Our Month In Flannel- January

What Did We Do All Month?

What did we accomplish in January?  Well, not a lot.  January is an odd month.  It’s the beginning of a new year, a chance to start fresh and remake yourself, but it’s also cold, dark, snowy, and dominated by the Christmas hangover.  It sort of makes you want to hibernate and avoid humanity until at least April.

Garden and Farm

We finally sat down, and finalized Our Plan for the Garden in 2021, and ordered our seeds and plants for the year.  We should have done it back in November, with all the seed shortages and everything, but that’s just how it goes.  So many things were sold out that we ended up ordering from 5 different places.  

This year we’ve cut way, way back on flowers (in the past we’ve grown flowers to sell) and are focusing mainly on food for ourselves so our order looked quite a bit different, but equally as expensive since we’re putting in a bunch of perennials this spring.

We also made the decision to purchase meat goats this spring,  which will be an entirely new adventure.  We need to build them housing and keep doing the research before they arrive.  

The House

We did a ton of work on the house this month.  We completed 3 major projects that have made our home way more functional and pleasant to live in:

We Built Standing Desks

Kiley’s Desk- A feeble attempt to get her to stand up more, made out of Spruce.

Our Christmas gift to ourselves this year was a set of standing desks.  Andy bought legs and we made custom tops with the help of my brother who happens to be very talented at woodworking. Mine was made from a huge piece of spruce which Andy slabbed up with his chainsaw mill. This chunk of wood was left at my brother’s place by a guy who had hand-hewn this log just for fun.  

Andy’s desk was built using a scrap maple butcher block countertop from when we finished the kitchen.  

We Built A Craft Room Work Bench

We also installed a workbench along the wall in the ‘craft room’ of the house where the sewing machine can live.  And, we got said sewing machine professionally serviced for the first time in its life.  

The workbench was made out of a spare table that Andy’s parents had built years ago but no longer wanted.  It was actually a folding table, but we removed the legs, sawed the table in half, and built new legs (with shelves) to raise the table to countertop height.  It’s not exactly fine furniture, but it was free, and it’s very functional.  For a ‘workbench’ it actually looks quite nice, and I won’t have to worry too much about hurting it

It’s amazing to finally have not only a functional sewing machine but a dedicated place to use it.  The sewing machine has been seeing a lot more use as our side-business picks up. The craft room (a spare bedroom that currently serves a variety of purposes, but does not actually house a spare bed) is feeling so much more functional with the addition of the desk and workbench.

We Finally Have A Bed Frame

Last but certainly not least, we built a bed frame.  For the first time in 3 years, we are not sleeping on the floor!  We are now finally real adults.  I think our certificate got lost in the mail.

We were forced to finally take care of this project because we purchased a new bed.  A waterbed, in fact.  Our old mattress was slowly killing me, and it was the second foam mattress we had tried and didn’t like, so we went with a waterbed (a strange choice, but I tried one out a while ago and loved it).  We’ll see if the waterbed works out long-term or is a mistake. Its sleeping position is a lot different than memory foam or a standard foam mattress so it’s taken some getting used to. Our first impressions weren’t as high as we had hoped, but we’re getting used to it and sleeping better. 

Andy built the bedframe out of scrap lumber from his grandparent’s barn. In an ideal world, we would have loved to have done one of two things: build a really nice piece of furniture or buy an antique bed frame, so we could enjoy this bed for the rest of our lives. We did neither.  

Having a waterbed really limited our choices of bed frames, because we needed something sturdy.  Antique bed frames are not sturdy, and also not often queens.  We also wanted a bedframe now, not later.  

So we came up with a cheap solution: we built a frame from scrap lumber that will be ‘hidden’, and we’ll attach a footboard later, when/if we find one or build one we like.  

While we were building we took the time to sand the wood down and give it some stain, so at first glance, it has the illusion of furniture. It is only made from framing lumber so it’s nothing fancy, but it actually looks very good.   

I’ll make a bed skirt for it one of these days (now that my sewing machine is fixed) to hide all 9 legs this bed has.

Andy’s Projects

The gator, ready for some late-night plow action

Andy’s parents gave us some LED lights for the gator to mount on the roof both front and back. So a few afternoons were spent in the garage getting these installed. He’s happy as a clam.  The original headlights “look like a candle compared to these new floodlights”. Andy is happy because now he can easily see where he’s plowing and will be able to keep hauling wood or moving rocks well into the night, rather than come inside to rest.

Finances

January always feels like a much-needed break after spending in December. This feeling of a ‘break’ was achieved by having only $3k in expenses compared to the $5k in December. We can’t blame Christmas for much of that though because $1350 was for the waterbed, we spent $170 building the bed frame, and $460 on standing desk legs. Classify it how you wish - gifts for ourselves? Life upgrades?  Long overdue needs? Either way, we are happy with the decision to invest in ourselves with these life-improving purchases.

We also had a few other expensive and non-recurring things to take care of, like a $200 vet appointment for Pepper and $80 in sewing machine maintenance.

We track our expenses in Personal Capital which makes it easy to see where our money goes. These mentioned expenses got tossed into the “general merchandise” category. “Gifts” in December only added up to $600 to treat our family with things to make them feel loved. $600 can be a lot or a little depending on how you feel about Christmas, but it’s the one time of year that we really ‘splurge’ (again, depends on your definition. Our splurge is a lot less splurgy than other people’s splurges).

Reading

I’ve been sick since the middle of the month, first with an infection, then with the side effects of the cure.  The silver lining is that I’ve gotten a boatload of reading done this month.  9 books finished, and probably just as many started (I like to have options).  Andy finished 3 himself, which is impressive since he hasn’t picked up a book in several years.  Here are the books we read this month:

Andy’s Reading List:

Superfans by Pat Flynn

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Big House, Little House, Backhouse, Barn by Thomas C. Hubka

Andy really enjoyed all of these books and would recommend any of them. Atomic Habits was a super quick read (Super Fans is as well) but still full of great ideas.

Kiley’s Reading List: 

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Wolf

Design For The Real World by Victor Dapaner

Love by Toni Morrison 

In the Company of Trees by R. Shamms Mortier

Mother Teresa: A Simple Path by Lucinda Vardey

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Atomic Habits and Deep Work were by far my favorites on this list, followed by Design For The Real World. I wouldn’t read any of the others again, but Toni Morrison has a very unique writing style and I think I have one more book by her I’ll be reading. Her books are enjoyable, but it’s very hard to keep track of the story.

Next Month

In February we don’t have much for plans. We need to get ready for the arrival of the goats later this spring, and clean up the basement for seed starting in March. Other than that, we’ll still be enjoying the snow and a big pile of books.

Happy February!