Many of you have probably already drawn the impression that I’m a little bit of a health nut (and also a smoker which I am aware makes me the ultimate oxymoron…) What bothers me terribly is that oftentimes the healthier choice for our families is usually a lot more expensive and, sometimes, simply not at all affordable. There is so much fear mongering in our media that we’ve become totally numb to headlines, “Coconut oil can save you from cancer!” “Man dies on the clean eating diet!” “New superfood, eat a pound every day to become immortal!” “Toxins in sun screen causing skin cancer!” “Wear sun screen or get skin cancer!” And it goes on and on and on. It is totally the boy that called wolf and the general consensus now is: “Everything is bad for us so I’m not going to bother changing how I’m eating or what I’m buying!” Which is totally understandable but also just awful. Read the rest of the post »

It is no secret for those of you have been following along here with me that August is my very favorite month. Every year I just can’t help but write a post about it. August is the month Joe first drove up my driveway, the month of his birthday and it has always been my favorite month to live in northern Minnesota. It is usually hot, dry and, truly, the dog days of summer here. August is accompanied by the starting fade of daylight (being this far north it becomes obvious this time of year that winter is REALLY coming) the shorter days are usually accompanied by cooler nights and long afternoon shadows. 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 »

A post about how I am now making my own homemade lip balm! I used to put on some kind of chap stick or lip balm every night before bed but managed to break myself of the habit when I realized the commercial (chemical laden) products I was using were actually making my lips more chapped! Since then I keep a product called Mela-Gel on my night stand for really bad chapped lips (winters here in northern MN can be brutal) and it also works incredible on bug bites, burns and pretty much anything you can put it on that needs healing… But I wanted regular chap stick of my own to carry with me. Read the rest of the post »

I want to build an outhouse. Ok, bare with me on this one because I swear I’m really not quite as weird as that makes me sound! Joe and I had the incredible pleasure of visiting some off the grid friends of ours last weekend to see their grounds. Oh. My. Goodness. The gardens, the flowers, the squash growing on the roof of their home (with a sauna built right in the middle of it!) the several sweet little screened in porches/guest homes/summer lounges complete with their own little wood stoves and the wood storage *SWOONS* I was in absolute Heaven! It was SO amazing and then I went to use their outhouse (they have indoor plumbing but use their outhouse most of the time to save on electricity) and I knew it was the first of a long list of things that these folks had built that I wanted! Read the rest of the post »

Hi guys! How has your August been treating you? I’m tackling a bunch of project for this coming fall on the blog, this week Joe and I are heading for the lumberyard so I can pick up the last two screen doors for the house and enough material to build two sun loungers, an end table and a wrap around bench for our deck! No to mention, we’re finally going to get our deck rails completed too! Hope you’re all having a wonderful summer! 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 »

A post on how I built a base for a barn door table for outdoor entertaining on our deck! Many times I’ve gone out to our old barn (my grandparents’ old wood working shop) and grabbed something and stashed it somewhere safe for a future project. This barn door was one of those stashes! At first, I had planned on building a base that included shelves, storage and castors for my workshop in the basement. But, the more I worked down there (now that its finally semi-complete!) the more I realized that this big old barn door was just too big for that space! Read the rest of the post »

I am so excited to be a part of a brand new collaborative group called Farmhouse Hens Decorate! There’s six of us DIY bloggers all together and the very first Friday of every month for the next four months we’re going to be sharing some of our farmhouse inspiration! From the kitchen, to the wall, to embracing fall and even making Christmas ornaments (oh gosh did I really just mention Christmas?! Summer is going by so fast!) It is really going to be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get started. Read the rest of the post »

I just can’t believe summer is already half over! If you’re like us then you’ve seen a whole lot of serious hot temperatures and not nearly enough rain. Regardless though, I always love summer and hate to see it slipping away… Joe reminded me that we were sitting in our yard in November last year at 71 degrees here’s to hoping for that again! 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’m rather surprised at myself for being able to write a post even mentioning kitchen appliances because, honestly, I’m not that big of a fan. Seems to me that most (if not all of us!) have at least one or two random gadgets collecting dust in a closet somewhere! Just about every time I’ve either asked (for xmas etc) or purchased an appliance for myself I’ve always brought them home crossing my fingers that it will be something worth the price and the space it takes up on our counter top! So, these are the four I never regretted for a moment that work hard for us almost every single day we’ve had them! Read the rest of the post »

As always, around this time of the year, I look up and wonder where the heck summer went. It has been incredibly hot here with not nearly enough rain and, in testament to that, we are now raising several hundred tad poles in our horses’ water trough! (I can’t for the life of me get a good picture of them but I will keep trying.) It turns out that this happening on dry years is not at all uncommon. They’ve been in there for about four weeks now and are just starting to grow little legs. This spring I had told Joe I wanted to add fish to our water tank to help keep it clean and mother nature took care of it for me! Those little tad poles are keeping all the algae down with vigor and eating any mosquito larva in there too! Read the rest of the post »

I just can’t believe summer is already half over! If you’re like us then you’ve seen a whole lot of serious hot temperatures and not nearly enough rain. Regardless though, I always love summer and hate to see it slipping away… Joe reminded me that we were sitting in our yard in November last year at 71 degrees here’s to hoping for that again! 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 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 »