Our Irish Manor

Get Back to Work!

2012-02-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

January is gone and February is well under way. We have been so busy around here! Doing what? Not all that much. It feels a bit like reorganizing, but I can't be sure. Most of January was spent working in the basement, a space that is vital to the rest of our house being finished. If the basement is a jumble, we will have to hunt down every tool, clamber over piles to get a can of paint and dig out the last scrap of wood or screw just to move on to the next project. We have continued to sort and unpack boxes and even move a few boxes off to storage.

Yes, storage. The word makes me want to cringe. I come from a LONG line of storage unit owners (I refuse to say hoarders and bring a curse upon myself!) and I know that once an item goes into storage it will almost certainly stay there. Forever. Mr. Ireland won't allow that to happen, however, and has set a time limit. All items must be sold or donated by the end of July. With his resolve and my "zero waste" kick, we are sure we can meet that deadline. So I shuffle things off to storage a couple times a week and it has freed up a lot of space in the basement. Enough to dig out the treadmill! Which I may or may not get around to using in February...

I've been taking pictures of things that are going to the yard sale. This is a tiny porcelain box given to me a long time ago by my little brother. It is pretty, but I never use it and everything will come under scrutiny during "the purge". If something you gave me ends up in the sale, I'm sorry, but I just can't keep everything and I'm not really a knick knack kind of girl.

We have also set a lofty goal of having *most* projects indoors completed by the end of May. We have set a major goal for each month and wouldn't you know it, we are already behind! Here is our new list:

January - Basement: Organize, purge, make room (check)
February - Remodel bathrooms...(nothing has happened with that YET)
March - Kitchen remodel
April - Trim work
May - Flooring upstairs
June - Paint house, yard
July - Yard, etc.

The back porch. Rotten, almost useless and covered with snow. This is coming down and will eventually be replaced. With a roof over head.

I attempt to trick myself by listing the fewest words possible when I write down a job, that way I look at it and say to myself "Oh look! How difficult could this be? There are only two words here!" It doesn't work for long.

Now that the baby takes real naps, I can pick up my saw and get back to work. I have a lot of wood projects waiting to be done, but the first is a sample board for bottle cap flooring. I hope to have that finished by the 15th and get a picture up. If you have any bottle caps that you have been saving for us, now is the time to send those on! Callen has collected 7 jars of caps! That's 70 dollars worth of caps - we will buy the caps from him and half of that money will be going to a charity of his choice. Thank you to everyone who has donated bottle caps!

Sweetest baby ever!

I have most of the materials for remodeling my bathroom, but we need to start upstairs. I am afraid that we will remodel mine and then decide not to do the upstairs and it is UGLY. We have decided to replace the upstairs shower with a corner shower. The bathroom is dark and light is cut off by a wall that houses the plumbing, which Mr. Ireland will move, so the wall can come down and that will really open up the tiny upstairs bathroom. I will be painting the bathroom and replacing the vanity light. I am also looking for a small window to install above the toilet. I have to have window's in bathrooms! Not everyone needs that, but I do. I need natural light. Just for fun, answer my poll to the right and let me know how YOU feel about bathrooms that have a window!

Enter to win at Cooking Traditional Foods

2011-12-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

Are you looking at the new year and thinking about making some resolutions? Is one of them eating better? How about eating locally? Well, we here at Ireland Manor are focused on the same thing. We have always leaned towards a more natural foods diet around here, but this year we are going to be more committed to it! Don't get me wrong - we love our junk foods, but even those can be made in a healthier way, using healthier fats and fermented ingredients.

If this is the sort of thing that interests you, or you are looking for a way to plan healthy meals without having to do all the leg work, you are in luck. Right now, Cooking Traditional Foods is having a giveaway for a FULL YEAR of their menu mailer! You will get a menu mailer each week, complete with a pantry and shopping list and prep page. It really couldn't be easier to feed your family healthy foods! Enter HERE to win!

We have been using their menu mailer for about 6 months and every issue has a great selection of family friendly meals. All meals are based on seasonal items and each menu contains a dessert and crock pot friendly meals. Go on, make a change and get some help along the way by entering to win!

If that link won't work, copy and paste the link below
http://www.cookingtf.com/2011/12/30/giveaway-one-year-menu-mailer-package-subscription/

Thanksgiving fun!

2011-11-25T18:11:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. We had a pretty nice day around here. We kept things simple. As you can see by the pictures, everyone pitched in to get our dinner ready. Eddie folded laundry and made the pie dough. Callen and Brody were my prep cooks, each of them peeling and chopping vegetables and Brody helped with making rolls. Liam, well... he did pretty well staying out of trouble. It was a really lovely dinner. Simple and easy and free of even the thought of home repair!

In a few weeks Mr. Ireland's business will slow down and we will resume work on the house and our blog posts will pick up. In the mean time...

Happy Holidays!

UnHalloween Fun

2011-10-27T11:09:00.001-07:00

We don't do Halloween at our house. We used to, yes, but we don't anymore. Partly because of the insane amounts of candy our children get, partly because Mr. Ireland and I hate dragging kids to go trick or treating. There are some religious reasons in there, but I won't bore you with the details. We do, however, LOVE to dress up around here! Costumes are a part of our daily lives; the boys have a dress up box in their closet that we are constantly adding and subtracting from. Some days I teach math to Darth Vader and Obewon Kenobe (the Ewen McGregor version), others its a ships captian and his little brother, King Tut, playing in the front yard.
Autumn is also our favorite season. To celebrate the fall and keeping in theme with the seasonal celebration of masquerading, I am sharing some recent pictures of the boys and our fall fun, interspersed with advice for making the most of the autumn celebrations!

1. All kids loves leaves. They are wet, moldy and make a mess in your yard. DO let them play in the pile! If you are lucky, they may even bag the leaves up when they are done jumping.

(Liam asleep in the car, sans pants, with a french fry in his mouth, Brody chasing Liam, Brody using wedgits to make himself into a robot)

2. If you must limit the amount of candy your children consume on (and after) October 31st, use the leftovers to get a jump on holiday treats! We have used leftover candies for gingerbread houses, fudge (excellent gift!), and pinatas.

(Brody dressed as an.... I don't know. He's wearing plastic bag lederhosen. Very futuristic.; Verity in her Notre Dame shirt; Raining leaves; Brody S. Holmes)

3. Wax lips (and vampire teeth and moustaches) provide hours of fun. Get them.

(Callen von Dracula; Eddie the Wolfman - same style of wax lips, just flip them upside down!)

5.Find a hay ride, a corn maze or go pick pumpkins. Have a bonfire. You will be giving your children memories to last a lifetime. Take pictures. Lots of them.

(Below, leaf fun)

( Taking aim)

5. Bake. Pumpkin muffins, cookies, roast corn or apples. Whatever you do, add lots of cinnamon and nutmeg! And don't forget the hot cocoa :)

I hope you have a fun, and safe, holiday. We will be holed up at home, warm and dry (maybe with face paint on), watching movies and eating candy!

There goes my modern art lawn sculptures!

2011-10-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

We said goodbye to our chicken's yesterday. It is sad, but they will have a good home with friends of ours. We have been having a small drama with our neighbor to the south of us. He is fairly polite, but it seems that our chicken coop, which was previously a shed, sits just over our property line, meaning it is completely on his! Rehoming them seemed to be the best and most affordable solution.

He did have his property surveyed and if the marks are correct, the entire building is over the line and the shipping container that sits in our back yard is partially over as well. I don't understand how that is possible, considering our house is the oldest house on the street (and was owned by the family the street was named after, we suspect) so we are very sure that the shed and container have been there nearly as long as the house! I think he was bothered by the rooster's crowing and rather than say as much, decided to tackle the problem from another angle.

He was also bothered by the junk in our yard. I know I am, so I can understand his frustration. If he is going to sell his house, you do have to drive by our house first and the impression you get of the neighborhood isn't the best. From the street, you can clearly see that it looks like half a dozen children live here and their parent's don't care much about the property! We don't mean for it to look that way, but put an old furnace in the side yard and tuck a couple of vehicles back into the woods and it begins to look like a run down homestead. We bought our house as a very neglected repo, apparently repossessed more than once, and I am sure all the neighbors had high hopes that the new owners would fix the place up. Maybe we are slacking a bit.

Saturday, Mr. Ireland and his father spent the morning hauling several engine blocks, car doors, half a motorcycle and numerous odds and ends from behind the shed to the dump. They had been stored in the shed before we decided to use it as storage. That afternoon, he and my brother Owen hauled even more to the dump. It will take another work day, but it will get done before the snow is here. The boys and I sorted the yard toys and tucked them under the front porch, put away bikes, and Mr. Ireland moved my bags of compost and bark chips. We will put up new lattice and you won't even know the stuff is there. I did have to give up my boxes of newspapers that I had been saving for lasagna gardening. I am sure that gave our place the air of hoarders living here! Just don't go in the basement....

I have to admit that I was very irritated with our neighbor at first. Admittedly, Mr. Ireland hates yard work. Any of it. I rather enjoy it, though, and felt that it was unfair for him to be so bothered. Couldn't he see that I had just had a baby? Well, no, he couldn't, so how is he to know that we had any intention of dealing with the outside of our home? I do have to thank him for stopping by with his list of chores outlined in the city's ordinances. If I had not gone online to look up our property values, I would have forgotten to pay our taxes! Did you know you can pay borough property taxes online? I was very excited to see that.

I will also forgive him for forcing our chickens to a new home. Another family will benefit from their eggs and they have children that will love caring for them. I think that it is not the fact that the chickens had to go but more the fact that someone is telling me what to do on my own property that irritates me. I have had this dream of having a homestead or farm since I was very young. My plan after high school included a desire to work as a ranch hand! So having farm animals is fairly high on my list of wants. It is okay though. We will start again next year and double our flock size. :D

Whether or not this is our permanent home, we will finish this property and it will not be a smudge on our neighborhood. We have no intention of being "that house" any longer. I hope to invite our neighbors over someday and proudly show them around our little homestead.

The Zero Waste Home: How to Get Started

2011-10-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

For those who want to know more about what a "Zero Waste" home is, this is a great article from Bea all about getting started! Enjoy!

The Zero Waste Home: How to Get Started: I recently wrote an article for Yes! Magazine, which included 10 tips for a Zero Waste Household. I thought I would share them with you. The...

Free Range

2011-09-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Our experiment of free ranging our chickens last week was a semi-success! The chickens stayed fairly close and went right back into the pen. We did have to herd them in, following them with a rod. I think they see the rod and remember the crook Mr. Ireland used to transfer them to the big pen, which they disliked very much. Whatever the reason, they see a stick or pole and immediately run into the coop!

The reason I call it a "semi-success" is because I let them out again the next day and they wandered off! Here's what happened....

It was a lovely fall day. The sun was out, the grass was crisp and frost free. I was so pleased with how well the chicken's previous day out had gone that I decided to let them out again. They gladly galloped out of the pen. Convinced they would stay in rather close proximity to their coop, I went back indoors. I continued my day, making lunch for the kids, tackling home school projects....

