Our root cellar!

This fall, we finally built our root cellar!  Well, not so much a cellar as a shed... We built it over the existing crawlspace access on the side of the house, so we can use the constant temperature of the crawlspace as a heating source in the winter and cooling source in the summer.  Go geothermal!  Since in Colorado you can't add directly onto a mobile (dumbest. law. ever.), we had to build it 'adjacent' to the house, but it's right up against it, which also helps in temperature regulation (in fact, the wall up against the side of the house isn't even insulated).  We do have to keep the crawlspace trap door open, and with the help of a single incandescent bulb, we're able to keep it a very constant temperature of 40 degrees, even when it's dipped down to 0 outside at night!  Without the light bulb on, it gets down to about 33, which is just a wee bit cold for our liking.  But 40 is perfect!  And it makes an awesome wine/beer cellar!!!  

It's not sided yet, but it's functional!

 That's looking under the house- Not too comfortable to get down under there, but it's great for critter-proof buckets of stuff we have multiples of.  Those buckets have wheat grain in them- the real deal!

 Great bucket storage for wheat berries, flour, sugar, beans, etc., and non-perishables that aren't in critterproof containers are in that big rubbermaid tub on the floor.  We've also got a good stash of household items!

 Home-canned goods look so pretty on the shelves!

The downside of having to leave the trapdoor open- Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

And there's the root cellar!  It's not quite as full as we'd like it to be, but it's a start!  Plus it frees up a TON of cabinet space in the house, which is a precious commodity as it is!  I hope it's as much of a success in the summer as it is in the winter- only time will tell!  

Welcome, me!

Well I've finally bit the dust and started an actual blog. I've had a livejournal for years, but have been seriously neglecting it as of late. Not to mention it's been an everythingandnothing sort of blog for me, much more like a diary than anything else, and is probably only interesting to me. I've wanted to start a 'real' blog for a while, I've admired many friends' blogs and wished I had one that at least had a theme or some sort of direction, but never really thought of anything that might be interesting to anyone else- until now that is! (wow, that does sound a bit conceited, but then again, I think all blogging is at least somewhat conceited...) So I've decided to make this blog (at least mostly) about my various crafting projects and general homemade activityness. I've always been into throwback crafting, things like knitting and sewing and more recently quilting, crafts that generally have an old lady stigma, but in reality have quite a strong following of younger people (and not just women). In recent years I've also delved into the worlds of food preserving, gardening, papermaking, bookmaking, candlemaking, all sorts of good stuff that is a ton of fun but also helps to lead me into a more sustainable lifestyle. Red (hubby) and I have dreams of homesteading, and though the age of claiming your land by simply building on it and fencing it are long gone (sadly...), the theories and activities of homesteading are still going strong, if not infact experiencing newfound interest, due to many factors (namingly the economy). For example, just about everyone we know did something homemade or handmade for Christmas gifts this year, and not just the standard tin of cookies. So all that being said, I figured a blog about handicrafts would be apropos of not only my life and lifestyle and interests, but might actually be something other people would find if not helpful, than perhaps interesting... Plus I just really like to write, and this gives me good direction.

There's also an underlying motive for this blog, and that is that I've been toying with the idea for a couple years now of opening a craft supply store and studio, so not just retail space but also offering classes and workshops, and workspace for projects, and all sorts of good stuff. In the past I haven't been the best boss of myself, and so partially this blog is hopefully going to help me stay motivated with my projects and act as a tool to measure just how dedicated to crafting I can be. Also, I'm hoping it can help me find even more direction for the shop, so I can figure out just what I want to do and offer with it. It would be a huge undertaking, starting a business -a REAL business- from scratch, but then again, any craft project is just that- creating something from nothing, and making it beautiful.

So for now, I'm going to share some past projects that I've done, and as I catch up on those, I'll share stuff I'm working on currently as well, and hopefully she'll grow from there. I'm not sure if this all will include how-to stuff or what, I guess that might be decided by what interest people have in my blog (if any). So if you do happen upon this blog, whether you're a fellow crafter or not, I'd love any feedback, on either projects or the blog itself or whatever else you'd like to see here. I want this blog to be for other people, not just for me (if you know what I mean). So in the meantime, while I try to catch up on taking photos of old projects and all that jazz, you can also find me on facebook, or on ravelry.com (I do still have a myspace but it has fallen to the wayside as of late).