New Roof Plans for Trailer

It's been a busy summer, but I finally added a new post to Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land .

For those of you who may not know, one of my hobbies is creating floor plans for working/country families. I love looking at floor plans, but they rarely have the features that Grampa Tom and I think ought to be in a home, like large mudrooms and master bedrooms that are away from the main living spaces.

The designs are, for the most part, dreams that we will never build, but I'd sure like to see some of them exist outside of my mind and my computer so I created a blog to show them to the world.

My most recent post though, is something Grampa Tom and I are actually planning to do :) Trailer roofs are notorious for leaking and ours is no exception. We often have to get up there to paint and fill the cracks that inevitably occur when a thin metal roof is blown around by the wind. We have often talked about putting a pole building roof over it, but not seriously, until one day a few weeks ago when Grampa Tom happened to mention our ideas to a couple of friends of ours who got all excited about it and told him they were going to help him.

This plan includes not only a roof, but a greenhouse designed for passive solar heating and cooling, a cold room for our veggies and lots of extra storage. Check it out at Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land


God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

6 Days of Creation

God created man in His image. Did you know that every one of us is creative? I used to think I wasn't very creative because I couldn't draw or sing, but that is just plain wrong. The way I  read it, God spent 6 days creating and then spent the 7th reviewing all that He had made. . So, on Saturday's I post some of the things that I created the previous week.

Here goes:

This week has been a busy one! A lot of my creative juices have gone into writing. Every day I have been furiously working on my how to homeschool book, Almost Unschooling Grama, and editing my What's in a Name Bible rendition of Genesis. I doubt that either of them will be ready by the time the markets start, but hopefully I'll have them at the markets sometime soon.

I've been planting and planting and planting in spite of the cold temps. Earlier in the week, when it was still warm, I experimented with building a potato tower. Grampa (doubting) Tom doesn't think it will work, so I'll have to wait till next year to build more :) Then the rest of the week I've been planting stuff in flats and pots inside. Hopefully it will warm up soon so I can move stuff outside. My house is getting kinda full :) I have a couple of pots of holy basil and several aloe plants ready to go the markets whenever we get started.

The other thing I've been doing is polishing up several floor plans so I can post them on my Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land blog. Trying to get ahead a bit so that when we are going full bore this summer I have something of a chance of keeping it up :)

What have you been doing?


God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Can't wait till it's warm enough to sit outside every day!

6 Days of Creation

God created man in His image. Every one of us is creative. I used to think I wasn't very creative because I couldn't draw or sing, but that is just plain wrong. The way I  read it, God spent 6 days creating and then spent the 7th reviewing all that He had made. . So, on Saturday's I post some of the things that I created the previous week.

Here goes:

Sunday I spent most of the day working on a floor plan. It's a pretty amazing house if I do say so myself! It only has 1903 square feet of living space but the 3 bedrooms are all tucked far enough from the main family areas that they ought to be quiet retreats. I really value a quiet bedroom! Check it out here. 

Monday morning I flipped on my computer and went in to finish up Exodus 12 on my What's In a Name Bible translation and every word was marked misspelled except for 4 "I AM LORD Yehovah". There was something wrong with my spell check. Not sure what, I got to fiddling around with some settings and it corrected itself, but I thought it was pretty cool to wake up to that reminder!  OK, so I didn't create that one, but when God trumps you with the most awesome creation of the day, I think He needs to take center stage!

Tuesday I decided to try my hand at making a gourd birdhouse. There are some things that I will do differently next time, but it is turning out kinda cool. I'll blog about it soon.

Wednesday I got to page 23 in my book about homeschooling called Almost Unschooling Grama. I posted a little bit from the section on record keeping that I was writing on Thursday. If you missed it, click here. Hope I can get it done before garden time! I've got tons of new gardens to create!

Thursday I had all kinds of fun creating a new floor plan. This one is about 2500 square foot. It is another inter-generational  plan with a processing room between the mud room and the kitchen where you can process fresh meat, veggies and eggs for storage. It also has a walk-in cooler and freezer. It's the latest post on my Floor Plan Play Land blog.