Three hours later, I realized I had forgotten the chickens! I flew out the front door, ran around to the back yard and they were gone! I checked in the coop "Maybe they're all roosting," I said to myself, "it is very warm out today." The coop was empty. I started to panic and began frantically running around the house, looking for any trace of chickens - a cluck, a feather, a pile of feathers... I worried that they had been eaten or carried off, but I reminded myself that there were 12 chickens, and it wasn't likely that all 12 had met their demise. Then I wondered "Would a neighbor steal my chickens?" I doubted it, and continued to search. Our chickens are very noisy. Where could they be?

I ran down the driveway and made my way to my closest neighbor's house. She has 2 dogs and if those dogs were out, my chickens were in major trouble! I shouted up the driveway, announcing myself, hoping not to encounter the pit bull or the German shepherd at the front door, and notified my my neighbor that all of my chickens were out. She assured me the dogs had been in for quite a while and she hadn't seen or heard any chickens. At this point, I became very concerned with what Mr. Ireland would say when he came home. Oh, he would be so upset! He had spent so much time preparing the coop and fence and now I had come along and set the silly birds free!

I came back to the back yard, hoping to see them poking around the other out buildings. They were not. As I approached the coop and pen, I realized that I had not checked behind the coop. Walking just past the back of the coop, I caught a glimpse of feathers through the bushes. Could they be wandering in the woods? I followed the little trail through the adjacent acre and there, halfway down the path, were all of our chickens! They were flocked together, snacking on berries and lichens, a delicious feast I am sure. I found the crook and after 15 minutes of chasing then through bushes, managed to get them back into their pen.

I am so glad that we didn't lose a chicken to an eagle or dog! I will not be letting them out again. They can have a bigger pen next summer. I'll fence in the whole dang yard and they can eat grass until they pop! That's about as free range as it will get.

Egg hunt

2011-09-15T23:18:00.000-07:00

We are trying something new today. Letting the chickens free range in the back yard. Now you might think that this is a fine idea for chickens. If you live in the Midwest or keep a coop in the suburbs of a large city, this might not be a problem. Here in Alaska though, many chickens fall victim to bears while in their coop! Letting them wander about offers the chickens a buffet of grass, yarrow and nettles, sure, but their wandering could provide a buffet for predators! I was feeling sorry for them in their pen - they pecked the enclosed area clear of grass and leaves in the first few days! It may be that we extend the enclosure. The chickens are fairly well trained to go into the coop at night, and I think that they will stick close to their pen.

I thought you might get a chuckle out of the chicken's names. They have been named by the children:

Goldilocks - gold Auracana
Victor- the rooster that we originally named Violet
High Flier - middle sized Rhode Island (R.I) hen
Cinderella - smallest R.I. hen
Ms. Hawkins - white Auracana hen
Lucy - only Golden Wyndotte hen
Buck and Jack - Wyndotte Roosters
Percy - R.I. with lightest coloring
Toby - R.I. with yellow on her back
April -smallest R.I. hen
Shiloh - R.I. hen
Ninja - grey Auracana

One of the hens likes to sit on her eggs. I think it is Percy. She is not quite what I would call "broody", but she will probably sit very well in the spring. I suspect she is the hen laying 2 eggs a day, since I find her sitting on two almost every day. She refuses to let the boys move her and I have to go out to the coop and take her out of the nesting box. Prior to the nesting boxes being installed, she was laying in a corner. When I mucked out the coop, I found two more eggs buried in the layers of hay! She is going to make a good mother hen.

(Above, Callen making hot dog buns)

(Liam and Verity in the crib; Eddie reading to his brother and sister)

There is so much going on around here. I'll be back soon with some good stories and pictures (that actually . Hang in there, fall is nearly finished!

A Day in the Life..... a peak into my kitchen

2011-09-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

Today, my kitchen looks like a science lab. On one counter I have a large pot of milk inoculating, another pot of whey waiting to be recooked for ricotta cheese and a stand mixer with a dirty mixing bowl that was used to beat egg whites. Dinner is cooking on the stove, tortillas frying in coconut oil, black beans and ground beef melding with some onions in another pan. On another counter sits a tub of cheese curds, draining into a pie pan, with a plate and jar of salmon sitting on top as an improvised cheese press. And out on the back porch, an old electric ice cream maker is loudly spinning goats milk, cream and vanilla bean into dessert. Its been a busy day in the manor!

From this description, you might think that we have a spacious kitchen, and wall to wall counter tops. I assure you, it is far from it. It is a crowded and over worked space, currently holding 2 refrigerators, one of which is blocking a window and blocking out the day light. My cabinets hold more small appliances than I would care to admit I have. Because there are so many, several of the large, less used pieces are relegated to other areas of the house - the basement storage shelves, the bureau in the dining room. Some of the upper cabinets are screwed together, and screwed to the ceiling, because we found that some of them are not fastened to the wall correctly! I can't complain too much though - I do have a working gas range. Yeah, maybe it only has one oven rack, but it bakes a pie.

My kitchen is the center of my home. I cook to show my family how much I love them - birthday cakes, beef wellington, home made ice cream. These are my love letters to my family. Give me a working coffee pot and a dishwasher and I am pretty happy! It's my creative space. Someday it will be remodeled and perhaps become the kitchen of my dreams, but for now, I make it work.

I'm sharing this to encourage those who might feel like their hands are tied - their kitchen is tiny, only has a hot plate and a microwave, no dishwasher. Whatever the situation is, you can cook delicious, healthy foods for your family. Make use of what you have and try to enjoy the food itself, not the process.

Sabbath Egg

2011-09-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

We recieved our first little egg this morning! Edward was the lucky finder of the egg. We cracked it open and it had two little yolks! We made french toast with it so everyone could say they ate the first egg.

Our little egg next to a store bought "large" egg; two little yolks!

I have a secret to share -our children primarily care for the chickens. Every day each boy does their part: Callen brings them grain and feed, Brody brings kitchen scraps and weeds from the garden, and Eddie hauls their water and scrubs the dispenser. Eddie is also the one who lets the chickens out in the morning and shuts them in at night, so he has the privilege of bringing in the eggs. Mr. Ireland and I change out straw and check on the birds every other day. We don't expect the children to look for health problems. Caring for the chickens is a responsibility that we all share.

Having chickens is very educational too. Our littlest boy, Liam, can crow just like a rooster! He is very loud. We have also had some interesting conversations about where eggs come from, how chicks get in the eggs, and why the roosters jump on the backs of the hens! There is nothing that teaches children about mating like keeping animals!

Here are some photos from the early part of September. Verity is growing quickly - she is starting to reach for everything and watches me when I eat. I am trying to hold out on feeding her solids until she is 6 months, something I find hard to do when the baby is watching every bite I take.

The other pictures are of Edward holding an enormous mushroom found in the woods. It was so big we could see it from the dining room, growing an easy one hundred feet from the house to its dark hiding place down the hill. The boys tolerate my mushroom forays. They lost interest in identifying them, but they will still come pick them with me. I just love to find out what they are. We have yet to eat what we find, but that is because I am usually pregnant or nursing an infant and I don't think it is wise to try new mushrooms in those circumstances. I also refuse to feed them to others without trying them myself. We are very good at identifying a couple of choice edibles and may be ready next year. I have found a few mushrooms on our new property that I have never found before and I am so excited. Some of them can be used as dye, something that I will try this winter with the specimens I dried after picking. I also went to one of the clinics at the local mushroom festival yesterday and learned how to grow oyster mushrooms at home. I'll share results when I get around to these projects.

All of these were found on our property! The white one on the right had an icy cold root (stipe) - odd.

Hope you are having a wonderful fall. I was told that the first official day of fall for Alaska is today. I know seasons usually are marked by an equinox, but the seasons shift much earlier here. The trees and I think that it feels like fall, don't you?

Work IS Learning!

2011-08-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

Oh August. How you crush my spirits and hope of an Indian summer with your constant rains!!

Here we are, at the end of another month. I am at the beginning of a big "purge". Why would I do this to myself and my family, with everything we already have going on? Because there just isn't room or time to keep everything and have any hope at ever getting completely unpacked! I am at the beginning of a journey to a "zero waste" home. If you aren't sure what that is, it is a home that produces no waste. Is that possible with a family of 7? I'm not sure, but I'm working towards it. Slowly, mind you. I talked Mr. Ireland into getting trash service. He has always hauled our garbage to the transfer site, but we live on the opposite end of town now and it was obviously an inconvenience for the busy man. We were delighted to find that the can was only 1/3 full after the first week! With both of the wee ones in cloth diapers now, and me hauling the recycling in my car, we make just 3 bags of garbage a week! This is quite a decline, down from a bag a day! We try to be more mindful of our puchases - buying glass or paper packaging that can easily be recycled, baking more, buying second hand. The goal is to rid ourselves of as many unnecessary items as possible and free ourselves and our time up to work on hobbies or projects (instead of using it managing the mess). Family be warned: We plan to go zero waste for holidays and birthdays as well! More on that later :)

Liam holding his little sis, Verity

If I told you the husband and I spent the last Friday night out chasing chicks, would you believe me? *grin* After moving the chickens to their permanent pen and house, we looked out the kitchen window to see ALL of them roosting on the fence! Yes, we had forgot to provide a roost for our chickens on their first night in the coop! We have gone back and forth about what to use as a coop and finally, we chose to go with using an existing structure, the shed, which is well insulated and already wired for electricity. The bathtub that was stored in there is now in the basement, and all the cabinets we are saving for our kitchen redo have been moved to another out building. The chickens seem quite happy in their new home. The boys each had a turn helping their father with the project - Callen helped with the pen construction and Edward helped catch each bird and bring it to the new pen. Before we had a door up, and could shut them in at night, there were 3 little pullets that were out every night. They didn't just roost along the fence, but had hopped from the top of the new fence to the the top of the old pen, which made it difficult to bring them down from their 7' perch in the waning twilight. Our white Araucana seems to be the mastermind. What can I say but, Chickens are very entertaining!

The permanent coop and winter pen.

As you know, we home school. With the end of summer practically here, school should be starting. *Should* But... it isn't, at least not in our traditional way. With the decluttering project and the list of my projects around the house being pushed off for most of the spring and summer, our schooling will revolve around projects for a while. The boys have used graph paper to help me plan out my cuts for the chickens nesting boxes, using division to create a scale diagram of our pieces. We will be using math for a lot of our projects: "If we have 30 pairs of pants that Mom will never get around to repairing, and each pant leg can be cut to a 12" x 12" square, how many pairs of pants will we need to create a quilt that is 4' x 6'?" This is the year of "practical application!"

Some of our entries in the Kenai Peninsula Fair; Callen's pyramid, titled "Entombed", took a blue ribbon!

We are back to semi normal level of cooking and cleaning, though much of the daily labor is shared by our two oldest boys. Thank heaven for these handy children! I hope they are learning as much as I think they are - they could be very capable people if we work this right. :)

Alaska Rug Company

2011-08-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm loving these rugs from the Alaska Rug Company! They are based out of Port Bailey, Alaska, on Kodiak Island. The owners bought the old cannery and are cleaning it up, turning it into a full service tourist destination, and have been selling off what they can and reusing or upcycling other items. These rugs are made from ropes from the cannery.

I think I am in love with this rug particularly - very celtic! It would be a good addition to the front porch.

I do like this one, but there is no way it would stay white in our house!
Maybe it could go in the new bathroom?

Round is good...

Yep, I might need this one too!

I guess I know what I am saving up for next!

