Laura Ingalls Part 4: Places to vist for that "Laura" Experience

Part 1: Introduction to the Series, information about Laura
Part 2: The books!
Part 3: Dress like Laura
Part 4: Places to visit to have that "Laura Experience"
Part 5: Cook like Laura
Part 6: Other books you might enjoy

Part 4: Places to vist to have that "Laura Experience"

 

 

The picture above is from a cute little old Homestead we took the kids to recently. You can read about it here, but since we are right in the middle of the Little House books the girls really enjoyed seeing what some of the houses were like in the "olden" days. No, the house isn't exactly what the books describe as what Laura lived in, but the point is that we got out together and explored something new.

 

There are some actual "Laura" places to visit though. I know my readers are from all over, and some of these may not be feasible, but if you are close you could easily drop in.

 

There is a musuem in Walnut Grove, Mn. There is a festival, museum, even a Laura and Nellie look alike contest.

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Musuem. This is located in Mansfield , Missouri and is where she settled later in life . This is where she wrote her Little house books.

 

The Little House Historic Homes is located in De Smet, South Dakota and is the setting for her book, Little Town on the Praire. Also in De Smet is the Ingalls Homestead This looks great, they offer covered wagon rides, you can look at the school where Laura and Mary went to school, run through the prarie grasses and so much more! Maybe one day I'll make it there!

 

If you live in Iowa you could visit a home she lived in as a child. The Laura Ingalls Park and Musuem has a Parade, a 5k, a musuem, gift shop and more.

 

If you are interested in Almonzo ( her husband) you can visit his boyhood home. It is located in Malone New York.  

 

Kansas, which is where the Prarie actually came into play has a great musuem also, with the one room cabin that is written about so often in the book series.  They offer lamplight tours and other events including re-enactments which sound really great!

 

Hopefully you all can visit one of these, or a similiar place to give yourself and your family a glimpse into the past.

Larua Ingalls Part 3: Dress like Laura

Part 1: Introduction to the Series, information about Laura
Part 2: The books!
Part 3: Dress like Laura
Part 4: Places to visit to have that "Laura Experience"
Part 5: Cook like Laura
Part 6: Other books you might enjoy

Part 3: Dress Like Laura

                                                                        photo credit

I love bonnets. I do. I can't help it. I think they are the cutest thing ever. Not only are they adorable but they serve a practical purpose as well.
I found a great tutorial at Given Moments Blog for all of crafty vixens out there ready to get your sew on.

There are also some on Etsy that other people have made. I found one seller here, that has super cute bonnets for as low as $8.50.  Ebay is another option of course, and I have found some really cute bonnets at thrift stores as well.

Dresses are adorable also. I love talking to the girls about fabric, and calico, and different patterns and swatches. A trip to the local fabric store, or maybe just into your sewing room would be a great side learning experience while reading the books.

Laura Ingalls Part 2: The books

Laura Ingalls Part 2: The Books

 

You can see here the other parts in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to the Series, information about Laura
Part 2: The books!
Part 3: Dress like Laura
Part 4: Places to visit to have that "Laura Experience"
Part 5: Cook like Laura
Part 6: Other books you might enjoy

I have 3 kiddos. I have two girls ages 5 and 6 and a little guy that just turned one. We have started a bed time ritual , which we ALL love of reading the Little House series before bed. These books are an easy read, are fun, have vividy imagry and the girls LOVE it. My husband will read it to them sometimes if I am busy with baby or something, but for the most part it is a special time for us to be together right before bed.

To make things more fun, I will either turn off all the lights and use a lantern to read by, or a candle. Just like Laura would have! I think it creates a little bit extra ambiance that just adds to the overall mood of the books.

There are several books in the series, and I personally think it is best to go in order. I normally read one chapter a night, which is a good length. Here are the books:

Little House in the Big Woods
Farmer Boy
Little House on the Prarie
On the Banks of Plum Creek
By the Shores of Silver Lake
The Long Winter
These Happy Golden Years
Little Town on the Prarie
The First Four Years


To me, this is the series that really started my fascination. My mother read them to me as a child, I read them several times myself as a child and now I am thoroughly enjoying reading them to my girls.

I am lucky enough to have the same set I had as a child, but they are available many places. Ebay.com was the cheapest place I found, and you can buy one at a time or buy them all at once. Just search for Little house on the Prarie Books. www.lehmans.com has the full set for sale, www.amazon .com also does. If you can't seem to find it please let me know! I would love to help you find a set to buy. What a great Christmas gift this would be, or some great winter reading!

Later on in the series I'll have some other books you might like revolving around Laura.....

Happy Homesteading....

Laura Ingalls: Part 1 Introduction to Series

Okay, I'll admit it. I love Laura Ingalls. I love the books, I love the tv series, I love the grand imagination and sassy little spark that she had in those books and tv shows. This may be a little bit off of my "typical" blog posts, but I am going to start a small series today on Everything Laura.

