Day 15 - Staying at Home and Staying Safe

It's day 15 for Steve and I being self-quarantined. I'm so thankful that neither of us are showing any symptoms of anything, so I think we can be reasonably assured that our house is virus free. If we don't go anywhere and don't do anything, I think we can ride this out with our health intact.

Hopefully many of you are in the same position and are able to hunker down at home and be safe. Of course there are those essential jobs that give me such worry and angst in my heart. Especially because our children are out there performing them!

Our daughter Heather is busy at UWGB University of Wisconsin Green Bay prepping rooms in the residence halls. They are getting ready for housing overflow additional medical staff from the area hospitals that might be brought into the Green Bay area, as well as a quarantine area for people awaiting test results instead of returning back to their homes. She won't be dealing with the inhabitants of the residence halls directly, we hope, but instead is getting things prepped and arranged to make the facilities more accommodating.

Daughter Erin has been busy working within her role in the healthcare system. Many essential workers are working tirelessly behind the scenes as well as on the front lines to get everything ready in case the numbers increase in the Green Bay area. The planning and strategy is tremendous, laying the groundwork that goes into the drive-up testing stations and expansion of medical facilities if need be.

I just wish I could take all of our children and keep them here safe in our home. To have them and all of our grandchildren come with their campers and motorhomes and stay here and stay safe. All of their pets could come and bring whatever food they have on hand and we could combine it all. It could be a great big Pfundtner Commune!!! 

I would love to see all of my grandchildren every day, and know that they are safe and healthy, and if nobody leaves and no germs are brought in, we could ride this through.

But that is a daydream. Our children need to work and things need to move forward so we can all heal and get out of this mess.

Our oldest daughter and son-in-law were so sweet to us yesterday. They were doing a grocery store run and took a copy of our phone shopping list with them. They replenished ALL of our perishables. We've gotten fresh vegetables, milk, eggs etc. It was bountiful and refreshing to have this all come to us. We sanitized and cleaned and washed everything coming into the house, and disposed of the plastic shopping bags, all while wearing disposable gloves. This is the first time in a long time that we've used plastic shopping bags instead of our fabric ones. I guess in this time of crisis, a few more plastic bags in the landfill is the least of our concern.

In return for Erin and Waylen's kindness, I agreed to bake them a big tray of toffee bars. This is my favorite recipe, minus the nuts on top. Not for themselves, but for them to drop off at the daycare center today as a little thank you to the workers there.

Because Erin is in a essential health field position, the little local daycare here is able to stay open for caring for children of essential health care workers in the state of Wisconsin. For the extra effort that these people are doing to keep my grandchildren safe, my baking a tray of toffee bars as a little thank you is the least I could do.

I even decorated the cover of the box 

to bring a smile to their faces!

I was able to put in two layers of toffee bars in that one box. What can be nicer than getting a box of treats, only to find that there's another layer underneath when the first one is gone?

With the limited number of kids attending the daycare right now, due to some of the people not being at work, the numbers are lower. Maybe there will be enough toffee bars to share with the little kids too. That is why I was sure to note on the box that there were no nuts or peanut oil used...


We have two birthdays coming up with our grandsons. All I can do now is send out birthday cards with gift cards inside for future presents, since we can not do any shopping at this time. It will be something to have them look forward to later.

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While being housebound, we are getting a few more projects done around our National Folk Farmhouse.

A part of our back acreage is all densely wooded with trees and shrubs. Over the course of many years, it was a depository for the renting people's trash and rubbish. The sellers we bought the house from hauled out 18 loads of trash from the woods, including things like microwaves, televisions, rubber tires, and other assorted junk. They left behind things like bricks and cement blocks, probably due to their weight and not really being a high priority to get out and into the municipal waste yard.  We noticed a lot of them when the leaves fell last autumn.

While the leaves are still off the trees and the shrubs, it's easier to see where these large cement blocks and piles of bricks are located this spring. Steve wheeled the flat trailer into the backyard by hand, not wanting to make big ruts in the soft lawn with the Tracker tires.

He started gathering cement blocks and bricks from various spots in the woods and is in the process of piling them all up on the cement slab where the trailer is parked. As soon as the ground firms up a little bit, he will load the trailer up and hook it on the Tracker to bring them over to the municipal waste yard. They have a section there to deposit cement blocks and bricks that will then be recycled.

He kept himself busy with that for quite a while yesterday and is probably about one third of the way done through our woods.

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We are fortunate that the back section of our property butts up to a little gravel road. Beyond that gravel road is a large nature preserve that is owned by the Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust.

