The Sauna Begins!

Here comes the Sauna!

It's coming along quickly, but there's still a ways to go. Insulation, stove piping, house wrap, benches and metal siding, and then we will have a functional sauna!

I wanted a picture collage, and Lucas came up with this creative decor.
The pictures hang from a 12 foot long tree branch above our sink and oven.



Jeremy and Lindsey spotted these 2 swag lamps at the local flee market.  This is also a great shot of the colored boards
that line our ceiling in the main room.

A new painting I created of our bathroom window made its way onto the living room wall.

Rilo got to have her very own bed made from the leftover scraps from our reupholstered dining room chairs.

Lucas has been busy!  He also built a 20' long, 10' deep woodshed with these beautiful birds painted on the side.  A picture of the wood shed will come soon, but he also came home with 2 does this hunting season, and they are currently obscuring the view of the shed.

Cleaned up and painted the sink.  I used lace to create patterns and then spray painted it.  We've been using this sink since we moved in, it had been Luke's parents years ago, and was sitting in a shed on the farm.  He cleaned it, built a base, and made it useful again.

Expanding our syrup, gardening, and canning endeavors has left us with a storage problem!  I finally got the idea to build this shelf in the small space between our water tank and wall.  About 3 feet deep and build out of reclaimed wood from a pallet, it holds over 75 jars!

An up to date interior shot of our main room

Fall pics of the house.  Not too much has changed recently on the exterior, but the hops that Dad and Lori are growing splendidly and make a nice frame!

Porches, Birthdays, Ramps, and Syrup!

 We had a lot of help hauling buckets and boiling down the sap.  We wound up with 25 gallons of syrup! 

It's great to have a covered porch!  Thank you to my Dad and his cousin Loureen for giving us the boards from her old deck!



We had a cowboy themed party to celebrate my birthday :).



So many great friends came out!

So many kids e njoying the woods!

Mustaches on sticks....

And awesome costumes!

 And Andrea and Thomas brought sky lanterns too!

 

 

 

Wild Ramps Pesto!



1. Find ramps



2. Gather many ramps

3. Puree with parmesan, walnuts, and sunflower oil

We wound up with 5 gallons of finished canned pesto :)
 

And a lovely nest of robin eggs by our toolshed.

 

 

We leave for Colorado for tomorrow, so this is the last post with house pictures for a few months.  have a great summer!

Artsy Updates and FAQ's

"Candelier" A small iron wheel, copper wire, and electrical insulators

Red accents everywhere, and Lucas surprised me with a mounted guitar stand :)
Thanks for the dresser mom!

The medicine cabinet--made out of a vintage suitcase

Beautiful rough barn boards gave the bathroom some finishing accents

Winter break gave me some extra time to add some of  my own artsy touches to our home.   This image is from one of Roma di Luna's album covers.

More painted additions classing up our bar area

FAQ #1 Power?  We have 2 12V AGM batteries that we currently charge at Luke's folks' home.  One day we will have a wind power set up to charge them on site.  Once charged, a battery is connected to our power inverter (shown above), and can run our 2 lamps for about a week.

FAQ #2 El Bano.  Comfortably indoors, the bathroom is a normal seat as shown above, and there is a garbage can accessed from outside of the house for easy emptying.  We use saw dust or coffee bean hulls from our local roaster after each use, and no, it doesn't smell our house up at all!  When it's nice out we also have an outdoor latrine to complete our 2 bedroom 2 bath household ;).

FAQ# 3 Heat:  We have a high efficiency wood stove and chopping enough wood to keep us warm is a regular fitness activity!
FAQ# 4 Refrigeration: Our fancy propane stove is pictured in some of the previous pictures, but was taken from a camper and runs quite efficiently on propane.
FAQ# 5 Water?  We have a 200 gallon gravity fed water tank that is tucked behind the toilet in the bathroom.  It feed into the sink in our kitchen, and there is a 5 gallon bucket beneath the sink that we empty regularly.  We have another 200 gallon tank that fits in the back of the truck and we currently fill it at the home farm, though next year we hope to set up a rain catchment with a filtration system :).

At this point we still shower at friends, family, and UWL campus showers, but soon there will be a Sauna with a shower inside to satisfy that need to!