 The series will kind of go like this:
Part 1: Introduction to the Series, information about Laura
Part 2: The books!
Part 3: Dress like Laura
Part 4: Places to visit to have that "Laura Experience"
Part 5: Cook like Laura
Part 6: Other books you might enjoy

So today I just wanted to share a bit about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

She was a real person! It's not just a tv show, or a book. She actually was a real person and I think sometimes people don't really realize that she isn't a fictional character.

This is a picture of her as an adult.

 

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born February 7, 1867, seven miles north of the village of Pepin, in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin.,^[ Her life here formed the basis for the book Little House in the Big Woods.

 
In Laura's early childhood, her father settled on land not yet open for homesteading in what was then Indian Territory near what is now Independence, Kansas—an experience that formed the basis of Ingalls' novel Little House on the Prairie. In the years subsequent to this move, her father's restless spirit led them on various moves to a preemption claim in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, living with relatives near South Troy, Minnesota, and helping to run a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. After a move from Burr Oak back to Walnut Grove, where he served as the town butcher and Justice of the Peace, Charles Ingalls accepted a railroad job in the spring of 1879 which led him to eastern Dakota Territory, where he was joined by the family in the fall of 1879. Charles filed for a homestead over the winter of 1879–1880; De Smet, South Dakota was home for the rest of his, Caroline, and Mary's lives. After spending the mild winter of 1879–1880 in the Surveyor's House, the Ingalls family watched the town of DeSmet rise up from the prairie in 1880. The following winter, 1880–1881, one of the most severe on record in the Dakotas, was later described by Wilder in her book, The Long Winter. Once the family was settled in DeSmet, Wilder attended school, worked several part-time jobs and made many friends, most importantly the bachelor homesteader Almanzo Wilder (1857–1949), whom she later married. This time in her life is well documented in the books Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years.

On December 10, 1882, two months before her 16th birthday, Laura accepted her first teaching position, teaching three terms in one-room schools, when not attending school herself in DeSmet. In the book Little Town on the Prairie, Laura states that she received her first teaching certificate on December 24, 1882, but this was an enhancement for dramatic effect.^{[citation needed]} Laura's original "Third Grade" teaching certificate can be seen on page 25 of William Anderson's book Laura's Album (Harper Collins, 1998). She later admitted that she did not particularly enjoy teaching, but felt the responsibility from a young age to help her family financially, and wage earning opportunities for females were limited. Between 1883 and 1885, she taught three terms of school, worked for the local dressmaker and attended high school, although she did not graduate. Her teaching career and her own studies ended when she married Almanzo Wilder, whom she called Manly, on August 25, 1885, when she was eighteen and he was twenty-eight. Almanzo Wilder had achieved a degree of prosperity on his homestead claim, owing to favorable weather in the early 1880s, and the couple's prospects seemed bright. She joined Almanzo in a new home on his claim north of De Smet and agreed to help him make the claim succeed. On December 5, 1886, she gave birth to Rose Wilder (1886–1968) and later, an unnamed son, who died shortly after his birth in 1889.

In 1894, the  young couple moved to Mansfield, Missouri, using their savings to make a down payment on a piece of undeveloped property just outside of town. They named the place Rocky Ridge Farm. The ramshackle log cabin was eventually replaced with an impressive 10-room farmhouse and outbuildings. The couple's climb to financial security was a slow process. Initially, the only income the farm produced was from wagonloads of firewood Almanzo sold for 50 cents in town, the result of the backbreaking work of clearing the trees and stones from land that slowly evolved into fertile fields and pastures. The apple trees did not begin to bear fruit for seven years. Barely able to eke out more than a subsistence living on the new farm, the Wilders decided to move into nearby Mansfield in the late 1890s and rent a small house. Almanzo found work as an oil salesman and general delivery man, while Laura took in boarders and served meals to local railroad workers.^{[citation needed]}Wilder's parents visited around this time, and presented to the couple, as a gift, the deed to the house they had been renting in Mansfield. This was the economic jump start they needed; they added acreage to the original purchase, eventually owning nearly 200 acres. Around 1910, they sold their house in town and using the proceeds from the sale, were able to move back to the farm permanently, and to complete Rocky Ridge Farmhouse. What began as about 40 acres (0.2 km²) of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a windowless log cabin, over the next 20 years evolved into a 200-acre (0.8 km²), relatively prosperous poultry, dairy, and fruit farm and an impressive 10-bedroom farmhouse. ( www.wikipedia.com)

I'm not too sure if her life was ALL that different than many other's that lived during that time. But what was dfferent was her ability to chronical those events so vividly in her books. That is what makes us feel connected to her and feel a bond to her life.
Tomorrow we will look at her book series and discuss where to buy them, etc.

Happy Homesteading.....


Linked up to Homestead Barn Hop Frugal Days Sustainable Ways

One small step: New series on small steps towards homesteading

I've been thinking about a few ways to help myself get organized (AGH) and also to improve my blog as a kind of place that people could follow along, be interactive and let me know what they are up to also. I will continue to post as I normally do , ( about yummy pies, salsas and other recipes, outings with the kids, my adventures in gardening etc.) but I also want to add a little maybe weekly section called " One small step".