That property then butts up to the 

DNR marshland for the state of Wisconsin. 

The best benefit is that of course, we will never have neighbors building houses behind us. It will never be developed into any more residential housing. So we are literally on the "edge" of town.

It is such a nice place that we can go into and walk around. It is open to the public, but not for hunting.

This trail was beckoning us to trudge down it 

in our winter boots. 

Last summer, not only were we so gosh darn busy, but it was quite wet and mucky back there to explore it very much.  We decided now would be a good time to get back there, things were still frozen on the ground and the trails. There is still quite a bit of snow in the woods.

We wandered on back around the big pond and looked at it from all angles. Although it was still frozen, we didn't venture out on the ice.

Then we went further down another path to find a large foundation left over from a big barn! Upon further examination we could determine it had one time burned down and the foundation is all that remained. There are some clusters of lilac trees and apple trees nearby from wherever a homestead or rural farm had been located.

It was quite a long barn, and not too old, because then it would have had a stone foundation. This one was a poured foundation, so had to be at least in the 20th century.

I asked on the local Facebook group for our area about more information on that farm. I received a couple different responses:

Tim LaCombe: Looks pretty much the same (old and overgrown) as it looked when I used to ride my motorcycle trail bike near it in the early/mid 1970’s. Edit: We used to park our bikes and hang out there but nobody knew anything about the history of the place.

Greg Barribeau: Use to be an abandoned old house there when I was a kid. Also a pond farther back. Use to walk it, hunt and camp. Kind of a favorite party spot in later years!

Karen Stranz: I grew up in Mary Jo and Eli's house on the corner. We always called that the haunted house. Beautiful lilacs in the front yard, would go back and pick them every year. We did lots and lots of exploring back there when I was a kid. Not to mention the beer parties my brother had out there two.
Occasionally I still have dreams yet about exploring in the old house.

Karen Stranz: The pond was dug when they redid Park Ave in 1966 or 67. All the equipment would go past our house, the guys would toss my younger brother and I candy as we sat and watched them all the time. We even had lemonade stands for them.

Greg Barribeau: Karen Stranz , the pond was there already in 61-62 when Dan Rhode and I use to roam around there. They probably dug extra fill after that for the road.

Steve Brazeau: Yup thats the old haunted house! Good memories 😜

Al Stranz: That was the old Siebert or Sievert (Seibert/Seivert) farm. The barn burned down in the late 50's. House and other buildings were torn down late 60's early 70's by Caspar Murdzak. It must have been a pretty nice place in it's day as there were several flower beds, liliacs, circle drive and an orchard. And a lot of asparagus. House was a 2 story red brick structure. Pond was dug in mid-late 60's, fill was used for CTH Y when it was rebuilt.

We even found a bear track in the snow so that means the bears have woken up from hibernation. It appeared to be a pretty small one.

But even still, they wake up and they are hungry and grumpy and groggy. Best to leave them be. Glad we did not have the dogs with us. Although if we did, they would be firmly secured with us on leashes. We also plan that we will carry bear spray next time we go back in that area.

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I finally got around to finishing up the backside of the big blue quilt called "Indigo Dreams" that I have been working on. I was short about 4 inches or so of flannel backing fabric during the original quilting process. So I had ordered some fabric from Joann's, that I talked about in my last blog. Sadly, the fabric came in a different dye lot. It was the same SKU number and fabric name that I ordered from the original fabric. But as any fiber person knows, dye lots can differ from batch to batch. I pre-washed the new flannel to shrink it down to the same texture as the previous piece already attached to the quilt. 

Even though it didn't quite match, I still sewed it on, and was able to finish the quilting process on my long frame.  It felt so good to finish this one up, because I knew it was for US!

I had also attached the beautiful tag that my friend Connie had made for me on her embroidery machine.

I completed the binding all the way around.  This I did on my other sewing machine.  (no way was I gonna hand stitch that binding all around like more "purist quilters" do)  My machine was acting goofy for a while, so Steve and I downloaded the manual for this one and also fixed it, just like last week on my other machine.  I am SO thankful I could still sew on it, because this is NOT a good time for a quilter to have an inoperable sewing machine.   LOL

This is a super duper king size quilt, I made it extra long enough to hang down both sides of our tall king size bed.  It is a bed that Steve chose 7 years ago when we were shopping for the house in Chilton.  It's so tall, I can't even get up on it.  See the little footstool in the foreground?  That is for me!  LOL

 I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Surprisingly, there are enough scraps left over that I can now create two or three little toss pillows that will coordinate with the quilt. That might be my project for today?  After we are done with our coffee and cinnamon rolls, fresh outta the oven.

