Sooooo Tired

Hi everyone. Just thought I would send you a note to let you know what we have been up to. We spent New Year's Eve with friends in Kingston. They used to live right across the road from us. We had a pajama party with them last year, and decided it was so much fun that we would join them again. Then we decided to get dressed up, on Friday night, in our reenactment clothes and go see the lights at Upper Canada Village (it is like heritage park, but bigger). We got up real early today (Saturday) and took the family skiing at Titus Mountain. Kierstan and Parker took lessons, and they all had fun going down the hills all day. I sat in the lodge where it was warm, and read and made jewelry. Sadly, I do NOT have any pics, because my camera has decided to die. It will only take 1-3 pictures on a set of batteries, and then flashes low battery. We have been having this problem for awhile, but it has gotten so bad now that I cannot hardly take a picture anymore. We will have to save up and see what we can find for a new one.

Answers about Christmas Card

Mom says that the cards created more questions and needed elaborating. I will make an attempt at clarifying some of these. If you have other questions, feel free to email them to me, and I will do my best to answer. First of all, I did not make John, Zac, or Paker's coats, just their pants. I will be making a new red coat for John, when the wool arrives. 1812 falls right in they middle of the regency era. This is a time when king George was extremely ill, and his son Prince George was acting in his father's stead as the Regent. He took over the throne upon his father's death. Fashion was usually set by the French, and copied by the British (even though they were at war). During this time the trend for women was to go with much simpler lines, reminiscent of the ancient Greek statues.

Waist lines climbed to an extremely high level (higher than our modern empire waist line). During this time it was all about the natural shape of a woman, so the use of stays/corsets went out of fashion. It quickly became apparent that this only worked for small busted women. Those who were more endowed, continued to wear stays, but less restrictive. They were also shorter, as the goal was not to shape the waist, just lift things up.

A stay was worn over a shift, allowing you to have fewer stays. The shift was worn next to the skin, to absorb the excess moisture, and was much easier to wash than the stay.

In the camp Photos (state of undress), I must admit that the clothes that Kierstan and I are wearing, are not actually accurate. They are about 20 years out of date, but we did not know that at the time. We were told they were appropriate, but it is also a very relaxed group. Parker, on the other hand is correctly dressed. He is wearing the "undress" uniform of the Canadian Fencibles (including the hat). When they were not on the battle field, this is what they wore working around camp. A state of undress has nothing to do with being clothed, rather it is a reference to the type of clothes one is wearing. Their pants are called "fall-front pants". They pre-date the fly. The waist band over laps in the front, and then the flap is brought up aver top and buttoned. The hat that Brittany (Zac's Girlfriend) is wearing is called a mob/mop cap. It would be worn around the house as one was working to keep the dust, flour and all else out of her hair while working. John's Green coat is also out of date. It is the uniform of the King's Royal Regiment of New York, or the Yorkers. They fought in the revolutionary war back in 1776ish. We did not have all the patterns, or supplies, to get everyone appropriately dressed, so we made due. I sewed for Three weeks almost straight to get done what I did.


This Picture shows the results. There are 3 dresses, 3 shifts one pair of pants, one stay and 2 spencers (short jackets). I cut out 3 other dresses, one was for my friend Sue to sew up herself, I also made her a shift. The other two dresses are works in progress. They will be fancier gowns to be worn to the various balls that are held at many of our reenactment events. I am taking my time with the embellishments, but I will post them when they are finished. I hope this is helpful, and I will try harder this year to keep the blog going.

4X as long

It always amazes me that our projects seems to take 4 times longer than we expect. As we start a project, we find all the little bits that we need to finish (so that we don't have to undo things later). I now have to go back to touch up paint in both the den and the loft, but each step is a forward one, I think.

Keep trying

I don't seem to be too good at keeping this thing up to date. Here is an update. We are almost done sorting out the inside of our house. As each room gets finished, I am starting to see that I may be able to keep up with the house with just a few minutes /room/day. I really think I may have this whole maintaining a house well under way of gaining control. I hope after this weekend, I will have more time to do things I want to. I realized a few weeks ago that even if each room took 10 minutes to straighten, I would still be done in 2 hours. That would mean the rest of the day to myself. (Well, at least until school is done.) We are finally seeing spring, so we are going to try to get the last of the trim done before and between conference sessions. On a side note, I am experimenting with leftovers. I made a turkey to feed the missionaries yesterday. With the leftovers, I am trying to make jerky. I don't know if it will work, but I figure it is worth a try. I even added cranberry sauce to one batch. Could be fun.

Home at last

It has been a hectic summer! We got back from two weeks in B.C., and left to go camping for a week. It was fun, but a long time to be away from home. We got back and had the hectic rush to get school supplies. Things are continuing to run at a hectic pace until at least Thursday, but maybe not until next week. Trying to keep every on organized, and making sure they have everything is a routine we have fallen out of. I guess we will have to learn that one again. We will also have to get back into proper eating and sleeping routines again. the weight has increased a bit for all of us, except the puss. He just grew like a bad weed. Well, gotta get supper started, and try to get pics on the computer this evening.

Starting again

Well, I know that I have not been keeping this up to date. This is the new green colour of my room. Not one room is done yet, but we are still trying to get ourselves settled. I still have more pictures to take, but slowly we will get the rooms done. I think the living room will be the first one completely done. We finished the floors in the kitchen, dining room and hallway last week end. I am going to work on the living room floor this week. It just leaves one more floor downstairs.

Tough decisions bring unseen blessings

Well, it has sure been interesting the last couple of weeks. We had a tough decision to make a short time back. Our car has been having trouble off and on, which leaves me to drive the van (an old ambulance). It cost me $40-80 a week, just to drive my little boy to school and back. I sat with the hubby, and tried to see how I could make the budget work , so he would not have to change schools until the next year. It just was not possible. We sat with him and explained that he would have to change schools. I think I was more upset than he was. He switched at the beginning of the month, and things have just gone on from there. The new class he is in, is not a split class, and this school has a teacher that just focuses on reading with students who are struggling. She doesn't really have room for him, but there are a lot of students who are away for various reasons. In just a couple of weeks his reading has improved so much, that it is like night and day. He is writing and spelling better already, too. I can not hardly belive the change. If we had stayed in our other home, or let him finish the year there, he might have just continued to struggle. Now he has the opportunity to get the extra support that seems to be needed, when one is almost a year younger than some of his classmates.