Long update: Stuck, little sewing projects, winter goings-on

Fair warning: this is going to be a long catch-up post, and is likely to be scattered. I'm on a business trip and have access to internet, which is a rarity. My workplace blocks this blog site (for good reason), so I just have to have extended access to unbridled internet to update it.

First, farm news. In early November Ryan was working on our drainage behind the house and into a kind of a creek we have there, and got stuck. And by stuck, I mean really stuck:

We ended up calling a neighbor to pull him out of all of the muck, the truck just wasn't even beginning to cut it.

He had a little helper working back there too (on a different day, a little farther up the slope):

Speaking of little helpers, I had one come with me on turkey deliveries too.

We ended up doing Ames turkey deliveries amidst fresh snow, and at that point in the season snow was still a fun novelty!
Last Saturday we did our business taxes, and only filed for a $200 loss for the business this year! That is awesome and means we're getting much closer to profitability. Without writing off our mileage and our depreciation, we did make about $6000 last year. Total sales are around $18,000 and were about 40% beef, 35% chicken, and 25% turkey. I usually like to tell you all how we are doing as a business, partially because I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we are a business. I feel like the business had a good year overall, and I'm optimistic as we settle into our new location.

For my sewing, I mostly worked on a bunch of little projects. First up, Ryan needed a new Dopp kit. He threw out his old one when he opened it up to pack it for a trip and found it covered in mold inside and out. I did some googling to find a tutorial, and sewed something up:

The purple bag on the left is my Dopp kit (purchased from Target). That sad, mopey creation on the right was my first attempt. Not so much a win. So I thought about it, changed some dimensions, and tried again:

Much improved. This one actually looks like something and functions (and doesn't make Ryan cringe when he looks at it).

I also made some table runners, here is one example:

The pattern is "Triangle Frenzy" if you're curious; it's easy and fun and involves cutting striped fabric into 60 degree triangles.

For whatever reason, I also seem to know a lot of people having babies right now, so I made another small baby quilt, this one is about 3 ft square.

It was inspired by a pattern called Hugs and Kisses by Tamarack Shack, but I didn't quite get it right. Ah well, it's done and when it comes to baby quilts, done is definitely better than perfect.

On the house front, we've continued to work on all of the finishing projects. We almost got the outside painted before it got too cold to work outside, so this picture doesn't have all of the trim done and I do know it. Sigh. I blame Iowa winters.

I do like the color a lot, and I will get the rest of the exterior done when it warms up again!

Recently I've been consumed with tiling our master bathroom surround. This was an all-consuming project and I am SO glad to have it done. We actually took our first shower in it this morning, so that made today a good day for me.

Most of the tile is just basic 6" off-white tile, but my one luxury here was these beautiful heron tiles from a company called Earthsong Tiles in Canada. It's a couple that does them by hand out of their home, and I just love them. Here's a closer look:

I also had a little helper working on cleaning grout with me a few days ago, she did a nice job helping!

My last house/crafting item doesn't classify well so it's going to go here. When my grandmother died a couple of years ago, I inherited a piece of needlepoint from my great grandmother. It's floated around my house in a horrendously ugly frame since then:

My apologies if this frame is your style, but it's certainly not mine. So I had it reframed and it's found a place in our bedroom.

I also had them frame it a little tighter to get rid of some of the awkward space around the embroidery, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

The kids are doing very well, and are happy and healthy. When fall color first started, we made some window decorations using clear contact paper.

The kids were much more into this than I expected, with H making houses and flowers and Z making storms and monsters (can you find them below? Some imagination required).

Then in October we took a family trip to Disneyland with my dad, stepmom, brother, and sister-in-law. It was a great trip and it was nice to all go somewhere together.

For Halloween we had a cowboy and a princess. Not a lot of creativity here, I'm hoping they forgive me when they're older. There was a lot going on in October.

For Christmas, we did our traditional tree hunt, which meant trekking into the pasture and chopping one down. It definitely had a very seedy look to it, but it worked! (and there's my ham of a daughter being a camera hog.)

H and I also took a ski trip in December where she had her first skiing experience. Here we are all ready to go:

And here she is at the end of her first day, tired but you can see the satisfaction and accomplishment in her face. She enjoyed it and did well.

And since this blog has been a little heavy on my daughter, we'll finish up with some pics of my son.
Z sandwich - Daddy, Z, Nermal!

And Daddy indulged him with a motorized toy train engine for his train track. It's like heaven for him. Those of you who know us well know that I have a general "no batteries" rule in my house for toys because all of their noises and lights drive me up the wall. I hereby pin this one on my husband and maintain that I'm still trying to hold the rule...

And finally, the last few days he's been sick and on Saturday morning we persuaded him to take a morning nap in our bed. We lured him in with cuddles and let him fall asleep, where I couldn't resist taking a pic.

Sleep well, little one!

Closet, Green Boy Quilt, and Jenga

As is typical every few months, the tractor died. This time it died down the road from our place about a half a mile while moving hay. It appears to have been due to junk in the fuel line, but I did remember to take a picture this time. It's a measure of how far we've come since moving to the country that I just brought Ryan the truck, he chained up the tractor, and I drove the truck while he steered the tractor back to the house with a minimum of fuss. Then he was able to clear the fuel lines without a lot of trouble and get her running again. All of that seems small, but there was a time when it would have been a big deal!

Adjusting to the new house is going well, it's kind of nice we are close to the cattle when they are in some pastures. One morning I woke up to this outside our window; all of the calves were just hanging out in the sunrise.

Obviously I took that picture through the screen on the window, sorry about that.

As for the house itself, we've continued to work on small tasks. Here is H's closet with some shelves hung on the wall. I still have one more bar to hang to the right of the shelves, but I think it will serve her well. 

