Art Nook

 I thought I would share with you a little glimpse into a sweet little space I called dibs on.  It's quite small, a little nook under the eaves of our small cottage.  But it's all mine!  I've not had near the time to play here, at least  not as much as my heart would have it.  And if it weren't for June being our busiest month in the way of birthday greetings needing to go out, I would be desperate to find any time at all. Times like these, I get all wonky. I need to be here, to make and do.

Pens, paper, paints, sewing machine, bits of inspiration and a cozy shawl.  I feel all Tasha Tudor when I quiet myself here.

I'll often open the little window that looks down towards Panther Creek, even in winter, just so I can hear the creek's soothing melody.  In the evening I'll light a candle that sits on the windowsill, a one small beacon of light shining into the forest darkness. Here, in these still moments, my soul is full wide open to creative impulse. Do you have a special place, just your own? I'd love to hear all about it!

 While in my little nook recently I was unexpectedly and oddly inspired by the mail. I noticed the colorful patterned insides of business envelopes I had gotten. The bills  however did nothing for me! ;) and then I came up with this humdinger of an idea.


A little snip, flip and bit of red stitching up two sides and I had a handful of new pretty recycled envelopes. And a small quick creative boost for fortification during these busy days.


Summer is almost fully here. I'm sure many of you are pretty much full steam ahead with over-brimming schedules, summer plans, and with a creative tank near Empty. 


From one friend to another, if this is your situation too, let me offer you a bit of refreshment to get you through. 

• Kelly Rae Roberts. Kelly Rae's collages are amazing. Try not to be captured by her long necked ladies looking inquisitively.
• Robin Luciano Beaty.  Robin's encaustic art has me smitten.  I guess I love the added dynamic of using wax, heat gun, hammer, and a torch?, grrr...
• Dana Tanamachi.  I have an infinite love for typography. Dana takes it back to black and white, and school all over with her phenomenal chalk board art. 

~*wishing you moments of pure creative joy*~

The Fire Pit

For the record let me preface this post with short and sweet I am not! I've never quite grasped that precious skill. Thus this here post may appear to wander a bit willy nilly. If patience eludes you then luckily freedom is but a mouse click away :)

However, if you are the long suffering type who likes foraging for tid bits of useful information, then by all means proceed. I know that I'm always hopeful in such pursuits and am reminded of the old adage that, "even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while." Referring of course to mwah! Because you dear reader, you. are. mah- vah- lahz!

Moving on....

Rock, block, and gravel. A fitting follow up to Rock, Wood, Chain.

At home, one way we try to reuse or recycle is by integrating back into the landscape materials we have laying roundabout the farm. Our old fire pit was just a bunch of stones formed in your typical fire pit ring. I remember how at family cook-outs small ones would find it difficult to navigate around the piled stones, and of the fear I had of an accidental tumble into the fire. A parents worst nightmare! Now, years later, grandchildren gather around the fire so we thought we would lessen our worries and upgrade a bit.

Oh, that large block of concrete pictured above was once, I learned, a man made cornerstone removed years earlier from our cottage when a new block foundation was built. It's become an unappealing artifact sentinel to our home, and I think has finally found it's final resting place at our fire pit.

After cleaning up the area, we leveled it some. The precise method around here is called "eyeballing" it! A method HH and I have fine-tuned over the years :). We also eyeballed the cornerstone, and dug out a hole for it. We made it deep enough to add a few inches of gravel underneath for anti-heaving purposes. I dug a trench and sloped the grade to aid in water run-off. Again another few inches of gravel for the base before laying the stone wall.

Slightly overlapping the stones ensures the integrity of the wall. I back filled with more gravel to help stabilize the stones, aid in drainage and in preventing the earth from heaving the stones out of place.

HH left me alone for this part of the project. He knows how much I love picking the right stone for the right spot. He doesn't have the patience, and I love the mind drifting, meditative aspect so much more. It's a win-win.

