The downside to country living

I love living in the country.

Buying this acreage last fall was a dream come true for us. 

It is quiet. 

It is private. 

It is beautiful and the possibilities are endless!

But there is one aspect of living out here that I wish I could trade in. See, there is a park in town. 

And at that park are friends. 

Friends for myself and friends for my kids. 

We have trees to climb and buildings to explore and animals to play with...but we often do these things alone. 

I'm usually ok with being alone. I love the quiet. I am not someone who wants to be with people all the time...which is probably why I didn't frequent the park when we lived in town. I felt like I was constantly surrounded by people while living in town so often stuck to our own house/yard for playtime. 

But now that I have all the alone time I need (believe me, it's glorious!), I am more often finding that I have the energy to be social. 

We have had more people over to our house for meals in the past 11 months since we moved out here than in the two years we lived in town. 

So when I drive through town and notice friends at the park, I am left feeling lonely. It would be nice to just be able to walk down the street every morning with the kids and play at the park. It would be nice to have play dates that I could walk to instead of getting in the vehicle every time. 

But I'm sure I will adjust. This is not something that outweighs all of the positives of living out here. I'll just have to make a point (and an extra gas allowance in the budget) for being with people. 

What do you think? What would be your pros and cons of living in the country?

Here are some pics from recently, because I did promise them afterall. 

Kiddos finding the kitties (notice the yarn on the bench beside me...work is never far away these days!)

Haha. Balloon in the pjs is always good for some laughs :)

We visited my brother and sister-in-law over my birthday weekend. They stayed with the kids while we went to a wedding and took them to a park. They know the way to my kids' hearts!

Quick, creepy drive-by shot of our first house in Manitoba. It's always nice to drive through our old neighbourhood and see our first house :)

Levi got some new piece for his Ikea train tracks and chose to play with them instead of having night snack when we got home (that's huge for him!). 

Levi's favourite new game: jr monopoly

Lately - a boring update

Sadly, I have no pictures for you today.  I know, bummer.  My kids are the cutest and that's the real reason anyone "reads" this blog.  My apologies.  :)

So what have we been up to lately? 

Well, my business has been keeping me quite busy for the past 6 weeks or so.  Orders started picking up in early August and have been coming in steadily since. I am shipping across the states and Canada and even had an order from Ireland this month!  It's fun to know that my creations are going out across the world and are being enjoyed.  My favourite orders by far, though, are the ones made for people I know. Nothing beats making something for a friend and then being able to see it being used and loved.  So anyway, I don't do much else in the evening at at naptimes besides work these days and I've thought a bit about sending the kids to childcare one day a week just so I can keep up.  We'll see if I need to do that once the trade and craft shows come and the Christmas rush is upon us.  While it is busy, I still SO enjoy what I do.  It's lovely that a hobby has been able to provide a little extra cash for our family while still being able to stay home with the kids full time.

We also made a trip to Manitoba to see some family and friends and attend the wedding of a former youth of ours from our days living there!  There is NEVER enough time to see everyone I would like to see while we're there, but it was good to catch up with a few people at the wedding and have a couple days with my brother and sister-in-law.  The kids had a chance to get to know their uncle and auntie all over again as we left them at my brother's house while we went to the wedding. I wish I could have introduced our kids to the friends we saw at the wedding but it was so nice to just be able to visit and stay late (we were almost the last ones to leave!) without little people pulling on our arms and asking when it was time to go. 

My garden has been thriving and also slow to ripen completely.  I have harvested all of the corn and squash, and peas have been done for a month already.  But I have yet to dig the potatoes, onions, and carrots. Most of my peppers aren't even ready yet and my tomatoes are all still green.  Is that normal??  Should I be bringing in the tomatoes to ripen inside?  I'm guessing the peppers just need to do their thing on the plant or freeze trying.  I've got 11 jars of salsa already canned, though, so if I don't get more, while disappointing, it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I have a bunch of peas, corn, raspberries and strawberries in the freezer, squash in cold storage, and potatoes, onions and carrots to come. Have I mentioned that I love having a large garden??  There's nothing quite like being self-sufficient in that area of life :)  Perhaps one day we'll be able to add to that self-sufficiency with a few animals like pigs and chickens...hmm.

