Thankful Thursdays Dec. 13th/12

Well today I'm thankful for know how. Know how isn't perfect. It's capable. It's knowledge. It's the first step but not always the last.

I'm thankful I know how to make bread, and eat it!
I'm thankful for know how which makes our lives easier.
I'm thankful for know how which keeps us from making the same mistakes as last time.
I'm thankful for other people with know how who like to share!
I'm thankful for know how to do things the 'old fashioned' way, make butter, bread, cheese, etc.
I'm thankful I know how to run a house, a farm and a home school.
I'm thankful I know how to be a friend, even if I don't tend to be great at it.
I'm thankful I know how to type, which makes blogging much easier :)
I'm thankful I know how to turn a frown upside down.
I'm thankful my kids enjoy know how and what it entails. In fact they seem to thrive on it.
I'm very thankful Papa has a LOT of know how in many areas.. many of which I have no know how in at all!!


Know how... it's a pretty useful thing :)

You got some??

~Announcing #7~

For those of you who may have missed it on FB or the feed on the side of the blog :) 

G Is ONE!!

Little Miss G is 1!! Happy Birthday little one!! 

At 1 year of age she weighs about 16.5 lbs and is 18 month clothing. She still not walking but can get around, and UP anything she wants. She drinks from a straw in a cup and about 2 weeks after turning 1 she weaned herself. She loves to play trucks with J3 and let the kids walk her around holding on to her hands. She loves food and eats A LOT for her size! She nods YES with her whole head and chin and has just started not nodding if she doesn't want something. She really dislikes her 'pink marshmallow snowsuit' and looks offended every time we get it out. She loves to sing and dance. 

Super excited for her cupcake!! 

Finally!! 

J3 blew the candle out as is tradition :) 

MINE!

Ahh....

 these three pictures were taken in about 40 seconds!! 

GOOD STUFF!!! 

Yes I have a chocolate icing beard.. I LIKE IT!! 

Done!! Boy did I make a mess.. then I got a bath at Gramma Griggs house!! (More on that later :) 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!!!

          Wowza!! The Christmas letter already!! We've had a busy year as per normal but I’ll give you some highlights ;)

          -The Griggs Family is learning, growing, and enjoying life together; enjoying our new, since the last Christmas letter, home church group; and enjoying watching each other grow in God’s word and love and in many other ways!!

-The Griggs Family Home school is still going strong! We've added a science program called Apologia to our ACE curriculum this year and we are loving it!! With 3 children in two grades, 3 and 2, and Rose doing sort of a pre grade 1 work we have a busy kitchen table J With Jesse, age 2.5, and Grace, almost 1, we also have a busy living room.

-The Griggs Family House Building is going really good. We got what we are calling the ‘half addition’ floor, ceiling, window frames and walls, except stuccoing, pretty much done this summer/fall. The VERY TENITIVE plan is to move into it next summer sometime.

-The Griggs Family Homestead is filling freezers with beef and pork, feeding critters, collecting eggs, making cheese and beer, curing bacon, selling piglets (28!! This year!), and generally keeping busy!  With butchering season upon us and snow on the ground it should slow down soon. Just in time for the holidays!

          -Ages and Stages Of The Griggers J

                   *Jed is almost 9 years old and in Grade 3.

                   *Levi is 7.5 years old and in Grade 2.

                   *Emmaline is 6 years old and in Grade 2.

                   *Rose is 4.5 years old can’t wait to do school next year!

                   *Jesse is 2.5 years old and officially toilet trained J

                   *Grace will be 1 when you read this and is trying out this whole walking thing J

*Some one new will be joining us around June or July of 2013 J.  We are excited to see who he/she will be J

“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21.

Merry CHRISTmas From

                                                         The Griggs Family

The littlest Grigger..

        

Thankful Thursdays. Nov. 8th.

Things I'm thankful for today include;

The way God made our bodies to heal while we sleep. Last night I went to bed bone tired and sore and slept solid and was amazed at the transformed shape I woke up in 7 hours later.

Papa told me last night that he has a long weekend this weekend! He gets Saturday off!

Bread.. I'm making bread today and the dough made an excellent fry bread lunch for the kids and I. With homemade cheese, honey, jam and milk it filled that hollow spot very nicely!

Nap time.. coming up soon and I think I need one :)

Carrion eaters....Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles. Beautiful.


