Who Needs A Dining Room Anyway?

The tour continues...

Once upon a time a few years back the second upstairs bedroom was my very own sewing room. It was a spare bedroom/sewing room for quite a while and then the day bed was sold and I got to use the space for sewing for a long time. It worked great for a while and I enjoyed working on projects upstairs by myself. I was set up with a TV and could have shows going in the background while crafting. Over the years I started to feel a little isolated and it was super cold upstairs and during the winter months and it took forever to heat up. 

Fast forward to 2015/2016 the walk in closet that we had was more of a hallway turned into a closet. It was hard to keep clean and organized. After many years of living with that mess I suggested that we turn the spare room into a dressing room. That idea was well received and we planned to start the conversion. However, that meant that my sewing stuff needed to go somewhere else. 

That natural somewhere else was the main floor. and the only space that made the most sense was the dining room or living room. After setting up my brand new Arrow Sewing Cabinet in both the Living Room or the Dining Room at different times I decided that the dining room was the better location, mostly because I could be near a window and close to the kitchen. Until this year my sewing adventures were minimal as I was working full-time which made it easy to store stuff on the cabinet since it is just another horizontal surface when it is all closed up and my machine is stored away.

Now that I am retired I have decided to set up "shop" in the dining room and leave my machine out and ready to go. I also have relocated the ironing board to the same space so I don't have to use the table top version. I have resurrected so many projects in the last couple of months that I can keep busy for a good long time.  

I finally finished the quilt on the wall - after 17 years of it sitting around.

View from the Living Room into what used to be the Dining Room

The space still needs some help, but I can make changes over time

There are still some things that need to be organized, but that will happen in time. For the past year or so I have been storing some fabric, miscellaneous tools and patterns on a card table in our front entry. We are not a front door household, back door guests welcome! 

Anyway, this space has been quite comfortable and I look forward to spending a lot of time here sewing and creating fun quilts and other crafts.

Tour

Well, I think it's time for a little tour of our home/farm. Today I'm sharing our Kitchen. This kitchen is not necessarily the most user-friendly space I've ever had in any house that we have lived in. I suppose that kitchen functionality wasn't a high priority way back in 1937 or maybe the original owner of this house wasn't much of a cook. Who knows?

Anyway, we are trying to fit modern appliances and work tables into the layout of the kitchen. To do that we had to take part of a cabinet away to get our updated refrigerator into the space. The stove is a stand alone, so it didn't require anything special. Come to think of it, the house came with the stove and fridge. The previous owner/realtor left the appliances for us. There isn't a lot that we could do to make this space more usable other than adding the Ikea table in January 2020. That table has made being in the kitchen more enjoyable. I can leave my Kitchenaid out and it has been used more this year than ever before. Before the table I would have to lug the mixer from a bottom cabinet and hoist it up on the counter. Okay, it's not that bad, but still. After a year of having this table I wonder why it took us so long to figure this out. 

When we first got the table we  had it situated as an extension of the counter. That was fine and all, but only one side of it could be used. So because I'm a thinker, I decided to make an "L" at the end of the counter and move a couple of things (coffee cart) to make things work out. Because of this move we are now able to get into the cabinet that houses the storage containers more easily. There once was a cart that sat near the stove, but blocked the cabinet. The cart also made it easy to be lazy about not putting containers away. The easy access makes the kitchen less messy now. 

The one thing that I would like to do is update the cabinets - not so much get new cabinets, but get new drawer pulls and maybe paint. The counter is super ugly, but we've lived with it since 1998. So, it's safe to say that we'll continue to live with it a while longer. 

One day we'll update the kitchen. For now we'll continue to make do with the space that has worked since the beginning. So many projects - so hard to choose. The kitchen is an important space, but the animal infrastructure is a little more important right now. 

Being retired really isn't so rough...:)

March?

Okay, I'm not like the rest of the world when it comes to time...I guess. Earlier this week on one of the YouTube video's we watch a late night talk show host had a compilation of different news stations exclaiming that it was March again...Wow. Whatever people...you'll get over it and pretty soon it will be spring and then summer and then March will roll around again. 

So, for me January was all about rest and February I started to do some fun stuff along with regular daily chores.

BUT...

