Island Mama

In the last few weeks we’ve had three new skylights added to the kitchen, and all new carpet put in in the living and dining rooms and hallway.

And the carpet… sorry, I didn’t take before photos. But it was a grotty 12 year old concrete-gray Berber that I couldn’t get clean. This is softer, warmer color, and easier to clean.

With all of that and a bit of painting, it’s beginning to feel like a different house.

They’re getting big! And they look like real chickens now. Harder to get pictures of lately.

On Memorial Day, we moved their new house. It was formerly the home of a giant tortoise belonging to some friends, but he was moving on and they were getting rid of the house, so we rented a trailer and moved it to our backyard.

All we had to do was take out all the insulation and one wall panel, add hardware cloth and some perches for roosting. Soon we’ll have to add nesting boxes, too, but since they’re not laying yet, it’s not an issue.

We’re still working on the run. Posts are cemented in, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be adding the fencing. They’ve been in a small temporary run up til now, or a makeshift chicken tractor in the garden where we wanted some weeding done.

This time, kittens.

We’ve had them for a week now. They’re about 9 weeks old, both girls. I hardly have any pictures, though, because most of the time they’re either under the couch or moving too fast! We haven’t agreed on names yet; the kids have their ideas and we have ours and, um, they’re not the same. Dougal, our 12 year old Maine Coon, is not happy. Mostly he avoids them, but if they get too close, he still hisses. I’m sure he’ll get used to them eventually.

We got them on Wednesday, when they were 2 days old. We have 10 altogether, 2 each of 5 breeds. Now we need to build them a coop and run before they get too big!

We don’t have good trees for easy treehouse building — they’re all pines and firs, straight and tall. But last year, we had some trees taken down and we had the stumps left at about 4 feet tall. For no reason at the time, except that we might want them.

Two of them were conveniently close together and close to the kids’ sandpit and the trees where we’re going to hang swings once we get a crossbar up. After looking at them for a few months, and finding one good solid pallet left over from building the woodshed, I had a plan. The first time Eric got out his chainsaw this year, I had him level them off.

And then I built a treehouse. Except, because it’s not on an actual tree, but on stumps, it has now become known as The StumpHouse. Because my children are literalists.

The posts supporting the other corners are from a fence that used to surround the front patio, and which my parents tore out last fall during a visit.

The siding is made of the outside edges of milled trees which we got free from a friend who had had a bunch of trees cleared and milled on her property about a year ago.

The ladder is made from more parts of that fence from the front patio.

It’s not huge, and it’s not quite finished, but I think the boys will have fun with it for a while. It’s probably big enough for 3 or 4 kids.

So now it just needs a roof! Having made the entire thing from stuff we had on hand (the only thing I bought was more screws), I don’t want to pay for roofing. We’ll be on the lookout for scraps of something that we can recycle.

We have one very small tradition for St. Patrick’s Day. It involves potatoes, dirt, and Guinness.

Spring is truly here. This was a few days ago — there are so many more blossoms open now on this tree, and others are joining in.

There’s always lots of ideas, patterns and tutorials around the web for things to make for little girls. So this month, as a crafting mother of three boys, I’ve been really enjoying Celebrate the BOY! month by MADE and Made by Rae.

I don’t have nearly as much time to sew as I’d like, and it’s not like my to-sew list was short to begin with, but now I’ve got inspiration to keep me going for months!

So far, I’ve only followed the tutorial for the 90 Minute Shirt — a simple, lap shoulder, long sleeve shirt, made from a recycled adult t-shirt. But I’ve made THREE. All for Nathaniel, and all out of clothes of mine that I no longer wear, or scraps from my stash which originally came from the thrift store. I LOVE making new cute clothes for the littlest guy, especially when it doesn’t involve a big trip to the mainland or lots of money. (I’ll make stuff for the older ones too, I promise, but they’re fussier and have more to say about the finished results.)

The first one:

And then it looked too plain so I added a giraffe using the freezer paper stencil technique. (I also made the pants and shoes in this photo from a felted wool sweater a while ago. An entire mama-made outfit!)

And the next night:

I think he likes it:

And finally:

During the sewing of the first two shirts, I was getting more and more mad at my sewing machine. It kept breaking threads every few stitches, or getting jammed, just making the entire thing take way longer than it needed to. I was about ready to throw it out the window and buy a serger and a new machine. But! Before I started the last one, I changed the needle again, and this time, it worked perfectly. I got through the whole shirt without one broken thread. I’m a little puzzled, but I’ll take it. The serger is on hold for now.

And I just hit the thrift store for more shirts to re-use for my guys.

Crocuses are flowering.

Garlic is coming up.

We planted three kinds this year, some is further ahead than others.

We are still using last year’s garlic, and we haven’t even touched the softneck ones I braided yet. It’s not going to last ’til July, when we harvest this, though. Hopefully this year we’ve planted enough to last a full year.

Last Sunday we went to Seattle for a Flickr meetup. The boys, of course, brought their cameras too. We lost the crowd pretty quickly, but spent a while hanging out on the bridge Eric designed back in his engineering days, which is conveniently located over the train tracks.

Boys love train tracks.

Timothy checking out his photo of the train tracks:

Ben showing me his picture of the train tracks:

Boys comparing photos of train tracks?:

ALL the boys taking pictures of the train tracks:

And long after the photography became boring, one little boy was patiently waiting to actually see the train leave:

(It had been sitting in the station for probably an hour, with people coming and going, and he did finally get to see it go.)