It's Jam Week!!

Hooray! It's jam week!

I skipped making jam last fall. Its a bit of a blur, but I think I was busy with a baby? Well she is almost a toddler and sleeps much more regularly now, so I have a little bit of time to make jam and replenish the dwindling supply.

I will be making at least one type of jam every day this week. And if you follow along and play my game, I will be giving away one jar of jam a day :)

Day 1 -
Today's jam is Pineapple Rhubarb!

This was a new one for me last year. I was very surprised that we all enjoyed it so much! It is sweet, not tart at all and it a really great way to use up rhubarb. I like Strawberry Rhubarb as well, but this is my new favorite way to use rhubarb.

The last time I made it I used only green rhubarb, and I have to admit, it was a nicer color. I didn't have quite as much green frozen this year, so I had to add some red rhubarb to equal the amount of pineapple and the jam is not the nice pale green it should be. I ended up with about 10 pints of Pineapple Rhubarb jam!

To enter to win a small jar (not a pint, not pictured) of Pineapple Rhubarb jam, leave a comment below and tell me your favorite what your favorite pineapple dish is! The winner will be chosen at random and announced on Wednesday's post :)

Marching on

March has come and gone without so much as an inkling of real progress.
Our plan of a major project a month has fallen by the way side, as all good intentions and resolutions eventually do. It looks more like this now:

March - Where did it go?
April - Still winter. Not much can be done. Plant seeds, plan and revise.
May - Flooring upstairs, Bathrooms (when we can finally get the bathtub out of the basement)
June - Paint house, yard, REPLACE Porch Roof!
July - Yard, etc. Kitchen? Maybe.
August - more yard work
September - trim work!

I hate the idea of spending the next 2 decades working on this house and I really have no intention of letting things take that long, but to maintain peace I really can't expect or push things along as fast as I want them to happen. Ya' gotta go with the flow and work with what you have, right? Its the Alaskan way! Work like crazy all summer and then go crazy in the winter because you didn't get enough done last summer!

What has been happening around here?

Over the last few weeks, Spring has been trying to break through the deep snow. The ice has been melting and sliding off our metal roof. Several times we have been woken by the slam of ice as it drops from the main roof to the porch roof a dozen feet below. One of these actually broke the supports for the porch roof! Not only did the enormous piece of ice break the extra bracing, it actually broke the original timber in 2 additional places!






























When we began the process of buying this house, we were told by the bank that the house was not financeable in its condition. The bank that owned the house gave us permission to do some minor repairs to get it up to the minimum standards. One of those repairs was the porch roof! Mr. Ireland braced the broken supports, it passed the inspection, and we put a new porch roof on our list for "not immediate but in the near future" repairs. We want a dormer over the steps and this year we really got a taste of how bad the steps are to navigate when there is ice constantly dropping in sheets onto them. Guess what project just got bumped to the top of the summer project list?


We also started our garden. Well, we started seeds for our garden. I don't think this will be enough food for our family for the winter, but it is a start. I have a feeling I will be annexing more of the back yard for a garden!
























All the kids helped plant seeds!






Mr. Ireland finally found time to fix my car! I am so grateful to Mr. Ireland's brother, Mr. Ireland, for loaning me his vehicle for the last 2 months but I am very happy to be back in my van.


Are you ready for some REALLY bad line drawings?

Most of my time has been spent looking around, planning and day dreaming. I have taken a few pictures of our yard, trying to catch the path of light around the property and thinking about the best locations for the next chicken coop and a greenhouse. I think I have a great place for the coop. I will be able to see my chickens from the kitchen window and I can walk out the kitchen door right to the gate, if I move the coop here. It will be nice to watch the chickens while I am doing the dishes. Moving the coop is a big job. I will have to do most of it myself, since Mr. Ireland is not what I would call an animal lover! He really wants nothing to do with the chickens. So its up to me to attempt to move this decaying structure. I figure I have nothing to lose! If it works, great! If not, well I was already going to have to build a new coop. I'm thinking the best time to try this is as soon as the ground is dry. Any volunteers?!





























That is the back deck in the bottom right corner. The back of the coop would face a very steep hill. It may have to sit up on stilts.

As for a green house... Mr. Ireland wants a garage and I think I have convinced him to extend the roof line on the east side of his garage to make a green house. That will give it a mostly southern face and on our property that is where most of the light hits in the winter. This is pretty important to me because I have a handful of fruit trees growing in pots in my house that will eventually need a year round green house! I have a couple of avocados, banana, apricot and meyer lemon trees. The collection is only going to get bigger. If the green house is part of the garage, the space can be heated to keep my trees from dying! I think it is totally possible if we take out the island of trees next to our driveway.





























There's no sense in dreaming if you don't dream big, right?

An acre in town sounds like a lot of land. It is and it isn't. A significant portion of the property is drive way and septic field and house. Does any one know if I can plant things on top of my septic leach field? I don't need to rototill, I can layer growing material on top. I'm thinking potatoes. I need to find more space for plants! Please feel free to share your thoughts on this :)

Get Back to Work!

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

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!

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

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!

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.