(I cheated - frozen roll dough from the Mennonite Store)

Things are damp and cloudy here this morning, and we are due for rain this afternoon. And then on top of that, surprise surprise, about 4 inches of slushy icky snow has been forecast.  Not fun.

I'm thankful that we can just hunker down inside, safe and warm, healthy and happy, and hoping that this will all pass over and our world can return to normal again.

Please 
Stay in.
Stay healthy. 

Stay safe.

More National Folk Farmhouse Projects

My goodness, we have SUNSHINE streaming in! That big glowing yellow orb in the sky has been missing for over a week in our parts. It looks so good coming in, flooding the newly painted kitchen with bright sunshine. This is what I was waiting for!

My new Dracaena plant from Aldi last week has been craving sunshine down in the she shed too! I really like the colors of this plant. It's very unusual. I hope to keep it growing for years to come.

Steve is still finishing up a couple more junctions and new wire replacements up in the attic today. Our temperature is up in the mid-forties. That's so very strange for Wisconsin. He was able to crawl up in the attic which is being warmed by the sunshine and the nicer temperatures. One year ago today we were 30 below zero How amazing is that?

While Steve is busy working up in the attic I am available to hand him a few tools and items here and there.  I run them up the ladder so he can access stuff without having to go up and down. While he is doing that, I'm doing a couple other little projects myself...

Since we mounted the TV on a wall bracket in the living room, I didn't like the look of the power cord and antenna wires dangling down underneath it. They make this really cool plastic strip that you can snap open, enclose the wires, and snap it shut again. It mounts to the wall with an adhesive strip. 

I bought a long piece that I cut into two sections.  I will use part of it for the tv in the livingroom and then the other part down in the she shed behind my quilting machine. It will help keep the wires tight to the wall and not tangling into the tracks as I go back and forth with the quilting machine. Very nice. I painted the livingroom piece a matching color for the wall and mounted it under the TV today. I was careful to use a level to make sure it goes directly up and down and not tilted. Once it's stuck, it really stays there!

Last night we ran a couple errands down to Green Bay. We picked up some new tires for the car because they are getting in rather worn shape and one is developing a wobble by the sidewall or wear bands. Time to replace them. While we were down in Green Bay, we happened to just walk through Home Depot, "just to see". You know how that goes??

Lo and behold I found a beautiful piece of matching trim egg and dart molding that was 10 ft long! I didn't think they had it.  On their website it said they only had eight foot long pieces and I needed a nine foot piece. While we happened to be walking through the store looking at things, I found the piece that was 10 ft long! Score!  It was only a $1.97 a foot, so it was under $20 for the entire piece.  When I painted the mantle 2 weeks ago, I wanted a piece of egg and dart 3 inch wide molding to match the trim we have over the doorways and window sills. 

We happily loaded it in the car with the last foot or so hanging out the rear window to get it home. Now I can paint it up and Steve can nail it to front edge of the mantle. It will cover up some of the rougher areas that the painting effort two weeks ago didn't really disguise.

Then we decided to pop into Menards, you know, "just to see". LOL!

Well, we wandered past the rolls of vinyl flooring and I knew that the vinyl flooring I had in the bathroom at our house in Chilton was now discontinued. The Menards in Marinette no longer carries it. I've been having my eye on it, for a sale, in case we find a 12-foot by 12-foot remnant to put in our bathroom here in Oconto.

Wow, look at that! Not only was there a perfect size roll left in the remnant pile, but it was on sale for an extra 10% off the marked price on top of it. Score!

We really didn't plan on buying bathroom flooring right now, but when it's on sale, and discontinued, I guess we can't pass it up. If we don't buy it now, we will never have the chance again for that brand and style and color. We can store it away in the garage until we're ready to start that project (somewhere down the line).  We paid for it and have to go back today to pick it up with the Tracker and trailer.

I love our bathroom off the master bedroom in this house, but I did not like the flooring. It's like a patchwork fake brown slate tile looking stuff that is way too crazy of a pattern. Especially with the beautiful pattern wallpaper on the wall, I didn't like pattern in both places. It's too busy looking. 

Underneath, there is hardwood flooring. The sellers told us they never had that room's floor refinished when they did the rest of the house. It's awfully tough to have wood flooring in a wet bathroom. This wide sheet of vinyl flooring makes a lot more sense.  I just don't care for the color and pattern they chose.