And the odd one.. is CATS. I'm really grateful they eat mice and keep them out of my house.. but do they HAVE to eat off the beef quarters that are hanging in the addition?? IT'S MINE!!! Just kidding.. they, hopefully, are not eating enough to make a difference (they chewed through the plastic bags covering the beef) and there will be lots for our freezer.

Harvest Time :)

For the most part harvest time on the Griggs Homestead involves animals. In the last week we've harvested 4 pigs and a steer!! And I only got two pictures of pig harvesting and that was on the second day when it was just Papa and I. The day before we had Mrs. E and her two lovely ladies :) from home church, and Mrs. M helping cut and wrap their pork and ours. The E family is trading potatoes, AI services for the cow, for their pork. Mrs. M also traded veggies from her garden this summer; zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, hot peppers, cukes, beets and more and babysitting for her pork. We like these kinds of trades! We cut and wrapped them in the entrance which is nice in this weather. After taking out a bunch of STUFF and putting plastic on the floor we put a piece of plywood on the table in there and covered it with plastic. Papa had the meat saw in the corner with more plastic under it. We started about 10:30 and stopped for 30 minutes of lunch to finish everything but the grinding and sausage stuffing by 3:30. The grinding was done by about 5 and we stuffed the sausage the next morning.. while the kids sat on the washer and watched and giggled. Apparently it's very funny! 

 Here are the three pictures I got! 

Papa putting casings on the stuffer. 

The meat in the tote and my wooden plunger to push the meat into the stuffer. 

A bunch of finished links. YUM!! I believe these are Dakota Hot dogs.

We made Mennonite sausage, Mc Griggers (breakfast type) sausage and Dakota hot dogs. 

Casings soaking in warm salt water. The best casings ever as they have the plastic inside which makes them MUCH faster to put on the stuffer. We did 73 lbs of sausage in an hour and a half and only had one casing rip!! AWESOME!!! 

Right now the steer looks like this 

but covered in plastic as beef has to hang for about 2 weeks to age nicely before cutting and wrapping. That's on the list for this weekend :) I can't wait!! 

Oreo Anyone?

After the 1st two oreos.

After the next two oreo's.. I think she likes them :) 

T-Shirt Chairs

A friend of ours gave us a set of chairs a year or two ago and I finally got tired of looking that the worn tops.. 

So I did something about it. 

The first one I did lasted only a few weeks. I took an old T-shirt and slipped it over the cushion and stapled it on. It had a few issues from the start. The shirt had a TINY hole.. and it soon grew and grew! Before long it looked worse then before. 

First I took Papa's little drill and removed the cushions from the chair.. 4 easy screws. No problems! 

This time I decided to use the shirt doubled up and make sure there were no holes!! 

I lay the shirt back side down on the table, put the cushion in the middle right side down. Then I  pulled the two layers over the back of the cushion and stapled it to the back of the cushion. You have to make sure you have both layers and that you do it so that it is tight all the way around. These were 100% cotton so they stretched pretty good. I did not have any trouble getting the whole front covered. Fold the corners over in a neat tuck before you staple them. Gives it a nice corner. 

Tools of the trade :) I stapled it like crazy!! 

When your all done stapling just screw them back on to the chairs!! 

I also ran my hands over the staples to get any that were at all loose out.. I don't want the baby finding them. The only thing I will do differently next time is mark the cushion so I know which way is the front of the chair. It would make them easier to put them back on. 

Finished!! I'm leaving the backs alone.. they are in good shape yet and I'm not that sure I can do BOTH sides nicely. I did 3 different colors on purpose :) and I'm glad I did!! I love them!! They brighten up the kitchen and the kids love to rotate chairs. 

Oh and by the way I just used old shirts of mine. The green ones ribbing on the neck and arms was worn out but the shirt was fine. The blue one had a picture on the front but it was SO worn it didn't look like a picture anymore. And the red one had a couple of burn holes in the front and was a bit too small on me. 

The whole project took me about 30 minutes :) a drill, industrial stapler and 3 shirts :) Totally worth it. It's been about 10 days now and they still look great. I can't see these wearing out any time soon! 

Well I Promised Pictures :)

Of the 'half' addition and here they are :) Sorry it took me so long.

