Sheep Camp!

Today G and R had their last day of sheep camp. What is sheep camp, you ask? It's run by a local farm (also where we get our free-range chickens and pork) for kids ages 6-12; they spend their days learning all about---you guessed it--sheep. G and R were each assigned their own lambs and all week they worked with them; teaching them to walk on a harness, tipping them to get them in position for shearing, trimming hooves, helping with injections, taking their temperatures (that was fun), and giving them baths. They also played games like Hide-and-Go-Sheep (hard to play because a lamb all alone will start to bleat loudly, giving you away!) and ran them through an obstacle course and a maze.

R enjoyed working with his lamb the most, but G's favorite part was working with the wool. The kids carded, washed, and spun the wool into yarn, and then dyed it with Kool-Aid of all things! They also got to try their hands at crocheting and knitting as well as weaving on popsicle stick looms.

We also sponsor a ewe on the farm; her wool was sheared in the spring and sent away to be cleaned and spun into yarn for me. It should be delivered by the end of next month; I have no idea how much yarn you get off an entire sheep, but I'm hoping I can at least eke out a sweater!

Will this floor drive me crazy?

Okay--I know I'm jumping ahead here, as I haven't written about any of our other choices concerning the new kitchen---but I have to make a decision about the floor in the next week or so and it's driving me nuts.

For various reasons we have discarded every flooring option except for tile (for those who are interested, I'll explain our reasoning in a later post). Tile presented its own issues for us, for although we are not trying to recreate a historically accurate 1870s kitchen, we do want the new floor to look like it belongs in the house. Lots of tile sold these days has a Tuscan, rustic look or a more modern polished look that just wasn't right for our room.

Then I found this.

Sorry my photo skills are lame

This is a combo of two different tiles; the outer tiles are a 2" matte glaze hex tile in a color called bone (a nice off-white/cream). The tile in the center is a 2" glossy hex in a caramel hue; if you look closely you can see the edges are fired in a cocoa color.  Believe me when I say this looks awesome with all of our other elements/colors. The bone tiles come in sheets of 36; we would randomly sprinkle in 3-4 caramel tiles on each sheet. (It would not have the organized flower look as above). Grout would be a medium shade to better hide any dirt.

I love how this looks. It fits the house and the kitchen perfectly. Yet I have been unable to move ahead and place the order. At first I thought it was because hex tile has more traditionally been used in bathrooms or Victorian surgeries rather than kitchens, but then I found lovely pictures of hex tile kitchens like this one:

Source: House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year 2007, via Your Home, Only Better

So I saw it can be used in kitchens, and in quite a lovely way (the above floor is apparently based on a floor at Harrod's department store in London!). It will give the room a light and airy feel and be somewhat unique at the same time. I have to face it. The main reason I can't pull the trigger on this decision? CLEANING, aka my lazy housekeeping habits.

My current floor (see previous posts for pics)? I hate it because I never seem to able to get it 100% clean. At the same time, I love it because you can't really tell it's dirty, at least until you look at the bottoms of your feet. (Eww.) You could really sweep it every so often, and not mop it at all unless it was grossly sticky or something, and never really tell the difference. Good when you have three boys and a dog.

This new floor--will it look like a muddy disaster after five minutes? Will I be mopping every hour, on the hour? No doubt it will show every crumb, every splash or spatter, every trace of dirt. So on the plus side, I will know it's dirty, but on the minus side, I will know it's dirty and feel compelled to clean it. I don't think it will be difficult to clean, just possibly time consuming, an every day thing instead of an every week or so thing.... ;-)

I feel we have exhausted just about all our possibilities here. We have looked at wood, cork, marmoleum, slate, marble, brick, other styles of porcelain/ceramic tile--this hex tile is what we're left with. Is it a huge mistake, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Should I simply encourage the removal of shoes at the door and give the children mops for Christmas? Hmm.

New shoe, old footprint

In my last kitchen post, I laid out some of the challenges we have in our current space with which we are not so eager to live. That said, there are some areas where we have been more than willing to compromise, perhaps even to the detriment of an ideal or perfectly useful kitchen.

We decided early on in our renovation process to stay within the existing kitchen footprint. Though the current remodeling trend seems to be knocking down walls to open up the floorplan, we just didn't feel it would be in keeping with the style of our home. Taking down a wall or closing up an entry would also mean losing original doors, moldings, and glass panes--we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. I also like the fact that when I'm cooking, I have some semi-private time to myself.

This isn't to say that this choice made things easier. Our kitchen has five (yes, 5!) doorways: one to the den, one to the dining room, one to the laundry room, and two to the sunroom. All of these openings are at the same end of the room; this creates a feeling of somewhat useless space in that part of the kitchen as none of the doorways can be blocked with a table, for example, which would impede the traffic flow. 

to sunroom

to dining room, laundry door on other side of fridge

to den, you can see one of the sunroom doors on the left

As the existing layout leaves no room for a table large enough for all of us to eat in the kitchen, we decided to divide our dining time between the sunroom in warmer seasons and the dining room in chillier months. This works well for family meals, but after a while we all felt it might be nice to have somewhere in the kitchen to sit for a cup of coffee, or review a recipe, or have a quick snack after school. We had already found this most excellent antique workbench to use as an island:

we added wheels!

However, we could not fit stools under it and our aisles are about as narrow as we want them to be with out chairs gumming up the works. So we ordered a maple and walnut butcherblock tabletop from Vermont Butcherblock and C made a lovely table to which he also added wheels and a latch to connect it to the workbench. Both items are now moveable to any area of the kitchen and can be attached or separated as the situation dictates!

Of course, they usually end up staying locked together right where they are, but it's nice to know the option is there is we ever need it. This solution works well for our family, but I know many people would be turned off by a kitchen without a table or an island large enough to seat the entire family. Some might also think the long table running down the middle of the room blocks the work triangle; from fridge to cooktop you do have to take a slight detour, I admit, but to us the extra workspace is worth it.

So we've decided to live with all of our doorways (and the resulting empty space/dance floor at that end of the room), as well as our lack of a true eat-in-kitchen and somewhat crowded triangle...Perhaps in this instance form is triumphing over function, but if it functions well enough for us, it's all good, right?