July flew by!

2011-07-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, it has been a month between posts. A dozen times, I have sat down to share what we are doing around here and every time I have been pulled away by a child that needs to nurse, needs a diaper, can't stop bickering with his brother... you get the idea. NOW, right now, the baby is sleeping, Liam is content and chores are done. So I might have a chance. I'll start with the biggest one:

We bought a new tub!!!

Long story short - two weeks ago, our freezer died (turns out it was fine) so I hopped on Craigslist to find one that might get us through and in the appliance section, there was a listing for a claw foot tub! Why it was there, I will never know, but there it was. Now, I've had my heart set on this tub since we first made an offer on this house and I knew it would be a while before we could afford it. At $1300 for the tub, plus the shower kit, it could have been forever. But here it was, listed for $600, with the kit!! So we shuffled finances (after clearing out our savings to buy a new freezer that we could have put off buying) and last Friday, Mr. Ireland and my brother Owen went to purchase the tub and bring it home! It is waiting in the shed for our bathroom remodel. All the major pieces for my bathroom (well, the girls bathroom) are waiting in the wings; I have the new mirror, the paint, the tub, the towel bar.... Everything but the tiles, which is really all we are waiting on.

By the way, we are still collecting bottle caps for our flooring and I am now collecting broken dishes and pottery to help with that. I have been saving any dish we break since we have been married, hoping to do a mosaic table or something, but I think I will use the pieces to create tile sheets for the bathroom. I haven't settled on a design, but the colors are greens, golds, whites and blues. If you have any of these lying around, let me know and I will take them off your hands! I'm open to odd, leftover tiles as well.

If you are wondering, the second floor bathroom is the boy's bathroom, and is also due for a remodel. I won't neglect them, I promise. First thing on the list: add a window to their dark bathroom! Something that will fit between the studs to make it an easy install, like a port window.

Lets see... Other interesting things from the month of July...

As I said, we thought our freezer died, so we bought a new one to replace it. We had planned on purchasing one this fall and then shifting the older, small one upstairs to become a refrigerator. When we got the new one home, we plugged it in and nothing happened! Huh. Mr. Ireland is a good electrician. He tests things before rushing off to spend money, trust me. It wasn't the outlet and it obviously wasn't the new freezer. No, it was the tip switch! In both freezers! Apparently the house had shifted enough to trip the tip switch (say that 5 times, fast) and shut it off. I blame all the earthquakes we've been having. We had already purchased the freezer, so we rotated everything anyway. Lesson learned!

We also had a fire drill! One of the electrical outlets in the nursery started smoking! Thankfully, we were all up and it was early in the morning, so Mr. Ireland was home. He smelled an electrical fire and we all ran out the front door in our pajamas, me with the littlest 2 in my arms, and piled the kids into the car. Mr. Ireland ran down the steps into the basement and started flipping breakers to isolate the bedroom. This is something that we have not done - label our circuit board! But he quickly found it and later that day, replaced the receptacle with a brand new one. It turns out that a piece of a plastic outlet plug had somehow started a fire in the outlet! Like a friend of mine said "Aren't those child safety devices supposed to make your house more safe?" We will be switching to child proof outlet covers. I am very proud of how our boys responded to the "fire drill".

Fourth of July fun with red, white & blueberry popsicles; the enigmatic Mr. Ireland, watching the parade with Liam.

Other than that, not much is happening around Ireland Manor. We are gearing up to move our chickens to a bigger coop and yard. Something that will stay fairly warm through the winter, so probably up against the exterior of the house to utilize the heat coming off of it.
The chickens are nearly grown and should start laying around the end of September. Our roosters have started crowing, but we have not had any complaints yet. We have great fun watching the chickens defend their feed from the Steller's jays, running straight at them when the get too close! Our Araucana's seem to be the fiercest.

Chickens!

The potatoes are growing well and I have managed to find a few minutes to bury the plants as they grow. With any luck, we will have a good deal of potatoes for the winter.
I have not finished my garden as I had planned, but I am learning to forgive myself and continue to acquire the wood mulch for the flower beds. I am determined to have it done before the snow flies!
I have also decided to forgive myself for not fishing or canning fruits and veggies this summer. We have never had a baby this late in the spring and I have to say, it has really put a crimp in my summer plans! I wouldn't trade our little girl for the world, of course, but sitting still during the summer is a difficult task for me! Before long, she will sleep regularly and I will be able to resume a semi normal day of homeschooling, cooking, cleaning and projects. And I'm guessing she will be my best little helper :)

Little Verity; the whole motley crew :)

Hope you are enjoying the lovely summer we are having in Alaska - beautiful, warm sunny days and the lovely rain at night (which means I haven't had to drag the hose out even once to water the potatoes!). I'm ready for August! Are you?

Flown the coop

2011-06-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Our little girl is now a month old and I have not posted since I announced her birth! I know, I know... I said I would post more frequently. I spoke too soon. Who knew it would be so hard to find time to sit down at the computer with a newborn (and 4 other children) and write for 10 minutes? I'll give you a brief update on what's been happening around here and then I will try to get back on schedule ;)

Callen and Liam at the park; Liam with a bug bite, early June. Poor kid! Bites near the eye are the worst!

Our chickens have a new home! Just days after Verity was born, they were evicted from the basement and are now in the back yard, in a chain link kennel left behind by the previous owners. Mr. Ireland put the left behind dog house in the kennel, stuffed the dog house with straw and topped the kennel with some boards to keep eagles and owls out. I miss their little peeping noises, but the smell of straw and chickens was starting to get to us, and there is a fine dust left behind in the basement, so I am glad they are out! This set up is temporary. Once I find my feet again, we will start working on a permanent coop and fencing a yard.

Sadly, just as we moved the chickens out, more tenants moved in. Unwelcome guests... ANTS.

We have ants! At first we thought that maybe they were random ants out on scout, or perhaps the abundant rain this month was driving them indoors. We decided that there were just too many ants to not be worried. There must be a nest somewhere, hopefully not in our walls, and we haven't seen anything in the basement to indicate a nest there. They are the most abundant in the kitchen, yet they don't appear to be looking for crumbs (and Lord knows there are plenty of those around right now!), nor have I found them in the bathroom, both areas where you expect to see ants because of the ready sources of food and water. Our suspicion is that they nested in the pump house over the winter (after Mr. Ireland destroyed their lovely log home last summer), which is attached to our basement, and are following the pipes into the house. Mr. Ireland bought ant bait to tuck under the cabinets and stove, and he sprayed the exterior of our house with cayenne and vinegar solutions. We have also moved the honey and sugar off the counters and keep them wiped off, using a vinegar solution. It seems to be working.

Mr. Ireland cleared the shed and moved the cabinets for our kitchen redo into it.
Anyone want an engine block?

Finally, just this week, the end of June, we have established some garden beds for vegetables. The boys helped me use a roll of news print to put down long rows of paper over the (tall) grass. Our outline was destroyed by Liam tripping and dragging toys over the orange tape, but we managed to make our beds fairly straight. Next week we will plant our (surviving) veggie starts, finish the smaller beds that will flank the steps and lay newspaper and dirt around my established plants. I am so pleased that all my plants that were transferred from the old house have survived the winter. I split my irises and peonies into many new plants and they all seem to be growing! If I can get my beds in, the next step is putting wood chips or gravel down for the permanent pathways and if I finish that, I may treat myself to a trip to the peony garden in Homer this fall to purchase some new plants!

Boys helping me lay newspaper and wet it while Dad moves dirt. Callen had the fun job of raking
the dirt out. It all goes to show that if you nag people enough....

We are slowly getting the hang of having 5 kids. It has been tough to figure out what "normal" is now , but every day feels a bit more successful. I have been very blessed to have Mr. Ireland home for the first two weeks after the baby was born, and again for the last several days.

Over the last month I have finally been able to sit back, look around at the house and really see and appreciate all the work that we have done over the past year. It was stressful, mostly because of the push to get unpacked before the baby arrived, but it was worth it. Now that my hands are full with a tiny baby and what little time we have is devoted to cooking and sometimes cleaning, unpacking would be impossible! It can still get overwhelming when I think about all that is yet to be done, knowing that we are only 1/3 of the way to being "finished", but we are slowing down and pacing ourselves now. It's time for more fun! We've earned it :)

It's a girl!

2011-05-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

She's here! Our new baby was born Friday, May 27th, just a few hours after my last post! I guess those contractions were serious after all!

Her name is Verity and she was born at "Ireland Manor", delivered by Mr. Ireland himself. She weighed in at 8 # 6 oz and is 20 inches long. She is lovely and tiny, with long delicate fingers and feet. She also has a full head of lovely red hair, which I suspect will end up being a beautiful shade of strawberry blonde.

We are resting and nesting around here, so I may not post for a while (nor will there be any projects or improvements to speak of.) I just wanted to share the news with you. Ta ta!

So done.

2011-05-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

I knew this point would come. The point when I had to throw up my hands and say "I'm done!"

Last weekend, my feet began to swell while sitting at the sewing table. So, though I am not done making the last of the diapers, I have to call it quits. Its uncomfortable and alarming to see your feet swollen! The same goes for the rose bushes - they can wait another month or year.
At this point in pregnancy, I should be focusing on having a baby, not finishing up projects! The only thing that got finished are the projects I asked for help with... :)

I did manage to get the potatoes all in the ground this week. I have quite a bit of garden left to layer, and as long as I don't go into labor, I plan to get some of it done each day. I am actually hoping it will START my labor! The goal was to get the potatoes planted, but I have pumpkin, zucchini, cauliflower, and broccoli starts waiting to go in, not to mention the veggies seeds waiting to be directly sewn. Tomorrow's project is corn! This is a new one for me and I anticipate a grand failure, but hope for some small success.

Our chickens are still doing really well. We have done absolutely nothing to prepare their coop! I am glad they have a few more weeks to stay in, because we need the time!

Maybe my next post will be a birth announcement. If I go another week, maybe it will be a post about how my garden is finished and everything is planted! Maybe.

May day? Mayday!

2011-05-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today I have a couple of hours to myself. Nearly. The three oldest boys have gone fishing with Dad this morning, so I am home with just one child! What does a mother of 4 (soon to be 5) do with a few hours to herself? Chores? No. I'm watching television. Lame. I should be working on that stack of sewing, or a million other projects that need to be done before I go into labor, but I haven't figured out how to keep the little one busy while I do that. Instead I'm watching reruns of Monarch of the Glen!

Liam pulled everything out of one of the homeschool cabinets and emptied the contents of each box.
Wasn't that thoughtful of him?

This week was fairly productive. I managed to find a sunny afternoon to paint the nursery dresser out on the porch. Sometime during the second coat, our 5 year old locked the front door! So, the oldest boys and I are locked out, me in paint clothes (might as well be pajamas!) and Liam is locked inside, having just awoke from his nap and was, thankfully, in his crib in the nursery. I didn't even have shoes on or my cell phone handy! Everyone kicks their rubber boots off on the porch at our house, so I was able to put on Mr. Ireland's boots and clomp next door to use the neighbor's phone. Mr. Ireland came home, the baby was very upset at being left so long in his bed, but eventually forgave me (with the help of some chocolate chips) and while stuck out of the house, I put several coats of paint on that dresser! I think the paint should be cured by now and I am more than ready to have it's contents gathered from the corners of my house and replaced in the drawers.