This stuff that we bought is called "White Cement". It's kind of a creamy mottled color with no distinct pattern or striping. Just makes a nice smooth even floor that will coordinate well with the wallpaper, trim, clawfoot tub, shower and the pedestal sink etc.  Steve said at the same time he would like to swap out the toilet for a taller one with elongated bowl. The one that's in there is a little smaller shorter and has a round bowl. So that will be the perfect time to replace the toilet when we change the flooring!  Here is the sample piece laying on top of the present bathroom floor. 

Another thing to consider is that when that flooring had been installed by the previous owners, he didn't allow it to "float" --- instead he nailed it down through the baseboard and quarter round trim tight to the floor. That is wrong, because this type of vinyl flooring needs to be able to expand and contract. There's a very pronounced wrinkle during the summer months and less of a wrinkle during the winter months. But the wrinkle is still there and it's because it was incorrectly installed in the first place. We will be sure to install this new piece correctly because we have done it before, and I think it will be a nice finish to the master bathroom.

(see the wrinkle near the rug and corner to the right?

It gets bigger in the summer and goes 

all of the way across the floor to the toilet)

Since we are going to buzz back to Menards today to pick up the roll of flooring we bought last night, (we couldn't haul it home in the car) we are also going to grab a 4 by 8 sheet of beadboard paneling. I figured out how to cut enough beadboard panels to enhance my kitchen. I want to put them on the ends of the cabinets, the ends of the coffee bar, and three little panels in the recessed area of the doors on the island. It will give it more of a "farmhouse look" of beadboard cabinets and I think it will finish things off nicely.

So that's it for new projects on our National Folk Farmhouse --- 

that will keep us busy this next week or so.

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As I mentioned in my last blog I have been working on a new quilt. I bought this really cute little kit at Joann's Fabrics right before we moved. I didn't have time to start it, because we were busy packing and sorting and moving. So I decided it was time to pre-wash the fabrics and get it going. 

The kit only makes a 70 inch by 70 inch quilt. That really isn't big enough to cover a bed. I kind of thought maybe I would find some coordinating fabric so I could make the quilt bigger by adding borders and wider spaces between the blocks. I mentioned on my quilting list on Facebook that I had this kit and I was going to shop for some coordinating fabrics. What a surprise to find out that another gal on my list had also bought the exact same kit on clearance. She didn't think she would ever get around to using it. So she sold it to me for exactly what she paid for it, plus a little bit more for shipping. She popped it in the mail and now I have enough fabric between the two kits to make a complete quilt. Big enough to fit on our King Size bed. Or I can just make it and sell it on my Etsy site for some income.

After prewashing the fabrics,

I have to carefully cut them to the correct sizes.

These are the two main block patterns. 

Coming together nicely!

The other quilt that I mentioned in my last blog, I finally finished it up. It is one that I had started a long time ago.

I had stopped at a rummage sale about a year or so ago. A lady was selling quilting kits that had once belonged to her mother. She said her mother had never been able to finish them up. I am not sure if she passed away or just unable to finish due to a health situation. I didn't ask. One kit had been started and had about half of the blocks assembled. I bought it to finish it up. 

My sister had visited me that very same week and saw the blocks. She was attracted to it and asked me a couple of times what I was going to do with it. She had even sent me a book with that particular pattern on the front cover. I knew she liked that and I kept that in the back of my mind over the last year and a half.

I finally got it done, and I had my old neighbor Connie embroider a tag for a special occasion. She has one of those fancy embroidery machines that does such neat lettering and made the tag.

This is my first attempt ever at flanged binding. 

I really like the way it came out. 

It adds a little strip of green 

before the red binding around the edge

This is my favorite free motion pattern I call it hooks and swirls. I do it all free hand on the quilting frame while moving the machine around the quilt, kinda like "drawing with thread".

Here is the finished quilt: 

Once finished, I packed it up and sent the quilt to my sister.  She lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so I popped it in the mail to her. 

Unbeknownst to me, she had popped a surprise gift package in the mail, on the same day, to me. Now isn't that wonderful? We must have been on the same wavelength. She does so many nice things for everyone else.

She's been through a lot of stuff this last year recovering from a motorcycle accident. I felt she needed a little something extra “just because”. She felt the same way for me and sent me some things, “just because”.

Well, it's time to wrap this up and hit the road. Have to buzz down to Green Bay for 30 miles and get that flooring.   Onward to another Fix It Up Adventure at our National Folk Farmhouse!