We also got the last retaining wall done, next will be the deck. We have that scheduled for early-mid August, so we will see how that goes!

Ryan also had an interesting adventure one day last week. So marijuana is a weed in Iowa. Not the kind you can smoke or make hemp out of, but its more boring cousin. It grows 7 feet tall all across our property where the soil was disturbed (which is most of the property) and we didn't get it mowed while it was still 1-2 feet tall. It's relatively resistant to any kind of herbicide (and if we spray it, other things around it tend to also die), and the stalks are also fairly thick and hard to cut. So Ryan was contemplating buying a machete. Then he thought about the sword his mother gave him for an 18th birthday present. While I thought this sounded fairly crazy, he sent me evidence that the crazy idea of cutting down the weed with a sword actually worked:

On the quilting front, I finished the quilt for my new nephew (Ryan's sister's son) who was born in March. It was inspired by "Snowflake Baby Girl Quilt" by MelissaHevey on Etsy. 

Here's the back, pieced with scraps:

And a detail with the tag. 

The kids are doing well, here they are playing in the sandbox:

Ryan's dad reads to Z (Cowpoke Clyde and Dirty Dawg - that book is so fun. We love it and read it a lot).

Z plays (as always) with things with wheels. That is a car on top of a tractor that is pulling a manure spreader (he calls it a trailer) that is carrying another two or three trucks.

And last night we went to Sunset in the Vineyard at Penoach Winery. It was a beautiful night with great music, and we enjoyed playing Giant Jenga that they had set up. The band is behind me while I take this picture. 

And then, of course, the inevitable always happens at the end of Jenga....

Tiling

So in the month or so since I blogged last, what I've done most is tile. There was a stretch in there that I tiled or installed cementboard for every day for 9 days in a row. As a friend told me, tiling is the quintessential project that you think will take a short time, and instead takes forever. 

This is the lovely floor tile that is in our mudroom, upstairs bathrooms, and entryway. It's actually the tile they use at Casey's General Store, so I felt like I got a good deal on it, and it's beautiful and durable. 

That picture is the only area of my house where the tile is DONE because I had to put a washer and dryer on top of it. But it is pretty!

My stepdad and I also put up 1/2" cementboard in the shower/bath surrounds (that stuff is the DEVIL. Worst substance to work with EVER. Dusty, hard to cut, fiddly, pain in the butt).

We also built in some wall niches to hold shampoo and whatnot. 

Then in the kids' bath I covered the seams with fibertape

And then painted over the whole shower with RedGuard to waterproof it before tiling. When they say RedGuard is Pepto Bismol pink, they mean it. And it does dry to fire engine red.

I have more tile than this on now, but this is what the kids' bath surround looks like. It's mostly off-white with a stripe of blue. I'm just going for simple and classic as much as I can.

We also got our cabinets installed, and really everything else. It's now a functional house and we've been living in it for about two weeks.

Here it is after countertops

Then we got carpet in the bedrooms

Even when I wasn't tiling, we were still laying drainage tile for our gutter runoff.

We've had several mishaps in this process, as you might expect.

Last night the septic alarm went off on our septic system, so we ended up reburying the electrical line. Having a backhoe on the tractor has been the BEST THING EVER while building the house. 

We also had issues with the bathroom vanities. We have three bathrooms, and we ended up with three failures on the vanities. The first had a drawer in the wrong place (our pipes come through the floor, the drawer needed the pipes to come through the wall); the second the countertop was too shallow for the cabinet; and the third the countertop was too narrow for the cabinet. Sigh. So after some rearranging, returning, and repurchasing, we finally had three workable bathroom vanities. That was a frustrating day.

Then we've had garage door issues. This is one of those things where if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. The garage doors were built too large (how hard is it, really, to build it the right size?) and I didn't catch it. So we had to add 2x6s to the edges until the garage doors won't gap.

Last, but definitely not least, we have the internet. We specifically sited our house because it was a location where there was DSL internet. We called the phone company, checked maps, and were told it was available. Turns out, that's a lie. The nearest internet lines are 2 miles away, and we are told it would be $6500-$10,000 to hook it up. I'm not giving up yet, though, because in my book internet is a utility like power and water. So we're pursuing options, especially since that hookup would put seven households online. Either way, that's one reason for more intermittent blogging (not that it's an excuse). 

In the sewing world, I actually did sew something this month. My niece had a birthday, so I made my kids and my nieces superhero capes. They were pretty easy and were a decent toy for the four of them.

I just used a knit fabric so I wouldn't have to hem (although I did zigzag the edges). 

Also on the kid front, H had a birthday earlier in the month.

She's doing fairly well with the move and everything, it's been harder that she's out of school now. She does better with the structure of a school day, of course.

I love this picture of her dancing in our new house just after the trim and cabinets were put in. It captures her attitude about everything so well.

I've also been trying to do more fun things with her, both because she's old enough and because I don't want to just be all work and discipline to her. So we went for a mommy-daughter pedicure date on the last day of school. She chose bright blue glitter polish and loved it.

We also went for sorbet on a separate occasion. 

Z is also growing up, we're working on his transition to a big boy bed. We'll also be doing potty training here soon, I think.

He really is such a curious and contemplative child, it amazes me. He found our box of magnetic toys and excitedly rushed to put them on the fridge.

But that wasn't the amazing part. The amazing part was that I told him we were going to go and get in the car. Thirty seconds later he hadn't come out to the car so I went back to check on him. He was hurriedly but carefully taking each magnet back off the fridge and putting it back in the box. He didn't want to leave until it was all "pick up put away".

He's not like that with everything (I definitely find toy cars EVERYWHERE), but I couldn't exactly tell him to stop putting things away and come out to the car, now could I? 

I'm still excited about the new house, and as I told Ryan, I'm excited about what we're building on the family farm.