Pumpkin Patch

No matter how hard I tried to steer him towards the $3 pumpkins.....

 

 

He liked the knobbly deformed $1 ones best.

Who am I to argue????

Oh, and we have squash in the cold cellar now too... $15 worth of squash & pumpkins, all from the local farmer, who's son goes to school with Chuck. I think that the squash traveled three km to get to our house. I dunno if I can handle the pressure....

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

Fall Tally Again

7 Jars Apple Jelly (250ml)
Apple Butter waiting to be processed tonight.

Apples from the trees on the property.


Edited to add... 7 jars of Apple Butter 

Fall Tally Again

4 jars baby food (plums) (250ml)
4 jars baby food pears (250 ml).

I was planning on doing peach baby food as well, then realized I still had five jars left from Buddy!  So I think I'll either can the peach slices, or freeze peach pie filling.

Score #2

3 more Motherease one-size: $4.50 for all (retails about $13 each)
5 diaper wraps: $15 for all (retails for about $15 each)
7 diaper liners: $15 for all (retails about 3.50 each)

Fall Tally Continued

5 jars of plums (500 ml)
7 jars of dill pickles (500 ml)
(both done on a week night. Mommy did the plums while Daddy made dinner, then Daddy & Chuckles did the pickles while Mommy tidied up)
we've now gone through 3 kg of sugar since Saturday.

Fall Tally

Completed this weekend:

6 jars of peach jam processed
2 jars of peach baby food processed
6 jars of pear jam processed
3 roosters sent to freezer boot camp
2 bush cords of wood stacked (by Daddy & Chuckles)
1 chicken coop shoveled out
Several gardens fertilized with said chicken droppings
1 child outfitted for school
1 toddler begun toilet training


We need a weekend to recover from our weekend.

Building The Chicken Coop

All pieces framed up, ready to put together.

Together. Ready to move onto the driveway to add the roof, & continue building. Hubby used the Lawn Tractor to drag it to the driveway.

Hubby & Chuckles heaved the roof onto the coop. It was raining when the roof was built, so it was built in the garage, then added to the coop.

Framed, built, plywooded, and loaded on the trailer, ready to be moved to the backyard.

In the backyard, after being painted.

My cousin came to visit, to help me with a large Girl Guide event. She got to help paint the coop the night before. Lucky Cousin!

ok, this is the cool part.

You can see where Daddy & Buddy are looking in the coop, with the first half of the bi-fold up. This can be lifted for ventilation.

Then, it can be lifted even more.

THEN, the bottom flips down, so that the whole thing can be hosed out as necessary.

You can see where the holes for the nesting boxes have been cut intot he sides. The nesting boxes are next on our "list of things to do."

When we built the coop, it was right after ripping out the front entryway. The 2 x 4's throughout are all recycled from that tear out. Also, a lot of the plywood was wood from around the house from other projects. the chicken wire came out of my Grandparents garage since they're moving, and the windows that will go in came from the re-store. So this project has been made with mostly "re-used" materials!

Hosted by Cecilyand Mom24

In the Windowsill

Top shelf: About 30 Cannonball Tomatoes
Second Shelf: About 30Mortgage Buster Tomatos
Third Shelf: About 30 Purple Cherokee Tomatos
Bottom Shelf: About 30 Green Peppers

Tom's

Green Peppers. Definitly not as far along as the Tom's are. They were started a few weeks later though

I think that I am going to be doing a lot of canning come the fall!!

Actually, I think we may sell some plants before they go in the ground. We're going to have tomatoes coming out of our ears!

More Laundry

I have never written about my laundry before, and here we are two posts in three days.

It must be some thrilling stuff.

Or something.

So my electric bill arrived the other day, along with a notice that 'time of day' pricing will begin in 2010. What this essentially means is that during peak electrical usage times, it will cost more to use electricity. The peak times change from season to season though (Due to air conditioning and whatnot).

Off-peak times include from ten at night until six or seven in the morning, and usually a chunk of time mid-day during the week, etc.

So they are recommending that we get washers, dryers, & dishwashers with a delay timer on them, and set them to run after ten at night. This has been promoted for at least two years now, to get everyone ready for the time of day pricing.

Now, I don't have a dishwasher, so that's not a huge issue.

But.

Should I delay my wash, and then do my drying during the peak?

Should I do my wash right when I get home from work, then delay the dryer to after the peak?

And HOW am I to process my regular three loads of laundry, that I normally do on Friday - Saturday, ALL AFTER TEN AT NIGHT??? maybe I'm a wuss, but I'm usually in bed then.

