February 2015 – Home at Winshaw

Ice Storm

Last week we were kept home by a long-lasting ice storm. There was a thick layer of ice on everything, then a dusting of snow on top of that. Marian and I were just about housebound the whole week, the ground was so slick it was dangerous to walk even a short ways. Jordan had to be out working in it, and it was bitter cold!

It did make some very pretty icicles on the house, though!

Jordan helped us venture out one day for a little fresh air. I was very brave – I think I lasted five minutes.

(it. was. cold.)

Jordan captured some beautiful shots while working in the woods and in his shop.

It was rather pretty, but we are thankful it is finally melted off now!

We would much prefer snow to ice…

Sewing Project – a Maternity Housedress

Even though I’m almost through the end of my second pregnancy, and even though I’m supposedly a seamstress… I think this is the first maternity sewing project I’ve done.

This has been in my head for a while, though. I want to make several house dresses (that’s where I am most of the time after all!). Dresses that are comfortable, easy to wash and dry, don’t show stains easily, and are easy to nurse in (just try shopping for clothes that fit all those requirements – they don’t exist! I’m sure other mothers share my frustration).

My goal (if it ever comes to pass) is to eventually make most of our ‘around the house’ clothes by hand. Washing with a hand washer and line drying in a humid climate really changes whats practical in clothing. Modern machine washers and dryers do well with modern clothing – which are made from mostly knit and stretch fabrics. The super agitation of the wash (mostly) gets the stains out of the knits, and the heat and movement of the dryer shrinks them back to shape and takes the wrinkles out.

However – hand washing and line drying knits and stretchy fabrics results in clothes that have lost their shape and are too stretched out.

Now, vice versa – modern machine washing and drying is pretty hard on woven fabric (printed cottons for example) and handmade clothing. It gets torn up, snagged, and raveled pretty fast if washed frequently. Washing them the old fashioned way seems to make them last longer, and wrinkles caused by the wringer blow out on the line without wadding up seams and tearing threads like modern dryers. They also seem to let go of dirt and stains much easier than knits.

ANYWAY. Sorry to go off on a tangent. Its not that I am against modern clothes, or that I don’t or won’t wear them – its just I think that for the majority of my home life there are definitely more practical and long lasting options (I also want to note here that I have not yet begun doing all our laundry in our hand machine. In these cold winter months Jordan’s family generously takes much of our laundry and does it for us! Its a huge blessing).

So, that was my purpose in designing this maternity house dress. I really like the results! My baby bump thanks me for the non-constricting style, and the front opening style makes it easy to feed Marian throughout the day. It has a dart fitted bodice, but I purposely made it to fit a tad loose and added a front tie closure as well for that much more adjust-ability. The full skirt definitely doesn’t minimize my baby bump – lol! But really at 8.5 months pregnant, who really cares?? It sure is comfortable though – the skirt length reaches just to my ankles, and it’s short enough I don’t trip on it while walking up the stairs with both hands full of Marian (big plus! most of my skirts were driving me crazy doing that). I decided on 3/4 length sleeves because you don’t have to worry about rolling them up while washing dishes and such.

Really like having a dress to wear that is a patterned fabric! It stayed looking respectable for many days in a row. (seems like most modern clothes are solid-colored. Usually I don’t last more than about an hour in solid-colored shirt, as Marian likes to use me as a giant napkin)

It is rather amusing that I started with the above vintage pattern. My results were quite different – definitely not ‘slenderette’! ha!

I just chopped off the bodice pattern at the shorter length I needed, added a rectangular gathered skirt of 2 fabric widths, used the sleeves as-is, and bias bound the neckline.

I think this dress rather ended up being a modern version of a 19th century wrapper. That was certainly a main inspiration.

So, yes. I want to make more variations of this style soon. Also – I apologize for the long ramblings on my wardrobe schemes. But it’s your fault for visiting the blog of a woman suffering from acute cabin fever and pregnancy brain. :)

I am so ready for spring, aren’t you?

