Daily Work

In between the daily baking

And playing

And creating

I have been having fun wood buring ornaments for our shops here and here.

Warm wishes for a beautiful day.  For us it is filled with Thanksgiving preparations, house cleaning, and some last minute market shopping as well as driving the boys to help setup for the free Thanksgiving meal at the Elks Club.  The snow is falling and we are in for a blustery couple of days, but it will make it feel even more cozy in our little home.
I will share our partly handmade and homemade Thanksgiving tomorrow or Friday.
Happy Thanksgiving.
~Tonya



Birthday Celebration and Toy Shop Business

The Mister of Natural Earth Farm celebrated his 44th birthday on Sunday.

With eggs, bacon and monkey bread for breakfast, nachos for a light lunch and a supper of local organic sausage, couscous, and our own butternut squash, finished with chocolate cake to celebrate - the eating was good.

Silly Poses

He and I then went to the newly built Jay Peak resort so that he could watch his beloved Patriots - just the two of us for two hours.

He told me it was his best birthday ever - oh that was so sweet to hear.

This is an order for Hip Mountain Mama

Our family has been very busy working in our "toy shop" filling our wholesale orders in time for the holiday season.  Now we are gearing up for our regular shop orders too.  My goal  is to fit in time to create for our family as well, which I am reminded every year as our shop gets busy, that I must remember to begin in January!  

Warm wishes for a beautiful day,

Tonya

Theater, Fairs, and Family

This weekend is going to be very full for us.

Our oldest, Thomas, is involved with a local theater company, QNEK, and they are performing Curtains over the next two weekends.

Thus, we have two different sets of parents coming up this weekend - my father and his girlfriend as well as my father-in-law and his wife. Next weekend we have my mother and step-father and my "brother" and his wife visiting and to see the show.

For this weekend, most of the food preparations were completed today - a quiche, breads and cookies baked and preparations to make another blackberry pie.

In addition, we have our first two fairs this summer. I have been gathering the inventory we will be bringing, labeling it and putting it all out on a shelf on our porch to be packed up first thing in the morning.

Abby is preparing as well. I took this picture of her gnomes that she has set up on her desk to sell at the fair.

In between it all, I am excited to spend time with family and prepare lots of delicious foods, share in my son's excitement for his achievements, and meet new people while sharing our family's creations.

Wishing all of you a beautiful weekend.

Tonya

Simple Lives Thursday - Family Work

On our journey toward a more deliberate life, one of our goals is to include our children in our work. To be home more, to be with them more, and to give them the opportunity to share in our work. Our handcraft business has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of months and we are excited that we are at a place where we can pay our teenage boys an hourly rate. Even Sarah, at six years old, asks to help. This picture is her helping Mike make the lacing set pieces by putting one piece at a time in the clamp for her father and then putting them in the bucket once the hole is drilled out of the middle.

No workshop for us yet, it may have to wait until next year. But it is amazing what can be done just making do with what we have.

The message is that if you wait to go for your dream until everything is in place, you may never get to that perfect place "first". For example, if we had not begun our business in earnest until we had all the best equipment and a workshop then we would still be so far from our dream or deep in debt (which we deliberately avoided while building our business - we never borrowed money, nor did we have start-up money). Taking small steps and working hard while keeping our thoughts on our goals has worked for our family.

Warm wishes, Tonya

Work Tables

I snapped photos of our different work in progress "work tables" yesterday.

The above picture is of our stainless steel counter in our kitchen. Yesterday I baked bread, "healthy" chocolate chip cookies, and cinnamon cranberry muffins. I made egg salad for lunch (we have lots of eggs right now, although a fox killed one of our chickens yesterday...). Mike is working on a large wholesale order for our branch block walking blocks. You can see the branch pieces in the picture.

By 2:00 or so, the counter was completely clear to begin preparing for an early supper before Isaac's baseball game.

This is a concrete base that we figured out was built to hold a very large diving board (we found in the woods upon moving here). The holes in the concrete match up to those in the diving board and the pond is at its deepest point there.

For us it was being used yesterday to hold peeled logs that are to become our railing for our front steps; sun tea; and more cut branches drying to become branch walking blocks.

Blessings and warm wishes for a full and joyful day,

Tonya

Handmade Things

I have been enjoying making these vests....

The pattern is free and can be found here.

I knit up another doll and added a sweater and hat to put in our shop.

We are also working on adding some more rustic items to our rustic wedding line.

And...

the summer issue of Rhythm of the Home is out!

Warm wishes, Tonya

New from our Handwork Shop and a Giveaway

We have created a new toy - a birch branch ribbon runner and would like to share two of these with one of our blog readers. Children love to run with these watching the ribbons flow in the wind behind them. When not in use they look lovely hung on a wall.

To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment and I will choose a number randomly. The drawing will be Sunday evening at 7:00 pm EST.

~Abraham "helping" Mike drills holes in our ribbon runners.~

Warm wishes,

Tonya

Before 9:00 am

As our house was its usual flurry of activity this morning, I thought it might be fun to document all that is going on before 9:00 am.

We have pancakes many mornings for breakfast. For our family of eight it is an affordable, healthy choice. We use our chicken eggs in the batter as well as some whole wheat flour, wheat germ and milk. For toppings we have honey, cinnamon, yogurt, and jelly. We have maple syrup only occasionally as it is expensive and not in keeping with our budget for food. I make the batter most evenings before I go to bed.

It is Abby's morning job to do the morning chicken chores. Usually at 7:00 am there is just one egg and that was the case this morning. By the end of the day we should have collected about 15.

Abby and Isaac were excited to check on the sap buckets this morning. They went out bright and early and gathered about 2 1/2 gallons this morning. We only have eight taps out this year as our new homestead doesn't have too many mature maples. However, we are clearing out around the maples to give them lots of sunshine for healthy growing in the years to come.

Abraham helped himself up to the counter to do some early morning sketching.

I do my computer work, last minute home learning planning, and some handwork first thing in the morning. My goal is to be up and out of bed by 5:15 each morning. This is my work area. It is in the kitchen but overlooks the open living and dining area. This is what it looked like this morning.

Thomas, at sixteen, has come down with the chicken pox. Five of our children spent the weekend in the Boston area with their Poppa two week's ago to see the Lion King and he must have picked it up while there. He is not feeling all that well, but thankfully he does seem to have a fairly mild case. He is eating his breakfast this morning. (We are keeping in mind that the next several weeks in our household will probably involve caring for children with the chicken pox as each child comes down with it - at least we are hoping they do.)

Starting the process of my almost daily bread baking.

Nolan beginning his math upstairs on his desk.

Mike's early morning work area (the workshop will be nice....)

Now, Abraham doing some beading.

And the on the woodstove top this morning - sap to boil off and butter melting to make cookies.

What are your early morning like?

Warm wishes, Tonya

Working and Playing

Just wanted to share some glimpses of our lives over the last couple of days.

~Sarah and Abraham playing with the sawdust from Mike drilling out the birch branch pencil holders~ (We are planning to build a workshop this spring so this will not have to be in our home soon.)

~Abraham helping Mike apply the natural beeswax/oil finish to the bottom of our walking blocks.

~So much fun can be had with a simple paper bag... Abraham growling away, pretending to be a scary monster.~

Warm wishes, Tonya