More New House Pictures--on the Inside

By request, here are pictures from the inside of our new house.  It is such an upgrade from living in a single wide that I'm not sure my brain can really wrap around it yet!  I'm trying not to get too excited about the wide open spaces inside the house, because I remember how much bigger our current tiny place looked with nothing in it, but having an upstairs area for the kids and a basement is a big enough improvement that it should all work out great, no matter how exactly we fill the house.

This is my small, but bigger than current, kitchen.  There is no dishwasher, which will be an adjustment, but there doesn't appear to be any critters, which is a major plus!  The counters, cabinetry, and plumbing all looks new as well.  I love the retro flooring as well!

This is the dining room.  It is huge in my eyes, about the size of our current living room.  I'm sure it will shrink a lot when I have our small chest freezer, hutch, homeschooling shelf, and table for six in it.  This is the view looking from the living room, toward the kitchen.  The shut door off to the right leads to the upstairs, which will be the children's domain.

And this is the living room.  I am so excited that there should be enough room for the couch, love seat, and coffee table and still have enough room to move around them!

This is our bedroom.  It's considerably smaller than what we have now, but with all the extra room in the rest of the house, I doubt I'll miss the space!

This is the mudroom, right inside the front door.  I doubt we'll use the front door much, except to get the mail (how awesome is that that our mailbox isn't a quarter mile away?), but I'm very excited that there is a designated area for coats, shoes, and all that nonsense that we've always kind of tripped over all over for the past couple years!

Our Michigan basement won't house some of the projects I'd been toying with, like a full blown garden with grow lights (which might attract the wrong sort of attention from the police anyway), but will be adequate for storage and as emergency shelter in severe weather, something I've sorely missed the past eight years that I've been living in a trailer!

This was taken from the stairs, peering into the children's domain of upstairs.  There's a large common area here, which will be the playroom and toy storage area.  There is also a common closet that they will share for hanging clothes (of which they don't have many, so that's okay). 

This is one of the two bedrooms upstairs.  The only difference between the two is which side the window is on, so of course the children are already arguing over which set of kids, the boys or the little ones, gets which room!  Kids!

So that's pretty much it.  That's the grand tour.  I didn't show you the bathroom, since you don't need to use it, being on the other side of the internet (and if you came over, it's impossible to miss just inside the back door, where everyone would come in), but it is a pretty good sized room that has a stacked washer and dryer, cabinets for towels (a first for our living spaces, like, ever) and bathtub with a sliding glass door in addition to the "necessaries".

This is going to be so much nicer than trailer living!  And once we get moved in, inside and out, I'll announce the name of the new homestead!

"Before" Pictures of the Homestead-to-be

Out of all the houses we looked at, we ended up being accepted at our first choice!  It has a nice area for the kids upstairs, a Michigan basement so we finally have someplace for some more advanced food storage and someplace to go during tornado warnings, and the biggest yard of every place we looked at!  For me, the basement and the yard were some of the biggest pluses for what we were looking at.  On this house, I was also greatly encouraged by seeing the next door neighbor had clothes hanging on a line in the back yard, something that had been forbidden at the Trailer Park Homestead.  I'm seeing a lot of potential for this new place.....but I haven't asked if I can have chickens yet!

This is our front yard to be.  Since we are on an extremely busy street, I haven't decided if I'm going to leave it more or less as is for camouflage (nothing to see here; move along) for the sake of security, or if I'm going to turn it into a showcase of what is possible to grow in a small area to serve as an inspiration for the surrounding community, and just expect to share whatever is up there with the community.  If it wasn't on a busy street, there is no question that I would have a showcase, but this is one of the city's major streets, so it may draw more attention than I want to deal with, in a negative way.

This picture shows the side yard, as taken from the middle of the backyard.  There isn't a whole lot of side yard, but that's okay, because if I do want to conceal my urban growing activities, I'll want to put a privacy screen of some sort up there to block the backyard from the three- or four- lane one way street that goes in front of it.  I'm also excited about the ramp, because that means for the first time, my sister-in-law will be able to visit us, so I'll definitely be looking to make sure to keep that accessibility when designing the garden.  The other side of the house is driveway, so nothing to see there.

This picture is from the corner of the property.  You can tell from the small size of the ramp that it's a pretty decent sized yard!  Not so large that I'm really thinking about goats, but I definitely intend on asking the landlord about chickens, once I make sure that local ordinances would allow for them (which I'm pretty sure they do, I just need to find out specifics).  The van isn't actually parked in the real driveway/parking area, since I wanted to keep the back of the house clear for pictures, so that's actually future gardening area as well.

Acorns Everywhere

After looking at the first four houses this afternoon and as we were waiting for our appointment to look at a fifth house, we stopped at a park to fill out a rental application for a house we kind of liked (it was in hardcore ghetto, but at least the bedrooms were laid out in a formation we liked, it had a basement, and a decent sized yard) and to let the kids run wild.  I expected that as soon as they were released from the van they would take off running toward the playground.