The kids are doing well.  Levi is nearing his fourth birthday.  He is not looking forward to it whatsoever.  I took him along when Kayden had her 18  month immunizations and didn't realize that we would be booking his 4 year immunizations while we were there.  He saw her crying and, naturally, doesn't want anything to do with needles now.  Poor kid. I keep telling him that he will get to do many exciting things while he's four but to him, four means needles. He's requested blue cake with chocolate icing so maybe I can deliver that and at least get him to enjoy his birthday, even if it means that shots are coming :) 

Kayden is 19 months old and has left the baby days behind.  At the beginning of summer, she was 16 months old and still feeling very much like a baby to us.  She wasn't walking, talking, crawling, pulling herself up, rolling over...nothing.  If I laid her down somewhere, that's where she lay!  If I sat her somewhere, that's where she sat.  Over the summer, she has learned to walk, pull herself up, crawl, talk, get off of beds/etc, climb (in this order). She has moved from the highest crib setting at the beginning of summer (the one for newborns!) to a toddler bed as of last week. High chair to her own stool at the table. Next on the list is potty training. I'm hoping to have her trained by Christmas so we'll see if that happens. It's not that there's a rush, but training Levi early (21 months) worked so well that I'm going to give it a shot with her before her real, 2 year old stubbornness sets in.  

I have so very much enjoyed our first summer on the acreage.  It has been a lot more work than living in town, but it feels so good to be able to get outside every day and accomplish something.  I found that in town I would run out of things to do in our yard and end up just sitting while the kids played.  It feels good to always have a garden to weed or a tree to trim or grass to mow.  Physical work is so rewarding. Plus, it keeps me in shape. Now that we've had a few cooler days of being inside more, I'm noticing the numbers on the scale creeping up and the love handles developing.  Need to keep moving! I might find myself shoveling snow by hand this winter just to keep fit (and warm!).  Well, I don't know about that last one. We'll see how desperate I get...

I think that's about it that's new with us.  I'll try to have more pictures for next time cause let's face it...pictures make every post more interesting!  But alas, I just haven't been taking many lately. Thanks for reading! 

Oh, and I don't mean to advertise, but if you don't know what "business" I'm talking about and want to see what I've been up to, you can check out my etsy shop HERE and my fb page HERE!

Cloud dough

When I was a new parent, I was like all new parents...I wasn't afraid of a little extra work on my part for the sake of my child's happiness. In simple terms: I was all for messy games.

Enter, cloud dough:

Why do the things my children enjoy most have to require the most cleanup afterward??

This particular activity promised "easy cleanup" (which was irrelevant to me two years ago when I first made this stuff) but boy is that wrong. This activity may require the most cleanup out of everything, except maybe puddle jumping. This stuff gets everywhere!  Table, floor, and toys that enter the scene need to be washed, clothes need to be washed, kids bathed. This is the full deal, people. And while it wasn't daunting the first time or two, now with two kids and supper to make, orders to make and ship, and laundry to fold...it feels like a lot of extra work.

But look at this face (my look of concentration was passed down to her, apparently!)...

How can I say no?!

On days like today when the kids have been so incredibly good, and Levi finds the cloud dough and asks ever so nicely if he can play with it, I don't have the heart to say no. And when Kayden sees what Levi is doing, playing with pom-poms and pipe cleaners suddenly isn't good enough and she wants in on the action too. So here I am, with a mixture of flour and baby oil spread out all over my dining room table and two kids, who will need to be bathed yet before supper. But they are happy and so I'm happy. Today the mess just doesn't matter and I smile as I see the focus on those little faces as they scoop and dump and make a mess. Because before I know it, they'll be all grown up and in school and I'll miss the days when I had little mess-makers to spend my days with. 