I’d love to hear from other mothers about what they found the most practical during pregnancy!

Marian’s First Year

This past week we celebrated Marian’s first birthday! This past year has just zipped by, I can’t believe our little baby girl is one year old already! She has been such a joy and a blessing to us. One the one hand I don’t know if we are still quite used to the idea of being parents, but on the other hand we don’t have any idea what we ever did without her!

She’s growing into quite the little girl – its so interesting to see and help her discover new things each day. On her birthday morning I had her in the kitchen to help with her birthday muffins. (since she isn’t having a lot of grains yet I used this flourless recipe)

Those sweet chubby hands! She tries to be such a big helper – she wants to be involved in everything!

I’m about killed with cuteness.

She thoroughly enjoyed watching the process (and tasting the batter)! As a special treat we also added her favorite ‘prizes’ – unsweetened carob chips!

We had a nice lunch and the muffins afterwards with Jordan’s family coming over from across the creek. Marian certainly didn’t mind being the center of attention!

And she loved getting to eat the same food everyone else was eating. The muffins were a hit with her – though after the first one she got full and just picked out the carob chips!

Later in the afternoon I gave her a little present I had been working on for a few months – a little ‘Princess and the Pea’ doll and playset. So far she just wants to knock the mattresses down, and not stack them up!

The rest of her birthday was spent by her taking two long naps. (I think she must be in the middle of another growing spurt!)

We are so very thankful to have her – and we are SO curious to know how she is going to react when the new baby arrives next month!

(To read about the day of Marian’s birth, click here.)

Little Moments

Just a few shots of little moments from the past few weeks.

Pancakes with blackberry & honey syrup for breakfast. The berries we picked last year and froze – very much looking forward to this summer’s berry season!

…because every baby girl wears Carhartt overalls, right? (actually these are amazing for her crawling adventures. Keeps her knees protected and her clothes underneath clean!)

I recruited Jordan to help me do a bit of early spring cleaning…or perhaps its ‘nesting’ in my case. Beating out our (very filthy) braided wool rug. After this we also pressure washed it with the hose. It looks SO much better now.

Recently Jordan’s right hand got rather badly burned. We treated it with an Amish method involving wrapping the hand in healing salve and burdock leaves. I’d never done this before so I was very glad to learn about it!

His hand looked pretty strange all wrapped up with leaves!

Marian attempting to throw rocks in the creek.

A really beautiful picture Jordan took while driving.

Jordan recently got my washing machine moved to the front porch so it would be easier to do small loads of laundry on these cold days. Yay!

Marian is quite fascinated by the whole process.

Wringing out a load of Marian’s little things.

Yes, I take pictures of our bathroom. Isn’t the morning light pretty, though?

Enjoying a warm sunny day outside with Marian.

This was so sad and sweet. Marian was getting ‘droopy’ while riding on Dad’s shoulders when we were walking in the woods one morning. He laid her on his chest and told her she could sleep if she wanted to, and she just closed her eyes and didn’t move the rest of the walk! (she was even snoring!)

A breath-taking sunset we got to watch from our second story porch.

Creating a Profile Silhouette of Marian

I’ve always been a fan of those old-fashioned silhouette wall prints. The actual antique ones seem so full of mystery in a way- as you think you can almost see the subject’s personality and looks, but there is still so much left to the imagination.

For several months I’ve been thinking about how cute it would be to capture Marian’s funny and sweet little chubby profile in this way.

I created little profile portraits of Jordan and I for a scrapbook several years back, using black paper and scissors. They turned out good, but it was very hard and time consuming. I knew this time I wanted to find a different method.

First, I had Jordan hold Marian up against the light of a window and I snapped a profile shot. When I got this image on my computer, I cropped it down to just what I needed, converted it to black & white, and upped the ‘contrast’ and ‘shadows’ levels until I had a fairly stark profile image. (below) Then I printed off a copy.