Newly painted dresser, without the hardware, but back in place.

We also completed our homeschool 4th quarter requirements this week. Work samples and progress reports for the two oldest boys are mostly done. Our sample for Music is still out. Edward, our oldest, has a new conga drum he has been practicing on and I have convinced him to play a duet with me! Eddie is a great drummer. Unfortunately, I seem to have a hard time playing the piano with a percussionist accompanying me, but with any luck, we will get it together and be able to record a decent run through. I have to admit, I'm a bit of an "unschooler" and most of our work samples were pictures of projects the boys have helped with around the house, like the garden, the chickens and the vegetable starts. What better way is there to learn than to try your hand at something new?

Incan "artifacts", made by Callen and Edward for our history studies of early explorers.

I took a whack at trimming the rose bushes back this week. I felt like I had cut quite a lot of the canes, but I think it may need to be pruned back even further. The rose bushes are starting to bud and now is the time to cut it back, while I can see what has been damaged or broken and what is still living. Maybe I will even relocate one of the plants while I am at it... We did not get very far with our dirt moving on Mother's Day and now we are waiting for a sunny, windless day to finish it. Will it get done before the baby arrives? I have no idea.

Jumbled mess of rose bushes.

Our chickens from last week have new companions! Five new pullets and two little roosters. Our roosters are named "Jack" and "Buck", but none of the new girls have names yet. They are so fluffy and cute! I will get some good pictures of our flock and post them next week.

My mountain of sewing is calling to me from the sewing room. Everything is cut and ready to go, Liam is down for a nap and so I should begin my two day sewing marathon!

Happy Mother's Day! Our new babies!

2011-05-08T13:57:00.001-07:00

Nope, our new human baby has not arrived yet. We have just about 2 weeks until the due date for him or her.

We DO have new animal babies, though! We picked up the first half of our chicks yesterday! We have 5 Rhode Island Reds and they are absolutely adorable. We have a pen and light set up in the laundry room for the chicks. The kids have been running down to the basement to check on them at every opportunity. They were making so many trips down there that I had to implement a "no one goes to the basement without bringing something down/up" rule. Now they take the recycling down or bring laundry up just so they can go visit the chicks!

Chicks on the far left, fresh out of the box; Boys checking out our new babies!

The boys have named most of our chicks: Violet is the loudest and appears to be the leader of the tiny flock, Shiloh is the shyest and likes to spend most of her time curled up in the box (our tiny hen house), Percy is the yellowest chick, Toby (hm, did a Thomas the Tank Engine fan name two of our chicks?) has a little orange on her back, and honestly, I don't think the fifth chick has a name yet. Hup, hold up.... The fifth chick is now named April. Next Saturday we will go pick up the rest of our chicks.

Sewing has been my other focus this past week. I sewed a pair of red curtains for the master bedroom. Really, I folded a twin sheet (bought on sale, with coupons, for about $2 each! ) at the top, creating a built in valance, and stitched a rod pocket. One sheet per window, so I will put a tie back on each window and call it good. My plans for nursery curtains have changed. I remembered that I have a set of white damask, tab top curtains in the basement and I think I will hang those in the nursery instead. Maybe I will use the giraffe print for valances and a crib skirt instead.

I have also been preparing a stack of cloth diaper covers, for both the new baby and Liam, who has outgrown the other covers. They are all cut and ready to sew this next week. I'm hoping that Mr. Ireland will be more willing to use the cloth diapers if they are prestuffed and he doesn't have to fasten a cloth diaper. He can change it just like a disposable and drop it into the bucket, no fuss. I will be making a few more wool diaper covers also.

I gave up on making some long nightgowns for myself (again) and will try to tackle that one again at the end of the summer. I gave in and purchased one. It doesn't matter what I have going on in my life, sewing always gets put off till the last. I am soooo lucky to have an aunt that lives close by and is helping me do some of this sewing! Thanks, Auntie Barb!

Later today, while our youngest takes a nap, Mr. Ireland, the big boys and I will go work in the yard and get our garden ready. We staked out the beds a couple weeks ago and today we will lay down newspaper and top it with soil (a semi-lasagna garden). I think we will plant our potatoes while we are at it too, since the frost seems to be nearly finished (and I will be far to pregnant to try to do it in the coming weeks). I am really looking forward to having my own vegetable garden! My irises and rhubarb are just starting to send up shoots, the peonies too, and I even have some raspberries trying to send out leaves. It's going to be a fun summer!

I am really trying to relax as I make final preparations for our impending arrival. Two weeks will go by very quickly, especially when I am busy submitting final work samples for homeschool, putting a few more meals in the freezer and sewing. Yeah, we have gardening, chores and chickens all mixed in there, but for me, this is as close to "nothing going on" as I get!

One last thing... A couple pictures of our youngest son, doing one of his favorite things... vacuuming! Lets hope he continues to love it as he gets older. I may have someone to take that chore over!

Liam vacuuming, 18 months; 9 months

Happy Mother's Day!

April Projects

2011-05-02T22:07:00.001-07:00

I really should be posting on a more often. We may not be working on huge projects, but there are so many small ones that I have a hard time remembering everything that was finished in the last month! Can I blame it on "pregnancy brain"? Maybe a little... Posting once a week would help me stay on track and also let me share more of what happens with the inhabitants of Ireland Manor, not just our projects. I also might have a chance at keeping Liam out of everything if I wasn't taking so much time posting pictures!

Boys and I, heading out for Passover Seder.

As you know, I retextured the nursery a few weeks ago. The wall color is lovely, but that's really all I have done in there. Mr. Ireland installed the shelves in the closet and put the doors on. The changing table is still sitting on the porch, sanded and waiting for new paint and hardware. As for curtains and a chair cover.... They are on the list, but they may not get done before the baby arrives. Liam loves the room, though. His favorite thing to do is open the curtains first thing in the morning and look for the snowshoe hare's that like to nibble grass and twigs in the yard. Pretty exciting for a toddler.

Clockwise: Nursery before, mid retexture, nursery after, Liam feeding his baby.

Dresser, still sitting on the porch.

I FINALLY finished the homeschool area! All the boxes are gone (well, almost all of them) and we have a table to work at! I was so excited to have a nice, big, empty table that I promptly started another project and now the table is full of seedling trays. We can call that a homeschool project, right?

I did manage to make curtains for the boy's bedroom in April. With the sun now setting sometime after 10 p.m., they were staying up later and later into the night because their room faces west. The curtains are black cotton, unlined. They don't block out all light, but they help. We will have to get black-out roller shades to achieve real darkness. At least they can go to bed without a night light, right now.

What else did we do in April.....?

Oh, Mr. Ireland traded the living room fan with the light fixture over the stair well, and installed a HUGE fan in the living room. Our third floor really heats up in the summer, but with 2 fans circulating air, I should be able to survive the heat. The living room fan was a gift from my friend Joy and matches (our future plans for decorating) perfectly! Its just lovely.

Mr. Ireland and I found a day to clean our bedroom during my spring cleaning week. We dusted and moved boxes to the basement and made room for a baby bassinet in our room. It is always nice to have a chair to sit in while feeding a baby at midnight, so we moved my rocking chair from the living room into our room. We have found that the master bedroom is always the last room to get unpacked and organized, so we are very proud to have a bedroom that we can leave the door open to when we have company over. Curtains for our room should be finished soon.

Accordion coat racks are a standard fixture in our house. These are vintage and I love them! Can you guess which one is mine?

I put more things away in the basement, trying to reclaim some of our floor space. I can send a child down to fetch something with a 75% chance of having them find it, so things must be mostly organized. Last of all, the boys and I staked out the garden beds that will be within the rock wall. We have plans to lay our newspaper down and move dirt on Mother's Day. The wall is on my list for the summer, probably somewhere at the end of the season. Having a new born could bump it to next summer, which is fine by me. Some other kind of fencing will have to go up for the summer, though, just to keep the moose out.

View of the garden outline from the front steps, left to right; Attempting to organize the basement.

May is here and with just 3 weeks until the baby should be appearing, I have finally turned my attention to sewing. Check back soon to hear about our new arrivals and gardening adventures!

The nursery is retextured!

2011-04-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

Its hard to believe, but baby #5 is on the way and this is the first time we will have a dedicated nursery! The three big boys all share one (large) room upstairs and our toddler and the new baby will be sharing the nursery. It is so nice to have a place for changing diapers and age appropriate toys, not to mention a convenient place to store baby clothes. Most of our children's hand-me-down/future size clothing is stored in totes under the basement storage shelves, but baby clothes get changed out so frequently, I could spend all my time bring totes up and down the stairs to keep up with a growing infant! Having them in the nursery will simplify things.

You might wonder why I would be so set on redecorating the nursery this late in my pregnancy... well....
We painted the nursery walls with a pale yellow (a can of "oops" paint), after we hung new sheet rock on the ceiling last summer, but I have been so bothered by the patch job on some of the walls (done by the previous owners) that I just HAD to redo it before I could allow Mr. Ireland to put trim up. It bothers me that much! I figured that it was easier to displace one child for two nights now, than to wait until there were 2 little ones who had to be moved out and worked around.

See that square in the upper right portion of the wall? There are 3 of those around the room and squares of glue (not visible to you) everywhere, I'm assuming from having large tiles glued to the walls? Maybe panelling? Whatever, it's irritating.

Here are some nursery befores:

I retextured the walls over 2 days, mixing my new paint into the mud to make the walls a darker, more golden yellow. It took me about 5 hours to do hand texture 4 walls. Its not perfect (I have never mixed paint into my texture before and it was not predictable) but I love the new color and the aged look of the walls now. It fits the house much better.

There are many small things left to be done in the nursery: sew new curtains (from giraffe print bed sheets bought on clearance), add a shelf above the dresser, make a red slip cover for the chair, add shelves in the closer (cut and ready to go), install the closet doors (waiting in the basement), paint the dresser that I use for a changing table (and replace drawer glides and hardware), and hang art work. It's not a difficult makeover, but those little projects can be time consuming.

I was able to get the paint for the dresser and 4 bags of mud for the bedroom all on clearance this week! It came to a whopping total of $25 for all of it (which is saying a lot when the original total would have been close to $80)! I bought the VOC free paint for the walls back in January when it was on clearance, marked down to $10 a gallon from $32 and was able to choose my colors. The laminated shelves for the closet were not on sale, but I made sure I had them cut before I left the store, so that saves me a lot of work at home.

Here is my swatch palette:

Curtain fabric, accent and dresser color, current rug and flooring, new walls!

If I have time, I will make a crib skirt and bumper from the giraffe print. We'll see. My sewing list gets longer and longer and my due date seems to be racing at me! I should have new pictures up next week, so check back soon!

In like a lamb, out like a....

2011-04-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Well I would say "lion" but I'm not so sure our progress here has mirrored that idiom. We did start March off slowly, working on little projects (yay office!) and now we are ramping up to bigger and bigger things! I would like to say that I'm not in full prebaby panic, but the fact that we are taking this week off school so I can organize the house says otherwise. The last of the boxes are nearly unpacked and I will be able to focus completely on the nursery.

I'm going to keep it simple and just post pictures of March's projects. Enjoy!

