Mini Homestead Happenings for 7/15/2009

I asked Zowie if she purchased the Suffolk tee shirt that she was wanting. She said no, but that she had purchased three tee-shirts for $10.00 while in Boston. Not bad.

Big day:

Super Wal*Mart opens in Bangor, and Harry Potter begins playing. I am waiting to see Harry Potter with Zowie. She is taking me for my birthday.

Big weekend:

Zowie and her friends Hanna and Schmo will be meeting me here, as will my daughter Skye and her boyfriend. We are all going up to a friends camp for the weekend where there will be four other adults and five children. We always have a great time while there. The camp is on a lake.

Hope you are all having a nice week!

Shannon

Mini Homestead Happenings for 7/14/2009

I am still waiting to get my pipes fixed. The insurance adjuster has asked me to wait until we determine what happened just over three weeks ago. They won’t pay for the plumbing, only the damage done due to the plumbing, so I wish that they would just let me have my stepfather fix the plumbing. But I have to wait.

My stepfather did come over and pull the skirting off the trailer, which made another problem evident. I will need a couple new sections of floor, and a small section of wall replaced due to water damaged caused by the rainy season or some other such cause.

I’m not sure if I remembered tot ell you that the filter went on my vacuum, so I am sweeping the rug and using the hand vac on it a couple times a week. What a pain! But it will do until I can afford to replace the filter.

Oh, and my stepfather fixed the lawnmower. Yay!!!!

Zowie is enjoying Upward Bound. They took their Boston trip last weekend, stopping at colleges along the way, as well as four colleges while there. They stopped at the beach on their way home and she and Hanna ended up with sunburns.

Hope you are all doing well.

Shannon

Still No Water

This insurance process is taking far too long for me!

Shannon

My Lawn

My nephew came to mow for me a couple of days ago. Finally! This is the first mowing this year. My stepfather came to fix the lawnmower on Sunday, and it just needed a new spark plug.

Now, it has rained here almost every single day for more than a month. There is sun today!!!!Yay! I am hoping for the sun to be out for at least a couple of days so that I can get down on my hands and knees and do the trimming in the yard.

I never did get to plant. I wonder if there is anything that I can plant this late in the season here in Maine.

Shannon

Mother Earth News

I am currently reading the June/July 2009 issue of Mother Earth News, and I just wanted to share with you some of the titles. I may write more on the issue later. If you do not receive this magazine already, I highly recommend it.

• Best Berries: Top Choices for Your Region
• Banish Ticks and Mosquitoes
• How to Protect Wilderness
• Natural Building with Earth
• Garden for Nature
• Fabulous Homemade Butter
• Save $$ – Build a Clothesline

Happy reading!

Shannon

Hi, Everyone!

Hello All,

I just wanted to toot my own horn a little.

I am now the Bangor Single Moms Examiner for Examiner.com. I just started writing, and have 1 article posted and another that I am writing. I also have helpful links added to my page there. You can visit my page here.

Feel free to check the page out, and please let me know what you think. While I am the Bangor Single Moms Examiner, most of the content will be geared toward anyone, with lots of tips.

I will still be writing here, of course.

Have a nice day!

Shannon

Mini Homestead Happenings for 7/1/2009

So…Zowie spent last weekend at home, and will be home again from Upward Bound late Friday. She is having a great time there, and is loving the peer counseling that she was accepted to perform. It takes up a lot of her time. She tells me that she will have her college essay written by summers’ end.

We went to a jewelry party on Friday evening, and went to the beach Saturday. It was a nice weekend visit.

Hope you are all doing well.

Shannon

Can You Eat on 1 Dollar a Day?

This link will lead you to a short article and a YouTube video describing an experiment on low-cost eating. I cannot view YouTube videos on my computer, so I am wondering if someone could gives us a rundown of what is said.

Can You Eat on 1 Dollar a Day? Watch New Documentary ‘Food Stamped’

 

If this can be done (at $1.00 per meal or less), then we may want to have a challenge here on the blog. Let me know your views on this. I could post the challenge on my other blogs, too.

 

Maybe everyone would agree to let me combine all of their ideas, tips and recipes into an e-book that we can each have a free copy of. Then we could sell it here for a $1 or $2.

 

Let me know if this is something that you would be interested in, and I will get it all set up.

 

 

Shannon

Mini Homestead Happenings for 6/29/2009

Right, so…I lost all water one day last week, and wasn’t sure why. I decided to wait a few days before contacting anyone, knowing that when someone in the park doesn’t pay up, everyone loses their water. I am also aware that a lot of people in this park have issues with the water system here.

Friday I had my brother-in-law come and check things out. I had a nice flood going on under my trailer. Something seems to be wrong somewhere up under there with the pipes.

At any rate, I had the water turned off, and an insurance adjuster will be here early this week. Then I can call a plumber. I am hoping that the insurance company will pay most of the cost of having things replaced. They will not pay for a new pipe, though.

I’ll let you all know how things go.

Shannon

Mini Homestead Happenings for 6/19/2009

I haven’t really been doing too much homesteading stuff this week. I am going through the rooms quickly looking for yard sale items to try to raise some money for bills. Today marks the first day of the yard sale.

I am simply going to lay everything out and have people make offers. Less work for me. I also have a small box of items that I will be giving away free.

After today’s yard sale, we are taking Zowie to the university. I won’t see her again for about a week. Maybe two, if she decided to spend a weekend with her best friend.

Let’s see what I can accomplish while she is gone this summer.

Hope you are all doing well.

Shannon