He is Risen Indeed!

This post is really about Saturday, but since I spent most of the day prepping the Easter Feast. I decided to give credit where credit is due in my post title.

 

Let us not forget the reason for Easter. While bunnies and eggs are fantastic, we would be nothing without Jesus, the big guy upstairs. C and I have been blessed so much and are thankfull for all of the many helping hands and hospitality that have been provided to us since starting our adventures on the property.

 

 

Cleary Friday wore C and the Greek out. They went for their morning coffee and Gma and I spotted this...I had to capture the moment:

 

OUT COLD

 

When RobSr. and Featherweight arrived, I went up to take a few quick pictures of the final sides. It was too dark to do it on Friday.

 

Gotta love our flag! RobSr. put up a strip to hang the flag on so it didn't go directly on the board and batten siding.

 

As I spent most of the day cooking, I don't have many photos to share. I hope you all had a very Blessed Easter Sunday!



Our Tiny Porchouse!

Well, last weekend things really started to come together with the Porchouse. If you drove by, you would assume it has always been a cabin. Don't be fooled, our tiny Porchouse was once just a porch, connected to a mobile home.

 

Tiny Houses are really popular right now, as more people are trying to get back to the simple way of life. If you don't have the room, you don't have the junk. Nuff' said!  Anyways, if you don't know what they are, visit the Tiny House Blog or Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

 

While our Porchouse is obviously larger than these, not by much. So we decided to take some of the interior concepts and space saving techniques from the Tiny Houses, to incorporate into our own floor plan inside of the Porchouse. I plan to fill you in on the various ideas we have for the inside of this masterpiece, including the AMAZING bathtub idea!

 

Back to making this porch look like a tiny cabin. As you know, we were able to use the boards from the shed to put on as siding. C and I had the day off on Good Friday and headed up early to the property. After all, we weren't planning to do work on Easter Sunday, so this gave us a good two days to get things done.

 

RobSr. got right to work on putting up the board and batten on the side that faces the road:

 

Due to the varying sizes of the boards on the shed, they weren't level all the way across, no worries though, he had a plan!

Almost done with Side One!

 

The boards for around the windows needed cut. Enter: the cutting station:

 

 

C continued to remove the remaining boards from the shed and I de-nailed them and put them on the trailer frame so that RobSr. could easily take the sizes that he needed.

 

 

 

 

Obviously, all this work means a coffee break is long over due. The Greek and his Wife came for a visit and thought we could use a good laugh, thus posing for this photo:

 

Yes, that is the toilet from the mobile. The only thing we haven't been able to burn or scrap.

 

Meanwhile, back at the Porchouse, things were wrapping up quite nicely. And the RobSr. was adding the battens.

 

Remember when I mentioned the unevenness?? PROBLEM SOLVED

Isn't it charming???

Framing in the last window

 

All the boards are officially off of the shed and C was denailing and helping to install the board and batten now.

 

Ta-Da...now it looks like a pavillion. We still haven't decided the best method to tearing this down yet.

 

As darkness fell, RobSr. was determined to have three sides done! The cutting station was rigged with a hillbilly light.

 

 

 

We decided to close up shop after the boards were on side three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DIY Fire Starters

Greetings All! Last week I made some fire starters with some everyday household supplies. I got the idea from Mrs. Cav, as we were always saving dryer lint for these creations.

 

They are so simple, and EFFECTIVE. I will prove it with pictures of a fire that they helped start :)

 

Materials:

 

1. Cardboard Egg Carton

2. Dryer Lint

3. Melted Wax

 

 

C eats an egg sandwich for breakfast daily, so I have tons of egg cartons lying around that I've been stockpiling.

 

The dryer lint was another story. I had to recruit for this. I have dibs on everyone's lint (Wow! that sounded gross). Featherweight, G-Ma and even some co-workers have generously agreed to save their lint for me.

 

As far as the melted wax goes, I have tons of old tea lights and votives that were given to me that I will never EVER burn. I just had to remove the wick and pop them in the percolator.  A few Christmases ago, I made homemade soy candles for gifts. They were wonderful and burnt great. I didn't really want the hassle of working with a double boiler so I scored an old school percolatorfrom Goodwill. It works great because you sit it right on the burner, and it melts the wax, but you can pour directly from it as well. Easy-Peasy.

 

 

Anywho, I finally had enough lint saved to start my first small batch of fire starters.

 

Step 1- Fill the egg cartons with dryer lint

Step 2 - Melt your wax down

 

Step 3 - Pour the melted wax directly on to the dryer lint.

 

 

I don't really know the proper amount of wax to pour on, but I don't think you have to soak the lint. Just enough to cover it. When I was done, I just let the remaining wax solidify in the percolator again. I'll just add more wax pieces to it when I make my next batch.

 

So now it was time to put these babies to the test:

 

Prep your fire for ignition. a/k/a make your teepee or however it is you like to start a fire.

 

Break off one of the fire starters from the carton. Light it on fire and place it in a good spot in your fire ring. We put it right under the wood and amongst some newspaper.

 

They work so well because they burn for a long time. Long enough to catch the other stuff around them on fire.

 

So save your supplies and make some starters. You wouldn't want to miss out on summer bonfire season would you???

 

This is our good-burn fire ring. Those flames ignighted just a few short minutes after putting a lit fire starter under all of that wood.