*Disclaimer: These pictures have not been staged. I live in this house with 5 male occupants and consequently, my house will never look like a show room. So expect to see stuff! :) *

Preparing to put the last 2 sets of shelves up in the basement; After the shelves are in and randomly stuffed with our junk. At least its up off the floor....mostly. Thanks, Mr. Ireland, for moving all that stuff!

Our new (craigslist) dining room chairs, waiting for the new table. The old table and benches were moved up to the homeschool area (finally!); Mr. Ireland building said table (love him for taking on a project that I was supposed to do myself); New table! Seats 10! We will bring it outside again this summer and I will sand and stain it. We are still looking for 4 more chairs, by the way.

Gorgeous new cabinet that was given to us! We moved our silverware and most of my canning and other random utensils into the drawers. I LOVE the retro look of it too! ; Unpacked all the frequently used cookbooks to the cupboard above the stove. These two changes allowed me to get rid of the stack of boxes in my kitchen (and prevent the toddler from destroying more books or dishes!)

My seedling trays - each carton is full of egg shells that have been cracked in the upper 1/3 and set back in the tray empty. Free seedling pots!; My crazy green house contraption in our living room. Started tomatoes and celery first (celery is in the shells) .

Dining room curtains (thrift store find!) before being dyed; Dining room curtains after being dyed. The color is not quite as I had imagined it, but Mr. Ireland likes them, so they will stay. I had a difficult time choosing between tan or green. *Shrug* They're OK.

As I said, I did get some work done in my office. New shelves went in, lots of organizing, but I recently cleared the upstairs hallway of all its boxes, which were "redistributed" to the basement and... my office!

April has been very busy so far. We have tackled a big project every Sunday. There will be many more pictures to share. The nursery is our last big project and I have the room prepped and my materials ready to begin work this very afternoon! I plan on sitting back to relax after this weekend, before baby #5 arrives (in about 5 weeks) and working on the mountain of sewing in my office. Wish me luck!

Soda bread the way it should be....

2011-04-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty busy around Ireland Manor! We have stocked up on paint for the summer (it was all on sale!) and all our basement shelves are built. We even found time to clean the master bedroom and made room for a bassinet for the new baby (due in 7 weeks!). While you wait for pictures and postings of our recent projects and progress, I thought I'd share one of my favorite recipes with you.

If Americans know anything about Irish cuisine (and they don't) its that every meal (which must be corned beef and cabbage, right?) is accompanied by soda bread. You know, white, sweet, raisin or caraway seed speckled bread. But I don't call that soda bread. That is tea bread. Really, its nothing more than a giant scone! If you want something to serve with jam and tea, you can't go wrong with a tea bread or a scone. But if you want something to go along with your meat and potatoes, lamb stew or to make grilled Kerrygold cheese sandwiches, you want something closer to bread. Well look no further!

This is my all time favorite TRUE soda bread - mixed in one bowl, using soda, tartar and buttermilk for leavening and using a combination of fine and coarse flours. Its darker, its not as sweet as other soda breads and there is nothing better than a hunk of it with a slice of cheese and a pint of porter.

This recipe is being reprinted WITHOUT permission. It can be found in the excellent cookbook The Irish Heritage Cookbook, written by Margaret M. Johnson. Each recipe is accompanied with some historic or local background, making this cookbook an essential in any Irish American cook's kitchen. I have added my comments in parenthesis:

Mills Inn Brown Soda Bread

2 cups coarse whole-wheat flour or 1 cup each wheat bran and old-fashioned oatmeal (If you'd like to try something even more authentic, try this flour from King Arthur Flours.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (who knew you could use it for something other than meringues!)
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cold butter (closer to room temp if you will be using my mixing method)
2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 F. Lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan (olive oil works great).

In a large bowl, stir the flours or wheat bran and oatmeal, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar and sugar together. With a pastry cutter, 2 knives or your fingers (this is the method I use, though you could do this part in a food processor), cut or work the butter into the dry ingredients to the texture of coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center and add the buttermilk. With a wooden spoon (or your hand), mix until a soft dough is formed (I mix this together using the flip method: scoop under the flour and flip it over, rotating the bowl as you go to incorporate the milk and flour).

(If you have mixed the dough with your hand, keep flipping dough until it forms a cohesive, smooth ball, kneading gently. Stop when the dough sticks together and comes clean away from all sides of the bowl. Transfer dough ball to the prepared tin or cake pan.)
Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead lightly, just enough to form a large ball. Flour your hands if necessary for easier handling. (We just skipped this.)
Flatten slightly. With a sharp knife, make a cross on the top. (Do not cut down into your dough too far making your cross, only about 1/4-1/2 an inch.)
Place the dough in the prepared pan (done earlier) and bake until the bread is lightly browned and sounds hollow when tapped, 35 to 40 minutes.

Now, go eat it!

Small but important changes

2011-02-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I expected my next post to be filled with pictures of the enormous strides we had made on our house. It is not. It is, however, filled with pictures of the few things that we have done and these have made a great impact on our daily lives. After sickness stole the last 2 weeks of January and the first 2 weeks of February from us, we still feel like we have made some progress. Most of all, we have scaled back our goals for winter projects, partly because of the baby that is due in May and also because of sickness that has just taken over this winter!

Homeschool area before....

First, I have spent more time working in the homeschool area. It has changed yet again, but these are the most recent pictures. They do not show how our area currently looks, though its in a similar layout. It functions, which is really all I can ask for. We are in the market for some dining room chairs, which would allow us to bring our current dining table and benches up to the homeschool area, so if you hear of any for sale, let me know. Two sets of 4 will work, or a total of 8-10. They do NOT have to match, but they do have to be sturdy and in good condition!

Homeschool area after... You can see in the second picture that a pile of boxes hides off to my right!

Second closet before, and after.The challenge of before & after pictures is taking them before the kids make a mess!

Second, the older boys bedroom has really changed and I can now say (drum roll please!) ... they are unpacked! Woohoo! To walk into their room and not step on toys or find boxes of books with clothing hiding in the top is a wonderful feeling! It is so nice, I feel like I can spend time in there without getting upset at the condition of their space. I wish I had taken more "before" pictures, but oh well. Art drawers found a new home in the homeschool area, we added another 2 towers of wire drawers for clothing (building the laundry basket drawers was mathematically and practically impossible in this space) and with the new wall shelves, a book case was freed up for its intended purpose (it had been housing Callen's collections). The recliner from the homeschool area fit nicely in their room and there was enough room for the roll away bed in one of the closets! A clean room, ready for a sleep over! Aside from trim, all that is missing are curtains for the windows and closet.

Clockwise from top: book shelf at far end of bunkbed holds the turtle tank and is no longer surrounded by boxes!; view standing in front of bunk, to the right; view standing in front of bunk, to the left (1st closet, recliner, rollaway and small child or two in tunnel); project table and new wall shelves across from bed, looking toward 1st door to room.

Callen, boy #2, is our collector and the biggest challenge of this space was convincing him that he cannot keep every thing he has ever touched! He had collections of bullet shells, coins, rocks, bottle caps, notes from friends, small toys... You name it, he had it! All this in addition to the Legos and Bionicle figures! We had provided a work table for him and it just seemed to get more and more cluttered, each completed project becoming another item for his "collection" instead of being disassembled and returned to the lego bin. We provided a camera and album for pictures of his projects, hoping he would document them and then let them go. He didn't. NOW, we have downsized his work area, with the hope that his work space will be more precious to him than the projects, offered our services as digital documentors for his creations, and organized his lego bins and left him with the threat that a messy area or any hoarding of projects would result in a suspension from legos! At the moment, there is room for his two brothers to keep their modest collections on the new shelves....

Lego storage, project table and shelves.

Last of all, Mr. Ireland has cleared space for the final 2 sets of shelves in the basement. I am so excited! The last set made such a big impact on the state of the basement. The shelves sat empty for a few weeks while we were sick and then he filled them and started clearing another area for new construction all in the same day, so I don't have pictures of that transition. I promise to run down immediately and get some "before" pictures before he begins building this time! When all the shelves are done, we can turn our attention to preparing our bedroom and the nursery for another baby :) Maybe someday I will get around to my office and the upstairs hallway...

Do the hustle, the shuffle, the box step....

2011-01-16T21:54:00.001-08:00

Whatever you want to call it, I have been reorganizing! Sometimes it feels like I move a pile of boxes from one end of the room to the other, then back again, and today that's pretty much all I did!
Eddie, covering his ears while Dad loudly assembles the shelves.

After Mr. Ireland finished the second set of storage shelves in the basement (pictured above), I offered to absorb his misplaced plastic shelves and give them a home in my sewing room. Of the three sets of shelves that were holding his tools, I chose the tallest. The other 2 will find homes in my laundry area in the basement. My sewing room is far from perfect, and has been shuffled 3 times now in the 6 months we have lived here! The "after" picture will be posted in a few days but, here is are a couple "before" pictures for your evaluation...

Two views of my sewing room from the doorway...

I am very proud of the progress in the living room! I set out to clear the homeschool area and at least get important materials for the remainder of the year onto a bookshelf. Up until now (yes, I know it is the end of the first semester), I have been digging through boxes for teachers manuals and text books for the boys, yelling and working myself up when I can't find what I know we need. This will really help with both my irritation and school for the year. And now that the walls are not blocked by boxes, I can hang a white board and move our table up! Yay me!

Before; After. Anyone want a TV?

Tomorrow, the boys and I will go shopping for supplies to finish my office, the nursery and if we have time, dye our curtains for the dining room that I found at a thrift shop.

Want to help? Bottle caps for food!

2011-01-03T11:12:00.001-08:00

Our second son, Callen, collects bottle caps. For a long time, I tried convincing him that a collection should be only the best bottle caps, free from dents or scratches. He finally explained to me that he was going for quantity, not quality! Three gallons containers later, he has quite the collection going and his father and uncles have started leaving small piles of bottle caps for him to find. His little brother, Brody, has even decided to start his own collection.. of wine corks! He's off to a pretty good start too, with corks from as far away as Israel!

Knowing that at some point this collection would exceed its owner's storage capacity or possibly interest, Callen decided that he would sell his collection and give part of the money to children in poverty. What a sweet boy! A while back I saw an article in Back Home magazine about using bottle caps and wine corks as flooring tile (called the Bone House, click here for pictures of the house) .

I offered to buy the containers from my son when we are ready to remodel the bathroom and use stick tile sheet to create flooring for the bath. Now, our bathroom is not large, but I suspect that it will take a LOT more bottle caps than he has, currently, to tile it. Here is my request:

If you want to help make his little dream come true (and help me tile my bathroom in a unique way) start saving your bottle caps from beer and soda bottles (and corks, if you wish)! Callen would be thrilled to receive them in whatever quantity you send or bring them and I will help him choose which organization to send the money to after I purchase all the caps from him. Start a milk jug or pickle jar, pretzel container, tissue box, whatever, and mail them, drop them by, or ask for a pick up! It will be neat to see what kind of funds he can raise and I think our bathroom will be really cool. I'm going to give this a deadline of June, which I will extend if we don't get around to remodeling the bathroom this spring/summer.

Contact me for an address :) Thanks!

Gotta get up....