Next I used my handy-dandy light-box (a mini desktop light table for tracing) and used the printed photo to trace a new outline onto some thick watercolor paper. I first used pencil, then carefully went over that with a tiny felt-tipped artists marker. I also embellished a bit by adding Marian’s trademark curls and funny little cowlicks. (which weren’t in the picture I took, but I knew them well enough to draw them in!:)

Next I took some flat black acrylic paint and with a small round brush, went all around the outline again, this time also painting an inside border of about 1/4″. After that the hard part was done, and I filled in the middle of the profile with a small flat paintbrush to make it faster. After a couple of coats it was good to go.

I also decided to add a decorative wreath and her name.

I love the way it looks framed on the wall! I feel it really captured her sweet little baby face. Now I want to do more – formal 19th century style ones for Jordan and I, and definitely one like this for our new baby when he/she is about the same age next year.

Homestead Layout Plan

As we start this New Year, Atlanta and I have big plans. We won’t be able to accomplish everything that we’d like to, but we certainly have a list of projects to work on. We want to make a lot of progress this year on finishing the house; we want to have a garden (we have not had one to speak of since we married); and we want to start setting up our little homestead in earnest.

I have several outbuildings planned, of which I hope to complete one or two this year. I am going to share with you an aerial photo of Winshaw, with a rough layout plan for outbuildings & etc. drawn over it. The photo was taken by good friend Jesse Wright, from over at Wright Family Farm, using a remote-controlled aerial photography drone. The technology available nowadays is mind-boggling (to me, anyways:)!

I will go through the items in the photo in order:

#1, at the extreme left, is my temporary fabrication shop, in which I do most of the work on the miniature steel beds for our online business, Dream Come True Beds. This temporary structure was built two weeks after our wedding, and measures 10 feet wide and 12 feet long, and houses one steel 3’x8’ workbench, my MIG welder, and an oxy-acetylene gas cutting torch. I am in the process of enlarging this temporary shop to 10’x18’ and adding two more 3’x8’ steel benches.

#2 is the site of a “pole-barn” that I plan to build later this year, Lord willing. It will measure 20 feet wide and 50 feet long, and will have a more permanent, larger space for my fabrication shop, along with storage areas for our farming and construction-related tools and materials, plus a room to house my 1941-vintage Farmall tractor (which belonged to my grandfather. I’m in the process of restoring it.). This barn will probably have a fairly large loft, but I’m not exactly sure what said loft will be used for-yet. There’s rarely any such thing as “extra” space for us.

#3 is another building site. On this one will stand our main shop. I hope to construct this building using traditional “timber-framing” methods. The main part of the structure will be essentially two stories, and will measure 20 feet wide and 70 feet long. The bottom story will have several different work spaces, and the top story will be finished out into living quarters and household storage. There will be a mostly open porch, or “lean-to” on the side nearest the house, that will add an extra 20 feet in width for the full length of the building.

#4, the dotted line, is the approximate route of a proposed driveway loop around the house.

#5. The flotsam inside this circle is mostly gone now- it was the left-overs from the many stacks of lumber I had sawed for building the house. We plan to finish clearing it out this spring. Most of the area around the front of the house and inside the future driveway loop will eventually be filled with raised-bed gardens.

#6. Mostly obscured by the trees, this is where the creek runs by the house.

#7. This is the house, and the narrow red box on the left edge of the house is the site of an unfinished portion of the house- the summer-kitchen/pantry/woodshed. The summer kitchen will be a screened-in porch set up as a second kitchen, providing extra storage, as well as a well-ventilated workspace in the hot summertime. The pantry will be a well-insulated store-room, designed to stay (relatively) cool in the summer, and warm (but not too warm) in the winter.

#8. Not really visible, but this is the hill-side site of our root cellar. Basically an underground basement separate from the house, its finished dimensions are planned at 8 feet wide and 16 feet long. The root cellar will be used as storage for vegetables and fruits, such as potatoes, squash, apples… plus canned goods.

So there you have it. Follow along here to watch us on our journey, as we build our homestead!