Even in the summer when the dryer isn't an issue since I'm using the line... this would be the scenario: I wash load one after ten on Friday, and hang it out to dry. Perfect. I wash load two after ten at night on Saturday, and hang IT out to dry. Again, Perfect. I Wash load three after ten at night Sunday, get up Monday morning, go to work, and come home to musty smelling laundry that's sat in the washer all day????

I dunno. I'm cheap, and I'm environmentally conscious. So these are things that I want to make work. But without cutting a weekly load of laundry, just can't see it being very effective (and the only reason that we only have three loads a week is because we already have the high-capacity front loader. For a family of four to only have three loads weekly? I think that that is pretty darn good already!).

Laundry

At this time every year, I feel a sense of relief that i can get my laundry for the week done in a couple of hours, instead of a couple of days.

The funny thing is, by spring, I'll feel that same sense of relief that I can FINALLY hang my laundry out to dry again, and don't have to use the dryer for several months.

I line dry from about March - mid October exclusively. The dryer MAY run once or twice in that time, if things HAVE to be dry NOW!

But generally, everything goes on the line. Even if it is pouring rain, my thought is that i am no further behind than I was when i took the things out of the washer, and the extra rinse can't hurt.

And, I love saving on the energy bill, and also that it is more environmentally friendly!!

The only problem is, in rainyt weeks, often by the time evrything is FINALLY dry & away, it's time to start over again!

Being Enviro-friendly... Maybe

ok, so we heat our house with wood all winter long.  There are baseboard heaters throughout the house, but they're mighty expensive to run.

And we get tons of flyers.... tons & tons of them.

Does anyone know if it's better for the environment to burn them, seeing as we have a fire going anyway, or is it better to recycle???


hmmmm........

Quick Dry Baby Pants

So I have this sewing machine, and it rarely gets used.

However, a while back I read this tutorial on Jessica's Balancing Everything blog, and I though "hey, I can do that!"

My first attempt was ok... not stellar, but ok. After ripping out the waist an re-sewing it, I could kind of put the baby in them, if we weren’t going anywhere.

Then I had this pair of pants that I had really, really loved, until I bent down one day to pick up the baby and heard a rip.

And was very thankful that I was at home when said pants ripped

That is an irreparable rip.

So I decided that I could make the baby a pair of pants out of these, and since we're heading away on our sailing vacation soon, a pair of quick dry pants would probably be beneficial anyway.

(note to Moms: The first time I wore these, the baby had a poop so explosive that it was all over them. After a couple of baby wipes, the mess was cleaned off, and within five minutes, they were already dry. That was one reason why I loved them. Quick dry is not only for canoeing / sailing).


So, a month ago I set out to make my baby a pair of pants and a pair of shorts from the legs of these pants.

I started by tracing a pair of pants and shorts onto craft paper, and then adding in a seam allowance:

Then got ready to cut:

And then promptly lost my nerve, and did nothing for a month.

So, last night I gave myself a good shake, said 'really, what do you have invested? A destroyed pair of pants, and a little time.' EVEN IF they got messed up, really, what did it cost? Nothing. A little thread, that's all.


So I got out my patterns, and traced and cut:

(you can see my print out of the tutorial in the foreground there)

Lined up the two halves:

Sewed:

And voila!

Shorts!

In Jessica's words:

"Shut up! You made pants! How awesome are you?

I do need to tighten up the elastic in the waist a smidge, but otherwise, they look ok.

After finishing the shorts, I also used the rest of the leg to make a full length pair of pants for the Buddy. If you look in the picture above of the pant legs before they're cut, you can kind of see that there's a drawstring around the ankle. There's also a button on the outside, with a tab inside to pull them into capris. I was able to leave all this styling on, so the pants can be tied at the bottom (keep mosquitoes out), or rolled into shorts. As my husband so eloquently described them "So you made cheap a** fashionable pants?" I sure did!

But wait, that does not end the frugality of the evening!! Not only did I sew a pair of shorts AND a pair of pants out of material that cost nothing and was headed to the landfill, the only part that I didn't use for Buddy was the butt part of the pants (which also had a drawstring waist). Well, the other day hubby asked me to make him a drawstring bag.... so, using the top part, I sewed up the bottom, put a quick seam where they had ripped, and... Voila! A bag for all the extra bungee cords and ropes for sailing.  (that took less than three minutes to sew)

I'm not sure if this counts as "inventive," "frugal," "environmentally firendly," or "ridiculously cheap." But whatever, I was proud of my accomplishment.  I saved all but a few scraps from the landfill, and didn't have to buy material (except thread).