The back :) That plastic covered opening will be one of the Master Bedroom windows :) The top 3 layers of bales in this picture will have to be redone when we plaster.. they are mostly a wind break right now and bale sizing. We will run rebar through them after we straighten them to keep them in place. Because the poles hold up the roof the bales just fill in the walls not support the roof. The space between the trailer an the bales will be the hallway and the back door will be right there.

Front and Side.. There are two window frames missing from the front, one on the front wall and one closer to the window on the side. Both are kitchen/dining area windows. We still need to find windows we like for the large open area and then make the frames to size. Right now those 4 layers of bales in front have been removed and our beef is hanging there :) These pictures were taken before our big snow.. we now have over a foot of snow. The windows here from front to back are pantry, bedroom, bathroom, master bedroom. 

Work in progress :) I'm standing in the 'to be' dining room to take this picture. If you look WAY To the back you'll see a square of white just about in the middle of the picture.. that is an unfinished wall. The two sections, on that same wall, closer to the camera are finished. These are the weird 2/3 bales I've been making and annoyed with. I keep making them too small and have to re do. Thankfully most of them have found other places to live. On the left of the picture right above that blue thing you can also see an empty spot in the wall, it's bales are there on the floor waiting for Papa to place them. Those bales on the other side of the saw horses are extras.. possibly enough to do the back middle wall or the front middle wall next summer/fall. We want to move them as we will likely be making our own floor trusses this winter on this floor space. I believe we need something like 70? For the upstairs floor and the middle floor to connect the 'half' addition to the little addition where the wood stove lives. As we cannot plaster until spring that is our next large house project.

I just like this picture :) Shows how the wall will sort of look once it's plastered. Yes we are using insulation for stuffing on this side and in the ceiling and eventually floor. Looks cozy doesn't it?

The front end. The ceiling stops there because that's where it goes to a vaulted ceiling. There will be a wall there to block the large living area off from the bedrooms/pantry/bathrooms. The large open space on the right, between the poles, will be where the kitchen (straight ahead) will meet the living room/school room. About a third of the house (the front) will be open in a area roughly 37 feet long by 20 deep.

That pile of stuff there has been one of our fall projects. We've cleaned out our back little shed (stuff from when we first moved here 7 years ago. Some of it had been packed in Wa. 10 years ago!) and moved all the totes of books and boxes of jars to it. The totes of kids clothes also found new storage space in the kids bus, leaving them with tons of room to play. What you see there is what is left. Quite a bit of it is building 'stuff'!! What's not will have to find a new home before we move in!!  

A closer look at the ceiling. We're not 100% on what we will put up there but it's about 80% that it will be 4x4 sheets like our present addition. Those sheets were a PAIN to put in and we are hoping this strapping will make it much easier. Wiring on this part of the ceiling is also pretty much finished. Vents being the one exception. 

Hmm the doors in the hallway are not super noticeable in the pictures. There are 3 of them, master, bathroom, bedroom. The pantry will open to the dining area. We had trouble with the small addition and the doors getting squished, for lack of a technical term, by the bales. So this time Papa used 6x6's on one side of the door and a pole on the other.. hopefully they will keep the doors straight and not prone to trouble. 

And that's it. Some random facts. The 'half' addition is 14 feet by 68 feet. There will be two bathrooms, one off the hallway and one off the master bedroom. The kitchen window in the front will have my sinks under it. The walls in the hallway will be straw bale but all other inside walls will be stick frame. We don't plan on using any gyp-rock. EVER. The floor trusses we will be building will be 22 or 23 feet long. They will go from the 'half' addition to the poles on the other side of the trailer after the trailer is taken out and connect the two additions to become a house.

A 6 Year Old Girl Birthday :)

Making the cupcakes and cake!! She begged to lick off the dishes.. and they did! 

With her princess castle cake with a knight on the side :) It even had a flag with a E on it and towers!

Sneaky mom put the candles too far apart to get in one blow!! 

The said cupcakes :) in their princess liners of course ;) 

With her new tackle box and mini knife from G&G F. Does Papa look worried to you? 

I think he should be!! 

Opening her card from G&G G :) She loved it!! 

I can't quite believe she six already. Seems like only a week or two ago that we brought her home from the hospital in a snow storm and spent the next few days without power living in the living room. Ah that proves it.. she is one tough kid!! 

Happy Birthday E!!!