2011-01-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

Its the new year and its time to start work on the house again. Really, we have had a nearly 2 month break and we are fed up with living out of boxes and working around unfinished projects. January and February are usually slow at work for Mr. Ireland and he can finally spend some time on things at home. We are also expecting another baby, so we are quite motivated to get as much done before he/she arrives in May!

We are setting a fairly easy pace - one major project a month, sprinkled with smaller projects throughout the house. January is devoted to shelving!! Mr. Ireland will finish building storage shelves in the basement, which will go a looooong way toward getting the rest of the house organized, and I will work on smaller shelving projects. The big boys are in desperate need of a new clothing storage system and a couple of large shelves in the closets to help get the toys up off the floor, and the nursery needs 2 shelves in the closet before I can install the closet doors. With another baby on the way, it is time for the nursery to be finished!

This is my plan for the upstairs bedroom closet - a dresser made out of laundry baskets! I love Ana White's site - I've been following her for a long time and now that her blog has transformed into a sponsored site, I am thrilled to have a whole list of building projects for our house that are based on her plans! I will be building 4 of these units, giving 4 baskets for each boy, using the 16x16 square baskets instead of the rectangular ones. This size will be much more manageable for children and the plans are really easy to change out. I'll post pictures when I'm finished.

A plan for the rest of the year is shaping up. The list is long, but if we can get most of it done, we will be pleased. Its not a resolution list, but here is our list for January - September projects (at which point we stop working because Mr. Ireland's schedule is too full for projects!):

Shelves, shelves, shelves
Trim and moulding in all rooms
Upstairs flooring installed
Complete kitchen remodel
Remodel downstairs bath
Refinish/repair floors in dining and kitchen
Paint upstairs bath, replace shower stall and linoleum
Retexture nursery, repaint
Master bedroom flooring installed
Build dining table, install new light fixtures
Finish basement projects - shelves, coat rack, laundry area
Replace heating duct and vents throughout house
Remove chimney and repair ceiling and roof
Repair front porch roof, build dormer over steps
Build chicken coop/barn for goats, install fencing
Get garden prepped for planting
Work on garden wall

That's a long list! Huh. Guess I should get to work!

Happy New Year!

Jam Winner!

2010-11-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

Old fashioned hat draw :) Number 9 wins!

Out of the possible 10 entrants (not counting the deleted comments, of course), the winner of the jam giveaway was.... comment # 9, Cecelia D.! I will gladly deliver these in person, since Mrs. D and family live in Soldotna :) Congratulations!!

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend everyone :)

Our Mouse

2010-11-25T16:59:00.001-08:00

Now that Thanksgiving dinner has been picked over and our children are settling into their beds, watching a movie on their ceiling (thanks to this cool little gift from Auntie Barb), I can turn my attention to the coming holidays and fun winter activities.

The boys and I will be going to the Nutcracker play in Homer again this year. If you can't make it to the Nutcracker Ballet in Anchorage, the Nutcracker in Homer is an altogether wonderful, different experience, and is far cheaper to attend. The boys favorite scene in the Nutcracker story is, of course, the battle between the toy soldiers and the mice. Swords clanging, a mutated mouse who has made himself the king, a violent, bloody death. Whats not to love? Its too bad they weren't around for my encounter with a mouse in our house!

Late one night, last month, I woke to make a bottle for our baby. I shuffled into the kitchen, following the light from the lamp on the piano. The kitchen was completely dark, but I navigated my way to the range and turned on the burner under the kettle. I flipped on the range hood light just after lighting the burner and as my eyes adjusted to the light, something moved off to the left on the counter! I stepped back and just then a little mouse darted out from behind the bottles of oil and vinegar on the counter. He ran to the edge of the counter, noticed me standing there and ran around for a moment, searching for another escape route. And then... he ran INTO the flame under the kettle! I wasn't sure if he had survived and I smelled singed fur. I was shocked! He had wanted to escape so badly that diving into the fire was better than facing me!

I can skin a caribou and swing a hammer, but mice bother me. They're sneaky and I worry about stepping on one in the dark! I made my husband get up to check that the mouse wasn't dead and laying under my cook top, and after he set some rodent poison behind the stove, we went back to bed. We know that the mouse was making his trips to the kitchen via the holes left (presumably for plumbing repairs) that are still unfixed behind the stove. He didn't go for the poison. A week or so later, my husband wakes me up by shushing me while I was sleeping (do I snore?) and tells me to listen.... the mouse is in our bedroom, nibbling on what is probably a chip or nut dropped by one of us during our bedtime snacking (guilty). Since then, we have heard the mouse in the walls, the dining room ceiling, and most frequently - our bedroom (we have GOT to stop snacking!) It seems like our mouse is now a permanent resident. For now, I'm okay with that. He's a hearty little sucker.

Its Jam week!

2010-11-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

A couple times a year, I make jam. A whole lotta jam! I typically don't have time to make jam when I pick our raspberries in August and September so I freeze my berries and make seedless jam later. November is a good time for this. In the spring, I do strawberry and mango.

This year, I helped pick a friend's raspberries because she had a broken leg. Her raspberries added to mine (from the old house), the ones my mom picks and brings to me and the ones I pick from my dad's house, makes for a long week of making jam!

I haven't purchased jam in... 6 years? Its easy to make and almost free if you can find enough berries in your yard or the woods (or bum them off relatives). In return for all the donated berries, I make jam for my parents and this year, my friends too! When all that is done, I suspect I will still have an abundance of jam, so I am trying some new combinations with raspberries. Raspberry and currant. Raspberry and lingonberry sauce (low bush cranberries). Maybe even a raspberry and cherry. Best of all, I make my jams with Pomona's, so you're not eating mostly sugar. There is only about an ounce of sugar per 8 oz jar (2 tbsp). Sounds good, right?

Well, I am feeling so generous that I am doing a "Jam Giveaway"!

Over the next week, post something on our blog and you will be entered to win a 4 pack of assorted Raspberry jams! Leave a comment on this posting about your favorite change so far on our house, leave a suggestion for us, tell us what you are most thankful for this year, anything! I'll announce the winner the day after Thanksgiving (and post it on Facebook) and your jams will be in the mail shortly thereafter. I don't make money from this blog, this is just a fun way for me to share some of "Ireland Manor" with my readers, and since I can't afford to send you all a jam, then it has to be a contest :)

Good luck! - Mrs. Ireland

Winter slow down

2010-11-13T17:11:00.000-08:00

Winter can sneak up on me, even though I am a life long Alaskan! I plan and plan for so many projects in the summer and fall and inevitably, a few go unfinished or worse, unstarted! I guess if we didn't set the bar so high, we would never accomplish half of what we do, though it still feels like I should have done more (I can't speak for Mr. Ireland, who works harder than anyone I know) !

Progress on the house has come almost to a complete stop now that we are moved in, but as I gathered pictures for this posting, and started listing off the changes, it adds up to quite a list!
I am really impressed that between the birthday parties (little Liam, Mr. Ireland and Callen, all in a 2 week time frame) and my trip to California to see my grandparents, we managed to do so much during October and early November! Read on for our list :

Two of our birthday boys, Callen and Liam

Installed a new furnace!
Finally moved my piano over from the old house!
Reorganized Mr. Ireland's studio
Cleared all the boxes from the dining room!
Reorganized the nursery
Unpacked and organized all the children's toys

Hung coat racks in the older boys room
Had a load of dirt delivered and filled holes on the property!
Moved all the homeschool materials from the boys second closet to the school nook

Sewed curtains and installed drapery rods
Installed a hand towel ring in the upstairs bath

Attached Ice Breaker Mats to the front steps! (Just today!)
Moved a desk from the porch to the dining room (sorry mom, it will have to stay till spring!)
Moved a cupboard from my studio to the living room, to serve as the upstairs linen cabinet

You can see by the exclamation points that some of these projects I was very excited to have finished. We are at a point in the renovation process that we can function fairly well in the current conditions and things are not quite as overwhelming, spatially. With the busy season at work for Mr. Ireland and the holiday season approaching, we are taking a break from any large projects until January. I have grand plans for the spring and summer seasons, making now a good time to rest. The pile of dirt intended for my garden can wait. The old furnace sitting in the yard can be buried by snow. For the most part, it will be me working on small projects around the house like trim and molding, building furniture, sewing, unpacking books and keeping up with the children's school lessons. If I do anything special, I will post :)

I am thankful to have a house that is mine and that I still love, despite all its flaws. I am thankful for a family that works along side me to make our home better for us. I am most thankful for a husband that goes to work every day, in cold, dark, cramped or filthy conditions and then comes home to work on our house. Thats some love :)

Happy Early Thanksgiving!

Fall change

2010-10-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

Not much has been happening around here at "Ireland Manor". We have managed to empty the linen closet of all the boxes of toiletries (seriously, where does it all come from?!), which allowed us to clear the linens out of the bottom of the master bedroom closet, which in turn allowed us to stack some of the boxes into the closet that were part of the maze in our bedroom. The rest of the maze was stacked on a second upper shelf in the top of our closet, and for the first time since moving in, I was able to sweep our bedroom floor! I don't have the heart to steal our rug back from the nursery, where our soon-to-be toddler loves to sit on it and play, so for now I will have to keep our room swept and deal with the grit that sticks to my bare feet. Either that or I will have to wear some slippers... Eventually, the master bedroom will need to be emptied again and have real flooring put in over the currently Kilzed subfloor. That day is far off in the distance though.

New shelves; Shelves serving their purpose!

Mr. Ireland managed to build the first set of shelves in the basement. This being his busy season at work, I am very grateful that I have any shelves at all. It has helped immensely to have that first set. It sits next to the freezer, making it a perfect location for canned goods and rarely used kitchen items (thanks Peter, for helping me organize that!) Best of all, the shelves will all be built to accommodate rubber storage totes under neath them on the floor. This means I can store our totes of children's clothing (with this many boys, we don't get rid of anything!) and not worry about items getting wet, should our basement ever flood. I don't think it will (and we will have a sump in floor soon) but it is an old house and one never can tell.

Brody trying out his new bike!; Our new couch, prepped for its trip upstairs.

We acquired another sofa during the past month. Its hideous, its so not what I wanted, but it was free and actually in good shape and didn't smell! I don't know how he does it, but my husband has a knack for finding things in questionable locations (i.e. waste transfer site). It had to have the back panel removed, back wood supports cut and then be folded in half to make it up our narrow stairs to the living room! I'm really impressed with my husband's determination and engineering skills. He reassembled it and it actually has been a really nice piece to sit on! With a slip cover, I might even love it. So thank you, random stranger who left this couch at the dump :)

Our shed, that we designated as being the "barn" is only going to house squirrels for the winter :) I'm okay with that. Last week my husband brought home a stack of windows for us to build a greenhouse with in the spring, so at least I can rest easy knowing that the shed is serving a purpose. Even though winter is not quite here, spring is not all that far away, and with a greenhouse to build and a barn to customize, I already have my work cut out! Dirt for my garden should be here next week and that will be the last of my garden work for the year. I did pick up some daffodil bulbs to put in :)

Have a happy last week of fall and first week of PFD spending!

Country Courtyard

2010-08-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

Our new dishwasher arrived yesterday! That is the only reason I have time to blog :) I have to say a BIG thank you to my dad, since this was a housewarming gift from him! It is so sleek and shiny, and quiet, and I love it! My morning feels wide open because I spent only 5 minutes loading a dishwasher instead of an hour washing up by hand. So thank you, Dad!