So enjoy the coud dough today, my children, for tomorrow we clean. 

Cloud Dough:

Mix equal parts flour and baby oil (or coconut oil?)

This stuff keeps for years, as long as you don't use an oil that goes rancid such as olive or veggie. Whether you want it to last that long, though, is another question completely ;)

GAK

We made gak today. If you have never made gak, you definitely should! Whether or not you have kids. Make some. It's cool :)

Here's the recipe:

If you can't read it, let me know. 

Basically you make a glue/water mixture (equal parts of each) and you also make a borax/water mixture (1tsp borax/1cup water) and you mix them with lots of stirring and you eventually get a slimy, slippery, oober-fun substance known as gak!

Mix mix mix.

And then you let your kids play and sit back as they're entertained for going on 45 minutes!  Love it!  It's a bit of a mess as it sticks to clothes and stains (if you've used food colouring) and little bits of it tend to end up everywhere but I'm game for a little cleanup some days if it means I have some happy kids :) (notice I said "some days!"). 

Oh, and a random sidenote...Levi loves saying the word "gak" and says "gak" as many times as he possibly can. For instance: "mom I like gak! I'm going to make my gak even gak-ier!" In fact, I just heard him say it 3 times in the last 30 seconds while typing this. Oh, and there it was again!  Gak!

Corn harvest 2014

Today was the day, apparently. I don't know if it's the "right" time to harvest corn in Saskatchewan. Or if it's typical to harvest all in one day or to pick a few each day as they seem ready. I grew up with a mom who was always gardening, and we kids were often involved in the process...but when I was 12, I wasn't exactly taking note of the time of year we picked corn or if we did it all in one day or not. So now that I have my own garden, I find myself flying by the seat of my pants a little (what an odd expression!) and asking my mom questions when I'm just really not sure!

But in any case, today was corn day. I went out to the garden this morning just to see what was ready and ended up pulling up half my corn!  I must say, it does make it more difficult to harvest when your corn decides to take a nap halfway through the growing season. 

 It is also more tricky when your mammoth squash plants use your corn as a climbing apparatus. Not only did I plant my corn rows too close together so I could barely fit down the rows (not normally a huge issue for me!) but now I also have vines as thick as my wrist criss-crossing back and forth between the rows of corn, coming as high as my chest, with the occasional squash hanging here and there. So maybe it's a good thing my corn fell in the wind...this way I can pick my corn like blueberries and not have to worry about making it to the middle of the patch!

I have two great little helpers who are usually with me in the garden. 

They can usually entertain themselves pretty well while I'm working. It was especially easy while the raspberries were at their peak!  I would just set Kayden down next to a bush and she would make her way around, eating as she went!  (Boiling water gets out raspberry stains, by the way) By the time she had made it around a bush, I was usually finished what I was doing and we were all still happy. During the really hot days in summer, we would take the truck to the garden for no other reason but to have some shade for the kids. It worked well because it was a treat for them to play in there and they were out of the sun. Win-win :) 

For my birthday, I got a wheelbarrow from my parents. We've made a few trips with that too :)

We've worked out the easiest way to travel via wheel arrow: Levi and his heavy 28 lbs in front over the wheel and Kayden's 19.5 lbs behind him.  I tried to have them side by side at first but by the time we reached the garden, my left arm would be dying while my right arm was not feeling anything so...this works much better!

This is how much corn I picked today:

When we got back to the house, the kids BOTH helped me shuck/husk it!  I have to say, there are few things cuter than having your 19 month old helping you shuck/husk corn!  And my 3 year old was pretty adorable helping too. I didn't even have I ask them to help. They just got right to work. I was all ready for lunch and they just kept working so I figured I wouldn't discourage their work ethic!

After that, we cooked some corn and had some for lunch!  Well, truth be told, Kayden couldn't quite wait for the cooking part so she enjoyed her first cob raw. But once it was cooked, we all dove in and enjoyed the fruits of our labour. Yum!

