The Big White Farmhouse

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I had a good chuckle when I stumbled upon the painting above because…the look on her face was pretty similar to mine this week.

We have been in limbo with our flooring situation since October 29th and have hit delay after delay after delay.  I’ve been relatively patient as the months have gone by, but after moving all of our furniture into a POD and then hearing of another delay due to a snow storm…I about hit my limit.

In a moment of desperation, we decided why not, let’s just do the floor demo ourselves!  A couple of Youtube tutorials later and we were fairly confident in our abilities.  (It really wasn’t hard, even for non-handy people like us.)  As a family, we spent Monday through Wednesday doing the work entirely ourselves, getting everything removed and prepped and ready for the flooring team to arrive on Thursday.

And then…even though we were in contact with our estimator early in the week and he knew exactly what we were doing, there was still some sort of miscommunication and the person sent out on Thursday was for demo!  The poor guy came in and looked around so confused, ha!  Anyway, we had to be put back on the schedule for the installers and they wouldn’t be available for almost a week.

It’s funny to look back at my 2025 goals and the virtues I wanted to work on in the new year.  Ask and you shall receive!  Oh well.  We’ll just continue rolling with the punches, hoping we grow in patience and perseverance along the way.  We’ll have floors…someday.

Hoping to document 52 weeks of good things!

Five Good Things…

1. Doing the flooring removal ourselves. // We felt like we were on a HGTV show!  We also saved $3,000, learned a new skill and even discovered a new interest for one of my sons.  (Maybe general contracting is in his future?)
2. Six years with our dog, Lucy. // She is a joy and we can’t imagine life without her.
3. Warm temperatures that melted the snow within two days. // We are pretty done with this relentless winter!
4. Starting my “handmade Christmas” challenge. // I purchased the “Christmas Lights” pattern by Stitch With Coffee and am stitching 2 over 1 (two threads over one square) – tiny!  It’s turning out so cute.
5. A plan to organize our deep freezers. // More details once I acquire the supplies, but I’m excited to bring some order to chaos.

Frugal Accomplishments //

• frogged a discarded knitting project to use the yarn in a different way
• used a scrap fabric for the ornament cross-stitch
• refreshed my white bed quilt using Oxyclean (thanks to the prompt on February’s bingo board!)

This Week in the Liturgical Year //

February 10 was the Feast of Saint José Sánchez del Río, Martyr.

To Read: The young Mexican who gave his life for Christ the King

To Add to the Library: Saint José: Boy Cristero Martyr, Saints and Sinners in the Cristero War: Stories of Martyrdom from Mexico and Mexican Martyrdom: Firsthand Accounts of the Religious Persecution in Mexico 1926-1935

To Watch: Looking at Heaven: The Life of St. José Sánchez del Río

To Copy in the Commonplace Book: ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Reading //

• Humane Learning in a Machine Age: A Professor’s Resolutions from Dr. Ben Reinhard at Hearth & Field // “We will have to move more slowly on this model: to read fewer works, but read them more deeply; to write less, but invest more in what we create. This seems to me an acceptable tradeoff. As we enter the machine age, the goal of introductory humanities coursework is no longer to teach close reading or the Western literary tradition, but something more fundamental: how to be human.”
• C. S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, and the sequence: truth, goodness, and beauty from Jeffrey Wattles at Universal Family
• From Gourmet Pork to Subsistence Farming: Why Buellton’s Winfield Farm Will Stop Raising Mangalitsa Pigs in Favor of Sheer Survival from Matt Kettmann at Santa Barbara Independent // “At a time when supporting honestly raised, regionally grown, sustainably minded food is on the lips of every self-respecting restaurant lover, why is it essentially impossible to make a stable living off of working the land?”  A blog post for another day, but these questions are frequently being asked here at our farm too.
• The challenge: Avoiding the grocery store from Bruce Steele // “The challenge, To stop eating anything storebought. To see how long you can go on foraging , dry provisions from last years garden, preserves from your own trees or foraged fruit. And of course the garden.”