As I promised, I will describe my general plan for the front yard. Right now, we have a sizeable lawn. It's nothing in comparison to the lawn at the old house, but its a decent size and a little more than we want to spend our time mowing. My plan is to enclose about half of the front yard with a stone wall. I have planted some of my flowers and my currants along the line that will be the front wall. I'd like the wall to run along the drive, from the front left corner of the porch to just under the spruce tree, then across the front yard and back along the right side, ending at the slope down to our basement. Its quite a large area, but as I said, it will certainly save us time mowing and still leave plenty of lawn for play, and also give me plenty of room for a large garden. We saved all the rock from the fireplace and with a few more loads of rock delivered, I will start the wall in the early spring next year.

Front view of house, purposed wall front view

When we moved, my father in law encouraged me to take all the plants from the garden with me. I counted up the plants when we were loading them into the back of a truck and the cash value of the plants came to over $600! I'm glad I took them, especially since I have split most of them into 2 or 3 pieces and those will be the foundation plants for my garden. I will be preparing the garden for next spring using the lasagna garden method. Along with the irises, peonies, currants, raspberries, rhubarb, labrador violet and lily of the valley I have planted now, I will mix in vegetables and a few more perennials next spring. I might have time to sink a few bulbs into the garden before the ground freezes too. Its not much to look at now, but I think it will be lovely next summer!

View of the drive from the porch, purposed wall and trellised entrance.

Getting settled but not settling!

2010-08-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

It has taken 3 weeks to clean my kitchen! THREE WEEKS. With no dishwasher, and 5-ish meals prepared every day, it was difficult for me to reprogram my self to wash up after EVERY meal (or at least the big ones). I think I'm getting the hang of it.

Most of our progress has stalled at this stage, aside from the occasional small project like installing a bathroom fan in the upstairs bath. I've spent a lot of my time just working around boxes and when I get to a point that I can do no more, we go outside to look for work! In my next post, I'll describe exactly what's going on out in the yard and how much work I have to do.

We did manage to get the boys bunkbed reassembled. After 2 weeks of sleeping on their mattreses amongst the boxes and toys, we gave up on the idea of staining it and put it together. Let me just say that building it was SO much easier than putting it together a second time! We thought the bunk boards, in their new complete state, would make reassembly simple, but no. We had to disassemble the bunk boards (remove the board from their cleats on the side rails) so we could install side rails first and then drop the bunk board back in to be re-fastened. Not so bad, but more difficult than we had planned. I'm just glad that thing is moved and the boys are all "put away" in their own beds, making bed time so much easier (and quieter!)

The rain finally let up for a week or two and gave us a little of the sunshine that we had been missing this summer. Unfortunately, it did not stick around longer and today is another gloomy day. It doesn't look to be full on raining, but I can hear the drops slowly dripping from the metal roof to the roof over the porch. I do love the sound rain makes on the roof! Last week we had a small leak start around the chimney. As you know, we spent 2 weeks removing the rock from the existing fireplace surround, where we then hung new sheetrock and textured to match the rest of the living room. We did not mess with the chimney pipe at all! It looks like it was designed to have a woodstove sitting in the corner and that means it stick down from the ceiling quite a bit from the walls, so we didn't have to haggle with it at all. We had planned on having it removed next spring and then fixing the ceiling ourselves, but I guess that will be happening this fall! I'm happy that it has not leaked since (though we have an empty tote standing by.)

The shed, last spring.

Today the children and I will be emptying the storage shed that came with the property and preparing it to become a chicken coop! I haven't actually been in the shed, so if it's much bigger that I estimate, it may be upgraded to a goat house. That's right, now that we have our own land, we are getting some animals! Food animals, that is. We don't consume a lot of meat in the first place, but the meat we do eat I would like to either raise or hunt/fish for myself, or in the case of beef, buy it as locally as possible. I like to know where my food has been! If I can get my hiney in gear, we will be ready for a spring purchase and maybe be up and running with eggs and milk (and other assorted dairy products) by the end of next summer! With my camera on hand now (I was getting sick of the low quality phone pics), I should have pictures up of this project soon.

My hands may be tied where I want to work, but there is certainly plenty of work to be done around here. Guess I better get to it!

All Moved

2010-08-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it! We are in.

It took a full week to get our things out of the old house and stacked into the new house, but we managed. In the end, we had exactly enough boxes to get packed, thanks in part to my brother's girlfriend loaning us some totes and my mother hunting down boxes for us. I think it was the post-move cleaning that nearly did me in though. I'm so happy that we are done moving! Now the fun begins... Unpacking!

There are so many boxes stacked up around the house, its overwhelming. I'm not sure where to start, but I do know that building storage shelves in the basement just climbed up to the top of the priority list. My new kitchen, while a lovely color, is not nearly as large as the last one and many things are going to have to find different homes or just leave altogether.

On our first night in the house, we had a clogged pipe, making one of the sinks over flow and spill water down onto the furnace. Turns out it was a blessing, since it drew attention to an electrical problem that we had missed during all our work. Over the past week, we have had appliances brought in and Mr. Ireland has been busy running gas pipe and repairing the finicky machines. Our dryer quit 5 minutes in to the first load and had me hanging laundrey out on a line for a few days.

The dryer giving out and the kitchen needing to be reorganized are welcome challenges. It seems that of all the changes I wanted to make when we had a home that was ours, now is the time to pair down kitchen items and to use less gas by hanging our laundry. It will take some getting used to but I think we will manage.

I had hoped to have some pictures up soon but I've misplaced my camera in the move. Once things have found homes and we bring the last of our furniture in off the porch, I'll be sure to post some new photos. Thanks for reading :)

Dining room update

2010-07-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a decent picture of our dining room. Its a color called "Evening Peruvian Lily". The color changes a lot depending on the lighting. Nautral lighting is all I have right now, since we haven't installed light fixtures yet. In cloudy cover, the walls take on a pink cast. When the sky is clear and it is sunny out, then the walls are more of a concentrated red or orange. I wonder what it will look like in the winter, when the snow will reflect a lot of light back up into the room...

The Green Kitchen

2010-07-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, not really a "green" kitchen, at least not in the "chemical free/environmentally friendly/reclaimed" kind of green. With just about 4 days until move-in, today I finished painting the kitchen. It is a lovely shade called "Pine Scent". It reminds me of a billiard table! Our kitchen isn't very big, but I think this strong color works really well in here.

I did finally finish the dining room yesterday and took some pictures today but the overcast sky outside made the walls a funny color, so I will have to take better pictures to share on a sunny day. Its not what I expected now that its up on the wall, but I think I love it.

Wall where the range will go; Fridge wall, base molding to come later

More repairs have been pushed to the "after we move in list", including refinishing the hardwood floors. Its a little bit of a bummer, but totally okay. Mr. Ireland has developed a nasty tooth ache and isn't able to do quite as much as he would like. There isn't enough time to finish this project on my own, so I will do the things that I do have time for and make it as livable as possible. Which means I will be cleaning and moving small items over to the house over the next few days. I'm hoping that we will have some help moving on Thursday and Friday. Maybe it will be furniture only.... that would be nice, wouldn't it?

Remodeling in Technicolor! With Smell -O- Vision!

2010-07-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

I managed to paint the boy's bedroom yesterday. It looks like Gymboree threw up all over the walls! The three oldest boys just could not agree on what color to have their room painted, so we ended up doing three colors. Let me clarify that this is not a style that I normally am attracted to. I find it overwhelming but, its not my room! Its a child's room, and since they change their minds fairly frequently, I'm sure I won't have to look at it for 20 more years. Five would be plenty!

Mr. Ireland started the beginning of his vacation yesterday. He is pretty terrific, choosing to spending his vacation working on the house. Of course, we have to be in it by the end of the month, so it's not much of a choice! With just over a week to go, we are down to the last of the manageable projects. Some things have made their way from the "before we move in" list to the "sometime after we are in it" list. We're trying to focus on paint and flooring and leave all the finishing work for later.

Triple layered living room wall, in all its pink glory

Yesterday we prepped the living room for painting, removing the wall paper border, filling holes, that sort of thing. One of the walls had two extra layers of sheetrock over the orginal wall... We were unsure of what we would find if we removed it, and were hesitant to do so, until I pulled the top layers back and peered behind it with a flashlight. I couldn't see any holes in the original wall or any reason why there should be another layer over it, and it looked like it was being held in place by a few nails, so we gave it a tug and down it came! Under the extra layers was a near perfect wall with pretty rose wallpaper. It smelled faintly of perfume and old house (it was not, however, scratch and sniff). We think the living room was originally 3 bedrooms, making a total of 6 small bedrooms on the third floor, so this had to have been a girls room! There was even a poster taped to the wall.

Smelling the wallpaper (we all did it!); Boys removing wallpaper.

Instead of removing the wallpaper, the previous owners chose to glue 2 layers of sheetrock together and nail it up over the existing wall. Talk about lazy! I'm sure it took far more time to put those up than the half hour it took for me and 2 children to remove the wallpaper! I guess we all use what we have on hand though. How about it, aunts? Recognize the wallpaper? Did you have any friends in highschool that had wallpaper like that?

Newly finished wall

After all that, we taped and mudded the wall and today I started painting the living room! I am happy to say that the ceiling is no longer magenta. I will not miss that color. With any luck, I will have the living room finished tomorrow morning and be able to move on to the dining room, the next to last room on my list. It is also the last room that needs to have walls textured. I can't wait to scrape the last smear of mud from the bucket and retire my blade.

Official count down to move in.... 9 days.

O the tediousness

2010-07-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well, my manicure it thrashed. I went to Anchorage for the weekend and spend time with my girlfriend for her birthday and we had mani's & pedi's done. It was wonderful while it lasted, but after paint and sheet rock and mud, there isn't much left of my nail polish! I'll have to take another trip when this is all done.

Monday, Mr. Ireland and I laid down wood for the floor in the nursery. Our plan has never been to have this place perfect before we move in, but to have it mostly finished and leave the little things to be finished for later. Moulding, new cabinet doors in the kitchen, remodeling bathrooms. Those are things that I can handle being done while we live in it. Considering that those all fall to me, they will have to wait anyway! This solution is temporary. Someday it will be removed and replaced with hardwood flooring to match the existing wood in the dining room.

Next comes painting the floor and installing moldings. The nursery will need to be completely finished before we move in. To do that, I'll have to have someone teach me how to use a router *hint hint* Then I can make my own base molding to match the molding in the hall. I'm sure there's someone in my family who could do that....

Tuesday, I painted our bedroom. Unfortunately, it was raining and the first coat would just not dry, so I will have to put a second coat up before we start putting wood on the floor in there. We are sticking with the same color for our walls that we have in our rental house right now. It took years for us to agree on a color for our bedroom, why mess with it now?

Before; Current

Today, we hung dry wall! We finished the fireplace corner and the inside wall for the boy's second closet. It looks one hundred times better upstairs! Removing that fireplace really opens up the whole room. The rock is taped and mudded, now I get to go in and texture. The division of labor for this project seems lopsided, but trust me, Mr. Ireland finds paint and texture tedious work and I rather enjoy it! I'll be hearing about the fireplace demo for a long time, though.
Boys new closet; different view of the living room and it's hideous color

Texturing the living room will be a lot like the boy's bedroom - the texture is heavy and choppy looking. Matching what exists isn't that challenging, I'm just not sure where to stop. Some of the walls are smooth, some are not, and all are painted an awful magenta! Who paints a 500 square foot room MAGENTA? And then adds violet carpet?! It's just wrong. I can't wait to cover that eyesore. The metal pipe stick down from the ceiling doesn't help.