Now I just need to decide how I'm going to process this corn!  I'm not a huge fan of frozen corn but without a pressure canner, I can't can it. I've done some creamed corn already this year so do I just make more?  Or do I try some frozen corn and see if it's alright? Or do we just eat corn on the cob morning, noon and night until it's gone? Yes, I think we might do that. Mmm...

And then the logger in me comes out

Sometimes it feels so good to do something other than sit inside and work on orders, that I decide to cut down a tree. By hand. With the biggest saw we've got. 

Things I count as blessings

When I was in Bible school, fresh out of high school, I was new to managing money. I had only just gotten my first debit card and was new to financial responsibility. That said, I think I did pretty well. I headed into tuition payment with the money my parents had saved for my education and the money I'd made working a couple summers at camp. Life was good. I was fairly oblivious, checking on my balance at the beginning of each semester to make sure the funds were there and once or twice throughout the school year to double check that there was enough to see a movie with friends or to buy the shampoo/soap/pads that I needed.

Something strange sometimes happened, though, when I would check my balance. Instead of constantly going down, as would be expected when you're a student with minimal student work, my balance would sometimes jump up by a few hundred dollars. Unexpectedly and inexplicably. Now, perhaps I could have tracked down the source for these funds; they likely had a very logical explanation. But in the minimal digging that I did, I couldn't find a source and therefore began to dub the extra money, "Miracle Money." I took that money as a gift from God and gave Him the thanks for it. I always felt so blessed.

Recently, our hot water heater started acting funny. We would have warm water for part of a day and then it would seem to run out and it would just be cold for about 12-18 hours until it had a chance to warm up again. At its hottest those days, it would be just barely warm enough for a comfortable shower. Not hot enough to feel like I was getting the dishes clean or really have a nice, hot shower...but warm enough to not freeze our hands when we washed them...until it ran out. Then it was just plain cold.  Anyway, we did a little research and figured one of our elements must be shot. Our options would be to replace the element(s) or replace the entire water heater - which, considering its age, was our plan. Nathan was going to buy a water heater one Saturday but for whatever reason, he left it for Monday. On Sunday, Nathan was talking to the previous owner of our place, who suggested flipping the breaker just in case half the breaker had flipped on its own and half was still on. He admitted it was a long shot, but it couldn't hurt to try. Well, we went home after church and Nathan flipped the breaker. Then we waited. And guess what?  We're back to hot water! Was it really the breaker? Probably. I mean, it's certainly a possibility that that was the case (though I've never heard of such!). But I'm choosing to see it as God blessing us. I'm giving him thanks for not having to buy a new water heater just yet.

I'm also giving God thanks for the little things these days. Like just now, I needed a few things for supper. Last year, while living in town, I would have run to the grocery store to pick up what I needed. Of course that's a blessing, to have a grocery store near by and the money to purchase what I need. But it was so nice to head to the garden and come back with a pail full of produce. I am always amazed that I can put small seeds in the ground in spring, basically do nothing else, and then have a garden full of stuff to eat in just a matter of months. Isn't that crazy? I think it's pretty amazing. You put seeds in DIRT, and food grows. Unbelievable. Anyway, I figured I'd share what I was making for supper, since it's one of my favourites. It's one of those things that I grew up eating and is a definite comfort food for me. If you happen to have the Mennonite Treasury of Recipes, you might have seen/made it before :)

Seven Layer Dinner

Layer thinly sliced potatoes in bottom of casserole dish (about 1/2"). 

Add a layer of thinly sliced onions. 

Next a layer of thinly sliced carrots (4 or 5). 

Sprinkle on 1/4 cup rice. 

Add a layer of peas (frozen is fine). So far in this casserole, the potatoes, onion, carrots and peas are all from my garden!

Add a layer of either pork sausages or ground beef and season with salt and pepper. 

Dilute a can of tomato soup with a can of water and pour over top. Then bake, covered, at 350 for one hour. Uncover and bake for another hour then serve!  Yum!