We wake up at 6am in our house I am sure when we get some animals we might have to adjust that time. But that gives us enough time for the kids to get ready for school. Getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing teeth and hair wow seems like alot for them. Melanie does good and most of the time wakes up in a great mood ready to start the day, our 13 year old not so much. We have to drag him out of bed. He wants to wait till the last minute and rush around. The bus comes at 7:05am right in front of our house, it drives by and does a turn around at the end of the street so they have time to walk down our long driveway to meet it. Melanie walks out the door when she See's it go by the house and Russell is running down the drive after her. lol.
While this is all happening my husband is getting ready for work he must leave by 6:30am he has a 40 minute commute to work. Most days he will be back home at around 5:15pm Monday through Friday. Not bad we both worked crazy hours before where there would be days where one of us would not see the kids for days. Now we always have family dinner together every night, at the kitchen table. We all talk about our day it is an important time of our day, I think we all look forward to it. The kids the most.
Before he leaves he helps start two wood stoves to heat the house. We have oil heat in the house but oil is expensive so we try to use the wood stove to heat the house most of the time. When we moved in we had the oil tank filled 3/4's of the way and to this day we have only used 1/4 of the tank. We think that is great. We have gone through about 4 cords of wood but that is cheaper than oil. Our house is about 72 degrees all day long and may drop down to about 62 at night but it heats right back up in the morning when the stoves get going again. It is one way we can save money.
Saving money is the key. We do a lot to save money, I think about it all the time. Living on a budget is very important for us to live like we do. Many times we want to stray from our budget but we have to think of where we have come from and where we are now and that makes us stay with it. I will blog of our money saving things we do and have done that help us stay away from credit cards and debt.
OK time to feed the dogs :) and do some laundry folding it never ends. I have some exciting blogs coming. We are remodeling our kitchen and it is coming out great. But I have to go for now........
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
meet melanie
HI I'm Melanie. I'm the youngest of five. I am nine years old. I love our new house. I love farm animals. I've been looking forward to starting a farm. I can't wait to get our first animal, I hope it's chickens or pigs!
I am nine so this blog is going to be short, but it is going to be interesting. My mom probably told you about our boxer puppies, Sophie and Bailey. I love them so much, we also have a cat and a hamster but our hamster, Taco, passed away a few weeks ago :-[ Our cat, Boots loves to cuddle just like the puppies, but he's not so friendly with the pups.
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I am nine so this blog is going to be short, but it is going to be interesting. My mom probably told you about our boxer puppies, Sophie and Bailey. I love them so much, we also have a cat and a hamster but our hamster, Taco, passed away a few weeks ago :-[ Our cat, Boots loves to cuddle just like the puppies, but he's not so friendly with the pups.
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Can you find my silly cat. Its Boots in a Basket he got in big trouble for that, not really ;)
I will blog again real soon with some more updates on my new home.
Bailey & Sophie our Boxer puppies
When we found our home and knew it was going to have 10 Acres of land we wanted some animals for sure. At first my husband said lets get a couple of Bullmastiff puppies. So I looked and looked and couldn't find any that we could afford. Breeders wanted crazy amounts of money for those cute giant dogs. So I started looking up other good natured dogs that looked like a Bullmastiff. We already have a Maltese for a dog and she is 7 years old. My husband really wanted dogs that were of a bigger breed. Our new home is in the country and he wanted something that states protection. Well I looked and looked and we all decided on the Boxer Breed. Then we had to find two girls at a reasonable price. That was hard. Well I found two gems. We did have to drive to New York City to get them and they don't have papers but we din't care we are not going to breed them.
We picked up Bailey and Sophie when they were just 8 weeks old. OMG they were just the cutest things ever! So gentle and loving from day one. Our children could not have been happier. We picked them up on New Years Day 2013. It was a great way to start a new year and what a great year it is for our family the start of our new and exciting life.
Now the puppies are alot of work but are totally worth it. The children have to take part in the care. The training is going great we take them out often and crate train them at night. They have a few accidents but that is mostly our fault. They love to play and run. They love our new home!
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this was a picture when they first came home they still cuddle together as much as they can.
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Melanie woke up on a snow day and was playing dress up with the girls and they didn't mind a bit. This picture was taken a few weeks back they are growing like weeds. The Boxer dog is a great breed and a great family dog.
Maple Syrup
Our new home has given us a few rewards already one is the art of making Maple Syrup. Our first attempt at farming is our trees. We are taking the sap out of our tree's and making it into maple syrup. It is the most amazing thing ever. The local people in Maine even have a day for Maple Syrup Sunday. That was the day we tapped our first Maple tree. A few days later we made homemade Maple Syrup. One thing we learned is it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Wow alot of work for such Little treasure. But totally worth it. We boiled down about 3 gallons and got a few ounces. Amazing! The taste to die for. We will make more for sure.
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Our first Post
Hello I am excited to be starting this blog. Our family made this move to Maine at the end of January 2013 and it was the best thing we ever did. It was not an easy move for us. We lived in the small state of Rhode Island near alot of our family. So saying good bye was not an easy party for sure. We are now about five hours away from them all. You might think what would make a family move away from extended family to a strange place? Well it was a few different reasons. I will explain.
