This is a post all about my homemade recipe for grease-fighting liquid dish soap! I have a confession to make, even though I said I had replaced all of our household cleaners with our own homemade there was one I just hadn’t tackled yet: Liquid Dish Soap. So, what have I been using to wash our dishes by hand with in the meanwhile? Well, I’ve literally just been dumping some of my homemade dry Dishwasher Detergent in the sink and scrubbing with everything I’ve got. It was actually working all right but I really wanted something for “real” that would have some “soapiness” to it etc. So, I got to searching and experimenting and FINALLY I landed on one that works great for us! Read the rest of the post »

They’re voting right now on the best Home Improvement blog over on Renoviso and I am SO excited to see Grandma’s House DIY on the list. There are some really fabulous blogs on there – make sure and go vote for your favorite! Now, on to the free house plan: I love the decks on this plan! And there’s even a little nook right where you walk from the garage to the house that provides cover from weather and some really great storage. Being a person that heats with wood myself I just drool over that much outside storage so close to home! Of course, this home has a great fire place in the middle of the living room. Despite that this place is less then 1,100 square feet I think it feels spacious and remarkably still private. (I hate those house designs that have the bedroom doors facing each other: its like EEK!) In this plan I managed to give each of the two bedrooms their own real space and bathroom. Read the rest of the post »

Hey everybody! I hope you’re having a great summer so far! This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

After building my mom a tall garden planter for vegetables and strawberries my aunt asked if I could build her one too. Seriously though I can’t blame her: this is a really great idea and everyone should have at least one of these! My mom’s garden only needed to be weeded once or twice all summer lol I’m wondering why I thought I needed to put in a big “normal” garden and didn’t just build myself three of these… Anyway, my aunt had a couple of requests: It needed to be a little smaller then my mom’s so it would fit nice in a specific place on her deck and she also wanted it to be on wheels so she could move it under her house eaves in the winter time or during bad weather. So, I got to the drawing board! Read the rest of the post »

Summer projects I can’t wait to build for us outside and out on our deck! Some DIYs and things just have to wait for some nice weather not only for us to enjoy them but for us to build them as well. Goodness knows I always have a summer project list in the spring that’s as long as my arm. There is just something about stretching out in my garage with a breeze, a little music, loving a summer day while building something for us to enjoy for years to come. Not that I don’t love my basement workshop its just that by the end of winter there isn’t anything better then being able to do something outside! So, of course, I have hundreds of build projects I’ve spotted online that I just drool over day after day. Here are a few summer projects via Pinterest that can’t wait to build Read the rest of the post »

Hey everybody! I hope you’re having a great summer so far! This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

This post is about how I make my own perfume out of essential oils and vodka! So now that Joe and I have switched our entire house over to homemade household cleaners I find that most perfumes have begun to smell more and more like bug spray to me. (Weird, right?) I’ve always had rather sensitive skin which is why the first household recipe we switched to was my homemade laundry detergent but I find now I’ve become sensitive to smells too. Walking down the cleaning aisle at walmart never used to bother me but now my eyes start watering and I am in shock at the horrible smell. Read the rest of the post »

A flower gallery of our summer blooms in our little farmyard. With spring giving way to summer all of our early blooms have now finished their flashy beauty – including my peonies which I will miss until next year. Our dramatic purple and lavender irises only gave us two blooms this year (which surprised me as usually they are the first to bloom like crazy) but my peonies certainly made up for them. All of our crab apple, choke cherry and plumb trees were adorned gorgeously this spring and we are anticipating some lovely fruit later this summer. My grandma’s old flower garden never ceases to amaze me with its resilience and, every year, something else comes up that we hadn’t seen in years and, every year, I mark some flowers for transplanting into my own flower garden come this fall or next spring. Read the rest of the post »

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July! Joe and I camped at a friend’s house and drank a lot of beer… ya know because its tradition 😉 This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