It turns out my children are squirrels.

Rather than rushing off to play, they squealed, "Look at all the acorns!  Mom, what can we put them in to collect some?"  I produced a plastic grocery bag that we keep in the vehicle for trash bags and they set to work collecting the nuts.  I think they ended up spending more time collecting acorns than they did playing!  You see, they know that tasty food can be made from acorns and were excited to do their part to collect the key ingredient in such delicacies as acorn pound cake.

Since we have all this craziness of looking for a house going on now, with the packing and moving that is to follow, I doubt I'll have a chance to post any fresh acorn recipes this year, but here is a compilation of my recipes and acorn instructions from last year:

Eating Acorns--How to gather and make acorn meal

Acorn Pound Cake

Chocolate Chip Acorn Bar Cookies

Acorn Griddle Cakes

Apple Acorn Crumble

So now that you know acorns are food, get out there and start gathering them before the real squirrels get them all or they go to waste!

THE END OF THE TRAILER PARK HOMESTEAD

Yes, for real.  We've been given notice that we cannot renew our lease at the end of the month like we'd been planning, so we have to be out of here by the end of the month.  How that is going to happen when we don't have the money to move, nor will we likely be able to find anything that meets our requirements (under $600 a month, 3 bedrooms, and something resembling a yard, in the Lansing or Jackson, Michigan areas), so quickly, nor are we likely to find someone that will rent to use when my husband has been unemployed almost a year and I am self-employed in a very non-traditional sense, I don't know.

What I do know is all this is going to be left behind or destroyed:

That blank patch has been planted with the last of my spinach seeds.  I'll take the garden box with us, but it is too heavy to transport with soil in it, so all those plants will be destroyed.

Obviously, the boy is coming with us where ever we end up, but that gorgeous volunteer tomato plant and all the pepper plants in this garden patch will be left behind.  I plan on telling our neighbors that they can have whatever it produces until the trailer park management weed whacks it down.

 So that's it, my major update about the Trailer Park Homestead.

I do plan on keep up my homesteading activities where ever we go, but, as far as I know right now, it could be a Tent City Homestead, Homeless Shelter Homestead, or, probably the best case scenario, the Ghetto Homestead.  This is definitely a very, very scary time for us.

Finding Drafts Before Winter Finds You

With the unofficial end of summer here, it is time to turn our attention to winter. Yuck. With that mind, here is a guest post from Jakob Barry, a home improvement journalist for Networx.com. He blogs for pros across the U.S. like Washington, DC, carpenters.

Whatever living space you have one of the most important situations to rectify before cooler weather arrives is drafts. That’s because when it’s freezing outside and the wind is howling the brisk air will find its way inside your home making life more frigid and uncomfortable than it has to be.

Furthermore, while you’re sitting there hands around a hot glass of tea dreaming about spring the heating bill will be rising. That’s because whether it’s an electric heater or a basement furnace trying to maintain some sense of warmth, the thermostat will constantly be trying to compensate for the imbalance in temperature.

That said the following are a few tips for finding drafts and trying to seal them up so the indoors will be a cozy space away from the wintry chaos.

Locating drafts
Drafts are mainly found around windows and doors because those spots are the largest openings on a home. Once in a while an old structure in need of repairs that wasn’t tended to may develop a draft in a different spot but this would be an unusual case.

Doors and windows are the places to focus on when locating drafts and the best way to do this is with a candle.

It doesn’t have to be at night but should be on a day where there is a breeze.

1. Remove curtains from around windows and anything else likely to catch fire that may also be around doors.
2. Close and lock windows and doors.
3. Light a candle and make sure it can be held securely.
4. Holding the candle move it over the space just across from the door or window going over the frame from top to bottom and any parts in between.
5. Watch the flame carefully. If it flickers chances are you’ve discovered a draft.
6. Try to mark the spot with a light pencil so you won’t forget where it is.

Sealing easy drafts
Once you’ve discovered a draft don’t be startled. If it’s not too serious you should be able to deal with it yourself and not have to hire a carpentry contractor. If this is the case all you’ll need is a caulking gun, some caulk, and rubber gloves.

1. Look at the pencil marks made when holding the candle and eye ball where they would correspond outside.
2. Caulk around the window or door exterior with extra emphasis on where the drafts were.
3. Smooth out the caulk with a finger while wearing the rubber gloves so it covers any and all openings.
4. On a breezy day check with the candle to see if the drafts were sealed.

Sealing more complicated drafts
Sometimes the drafts are more complicated and may require weather stripping, especially around doors. This can be purchased at a local home improvement store and installed easily by following the directions.

It’s when drafts are found around the mechanism of a window that a professional may need to be called in. This often occurs when a window is out of alignment and needs to be serviced.

In such an event, it’s important to realize that while paying someone to give the window a tune up may not seem like an option you’d like to follow through with, the savings it will most likely provide on the utility bill will be worth the money.