When everything was in place, we moved on to spreading a layer of gravel down before constructing the actual fire pit. There are two camps I find in ground prep. The weed barrier and the no weed barrier. I've come to my frugal opinion in choosing the latter. No amount of fabric weed barrier can stop nature from depositing residue and all manner of seeds in reclaiming it's territory eventually. Sooner or later weeding will commence and up with the weeds will come bits of barrier. Ever wonder how a sidewalk can sprout weeds? And that's a concrete barrier!

The fire pit. What's wrong and what's right? Nothing really wrong. It's just aesthetically, I prefer a more natural flat stone appearance in our landscape vs. man made. But being frugally minded and aspiring to "do what you can, where you are, with what you have", we were determined to use what was on hand. These concrete blocks and pavers we're salvaged from our last remodel job.

We laid the blocks in place and with a flat shovel scratched an outline. We then moved the blocks out of the way and dug out the area about 4inches deep allowing for 2 inches of gravel footing and a 2 inch set below grade. The openings on either side of the pit were intentional. We plan to mount hardware to accommodate a spit or suspended rack for wood fired cooking so we cut a block in two creating the openings. FYI, you can easily cut one of these hollow blocks in two as we did by scoring it with a screwdriver and giving it a good whack with a hammer or mallet. Ideally it should break in two equal pieces. Lastly, we mortared the pavers on top to cover the holes in the blocks. Now the grand-kids can sit around the fire pit, their rambunctious feet propped up on the ledge, with a few precious inches of clearance from the fire. And an almost nightmare free zone for Grandma!

P.S. Did you notice the little brier runners eager to re-claim. Hmmm.... You gotta love it!

Rock, Wood, Chain

On our frugal homestead, when we need things done, reaching for the best tool is most times not an option. Because A.) The best means expensive and B.) We ain't got the money honey!

Take this spot for instance, it would have been nice to have fired up the tractor in moving a huge concrete cornerstone into it. Not an option. What's a hillbilly to do?

Observe! Rock, chain, wood, and the hillbillies who could!

We hooked the chain to the poor man's tractor, the Honda Foreman. And I gave er' the gas!

HH placed one wood fence post in front of the other as the cornerstone slowly inched it's way to the spot, resetting the rear post to the front and readjusting the chain at each step.

Seven or eight incremental moves later an we were spot on our target.

Almost there.

Woodoggie!

A little hillbilly know how and some doing what you can, where you are, with what you have attitude!

We began this home outdoor project last spring. A revamp of our crude fire pit area. I'm excited to show you our progress as we re-use items from around the homestead.

In the meantime you might dig this humdinger of a recycle project we did earlier.

The outdoor washing station.

~warm winter wishes~

The Ultimate Recycle

See this 14ft. piece of timber? It's just one of four pieces of a huge shipping crate. It's lying here ready to be used in our garden bottom side up and those pieces secured to the bottom are actually the feet of the crate and took some head hillbilly muscle to pry off. But this is just the end of the ultimate recycle, let me take you back to the beginning.

HH calls me one day from work and says "Hon?". And that's all it takes to get me excited. He tells me that his work brought in a new piece of equipment and that it came in this huge wooden shipping crate. HH gets excited over large dimensional lumber like I do and he asked me if I thought he should disassemble the crate and bring it home. I said "woodoggie!", that means YES.

That chore took a considerable amount of time, but eventually he slowly pulled up the drive with the over sized, red flagged behemoth and we dragged it out of the back of our pick-up one heavy piece after another and laid them in our pasture. We admired those manly hunks of wood awhile before we wondered just what in the heck we were gonna do with em'. That was 4 years ago! We had no foreseeable idea what we would do with all this beautiful lumber. And as time would have it, a year had passed and our precious crate wood lay unused and partially overgrown with grass.

But then destiny took over and we endeavored on the ultimate recycle of this precious wood.