This is a post on how Joe and I created gutters for our house using PVC pipe! So, quite awhile ago, I stumbled on to the coolest thing online: Rain gutters made out of 3″ PVC pipe. Since then I cannot find it online ANYWHERE! The only thing I can find online about it is forums of people like me who want to try it and other people telling them to just hire a crew to put up seamless gutters because apparently: we’re all rich. Not that I wouldn’t love to be able to afford seamless gutters but, seriously, that’s just not our style! On top of that, we just so happened to have enough 3″ pipe leftover that using it for gutters on our house cost us almost nothing! Read the rest of the post »

Every year here I have found that I get a little bit better and learn a little more on how best to serve our little farm and us. Some lessons are obvious ones but still took time, like how often and how efficiently to clean our hardwood floors and how much toilet paper I need to order with my Amazon pantry purchase to coincide with how many paper towels to buy at the same time so that they run out at about the same time etc. Life really is a learning experience and I don’t doubt that every year adjustments will need to be made and more lessons to be learned for the rest of our lives. Read the rest of the post »

Hope you’re all enjoying summer so far, we’ve got ourselves a few peas out of the garden now we’re just watching the tomato plants grow and waiting for green beans! This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

Now that its been a couple of years of living with an on demand hot water heater (also called a tankless hot water heater), I wanted to put in my two cents. When we renovated the house I really didn’t want anything to do with a regular hot water heater. A: they take up a ton of room and B: They run out! Seriously, it just seemed to me that common sense would say that heating the water ONLY when you need it would be a lot more economic then paying to keep a huge amount of water hot all of the time. So, how’s that been working out for us? Well, there’s a lot that goes into that answer! Read the rest of the post »

A Peonies Gallery post and a few other blooms thanks to my Grandma! Along the south side of our 100 year old farm house my Grandma planted a row of peonies several decades ago. As the years went by and the health of my grandparents declined the peonies over grew with grass and were almost lost. I snatched as many as I could find nearly ten years ago and moved them to my mom’s house where they actually flourished until she moved to another home and we moved here to the old farm house. It only seemed right for me to dig them up, once again, and bring them back home where they belonged. Read the rest of the post »

Oh I am so excited to post my peony gallery on Friday 🙂 We have three different colors this year and the blossoms are so big they can barely keep their heads up lol We have white, bumble gum and magenta! How are your gardens doing so far this year? This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

This post is all about my favorite frugal kitchen tips! I save every single glass jar that comes with a decent lid. I can’t help it! Here’s the thing though, I use them CONSTANTLY. A big batch of stock to freeze? I fill up a bunch of jars and stick them in the freezer. Leftover soup? Yup it all goes in jars and gets frozen. One of my old plastic herb shakers finally breaks? Dump that garlic salt in a jar! (My entire seasoning cabinet will eventually be nothing but jars with green Parmesan container lids screwed on them.) Leftover bacon grease? Yup, it goes in a jar so I can use it later. Leftover every other kind of grease? That also goes in a jar and when the jar is full, it gets thrown away. So handy. I’ve also managed to collect 6 glass drinking “bottles” from my favorite organic tea that I spoil myself with from time to time now I always have one full of our water in my car at all times, which helps me avoid the impulse purchase of buying something to drink when I’m in town. Read the rest of the post »

This is just a little post about the raccoons we are happy to now have visiting us every night. Many of you that follow along on my blog here know that I have a full and complete “do no harm and leave no foot prints behind” policy. I am notorious for informing anyone on our property that if they kill it here I will MAKE them eat it. I don’t have any problem with hunting, raising or harvesting our/your own food and that is whether it is us (or the wild animals we share our farm with) as long is it is taken in necessity, quickly and with the least amount of waste possible. Read the rest of the post »

This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

This post is about how I built hanging flower boxes for our master bedroom! So this past winter I kinda went stir crazy with cabin fever. There really isn’t any explanation for it as we had an actually VERY short winter for us. But that doesn’t change the fact that I really did have a tough time personally. I just got so tired of the daily grind and the gray and the white and the never-seeing-the-sun and the every day being the same. Ugh. So, it occurred to me that maybe something green and growing in our master bedroom might just help brighten my winter days a little bit. So, I got to planning my flower boxes! Read the rest of the post »