I'll post soon about the trip all my flowers are making from the rental to our new house. Here's a preview of it....

I'm surprised that it bloomed, since moving usually shocks irises. I've been waiting for that to get growing for 2 years. Anyway, more later on that project later. ttfn

Earthship

2010-07-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

If you have time to spare this summer, or need something worthwhile to do, this is where you should go:

http://shipoffools2010.blogspot.com/

Kelly and Willow lost their home in a fire this past winter. They have 3 little kids and they are determined to rebuild. Not just rebuild but to build better! This is a fantastic project. I am envious of the goal they have set for themselves and the lifestyle they are choosing for their family. Laborers are needed, so if you feel like doing something meaningful this summer, make this it!

-Mrs. Ireland

Still plugging away

2010-07-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Demolition is definitely more fun than repair. Our postings get farther and farther apart, mostly because the work is slow going. With a month left until we need to be out of the rental house, we can feel the days wasting away. Here are a couple more pics, just so you can see what we are working on.

New ceiling
We started texturing the ceiling in the mom & dad's room on Monday, mixed our medium to thin, and had to start over. Today I finished that room and then moved on to the nursery. Only one bedroom left that needs texture. I've applied the texture by hand in the master bedroom, by loop roller in the nusery and the third will be done a completely different way as well, to match the ceiling in the other half of the room. It looks like it was floated on.... interesting. I don't care for the texture in the nursery, but I doubt I will have time to go back and re-do it. Time at the house without children is rare.

Mr. Ireland has framed in the wall that will divide the boy's room from the living room. We can see where they had a wall there before, but we are not sure how, since there are no studs that line up in ANY of the walls-ceiling-floor to make it a straight forward build. Mr. Ireland put some cross supports on one wall, which will allowed him to sink into the stud on one side of the wall and the bracing on the other. This wall will be in the back of a closet on the bedroom side and part of built in book shelves in the living room side, so we aren't that worried about it taking hard hits from rambunctious boys.

Next week we should be able to finish Mr. Ireland's office wall and sheet rock the fireplace corner. I have been clearing out the crawlspace this week, bringing boxes to the basement and my office, the only two spaces that are finished (well, mostly). Its slow going, but we'll get there!

Many projects

2010-06-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

r

It seems like we have spent a lot of time working on the same projects over the last two weeks. I am happy to say that some of them are complete! The fireplace rock is DOWN! The plywood backing is down (the picture was taken before it was ripped out) and we can probably hang sheet rock soon.

Removing the closet has brightened up the rest of the room; You can see where the closet was before it was removed.

The nursery is coming along as well. We installed the sheet rock for the ceiling and now we can texture the bedroom ceilings. The completion of the nursery will allow us to work at the house for longer periods of time and give the kids a place to play. Mr. Ireland tore out a closet in his studio, and is replacing that section with a straight wall.

Before After

In an effort to speed up our transition from one house to the next, I laid vinyl tile squares in my new sewing room. I should be spending more time packing, but one car load of boxes a day is about all I can do. I will not be leaving it lavender, it is temporary.

We are closing in on the last major projects - the kitchen, which includes repairing the hardwood floor and restyling the cabinets, and then the heating system which, thankfully, is Mr. Ireland's profession! Replacing the heating ducts will go a long way toward improving the smell in our house! Keep checking back :)

A little more

2010-06-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

We didn't get all that much done today. I pulled staples and nails off of the stairs, the boys helped upstairs by vacuuming and sweeping, and Mr. Ireland started breaking rocks off of the fireplace wall. Once he got started, he found that most of the rock wanted to come down with the chicken wire baselayer. He is confident that the rock will all be down by the end of the week and we can move forward with sheet rock. It will be really nice to have that corner of the living room usable!

Other than that, we walked thru the house, discussing our concerns and ideas and getting a plan together for the week. We are each tackling a job on our own and then one big project that we will accomplish together. My goal is to have the wallpaper down and the molding in the dining room stripped. Together we will finish the nursery. Things are coming along.

Paint Sprinkles

2010-06-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

The basement if painted. I set out thinking that this would be a very easy project. Day 1, wash the floor with concrete prep. Day 2, paint. Right? Wrong.
Washing was easy, right until the last 20 square feet, that started foaming when I went over it with the floor cleaner!! It needed to be scrubbed again, with good ol' bleach and water, and then the smell and the stain were both gone.

When it came time to paint, I had intended to do it all myself, but then I mentioned that we were going to put paint fleck "sprinkles", I had 3 volunteers! The sprinkles aren't exactly evenly distributed, but sometimes it's more important to let them help than to have it perfect!

Now that the basement is done, we can get going on those shelves for storage, bring in the washer and dryer, and start customizing Mr. Ireland's studio! Our reward to ourselves for renovating (other than getting a really nice house in the end ) is that we each get a fantastic space for ourselves! I get a fabulous bathroom, no sharing with little boys, and Mr. Ireland gets a music studio. The boys will get to have their room painted however the can agree to paint it, their reward for helping mom & dad get the house ready. Thankfully, mom & dad have the final say!

Living room update

2010-06-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

oo

All of the carpet and pad and subfloor is officially out of the living room! The bedrooms that had carpet are stripped as well. Now we are left with removing the vinyl from the floor of the second bedroom, which could have been used as a kennel? Yikes.

So far, renovations have gone fairly well. It has been a lot of hard work, but inexpensive overall. We are hoping to get all of our demolition done before the end of the month and then we can begin moving on to repairs and painting. I have volunteered to repair the hardwood in the kitchen, where it was damaged from a washer sitting on it (and then leaking, I would think!) I feel very blessed that yesterday, Mr. Ireland began tearing out the upstairs fireplace and bench surround and discovered that the bench was constructed of the VERY SAME tongue-and-groove flooring that is in the kitchen! Woohoo! That means that I don't have to try to find a match and we can save money! I give credit to the original builder of this house - he was a very good carpenter. The unusual but blatantly providential circumstances of buying, and now renovating, this house have kept our spirits high. I'm very grateful!

Today I will finish painting the basement floor, and then we will build storage shelves and start bringing things from the crawlspace at our rental house and giving them homes.

I would like to tackle the fireplace soon. It is rock and cement? There is no functional use for this, since it is on the third floor, which stays plenty warm, and we don't want a woodstove up there. If we ever put one in, it will be on a lower floor, where it will better heat the house. So out it must come. It looks like it is mounted on plywood, but we don't even know where to begin without destroying that corner of our house. We know, go slowly, take care. Any other tips?

New Doors, Old Floors

2010-06-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

We scored an awesome deal off Craigslist! A gentleman replaced the doors in his home, per his wife's request, and was selling off some very nice interior doors - 3 bedroom, one hall and one set of 24" bifold doors, all for the low price of $50!

All came in jams, with hardware, no holes and they are even the correct color! Considering they somehow match all our measurements for doors needed, and he delivered them to the new house, we think we got a pretty good bargain! They'll have to hang out in the dining room for a bit, putting my wallpaper project on hold, while Mr. Ireland finishes tearing out the old carpet and subfloor from upstairs.

You wouldn't believe the stench of the old carpet! It was soaked with dog urine and who knows what else. The task of tearing it all out has fallen to the husband (thank you!) and he has nearly finished removing all of the subfloor upstairs as well. If it weren't for the particle board subfloor, we would be looking at a very costly redo of the upstairs floor. Suprisingly, there isn't any mold, which is a relief! One more day of demo and we can probably start construction of the wall to separate the upstairs bedroom from the living room.

The very best part of the carpet removal has to be the last bit. Under the carpet on the stairs we found wonderful hardwood steps! I thought that there was a chance of them being simply plywood, but I'm very pleased that they are not. A little polishing up for now and we will have a very pretty staircase!

Wallpaper Removal

2010-06-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

O the joys of scraping off wallpaper!

You wouldn't know it, but these kids, with their tiny fingers, are really good at picking off the soggy bits left behind! We don't call it child labor, it's "character building" and "family bonding"!
Really, we think they will get a sense of pride knowing that they each helped to make the house into our home. Don't worry, they had scrapers and a spray bottle with just water and vinegar in it.

The wallpaper is not off completely, as you can see, but we made a good start. After realizing that some of the paper was being left behind the chair rail molding, I removed the molding. To my surprise, the revealed that the last decorator had put the bead board up OVER what is probably the original wallpaper! Classy. Sure, it's time consuming, but it isn't exactly difficult to remove vinyl wallpaper!

Sadly, I don't think I have the time to remove all the panels from around the room to remove the wallpaper. I really like that feature and if I removed it, I would not want to put it back up. The rail is not such a big deal, since it was going to be replaced anyway (though I could save myself some time there if it comes down to it). So the panels will stay up, covering the wallpaper and I will finish stripping and preparing the walls to be painted. What color?
Well, you'll have to wait and see....

I Spy....

2010-05-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

So for fun, I am posting the first of our pictures as a kind of game. If you can spot the differences, you win.... my appreciation? Hee hee! It's probably not that interesting to you, but it helps me to see that we have already made progress.

Before the appraiser would sign off on this house, he had a list of things that needed to be done. Add that to the list of getting the utilities in working order, it became quite a bit of work for "Mr. Ireland." The house was originally a repo, and the bank that owned the house is in the lower-48, so that meant the work had to be done by someone! The furnace is over 50 years old, the plumbing turned into a sprinkler system when it was first turned on, and there were so many safety concerns listed in the appraisal! "Mr. Ireland" put a lot of time into making sure this house would pass the appraisal and it really paid off because most of the things required were already on his list for after closing! Way to get a head start, honey.

Okay, for your viewing pleasure, here is the first round of pictures:

Front porch area, phase one. Not much is left to be done with the porch, aside from paint and replacing the trellis! The bathroom is also a phase one project, meaning that there will be a MAJOR overhaul after we get everything else done. This is MY bathroom. Im so excited to have my own bathroom! Living with 5 boys sometimes makes for an interesting midnight trip to the bathroom!

More later....

We're Home Owners!

2010-05-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

After months and months of waiting, we finally closed on our first house! We are so thrilled! I have already taken tons of before pictures, so this might be the easiest blog to start ever. Here is what our house looked like at the time of our offer:

Beauty, eh? We have a LOT of work to do on this house, but it's ours! It's big, it's old, it's solid and it's ours! The real work begins after Memorial Day. The list is long and our time frame continues to get shorter, if only because my husband wants to move up the move-in date by over a month! It might kill us, but it is ours!

This year we agreed to focus on the inside of the house, as much as we detest the color of the exterior. It is far more important that it be ready to accommodate our family before the end of summer. I might be able to talk him into hiring someone to paint the outside this year, since we can agree that we both really dislike the color outside! We'll see.

Keep checking back to see where we are on renovations! We won't be having a housewarming party until it is completely finished. We're both kind of perfectionists, so things have to be done before we will reveal it to someone else's scrutiny!