Bathroom Remodel Progress...

Here are a few of the BEFORE pictures.  Everything was very worn, pretty grungy, and dated.  There were holes in the sheetrock from the door knob, many holes from old towel bars no longer there, an old mouse hole in the corner,  mildew in 2 small areas inside the wall, and outdated lighting.

Sunshine has been working on refinishing the antique washstand to use as the new vanity.  We wanted something unique and interesting to use as the vanity and not just a stock vanity from the local Home Depot.  It has a curved front and some fun details that help add some character.  I let Sunshine take the initiative on refinishing it.  She is learning a lot and I think she has caught the "upcycling" bug after working on this project.  She has gotten the old finish stripped off, sanded it down, and painted it a nice barn red color.  She is really good at painting things like this, she has the patience and attention to the little things to deal with all the details on this piece.  We distressed some of the high wear areas and added stain over the top of the paint.  It added the rustic look we were shooting for.  

Here are some pictures from the progress on the remodel of the bathroom.

We still have to pick out the hardware and figure out the countertop choices for the vanity.  We are actually leaning towards a unique penny countertop.  Here is a picture of it laid out on a portion of the top to get an idea of how it might look.  We'd cover the pennies with an epoxy finish so it would be smooth and easy to clean.  It is growing on me.

Here is the enthusiastic demo crew.  Actually they LOVE to do demolition.  Here Spud Man is wishing I'd quit taking pictures and hop out of the way so he could get this piece out the door and Tobers is in the background.  It was only the 100th picture of the day, I am not sure why he was getting annoyed. haha

Until the next update!

Winter Projects...

We are excited to have Mr Wonderful home more these days.  Which in turn means more family quality time and more project time!  We have a few projects we hope to complete this winter.

First of all we are working on a bathroom remodel.  I so wisely decided that a few weeks before hunting season was a good time to demo the kids bathroom.  Someone should have reminded me of this little sign before I went and let the kids rip out the bathroom.


I've been thinking seriously about buying this sign off Etsy for our fall decor!  Check it out here .

Anyway, on with the story.  So the bathroom was demolished, down to the studs, wires and plumbing.  To ease the eye sore we put the shower curtain up along the bathroom wall to hide the mess.  I have to give myself some credit here, we did leave the toilet functional until this last week when we needed to get some demo done behind it.   There it sat a disaster.....the tub was still partially full of yet to be hauled away sheetrock pieces for a couple months.  Hmmm, well my patience got a work out as we progressed through 4 hunting seasons, weddings, hog butchering process, more hunting (you get the idea)!  Then finally, slowly but surely, progress has started in the right direction on the bathroom remodel.

So that is the #1 goal for this immediate time, get back to 2 fully functioning bathrooms...because Sunday mornings are interesting with 6 people sharing 1 bathroom!

#2 Goal~ Finish all the trim work in the kitchen.  We still have a custom range hood to design and install, lots of crown molding on the tops of cabinets, window trim, base cabinet end caps and snack bar trim work to complete.  It won't take long once we get all the wood stained and ready and a free weekend to get it completed.

#3 Start work on the shop project, even if it is just getting the plans figured out and footings dug!  We NEED a more enclosed shop.  I am afraid our investment in tools is going down the drain as they get weathered each month that passes.  Having them under a roof is good, but walls around them would be much better, especially on those wind/rain/snow days!  We need a secure place to keep our tools and supplies and it is beyond time to have a place to keep the extra freezers and frig.  Having 2 large freezers and an extra frig in the house is proving to be a little noisy at night and not very aesthetically pleasing to look at.  What is supposed to be the dining or breakfast nook in our house is full of appliances instead!  This project might have to be something we do in stages to be able to afford getting it done.  Slab first, walls/windows/doors second, wiring third etc.

#4 Fencing projects.  We need to get a few fences more fortified around here.  The back property line fence needs some serious work, the deer have really torn it up and broken every hot wire we've try to put up.  So we need something stronger, taller, and more imposing to discourage the pesky deer from using the orchard trees to remove the velvet from their horns next fall!  grrrr  We'd like to work on some more defined corrals and possibly shelters for the horses, add a couple more pens to be able to board more horses for additional income or for our own horse one day.

#5 Find my go get'em energy and motivation to do a lot of it with the kids so Mr. Wonderful won't have all the burden of trying to work on projects.

That should bring us into spring projects and I can't even think about those yet, so we will focus on getting these few things done first, heck even getting started on some of these winter projects would be good!

Garden Tour Early August...

The garden is doing pretty good, there are a few crops I wish had done better (like the green beans, cucumbers, and corn), but overall they still look good and we are getting some bounty from even the weaker crops so we have much to be thankful for.  The weeds have been very healthy this year and keep finding ways to create more work for us, but the deep straw mulch helps so much I can't complain too much!

Here are a few overview pics of the garden and you can see the hay field has been cut for the 2nd cutting too.

Cucumbers, cantaloupe, dill, celery, chicken run etc.

Green beans, tomatoes, and flowers.