 

And this is the fire-pit that was used to essentially burn up the entire wooden framed mobile home

(other than scrap of course)

RobSr. and C prepping it for the fire starters

Haha...the finishing touches

 

Fire Starters: ENGAGE

The previous owners had a split-rail fence installed in the woods. Most of it was broken on the ground. We used the wood for this massive fire.

Me and Featherweight found this piece of plywood in the shed as a "workbench". And by "work" I mean covered with garbage.

Burn Baby, Burn

And more finishing touches...

Look how big the fire is burning compared to C!

 

I have to say, we only used 3 fire starters in here. Obviously don't try a fire this large in your home, or without the supervision of an experience fire-burner, like RobSr.  :)

 

What are you waiting for? Go eat some eggs, dry some clothes and highjack everyone's candle scraps so that you can have big bonfires too!

 

 

 



Throwback Tuesday

Greetings All! For this Throwback post I am going far back, and I mean really far, to when I was about 14 years old, and I started working my very first job at Chick-fil-A.

 

 

That's right folks. I know I've been working in the office world for close to 7 years now, but it took a while. In fact, I seriously worked both jobs for a few Christmas Seasons. It's like I couldn't get enough.  After being a proud employee of this company for 9 years, I finally quit. That certainly doesn't stop me from treating myself to a delicious chicken sandwich every now and again. In fact, C and I don't eat out much, but when we do we always go back to CFA. The chicken is the freshest of any fast food restaurant. It really does start out raw when it goes into the fryer. This is not typical of any fast food restaurant.

 

 

Also, you might find it odd to eat chicken for breakfast. But you have clearly never had one of these from scratch chicken biscuits.

Don't even get me started on the chicken minis...and their honey-buttery goodness.

 



 

Okay, now that you are officially going to CFA as soon as possible, I'll fill you in on some other awesome facts about the company.

 

It's such a clean and family friendly place to eat. Click HERE for a link to see all of the events that CFA has for your family. Then find one near you and enjoy!

 

Chick-fil-A is a family-owned and family-led organization that runs on Biblically based principals. They are closed on Sundays and are super kind to customers. In fact, all team members say "My Pleasure" when serving customers. Don't believe me, I dare you to go find out for yourself! While I sometimes crave some sweet tea on a Sunday, I simply wouldn't have it any other way. I always had Sundays off to spend time with my friends and family, and my church friends and family.

 

I also received a college scholarship from Chick-fil-A for working there so many hours. Not only did my stable part-time job help put me through school, it literally paid for some of it.

 

When things would get a little crazy at work, we would always joke and say "Do it for Truett". If you are unfamiliar, Truett Cathy is the founder of Chick-fil-A and is also the founder of many foster homes, the WinShape Foundation. He has such and heart and passion for impacting youth, he even wrote this book. If you are interested in reading, or if you are a parent, I would highly recommend you pick up this book today. While short and simple, "It's Better to Build Boys than Mend Men" is inspiring at best. No one would know better than Truett himself, seeing as he changed the lives of so many children with his foster homes.

 

I fully stand behind and support everything that fast food chain stands for and I will leave you with their corporate policy, that I think we could all try to apply more to our personal lives.

 

"To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A".

 

 

 

 

 





Doe, a deer

Happy Monday! It seems as though spring just doesn't want to show up, as we received yet another night/day of snow. When I talked to the Greek he said they had 6 inches up at the property.  Hard to believe it was mostly all gone just a day ago.

 

The game plan on Saturday was to cut in, and install the 4 windows. We ended up purchasing two matching windows at Home Depot for the side facing the road, and the other 2 that were gifted to us, were on opposite sides.

 

Windows: Complete

 

Window number 1.

Please, no photos!

 

This is the side facing the street.

 

Next on the list for Saturday was completing the floor. This consisted of, lining the floor with a layer of ice and water shield, and then laying plywood.

 

Making sure the floor will be all sealed up.

C-Laying some floor

We decided to update our previous door/sawhorse table to this nice combo set that we had sitting in storage.

The floor is completed, for now.

 

While eating some yummy Shepherd's Pie, we were discussing how the deer ate all of the corn from the feeder, and they even tore the feeder down! We had a visitor looking for more food.

 

 

 

Sunday rolled around quickly, and RobSr. had a game plan.

 

1. Dig up the pump

2. Close in open areas on Porchouse

3. Wrap the Porchouse with tar paper

 

After enjoying some pancakes, we got right to it.

 

Rigging up the contraption

In case you were wondering, this is the well.

That orange hose-looking thing is the pipe to the well, and it's like 200 feet long.

 

The Greek brought his tractor, and chainsaw to help us start to clean up some miscellaneous things that we didn't need laying around anymore. We cut up the shed doors and he cut our pile of firewood for us, to make it easier to transport and put into containers.

 

 

After the pipe was dug up, RobSr. and C began wrapping the Porchouse.

 

 

And they also closed in all of the open areas.

 

 

Where the plywood is sticking out used to be exposed. This allowed the heat out, and the smoke from the fire in. NO GOOD. This is obviously not a problem anymore.

 

This image is from another day, but I still wanted to put it on here. It's me and the Greek. Probably in February, no snow and warmer than it is now at the end of March!