2016 and 2017 UPDATES

Good evening!  We decided it was time to put a few new photos up here, in case anyone still checks for them...  (Hi, Dad!)
We're gradually finishing off more of the house, though at a much-slower pace than when we had a bank and inspectors holding deadlines over us!  Little by little, now...

Here is the finished Landscape along the North side.  We grow some great beets and kale in this flower bed...

The back of the house.  We've also put in a nice "kitchen" garden here, which is oh-so-much more convenient than the ones that are 1/8 mile across the road!  This garden gets a little more love.

The Sacred Heart is alongside the driveway, and at the edge of our strawberry beds.  Here's hoping for fabulous strawberries next year--this year just wasn't productive.

We currently have four bee hives on the south side.  We've moved them to several locations on the property, but this spot is by far the most convenient for maintenance.  They're right outside the garage doors.  We hope to get these guys (ok, technically, "these gals") through the winter this time.

David and the kids built this playhouse and "play garage" (fancy name for bicycle storage!) in our front yard early this summer.  They're missing windows, doors, and paint yet.

Upper level of playhouse.  Anyone want to camp out here?

From the upper porch of the playhouse, looking down at the front of the house

The front yard is semi-flat-ish now...  We did build on a hillside...  Still, it sort-of works for kickball and batting practice, so we're happy with it!

We're so thankful to have moved our woodstove here from the old house.  We had a 17' tall chimney installed the first Fall that we were here, so that we could heat mostly with wood.  We live in the woods after all :)  The stove is now the focal point of the living room, and is oh-so-cozy all winter long.

We're still struggling mightily to get our gardens to produce here.  We've added a lot to the soil and mulched heavily.  We have about 6,000 square feet of gardens here, but our much smaller plot in town way out-produced these.  We still hope, and work real hard at it!  In lieu of canning many vegetables then, we were thankful to at least put up apples that we'd gotten other places.  Here, the fruits of a busy canning weekend.  

This fall, we've been working on a playroom in the basement.  So far, it has a magnetic chalkboard and a magnetic whiteboard.  My patient husband wouldn't recommend, however, that you mess with magnetic paint if you don't have to!  It was, apparently, quite a tar-ry mess to work with...  And really played heck with his stellarly smooth drywall job...

Pretty sunset to the West

One of the new basement bedrooms

Second basement bedroom

Both rooms have built-in closets, which double as dressers and bookshelves too.

Third basement bedroom

Playroom progress--the sandbox is about to be installed.  It will also double as a stage.  Can you believe we're brave enough to try indoor sand?!  (Me either.)

 (If it gets tracked up the stairs more than once, it won't last long!)

The canning room has already undergone a remodel.  David removed a wall and enclosed an adjoining hallway to make it larger.  It's quite full at the moment, albeit mostly with previous years' canning.

I couldn't resist a couple photos of my little peg-doll saints.  I had seen some like them online several years ago, and have been wanting to give it a try...  So I asked for blank wooden 'pegs' for my birthday last year, and have done a little painting since.  I  mostly paint after Midnight, when the house is finally quiet, and I can pretend that the day's work is done :)

Some of my favorites are in the front-- St. Louis and Zelie with all their little girls; St. Nicholas; St. Veronica; St. Therese.  These get played with almost daily- to my delight.  Besides being incorporated in various processions and pretend religious functions, they are often put in dollhouses, or given rides in tractors.

The basement bathroom, finished early summer, has double sinks just outside the door, which theoretically speeds up the teeth-brushing process.  The verdict is still out on whether any time is actually saved.  Seems there's still an awful lot of goofing off at bedtime :)

Just-installed game shelves outside the basement bathroom

Candid shot of our school room before the kids got started this morning.  Their desks are just as they left them yesterday afternoon...
We are sooo loving having this (mostly) organized room, which is just off the kitchen, and within view of the kitchen sink.  

I scored an 8-foot chalkboard on Craigslist for Free. (Yay!) It gets a lot of use--while demonstrating math problems, or reviewing Latin conjugations.  Or sometimes gets all drawn-up with artwork.

For Christmas two years ago, David bought me an enormous roll of corkboard, so he could "bulletin board" this entire wall.  Of course, we keep our maps up here, and some Kindergarten art projects.  The blue timeline has proved to be a great success.  We're making picture-cards for it as we study each time period.

Well, that's all for now!  Thanks for checking up on our house project.  As we tell everyone who asks us if our house is done yet, "It's certainly done enough to be very comfortable, but we'll be working on it for a long time to come... :)"