A bit of a self-reliance lesson

A few days ago I had made a really hot fire in the wood burning stove to heat our cold house. Well, apparently I did a good job, because the fire was hotter than ever. So, I wondered if I could boil water on top like people used to do to cook food. Well, it worked. I boiled potatoes and and I boiled some noodles for snack. I decided to use the potatoes to make a shepherds pie for dinner. Then, when the boiling water was successful I decided to try making a makeshift oven on top and see if I could make the whole dinner over the fire. Here's a few pictures of my "oven". I made it with #10 cans, a cookie cooling rack and some tin foil. Shepherds Pie turned out great!
That worked and so I thought I'd try making some brownies in my makeshift oven. But, by this time the fire was even hotter. It ended up being too hot and burnt the brownies on the bottom and edges while the middle took longer than normal to cook. The brownies turned out okay as long as we just ate the center. I definitely learned a lot and am more prepared to cook over a fire if we don't have electricity for some reason.

Yesterday I decided to move all my canned food out the food storage area and into the house because (silliness) the food storage shelves are in the laundry room where the air gets very moist from the dryer. The cans are starting to rust on the outside. So, I pulled all the extra toys out of Rebekah's closet and put them in the laundry room storage cupboards and I also cleaned out the linen closet and put the extra blankets, sheets and towels out in the laundry room too. I filled those two closets with food storage.This is where my cans used to be stored.

I also made a little stair place for the children to play on in Rebekah's room. I covered it with two table cloths to protect the boxes. We'll see how long this lasts.

The children had fun helping me put the cans and jars in the closet when I was down to the single cans.
Sorry the pictures are fuzzy, I just realized that there was a big smudge on the camera lens. (Probably toddler fingerprints) :)