Are we THERE yet??

*sigh*  I feel like I whiny kid on a long road trip.  Our electrician keeps flaking out on us (to finish other side jobs, no less!!), which is holding up the rest of the plaster repair.  Our plaster/drywall guy is not happy (especially since the electrician is a family member of his).  I'm not happy.  We have a "date" set for Monday, so here's hoping that everybody shows up like they're supposed to.  Granted, Tony is doing a much nicer job in the office than the guy did in the living room, and the work is more extensive, since it involves patching and framing, but the living room only took maybe 2 weeks.  I feel like the office is taking forever.  But I guess there have only been about 20 hours of work done on the office, it's just been really spread out because of scheduling conflicts.  And no-shows by certain electricians. 

I'm also really anxious to finish work on my antique Chambers stove.  It's been sitting in the garage for a little over a year, and I'm kicking myself for not sending the pieces and parts off to be porcelained and chromed a long time ago.  Now, all of our spare money is being channeled into savings for when I'm off work on maternity leave.  I feel insanely guilty if I spend anything beyond what is necessary.  But I really, really want my stove in my kitchen!  I'm so sick of only having 2 burners to use on the Jenn-Air.  Yes, a built-in griddle is nice, but not when it leaves you only 2 burners! 

The only real problem with using the Chambers stove is that it doesn't really fit in our kitchen.  Our current stove is 31" wide; the Chambers is 37".   I can remove a lower cabinet without much fuss, but the uppers... not so much.  At least one cabinet would need to be modified, and it would throw off the symetry.  Now it goes almost without saying that the original cabinets that are out in the garage were of course built to accomodate a larger stove.  You see where this is headed, right?

My biggest probem of all is that I absoloutely love our house.  Even though we've agreed to start looking for a "new" house as early as next summer, and wrapping up our current projects without starting new ones, we both still talk about future projects in this house.  Everything from bathroom remodels to re-finishing the basement in a new configuration.  Obviously these projects will add value, but that's hardly the motivation behind them.  When we bought this house, even though it was our first house, it was going to be our last house.  And that's a really hard thing to let go of, especially since there's nothing wrong with the house itself.  We just want more property and are very bitter about the neighbors cutting down the woods.  I dream of owning some acreage, but I can't imagine living anywhere but here.  And as long as we are here, I don't see an end to us working our butts off to try to make it better.

Office progress photos

There's been about a two week time-lapse since these were taken, but I figured I'd post them anyways.  This first one is a view into the master bedroom/office closet now that the paneling has been removed.  You can see the office in the background.

Next is the gaping hole where the non-original built-in bookshelf used to be.  You can see the knob and tube wiring that I'm guessing used to feed a closet light, but now leads to our bedroom light and fan.  The framing is between the soon-to-be office closet and the office.

And all the demo debris...  We ended up tossing a lot of it out the window (classy, huh?) to avoid tracking dirt all over the house.  The plaster bits we loaded into paper bags and carried out like normal human beings.

Currently, all of the patches are covered over and 3 of the walls and the ceiling are ready to be primed.  As of yesterday, the ceiling was textured to match the rest of the house.  We probably could have gone with smooth, since Tony did a great job on repairs, but we thought it would be odd to have 1 bedroom smooth and the rest of the house with a "crowsfoot" texture. 

We had some scheduling conflicts with the electrician, so the the knob-and-tube is still in service.  Once that is removed, Tony can repair the last little bit of the last wall, and we can frame in the new closet opening.  Right now the old wiring is in the way...

I was really hoping to be done by this coming weekend, but I don't think it's gonne happen.  We're still pretty close, though.  At least we're done with the really messy stuff.

Mulberry jam

A few years ago I noticed that there were several trees on our property that were dropping berries all over the place. After a little research, I found they were mulberry trees and that the berries are edible. I guess I kinda always knew they were edible, because I remember eating them as a kid. I just never knew what they were called. Last year I picked a bunch, but only ate a few. They're good to eat, but just can't compare to fresh raspberries or blackberries. Their flavor is more subtle. Plus, they're a royal pain to pick.

This year, I'd been noticing out the office window that the mulberries were getting ripe. One of the few benefits of not having curtains, I suppose. I didn't think much of it, though, until after the bad storms a few days ago. I went out into the yard to find that a TON of mulberries had fallen from the tree. Picking them up off the ground is much easier than picking them from the tree (or would have been if my big, pregnant belly wasn't in my way), and I picked up about 4 quarts in an hour.

