.  The package price is going up (again), a lot of our website is no longer pertinent to us, and I just haven't had the time or energy to devote to it like I used to.  Once they quit allowing Front Page to publish... then I was lost.  ;-)  Anyway, we'll be going through boxes and stuff that we've had stored in the rafters of the shop for over 6 years now.  We'll be selling stuff, giving stuff to the kids, and just plain throwing STUFF away.  We just have way too much STUFF.  Our website has been online for 13 years.  I'm going to go through the website and get rid of a lot of Stuff on it, and move the pertinent Stuff here.  So, Very Soon, we'll be moving into our new house and moving into a new home on the web too.  Please bear with me during the transition.