And on Friday, I created another big pot of chili. I have 45 quarts of chili put up now. I've only got one more gallon of tomatoes left in the freezer. I watched Alton Brown make a tomato sauce the other day. I think I'll try something like that with the rest of my tomatoes. You know it's going to be "something like that" because I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly. Besides, he started with canned tomatoes, mine will be frozen. :)P

That's it for this week! I'm going to spend the weekend helping my mother and father in-love celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary!


God Bless You All!


~Grama Sue

6 Days of Creation

God created man in His image. Did you know that every one of us is creative? I used to think I wasn't very creative because I couldn't draw or sing, but that is just plain wrong. The way I  read it, God spent 6 days creating and then spent the 7th reviewing all that He had made. . So, on Saturday's I post some of the things that I created the previous week.

Here goes:

Sunday : Two new floor plans. Posted one already, a smaller home that wraps around a large sun room . The other is an L shaped home with a sun room that will be coming this week. Both are close to 2000 square foot of living space with 2 bedrooms and lots of kitchen storage space. They are also passive solar homes with rocket fired stoves and heat pumps.

Monday: Yum! Lasagna! Made enough for a few meals. Lasagna is always better after it's been frozen and cooked a second time.

Tuesday: I created a Twitter account! If you tweet, connect with me! I'm gramasuesrainbo@twitter.com!

Wednesday: Nothing unusual, I made a mess. The dog seems to have brought in some fleas so I dusted everything with DE and left it until Thursday.

Thursday: Made some cedar moth repellent for my closets for almost nothing. Post coming this week.

Friday: The freshly created chocolate chip cookies I made created cute little smiles on 2 little boys! Double creation!

So what did you create?


God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

This Week's Floor Plan

I've been working on floor plans again. Actually came up with two this week, but I'm only posting one. This home is 2025 square feet and wraps around a sun room/ greenhouse. Check it out at Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land. Let me know what you think!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land

I'm reintroducing my floor plan blog. Several years ago, Grampa Tom bought me a floor plan design program because I love to sit around and design houses. Over the years, I've developed quite a collection of original designs. My program is pretty basic. Can't do blue prints or create curved walls with it, but it's fun. Someday I want to buy a pro version and really develop them for sale, but a couple of years ago I kept having this nagging thought that I ought to just start putting them on the internet and see what happens.

I managed to post 10 plans and then got so busy with my jobs that I didn't have time to post.  I forgot about it until about 6 months ago. Decided to check to see if it even still existed and found out that it was still getting hits! On a daily basis!

I've been dragging my feet about getting going with it again for fear that I'd get to busy again, but I keep looking at this thing and thinking it could actually turn into something!

For the most part, my homes are on the smaller side with features Grampa Tom and I think are important, many of which are hard to find in your run of the mill floor plan sites - things like mud rooms, walk-in showers, pantries and multi-generational accommodations.

If any of this interests you or if you like to name things (I am at a loss as to what to name these homes.) I invite you to bop on over and take a gander at my play land: http://gramasuesfloorplans.blogspot.com/

God Bless You All! 

~Grama Sue

Blogging Dreams

Whoa! I just happened to check on a blog that I started playing with back in 2009. It's just a little blog with 11 posts about my floor plan creation hobby. I love creating floor plans and would some day like to possibly sell my plans. One day I was praying about this and I got the impression that I ought to go ahead and put some of my work out there on a blog. I put a few of them out there, but the last couple of years have been terribly hectic, so I haven't done much with it and I've pretty much ignored it for over a year. There's been over 2000 page views on it! People looked at it yesterday and 171 pages have been viewed in the last month! The URL is   http://gramasuesfloorplans.blogspot.com/ if you want to go check it out.

Right now I'm purely an amateur blogger, but I have aspirations to one day turn pro. Grama Sue's Floor Plan Play Land will definitely be one I have to work on developing. Someday ...   Why can't there be 48 hours in every day?

God Bless You All!


~Grama Sue