I had been itching to make jam and had just recently read about a woman making mulberry jam. Using her recipe (4 cups of berry puree/juice, 5 cups of sugar, 1 box of pectin) but halving the sugar and using Ball no-sugar-needed pectin, I made two batches of mulberry jam.

This all started last night, and I was nervous about how it would turn out. Not only had I never made jam before, but I'd never done a thing with mulberries except eat a few off the tree. After I had run the berries through my food mill to remove the stems and seeds, I tasted the puree. It was less than appetizing. For some reason, the resulting puree tastes worse than the fruit it came from. This has held true for me for both the mulberries and strawberries. I don't know why. But I plowed ahead anyways and hoped for the best.

After simmering and adding pectin and sugar, I tasted the mixture again. MUCH better. In fact, it was awesome! It's amazing what cooking and a little sugar can do. After testing the mix on a chilled spoon to make sure it would gel, I poured it into jars and processed them in my canner. One jar was only half full, so I set that one aside to use immediately. My "midnight" snack last night was a peanut butter and mulberry jam toasted sandwich.

I'm not sure how to relate how good it feels to have taken something from my yard and made edible, good-tasting food from it. Since I haven't ever really gardened or anything, this was my first experience truly making food. I'm just amazed, not only that it turned out so well, but that it came from my yard! Gardening and preserving is just so fulfilling. I really don't know why more people don't do it...

Strawberry jam!

Today's advenure started at the farmer's market.  I bought a flat (8 quarts) of "second" strawberries for $12.  Once I got home, I ran them through the food mill to remove the stems, leaves, and the little stalk in the middle.  The food mille (mine's a Roma), has to be one of the coolest inventions ever.  It would have taken forever to remove all the stems and leaves manually.  Even though I ran the "waste" through about 5 or 6 times to make sure I extracted all the juice and pulp I could, it still only took about 30 minutes to process all the berries.  I ended up with about 3 cups of actual waste for 6.5 quarts of berries.  We saved the other quart and a half to eat.

I poured all the puree and juice into my big stock pot, then measured out what I needed for each batch of jam.  My recipe calls for 3.5 - 4 cups of "juice" per package of pectin.

I simmered the juice for 10 minutes, then added 1 package of Ball no-sugar-needed pectin mixed with 1/4 cup of sugar.  I brought it to a boil and added another 2.5 cups of sugar.  The volume of liquid pretty much doubled by this point, and I probably could have used a bigger pot...  After boiling hard for 1 minute, I removed it from heat and checked to make sure it would gel.  I had put a spoon in my ice container earlier, so I scooped up a half spoonful and let it cool.  It gelled!  So I poured it into my little half pint jars.  Each batch gave me 5.5 jars. 

Then I loaded my 11 jars into my big, huge water canning pot and processed them for 10 minutes.

Ta-daa!!

I'll be canning again tonight, as I still have over half of my puree/juice left....  I always thought canning was difficult, since most people have stopped doing it.  I'm finding that it's really pretty enjoyable.  The actual cooking part took about a half hour per batch.  I'm going to try cooking a double batch next time, which will make it go a bit faster overall.  Still, I'll have about 3 - 3.5 hours invested in pureeing, cooking, and processing by the time I'm done.  I don't think that's bad for about 27 or 28 jars of jam.  Total cost will be around $20  ($1.50 per box of pectin x 5, $12 for strawberries, and $1.25 for an on-sale bag of sugar), making the jam cost around $0.72 per jar.  How's that for a bargain?  Plus, I know exactly what's in my jam and where it came from.

Hopefully within a year or two, I'll be making jam with my own home-grown strawberries...!

Why I love my living room

Without a doubt, this room has the best natural light out of any in the house.  My favorite time of day in here is late afternoon/early evening.  It's not bright anymore; there's just a soft, natural light that makes the room feel very cozy.  The gold we chose for the walls enhances the warmth of the room.  I'm so glad we didn't stick with the Roycroft copper red that we had...  With all the windows, it almost feels like you're sitting on the porch.  Now that the futon isn't blocking the windows, there's an even greater connection to the outside, and I can see the tops of the ferns in the bed in front of the porch.  Right now there's hardly any traffic, and I can hear tons of birds singing.   

Looks like the critters like it in here too...

Times like this make me wonder how I'll ever manage to leave this house behind...  When we moved in, this room was straight out of the 80s.  Now, it's like a little Craftsman oasis.  I'm so very happy with the way it turned out.  Just sitting in here, doing nothing, makes me feel so contented.  Everything in this room just screams "home" to me, from the glowing pine floors to the homemade pottery.  I can't wait til the rest of the house is done.  I hope it feels as good as this room does.