Hey guys! I am so excited to have FINALLY finished coding our new site design! Many of you know that I’ve been a website designer for many many years (though I’m basically retired) I still enjoy designing WordPress templates from time to time and, goodness knows, being able to code has given me a jump here in blog land. But it also handicaps me in a way as well because, you see, I’ve been working on this new site design for over six months! When you’re able to code and truly start from scratch it is very easy to get kinda paralyzed and after working myself down to two complete designs I needed a good month to step away and not look at them anymore. Read the rest of the post »

So summer has come with a bang to northern MN – we went from highs in the 40s to highs in the 80s in just a matter of days! Though my husband does not appreciate the heat at all I love it enough for the both of us. Welcome to the To Grandma’s House we go Link Party! This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

I am so excited to finally show you guys the before and after of the entire little house remodel! It took me about fifteen days in total to get this place up to snuff and around $3,000 to complete it. I had a serious plan and took a few hits when that plan collided with reality – I also tried a new product (styrofoam ceiling tiles!) for the ceiling in the main room and in the bathroom. I also purchased the most expensive plywood I have ever purchased (nearly $100 for a sheet!) that my husband helped me cut and get into place in the kitchen for the counter tops. Read the rest of the post »

Joe and I both had a three day weekend over this last memorial day and Saturday was absolutely perfect. Over 70s in the sun it felt hot but the breeze was the cool promise of storms coming. We worked on our wood pile all morning together, him cutting and me splitting. We don’t cut down live trees and almost our entire pile right now was given to us by neighbors. The gift of heat in northern Minnesota where the temperatures can fall well into the minus thirties and beyond. We heat entirely with wood and, though it may seem early in the year to be worrying about next winter, quite frankly, it is never too early. It is the best kind of work, physical and very real in this age of digital everything. We take breaks periodically and sit together, bodies hot and sweaty, covered in saw dust and the smell of pine and oak, tamarack and elm. Read the rest of the post »

How was your memorial day weekend? We had a delightful Saturday, the weather was perfect and Joe and I spent the morning together cutting up and splitting wood for next winter. I am always surprised by how gratifying the work is, I love us both coming together on breaks sweaty and covered in saw dust. I am also reminded during the work just how much I truly do love wood, its so beautiful and every piece is so unique. The weather turned on us after that and we watched it hale, downpour and blow seriously over Sunday and Monday. But it was nice to have a excuse (especially this time of the year!) to sit inside and, the universe knows, we needed the rain badly. Welcome to the To Grandma’s House we go Link Party! This link party is all about homemade, homemaking, DIY, recycling, upcycling, before and afters (of rooms, furniture, whatever), build projects, vintage, any kind of creative, frugal, time saving, money saving or green advice, canning and old fashioned recipes. Going back to simpler times, simpler days where we used all that we had and never bought new until there was absolutely no choice. Read the rest of the post »

This is a tutorial on how I built the mahogany counter tops in the little house out of plywood. I was in a real pickle when it came to what I wanted to do with the counters in the little house. Normally I probably would have just run to Menards (or Lowes or Home Depot) and purchased stock laminate counter tops that they have on hand. But because I chose to put cabinets back to back I had a span of 48×60 inches to cover so if we wanted laminate counter tops they would have to be custom ordered and thus: too much a splurge for this little house. A big part of me wanted to just use barnwood like I did for the kitchen backsplash but I knew my mom would hate that and if she ever lived here she deserves the flattest smoothest counter that she could ever want. So, I was in a pickle. Read the rest of the post »

For those of you that follow me via Pinterest my very favorite board is my DIY Inspiration Board. This is the one where I let myself pin literally whatever I love when it comes to rooms. This is the board where all of the pins (at least for me) come right out of my dreams, like places from a fairy tale. My own home is a little less frilly, a little less boho, a little more subtle as I simply do not yet have the salt to be quite so bold. However, I am getting there, for every gorgeous place I pin, I am definitely becoming more bold and reaching for the true beauty of places like these that make my heart sing. Read the rest of the post »