Urban Homesteading

Ashes sent me a wiki entry on Homesteading-

"Currently the term 'homesteading'^[1] applies to anyone who is a limb of the back-to-the-land movement and who chooses to live a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. While land is no longer freely available in most areas of the world, homesteading remains as a way of life. A new movement, called 'urban homesteading', can be viewed as a simple living lifestyle, incorporating small-scale agriculture, sustainable and permaculture gardening, and home food production and storage into suburban or city living."

I think this is roughly my goal. I'd like to produce some of my own food, turn most of my yard into either a) gardening space for growing food or b) native plant areas that mimic (somewhat) what plants might naturally grow here. I also am trying to eat "seasonally" or with seasons in mind. Of course, that's not as easy as it sounds. It doesn't even sound easy! But here's some of the things I've been working on:

• Trying to choose previously owned, sustainably-made or re-purposed furniture whenever possible. All that we bought new (furniture-wise) for this house was our bed frame and that was made by company that re-plants a tree for each one it uses, and uses parts of Rubber Trees that are going to be disposed of!

• Shopping at the farmer's market, Ypsilanti Food Co-op, or Whole Foods/Trader Joe's. That's where I get 90% of our groceries

• Canning and preserving food that is in-season now for the winter, when it will be unavailable

• Had my own community garden plot this year!

• I try to support local businesses whenever possible, whether its buying furniture, buying food, buying art, etc.

• Hope to transform my yard and leave only about 20% grass. The rest will be raised-bed gardens and native plant areas!

• 90% of the household products I buy (toilet-paper, cleaners, etc) are organic or non-toxic

• Used No-VOC paint (FreshAire from Home Depot) on most of the new rooms we painted!
  

In general, I try run everything I buy by this test: Is it either local or environmentally friendly (it's hard to find both!)?

Anyway that was a rant! Just meant to post some pictures of our latest canning adventure: Butternut Squash soup, Apple and Ginger Marmalade, and Apple butter! Yum!

Kitchen and Mudroom remodel

Kitchen and mudroom tile is finished! Here is a before pic:

We ended up being able to use the $20 tile that my mom gave us (the yellowish one thats in the mudroom), and then we just picked what we thought was a complementary beigey tile for the kitchen. Jim (Mike's uncle who did all the work!) thought we were short a box of yellow in the mudroom, which is good because he started to think about how he could sub in a few of the beigey tiles and came up with this pattern- which we loved! So even though we found the missing
box o' tiles, we decided to have this pattern any way,
to help "connect" the two rooms.

We still need to seal the floor... I hope that will be
happening today. When I say that, I mean I hope i have the energy to do that today.

Overall I really love the tile that Jim put in.
He did a great job! Here are some after pics:

If you live in the Southeastern
Michigan region and you are looking for someone to help out with home projects, Jim Jakubowski is a great doer of stuff!

see info-
Next project- Paint the kitchen & mudroom!
We decided to go with a yellowy color called... something Daffodil. Since we are using No/low VOC paint, our color options were a little limited. We really liked most of the FreshAire paint colors from Home Depot, so we decided to go with that line of paint. I might paint the mudroom first, because a) it will allow me to feel like I am accomplishing something and b) then if I do not love love love the yellow, it will not have to go in the kitchen.

I did some work outside today too. Could not figure out how to get the lawnmower going but I DID get the weedwacker going! :) So I did some driveway trimming and wacked some of the weeds
on the front walk. Looks marginally better- how satisfying!