New Additions to The List // 

• A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food by Will Harris
• Politics by Aristotle

Watching/Listening //

• Lessons 1-2 (on George Orwell’s 1984) in the “Totalitarian Novels” course from Hillsdale College
• How I Turned Over 300 Scraps into a Beautiful Quilt in 1 Day from Sew Easy by Sandy

Loving //

• The Last Homely House Youtube channel // Her voice is so soothing and her projects are inspiring.  She reminds me of a British version of my grandmother!

from the archives…

WEEK SEVEN 2024 // Patience

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This week, our primary focus was packing up the first floor as we prepare for our new flooring.  I’ve spent a lot of time decluttering the past few years but it still astounded me to see how many items we own, neatly tucked away in cabinets and nooks and crannies.  None of this is junk per se – it’s our puzzle collection and stacks of books and throw blankets and pillows – but it was a good reminder to never complain.  How fortunate am I to have collected an abundance of beautiful, useful things!

Hoping to document 52 weeks of good things!

Five Good Things…

1. Celebrating my husband’s birthday. // We did the math and have celebrated 20 years of birthdays together.  Time flies!
2. Making it through the ice storm (relatively) unscathed. // A wild experience.  Trees were snapping everywhere and roads were blocked in every direction.  We even lost power for 30 hours!  So thankful for our generator and fireplace.
3. The gentle reminder from my kids not to stress. // I think they could see it in my eyes.  With the unpredictable weather, my husband’s insane work schedule, car issues and a sick pig, I was very overwhelmed with all of the tasks that needed to be accomplished.  My sweet son joked, “So is No Stress 2025 out the window now?” and that was enough to pull me out of my spiral.  One step at a time.
4. Not breaking my finger. // In the midst of this crazy week, I somehow managed to jam the ring finger on my non-dominant hand!  Thankfully, taping it to the next finger helped significantly and I was back to normal a day or two later.
5. New art! // My “making do” project of the week: I finished my second cross-stitch project and planned to frame it for my dining room.  I took a quick look at framing services and realized that I might be able to do it myself!  I laced the back using this tutorial and put it in a secondhand frame I purchased on Poshmark.  Definitely not perfect, but done.

Frugal Accomplishments //

• used every tote and bag and piece of luggage we own to pack up instead of buying boxes
• did all of the heavy lifting (moving furniture into the POD container) ourselves
• found a secondhand frame on Poshmark to use for my cross-stitch project
• used the newspaper packing from the box to start a fire
• reused an Old Navy bag to package up an ebay order
• fixed a gear shifter issue without having to see a mechanic (maybe. hopefully.)

This Week in the Liturgical Year //

February 8 was the Optional Memorial of St. Josephine Bakhita.

To Read: St. Josephine Bakhita Was a Humble Witness to God’s Love

To Make: African Inspired Meal for St. Josephine Bakhita

To Copy in the Commonplace Book: “Be good, love the Lord, pray for those who do not know him. What a great grace it is to know God!”

Reading //

• The Rules of Discernment: A Practical Guide – Rule 7 from Megan Hjelmstad at Spiritual Direction
• That I Might Be Seen from John Cuddeback at LifeCraft // “How I see the persons around me is more in my power than how they see me. Maybe, when I feel unseen it is then most important that I look outward at others, that I renew my effort to see them better. Lord, that I might see. Them. Even now.”
• Hannah Coulter, the Green Lady, and Me from Emily G. Wenneborg at Plough // Thought provoking.
• The Gift of Kindness from Melisa Capistrant at The Cavalry of Woe // I loved this.
• “Immanence” by Evelyn Underhill // A poem mentioned in the Tasha Tudor documentary I watched last week.

New Additions to The List // 

• Aristotle: The Desire to Understand by Jonathan Lear
• Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Watching/Listening //

• Lessons 4-5 of the How to Think Like a Thomist: An Introduction to Thomistic Principles from Aquinas 101 at the Thomistic Institute

Loving //

• this book from Alicia Paulson // A used bookstore find for $3!

from the archives…

WEEK SIX 2024 // Patience