Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Howdy, Buck-a-roos!

So we're finally up to window height! Yippee! Well...actually...I guess we were up to window height a while ago, but just didn't know it. Oops! But that's ok...we like spending our free time undoing things we've already done.
Anywho...
So we had to saw part of our wall out! We thought this was going to be a huge pain in the gluteus, but actually, it was pretty easy. We just drew chalk lines on our wall, and went to town!


Tah-dah!

(Using a screw, tape measure, and some string, McGruber...er Brian...found a way to center our window.)

So now we've got a window buck (a rough opening) for our window, and part of a sill, too!
This makes it a little easier to "play house".
Grass soup and mud pies, coming right up!


These are some pictures of our house as of Friday.
We've got two window bucks in, and about 3 feet of wall.
And I know 3 feet doesn't sound like much (and trust me, I wish we had more than that), but it took a LOT of work to get those 3 feet. So instead of getting discouraged about how much we have left to do, I try to focus on how much we've done.
The good news is, that I found out from Kindra (Workshop Instructor Extraordinaire), that we can keep on building until a bucket of water freezes to an inch thick over night...which might not even happen in Oklahoma. Which means that we can keep on building indefinitely! This is a huge relief because we thought our building was going to have to come to a screeching halt for the winter. So I guess we'll keep on plugging away! It's great to not feel so rushed (it makes building that much more enjoyable), but now we've got to make sure to stay motivated (oh, wait, we're living with our grandparents...motivation found!). Also, I guess we can put our roof on 2 to 3 days after our final course of cob! So it looks like we might have a house sooner than we thought!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Footloose and Fancy Free

Here are some pictures of us gathering our building materials! Most people go to the lumber yard...we dig ours up! Fortunately for us, our friend, Chris, has mountains of clay out on his land that he lets us help ourselves to. He also has a Kubota, which comes in real handy....and it doesn't hurt that Brian operates it like a pro! Hello, cute farmer guy! I help out too, by driving the truck a little bit, taking pictures, and fretting.

Watch those shoelaces, Wren!


I need a hero...I'm holdin' out for a hero 'till the end of the night...




After doing an angry drunken high-bar routine, Brian picked up some straw bales. These are actually for standing on...they make for good scaffolding for us shorties...plus we can add them to our cob should we run low...


...and they make pretty prom decorations.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Aerial Shots

How cool is this?!!! Our friend, Jake (who also happens to fly a plane), was doing a little espionage the other day, and decided to fly over our land and take some pictures while he was at it! So, just in case any of you thought we were kidding when we said we were out in the middle of nowhere...





Kinda purty, ain't it?!

Some of my Favorite Things

Here are some more pics that I like that, for one reason or another, I hadn't been able to squeeze in yet!

I told you he had some weird sort of fire skills!
["By the power of Grayskull--IGNITE!"]
Zac Christian, Gravel Warrior

Meme, having a quiet marshmallow moment


Me trying to stop Tyler from catching "snowflakes" on his tongue--snowflakes being floating ash from the fire (not so yummy).