March is when we get busy around here. When I was still working I think it was more busy. March was the month that I would take off a week of vacation to do all the things that I needed to do to kick off food growing season. I would try packing every little thing into a week. Starting seeds cleaning the garden and the hoop house, getting ready to bring home chicks from the hatchery and so on. Inevitably, I wouldn't be able to do everything on my list. That just meant I had to cram things in whenever there was extra time. 

This year is different. Now that I am into month three of retirement I am ready to get things going without the fear of running out of time. I've already gotten seeds into trays, but that wasn't without issues.

This is from this past Monday - March 1

STARTING SEEDS

On Monday I decided to start getting my seeds started. My preference is using my soil blocker and placing them into trays. I can get 9 rows of blocks into a standard size tray and get all sorts of seeds sown. Over the weekend I did run into a little problem. All of the domes/lids for the trays were nested together in the corner of the hoop house and were damaged from all of the heat...Oooops. Since I got all of the lids at Wilco, I didn't think anything of it and planned to trek out to Battle Ground to purchase some more lids.

Issue #1 - I drove all the way out to Battle Ground. It's not far, but it's also not as convenient as popping down to Freddy's. I know, first world problem... Anyway, arrived at Battle Ground, marched into the store and to the garden area only to find that they did not have the domes. What the WHAT? They had all sorts of trays, but no lids. Not all was lost though, as there is another Wilco in Clark County. Instead of heading over there I decided to be smart - I asked a clerk if they could check the Vancouver store. Nothing there either. Mind you, the Vancouver store is nearly as far away from our home and a little bit of a trek from Battle Ground. I was not in the mood to go there. 

DANG! 

So, off to home I went. Although, out of curiosity I decided to stop and see if Freddy's had any. What on earth was I thinking?! Of course they didn't.

Issue #2 - The next best thing...Amazon of course. After a couple of searches I decided it was not worth it to buy FIVE lids for $30. You've got to be kidding me these things are plastic! If I'm going to spend that much money I'm just going to get another set of mini trays. 

The mini trays that I chose are same size as the ones in the photo above, BUT the lids have vents. That's a bonus in my mind. I placed the order on Monday and they delivered a couple of days later

These vents - so very cool! The other thing that was different about these - the cell tray is clear. Tom mentioned that this way I could see the roots - which is always cool! So this was a win. 

The soil blocker will still get used though. When it's no longer +/- 40 degrees I can get stuff into the trays without using the lids. I think I had done that in the past and it worked just fine. 

MEATIE CHICKS

We have ordered our meatie chicks from Jenks for the past three seasons. Just to be different and not go the Cornish Cross route we decided to go with the Freedom Ranger. Our last batch was the FryPan Special - we did not like that batch at all. You can read that post HERE. We REALLY like the Freedom Ranger, but they take several weeks longer to grow out. Like fourteen weeks, not eight or nine weeks like the CC. As much as I like the Rangers, I think after this batch we'll try the CC. It would be nice to harvest the meaties after a couple of months - tops. Less time = less feed. I think I'd be okay with the chubby CC.

We order from Jenks Hatchery which is a nice drive down the Willamette Valley. It's nice to get out of Vancouver now and then. Also, we take the opportunity to do a little Pokemon hunting :)

PROJECTS

Like I'm really helping with projects. What I do is come up with projects  I'm the queen of thinking up projects! Yesterday (March 4th) Tom built a simple table with the shelf underneath it so I could store my canners in my new storage space in the basement - 

I wasn't looking for anything fancy and just wanted to get the canners out of the kitchen. This works out perfect!

Today Tom is out building a new brooder for the meaties. The big brooder currently has a dozen pullets in it and the livestock tank that we bought to  brood the last batch of chicks is actually a nesting shelter for one of the turkeys. ANYWAY - chicks coming home on Tuesday means we or Tom needs to build a new brooder. That should be done this morning. 

So, even though I've got more time than ever, I'm finding that I don't necessarily have the energy. I'm still spending time resting as I did throughout the month of January, but not napping as much as I did then. I'm trying to designate different activities to specific days of the week. That way, if/when that project or task is done I can focus on doing other things. That's how my days get filled up when I fill in the "free" time with stuff. It can be something enjoyable as sewing or cooking/baking. A lot of times I'll hang out and watch some TV shows or read. Things that I didn't have time for while work. Well, we did watch TV, but usually YouTube videos. 

Anyway, I welcome the month of March because it means that it's time to grow stuff! That's really the whole point of us and our farm.