This will just be a sort of challenge to myself and to my blogger friends for something very small we can do together towards our Quest to building our Homesteading Utopia.

Some of you may already do it, if so then HOORAY, you can help the rest of us. Some things you may have no interest in doing. No worries. Just thought this would be a fun way to share my thoughts a little more clearly.

Some ideas I have include:
Buying one extra bulk item per month, utilizing eggs more in my weekly menu, thrift store shopping, purging unwanted /un-needed items from our home, trying new whole foods recipes, baking our own bread for a month, menu planning, specific challenges in the garden etc. Books I'd like to read, book reviews etc.

I would love to hear from some of you guys also, just some really small steps to get us all on the path towards sustainability. Be looking for some posts soon, helping us all towards our goal, one small step at a time....

Happy Homesteading!

Vacationing with kids: learning as they go...

Last Friday we got the girls up and ready for the day, got dressed and got into the car. We started driving, and driving and finally one of them asked if we were going the wrong way. My husband and I looked at each other and said, " Oops looked like we are, lets just go to the mountains this weekend ". The girls just looked at us with wide eyes..... "Really? Are you for real? Are you kidding?"
Of course we weren't kidding, we had been planning a little 3 day trip up to a cabin for a while and thought it would be fun to suprise the girls. They were suprised and excited.

Many people we know take extravagant vacations to the beach, or to a waterpark or to another destination with little characters with mouse ears and rides and such. ( Not bashing those places, just not what we are in to).

We have always wanted our children to be able to appreciate
- all the beauty of nature
- family time with our family
- inexpensive trips that create a life time of memories.

So off we went:
We went to this fantastic old homestead that we explored for hours. We had a picnic, we walked around, we talked about the "olden' days" we discussed homesteading and just enjoyed our family. It was a beautiful day, we were the only ones out there, ( probably because it was about 30 minutes on a tiny dirt road) and it was just awesome. I'll share a few photos of it now:

This is the main cabin. It was an adorable little cabin, with a huge loft. The fireplace was beautiful also. The girls enjoyed exploring and we talked about how things were done before electricity, how the homes were built with native logs and what each of the different rooms would have been used for.

Here are a few of the old out buildings. It was a beautiful day....

I just thought this was a super cute picture of my daughter.

 And here are all three little blessings. :)

 Yes I was a super dorky mother and made the girls pose by the outhouse....

I couldn't resist taking this picture of my daughter by this beautiful barn wood. It was amazing.  

Then we took a drive and saw some elk! This is a young calf. What this picture couldn't capture as hard as I tried was the fact that there were 2 coyotes on the tree line stalking it. It was a great lesson about the food chain, conservation, hunting and all kinds of other interesting topics.

 

Then we played in the river. The beautiful river.....

We threw rocks, we found minnows, we found frogs, it was also an amazing geology lesson. Take a look at those cliffs!!!!!

We ended the weekend with a tour of a local cave. Fascinating. My husband and I have been to many caves around the country, the kids though are just getting old enough to really appreciate the majesty of nature.

It was a great weekend. It wasn't that far of a drive, we spent QUALITY time with each other, we hiked, we picnicked, we sang goofy songs and above all else we drew a little closer to each other in this world of gadgets and gizmos and extravagant living.

Happy Homesteading all.....

 

Linked up to : Morris Tribe Blog Carnival, Natural Living Monday Frugal Days Sustainable Ways Homestead Revival Thriving Thursdays Mothering Mondays Mama's Story Mondays Far Above Rubies Eco Kids Tuesdays

Muscadine Jelly: Take 1

We love our muscadines. My oldest daughter won't eat anything EXCEPT homeade muscadine jelly. I can honestly say that in her almost 7 years she has never had store bought jelly ( to my knowledge at least). Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches are a staple in our house, especially for lunches and it takes a lot of jelly. I have made strawberry, blueberry and blackberry this season already, but our muscadines are ready and I made one batch this weekend. I forsee several more batches in the future...

Aren't these delicious looking? The girls helped me pick them and only about half of what they picked ended up in the basket.

I washed them really well then put them into the pot to start the juicing process. I just smash them down with a potato smasher, then strain the juice into a different pot until I'm ready to cook it.

Ah the beautiful juice. It smells heavenly, and I always keep out a few cups to drink over the next day or so. Such a fresh juice, it is delicious.

And here are the "fruits" of my labor! I got 4 pints, 2 half pints, 1 quart and 2 little 3/4 pint sized jars. Of course we had to taste some and it was delicious. I am hoping to do about 4 more batches before the muscadines are gone...

 So what are you up to these days?

Until next time,
Happy Homesteading......


Linked up to The Carnival of Home Preserving, Morris Tribe Blog Carnival, Monday Homesteading Barn Hop, Frugal Days - Sustainable Ways, Simply Made Home, Fill those Jars Friday
These are great blogs with lots of link ups you might like.