The Rabb's Farm Life Adventures

We have been on a journey to better health for a long time now.  It started in 2007 when a psychologist wanted to diagnose our youngest child with a "disorder" by using medication.  His idea was, give him medication A, and when it doesn't work, we will diagnose him with another "disorder."  John and I weren't convinced by this suggestion.  The idea of using medication to diagnose a condition seemed far fetched to me.  I told the psychologist we were concerned about introducing medications like this to our then 5 year old.  He responded to me with a condemning tone and asked, "if he was diabetic you would give him insulin, right?"  We left that appointment with a new perspective.  John and I decided to research and find natural solutions for our son.  We were determined to find answers that didn't include a lifetime of pharmaceuticals for him. We stopped drinking milk or eating milk products.  We began eating organic food, which inc...

I learned in church this morning today is Sanctity of Life day.  A day when we celebrate life.  A day when we acknowledge that all life matters.  The lives of babies, born and unborn, those with special needs, those with disease, the aged, the outcast, the lovable and the unloveable.  They all matter to God and they should all matter to us, especially those who call themselves a Christian. Several years ago I was given the opportunity to share our story on this special day in our church services.  The story of one of our most precious gifts.  Our youngest son, Zachary.  His life matters.  It has for 15 years and God had a plan for him before he was even born. I thought today was a perfect opportunity to share that story again. Today is a day to celebrate life and we wanted to share the story of how we came to adopt our son Zachary.  He doesn't really like for us to talk about his adoption, but he gave us permission to today as long as w...

My latest project has taken me outside, in the heat.  This is Louisiana heat people.  It was really hot outside today, I worked in shifts and made a little progress. When I originally decided to work on this bench I was a little deceived.  There was obviously a lot of rust visible, however, there was a great deal of rust hiding under the paint. This project is going to take a lot more elbow grease than I originally anticipated.   I watched a video a while back showing the use of Coca Cola to remove rust.  I decided to give it a try, (even though I would have preferred pouring said soda into a glass filled with ice and enjoying a drink while I relaxed on the rusty bench).  I decided to stick with the original plan and poured the soda on the bench.  It was amazing to see the rust bubble in the fizz.   It wasn't instant, all the rust wasn't even removed on the first attempt, but with a little scrubbing with the wire brush, the rust ...

When we finished "phase one" of our renovations we weren't expecting to begin on phase two until later in the fall or early next year.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for us, we have moved up the start date.  We plan to begin work later this week.  This phase will be minimal in comparison to the previous project as we plan to work on the redo the remaining bathroom and add a front door and small porch.   As weird as it may sound we don't really have a front door.  When we moved into the house we turned the original living room into Zachary's bedroom.  We left that entrance accessible during phase one, but never intended for it to be a main entrance to the house.  We currently enter through the garage, where we don't park our cars, but we do collect a lot of building project materials.  The new front entrance will change the appearance of our home on the outside and provide the ability for us and our guests to avoid the garage or as I like ...

When our home was originally built (1954), people didn't own nearly the amount of stuff we own these days.  My grandparents built this home with two small closets in their bedroom and the room built for their daughter was a little larger and included one "larger" closet.  John and I call her room our "master" bedroom.  There isn't a large walk in closet, and there isn't a master bathroom.  John remodeled the bathroom in the hallway a couple of years ago and we now affectionately call it the "girls" bathroom.  The boys all use the bathroom in the front of the house.  This bathroom will be remodeled during phase II. I wanted to share with you the pictures of our newly completed master closet.  Since it isn't a large space it had to pack a punch with storage.  Before the renovation we had two bars across the entire length which kept me from being able to hang dresses in our closet.  I really wanted to be able to keep my dresses in our room,...

I realized recently I promised photos the kitchen long ago and never posted them.  I must tell you we are very happy with the kitchen renovation.  We purchased all the cabinets and the counter tops from Lowe's.  We ordered the faucets from a local plumbing store and the bar stools were purchased from Wal-mart. I wasn't really sure how I wanted to design the kitchen but the staff at Lowe's have the right software and we walked through the design painlessly.  Because we had the installation completed by their installer, we didn't have to pay tax on the purchase.  This made the installation much more affordable and we are so glad we did. We have decided we will make a few more alterations to the kitchen in "phase II," the next phase of our renovations.  We will removed the wall between the kitchen and what will become the dining room, move the current island to the opening between the kitchen and dining room and we will finally put permanent flooring down....

A panoramic view of the functional side of the laundry room.   I have often said you should live in a home for a while before you make decisions about design or renovation.  I am so glad we decided to do that with this house.  I am not sure how my grandparents lived in this small space for their entire marriage.  It is clear to me they didn't have storage space.  The fact they only had one child probably made it a little easier for them.  We have one living with us full time and we have the others over to visit and eat often. My granny didn't have a separate laundry room.  Her kitchen housed the washer and dryer.  It was a small kitchen so having the laundry space in there couldn't have been ideal, although, I never heard her complain.  In a previous post I detailed the renovation project to convert the dining room into the laundry room.  It never really got completely finished so during "phase I" we had the contractor compl...