We have two children left at home, one son that is 13 years old and a daughter that is 9 years old. We had been looking at our lives and them growing up the last few years and found alot of stress and money problems. We were always working hard to get by and never getting ahead. I am sure like everyone else in the world always trying to give our kids everything they wanted. Always trying to keep up with the Jones. But really not being happy just being more stressed. We thought there must be more to this.
Well then my health gave us a problem and it turned our two family income household into one and we had to really look at things. That is when we said wait we are doing this wrong. There has to be a better way. We have to give our children things but most of all we have to give them us, our time not material things. They will treasure that more. They might not think that at first but they will get used to it.
Well it was kinda drastic for us at first but we had some money saved so we were able to live on a smaller budget. I was a single mother years ago and knew what it was like to rub to nickels together and make a family live off a small amount and get by on love alone. lol. Thing with that is you have to get everyone in the family to agree on the living on Love thing. They might fight it cause children always want things. They want what there friends have but they have to be told those things are not important. Us being together more is. Not the reality of me not being able to work because of my health but they were to young and didn't need to know that. And I take my health issues as a blessing of getting my family back together. Back to being a happy family with a real future of being together forever.
So we lived on a small budget and saved what we could. We decided we would start looking for a home of our own instead of renting and giving our money to someone else. Well with a small income and not wanting to be in debt for 30 years we found out through the Internet what we could afford on a 10 year mortgage. Well with that amount we new we could not find a home in our area in Rhode Island. The home prices were just to high.
So we opened our search out to about five hours from all of our family and just looked and looked. We new we were not going to live beyond our means anymore. So we new we did not want to spend more than a certain amount and that we didn't want to pay for more than 10 years.
And that is what brought us to Maine. OMG all we heard from family and friends is why Maine. But why not Maine. We found a home well within our budget, within a great school system for our children. We took the risk. We do not know a sole. But we needed to make this change for the sake of our family and to make a better life for us.
Our home has 10acres of land which we hope to do some farming. We will start with chickens. We would like to try pigs after that. And we will go from there. I would love to build a guest tree house near the river.
The home is an older home and needs alot of work. That is an understatement. My husband plans to do most of the work himself. I will blog about that. My daughter many times has said I am so glad we made this move. Even my son who was so scared of this whole thing has said he is very happy with the way things have turned out. He does say he is not quite sure about becoming a farmer but he will try anything.
Well this is the short and simple version of our reason for coming to Maine lets hope you keep up with our blog and maybe make a life change of your own.
We have two children left at home, one son that is 13 years old and a daughter that is 9 years old. We had been looking at our lives and them growing up the last few years and found alot of stress and money problems. We were always working hard to get by and never getting ahead. I am sure like everyone else in the world always trying to give our kids everything they wanted. Always trying to keep up with the Jones. But really not being happy just being more stressed. We thought there must be more to this.
Well then my health gave us a problem and it turned our two family income household into one and we had to really look at things. That is when we said wait we are doing this wrong. There has to be a better way. We have to give our children things but most of all we have to give them us, our time not material things. They will treasure that more. They might not think that at first but they will get used to it.
Well it was kinda drastic for us at first but we had some money saved so we were able to live on a smaller budget. I was a single mother years ago and knew what it was like to rub to nickels together and make a family live off a small amount and get by on love alone. lol. Thing with that is you have to get everyone in the family to agree on the living on Love thing. They might fight it cause children always want things. They want what there friends have but they have to be told those things are not important. Us being together more is. Not the reality of me not being able to work because of my health but they were to young and didn't need to know that. And I take my health issues as a blessing of getting my family back together. Back to being a happy family with a real future of being together forever.
So we lived on a small budget and saved what we could. We decided we would start looking for a home of our own instead of renting and giving our money to someone else. Well with a small income and not wanting to be in debt for 30 years we found out through the Internet what we could afford on a 10 year mortgage. Well with that amount we new we could not find a home in our area in Rhode Island. The home prices were just to high.
So we opened our search out to about five hours from all of our family and just looked and looked. We new we were not going to live beyond our means anymore. So we new we did not want to spend more than a certain amount and that we didn't want to pay for more than 10 years.
And that is what brought us to Maine. OMG all we heard from family and friends is why Maine. But why not Maine. We found a home well within our budget, within a great school system for our children. We took the risk. We do not know a sole. But we needed to make this change for the sake of our family and to make a better life for us.
Our home has 10acres of land which we hope to do some farming. We will start with chickens. We would like to try pigs after that. And we will go from there. I would love to build a guest tree house near the river.
The home is an older home and needs alot of work. That is an understatement. My husband plans to do most of the work himself. I will blog about that. My daughter many times has said I am so glad we made this move. Even my son who was so scared of this whole thing has said he is very happy with the way things have turned out. He does say he is not quite sure about becoming a farmer but he will try anything.
Well this is the short and simple version of our reason for coming to Maine lets hope you keep up with our blog and maybe make a life change of your own.
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