In a what! are you flipping crazy? period of life , we embarked on a complete remodel from foundation to roof of a shack (literally, it was virtually uninhabitable, except for the cats and mice in the neighborhood) in the little town of Carlton, Oregon. But we envisioned the lovely cottage it could be, rolled up our sleeves and got started, never knowing that our recycled crate would save the day.

You see when we solicited bids for the foundation part of the remodel. We never anticipated the cost of that project to be as high as it was and well, being part frugal, part DIY'er, part crazy, we did it ourselves. Deciding not to get all worked up over a little mortar, brick and brawn. (Shout out here to our guru of DIY and best bud, Glen for his invaluable assistance and know how). But back to the crate!

We needed to jack the house up to put in the new foundation and lo and behold those crate beams were just the ticket to support the house while we worked on it. HH fastened two of them end to end with some old scrap iron, then placed multiple jacks under them and up the house went. When we finished that project, we loaded them back up and took em' home and laid them back to rest in the pasture.

Carlton Cottage

Little by little we have recycled wood from the crate back into projects around the farm. And just recently we placed what was left into our vegetable garden and we marveled as we reflected on how far this wooden crate had come and the many uses it had served before ending up here in our garden.

Our newly planted hillside vegetable garden is now home to the remainder of our shipping crate. We created raised beds and borders using the recycled wood with nary a piece left over, just an empty spot in our pasture now that needs filling. ;)

P.S. And then there was Carlton Cottage II (our second remodel) and the how to of selling in a slow housing market.

The Washing Station

Why the feet you ask? I didn't want to horrify you with what the rest of me looked like after rooting around in the mud all day. Okay maybe not literally rooting, but at times i was on all fours digging like no body's business. Trust me the foot shot is the least offensive and if you just take a looksy at what humdinger (at least to me, but I'll consider your vote) these two little cottage woman hands made you'll understand.

An outdoor sink! Of course you say, everyone knows that you must have an outdoor sink right? I see you shaking your head with the "total dud" bubble floating above. Don't be hasty let me explain.

You know when you spend a long time in the garden carefully harvesting your bounty and realize that you need to wash your fresh tasty vegetables and you really don't like traipsing through the house to your kitchen sink with dirty vegetables and shoes and then clogging your kitchen sink with the dirt. So you kneel on the ground rinsing and sorting with the hose until your kneeling in a pool of muddy water and you can't get up from all that stooping and picking and rinsing? Let's pretend that you do okay? The answer of course the outdoor sink or more eloquently the washing station.

The original idea came from an old issue of Mother Earth News and when I laid eyes on it I knew at once this was at last my ticket to evolving into an upright Homosapien. I gleaned most of my supplies for the project from surplus items left over after the two remodels we did. Here's the low down.

****

~ First let me divulge that the idea was hatched in my noggin last fall. I knew that the sink needed to be not to far from the garden and situated as near as possible to the compost so I could toss refuse into the pile as I cleaned. The area where I wanted to place the sink had a lot crab grass and I could have waited to start the project this Spring and just dug the stuff out, but with a little forethought I saved myself a bushel of tedious work by laying a bunch of cardboard (an awesome mulch and weed suppressing source) on top of the grass in Fall and let it Winter over. Now I had a completely flat and weed free area to start right in on the project.

Next I dug 2 shallow footings and put in a couple inches of gravel heeled in to form a heave free base for the recycled cinder block columns. I turned the center blocks around and found I liked the little architectural flair it gave the columns. Then I topped each column with recycled stepping stones to cover the large holes in the cinder blocks. I positioned the recycled enameled steel dual sink in the center and laid the found rack loosely on top for draining the veggies on. I laid more gravel to cover the entire soggy cardboard and topped that with an inch or so of fresh compost and seeded it. But I couldn't leave it alone because we also have a nice pile of homemade stepping stones we made from extra concrete from a pour a few years earlier. Ta Da, two nice stones to stand on when working at the station. That's it.

You like? I hope so.