J's Teepee

Side view :) 

The art on the back. 

J also had to make a teepee for school :) He did a great job!! 

Birdhouses

 J was suppose to make a 'stick house' out of a cardboard box, Popsicle sticks and tubes of paper.. I showed it to Papa and we both decided it was a useless thing. Then Papa put his foot down and said 'if he has to build something with wood it should be USEFUL" so we built bird houses instead of clutter.. It  also ties in nicely to our on going bird unit :) He did read the pages that went with the 'stick house' project :) 

J and his birdhouse :)

It really was a family project. Papa and I cut the boards, Papa cut the holes and helped the kids put them together. J, L and E pretty much put theirs together with the drill with Papa only showing and holding and  putting in a couple of 'holding screws.' R and J just passed him screws to put in to their birdhouses. 

 They are only missing one thing.. Papa is going to drill holes in the front under the entrance hole for a stub of a stick for a perch. 

L and his bird house :) 

E and her birdhouse. 

R and her birdhouse! 

J3 was SO very proud of his and that he got to 'help' Papa make it!! He loves it!! 

We marked them so when we put them up we will be able to remember who's is who's. The kids are very excited to put them up around the place and see who decides to live in them. 

House Update :) Pictures :)

 Well here you go :) Please remember that these pictures were taken with my ipad :) 

We've been working quite a bit on the house in the last couple weeks. The weather has been strangely warm and we've been taking advantage of it :) We cleaned out the space, if you look in the link below you'll see how much STUFF there was still in storage here. Some of it went to the dump, some to the bus and quite a lot of it to the newly cleaned out back shed. There are only two cabinets left and they will stay in the house. Papa and I made several To Do lists and a bit of a timetable which is helping us look at our time needed/time that we have. We are hoping to have our newest blessing born while we are still in the trailer but plan on moving into the house soon afterwards and pulling the trailer out. This will be keeping us VERY BUSY!! This means that as soon as the walls are prepped and the weather nice we will be stuccoing like mad to get two coats on so we can live in it. After the stucco we'll be installing windows, doors, walls, kitchen and bathroom. Because the hallway is currently in between the trailer and the house we'll only be building a few inside walls so we don't have to redo them later :) 

Ok this is the back of the house.. Master bedroom and bathroom area. If you look HERE you can see what it was like before our last building stint. 

Here is the front. Empty of STUFF and with the temp wall built.. more on that below. That stack of bales in the right middle of the picture are all the bales that are left from the 200 we got this fall. The temp wall ATE a huge amount of these which is wonderful as it's a great storage place as well as a warm temporary wall. 

Looking the other way.. that stack of leftover bales (for building the two walls around the front windows, more below) is now in the center of the picture. There will be a stick frame wall there across the end of the lower ceiling behind which will be my pantry. The vaulted ceiling of the kitchen, dining, living area starts right there. 

The Temp wall..and a great place to store bales for later use... is where the middle section of the house will meet this section. That wall is right where the living area will join the kitchen dining area. The bales in the temp wall will be used for the outside walls around the living room area and the back.. after the trailers removed. To live in the house while we build the middle of it we needed a wall there. It's just a bonus that we had enough bales left to make it. 

The front two window frames are next weeks project. The plywood there is right in front of the dining room window and the 4 top bales by the ladder are where the kitchen window will go. It is about 24 feet, I believe from the front kitchen wall to the pantry wall. 

 After the window frames are finished we can build the walls around them and start our stucco prep. Still lots of mess to make!! :)