Happy Birthday

Today is my sons 40th birthday.  Nine days from now I will turn 57. Yes, I was practically a child bride, but we will leave that for another post.

I wanted to make this birthday special for him, something he would always remember.  When my Grandfather passed away in 1977 I inherited the ring that he inherited from his father.  In other words, the ring originally belonged to my Great-Grandfather.  Having the ring end up in my possession is, in itself quite extraordinary. My Grandfather had 10 siblings and some of them wanted that ring.  It had belonged to their father after all, and they thought I should just turn it over.  I didn't.  I kept it. 

For his 40th birthday, I passed the ring on to my son.  He was very touched.  Along with the ring I gave him some printed material about his Great-Great Grandfather so he would know something about the man that first wore that ring.  I feel so good about it. It ended up being just as memorable for me as it was for him.

First Steps to Preparedness

Yesterday we decided to tackle the room in the basement that we are going to use for storing our supplies.  Our house is called a "daylight basement" house because it is built on a hill.  We live in the top floor and the "basement" contains 2 single car garages and a one bedroom apartment.  The smallest garage is the one we call the greenware room.  Right now we use this space to store our canned pickles, our canning supplies and all of our Christmas decorations.  There are floor to ceiling shelves on 3 walls.  We don't use it as a garage so the garage door is blocked with shelving and junk.   The bad part of this is the mice. We fight them all the time.  So the room is not very sanitary and that bugs me.  We are working on ways to keep things clean, such as using trunks, covered plastic tubs, and even an old cedar chest.  Anything we can put food in and keep the critters out.  Today we made huge progress. 

This is what we started with.  Lot's of shelves but a huge mess.

Hubs began to reassemble some old shelving we had taken down and saved years ago.

 By the end of the day we had this. 

 The cedar chest on the floor next to the chair is filled with water, flour, sugar, and 2 cases of Top Ramen.

 The finished shelving had bars nailed to the front and sides in case of an earthquake.

Now the jars will stay put - hopefully.

We have a long way to go, but at least we have a space now.

I don't think we will be able to store a years worth of food, but we will do what we can.