Swiss chard, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, carrots, zucchini, crookneck, and furthest out is the pig plot area that has mangels, canola, turnips, carrots etc.

Sunshine is checking out the Crenshaw melons.

The strawberries and corn beyond that.  The orchard is beyond the corn.

1 Ball yellow squash, I love these for stuffing!

Broccoli head, we have harvested about 75% of the plants now (we have about 90 plants) and we have about 34+ quart bags of  broccoli in the freezer (plus we've eaten a few meals worth too), our goal is about 45 bags.  We will continue to get some side shoots off the harvested plants later in the season to help us get to our goal.  We also plan to donate some of the larger remaining heads to the local food pantry if it is ripe on their next distribution day.

Some of the cantaloupe are gaining in size and might have a chance of ripening in time before frost.  We were unsure if we should grow melons as they take up a lot of space and we have never had good luck with melons, but we had to at least try now that we have so much more room to grow things.  So far so good on these.

My first year growing cauliflower is, so far, a success.  It tastes good, we've frozen a little here and there but mostly we've been eating it for dinner.  We did a few bags of frozen mixed broccoli and cauliflower which will be nice in the winter.  I am still learning how to tell when they are fully ripe and when to tie the leaves around the heads to prevent sunburn.  

We had to replant the cucumbers 2 times this year so they are a little later and I haven't gotten the yields I hoped for to be able to make pickles.  The only seeds I had left to reseed with were a space saving type so the vines are relatively small but are producing well for such small vines.  They have great flavor so far.

The lemon cucumbers are almost ripe and Mr. Wonderful can't wait for the first one of the season!  He LOVES these little gems.

The lettuce patch is hanging in there surprisingly well for such high temps lately.  It tastes good still and I'd love to plant this kind again next year!  Too bad I am not sure which mix this was. 

Here is a nice purple kohlrabi, we also have white and they both taste really good.  We sold about 22 to the local fruit stand because we had too many.  What we have left we should be able to eat before they grow too large to be tasty.

This spaghetti squash plant is really happy!  It is producing lots of squash, probably more than we'd eat so we might have a few to share and sell at some point.

At the end of the day with all the watering, weeding, harvesting, and tending....this is how we feel....

Then again, living here is a dream come true and no matter the hard work we are blessed and really enjoying it!  God has been so good to us.

July Garden/Animal Tour...

It's been a while since I had a chance to post anything about what has been going on around here.  This warm weather and the prolific weed population proved to be no match for my 30 minute weeding sessions in the early mornings.  I needed help!  Mr. Wonderful came to the rescue when he had a 4 day weekend over the 4th of July.  We took 2 FULL days as a family, and weeded almost the entire 10,000 square foot garden.  We didn't worry about weeding much in the walkways or the pig food plot, because they weren't at risk of crowding out the garden produce plants.  It was hard work, but we really enjoyed working together, visiting, laughing, throwing "weed bombs" at each other, and then celebrating with a nice swim in the reservoir nearby when we finished each day.  Standing back when we finished each section gave us a sense of accomplishment, and it was fun to see each section reveal what plants has flourished even with the weeds in there.

Here is a sample of the before and after effect...

We are starting to enjoy several garden harvests.  So far we've harvested a few 8 Ball Zucchinis, some of the 1 Ball Yellow Squash, lots and lots of lettuce, a few handfuls of strawberries, a bumper crop of snap peas, and several herbs.  It is an exciting time to see all that is about to go into full harvest mode.  I should be harvesting and blanching broccoli either today or tomorrow.  We have quite the crop of beautiful heads of broccoli coming along!  There is also one head of cauliflower starting to form.  I've never grown cauliflower successfully before so I am pretty excited about it.

Here are some garden pictures...I can't get the whole garden in any one picture because it is L-shaped  and very large, but you can get the idea.  It is hard to believe that many of these plants we started from seed way back in January and February!

I have learned mulch is my best friend!  Lots and lots of mulch is the secret to maintaining a garden this large. Sure the mulch itself is a lot of work when you are putting it down, in fact the only areas that managed to get out of control weed-wise were all non-mulched areas.  Now we have most everything mulched, after we got it weeded.  It really helps keep the moisture in as well.  We noticed our soil doesn't hold moisture as much as our previous place, so anything to hold it in better is good.

The yard landscape is shaping up pretty well too.  We have had very good luck with the wave petunias we planted from seed, they are really starting to cover some area now and I so appreciate their color where we have such large areas to cover.  I have quite a few in pots as well.

 The front flower bed is going pretty nicely for it's first year.  Considering how little money we put into landscaping plants, I think the area is filling out pretty well.  We planted areas of sunflowers, zinnias, and gourds to help fill in some of the space between the shrubs and perennials we have gotten so far.  I am really pleased with the overall shape and look of the flowerbed areas.  We still have a lot of work to do like bark mulch, edging, and more plants.

Now for a quick update on the animals too...

 The pigs actually like weeds way better than the actual pig food we planted for them so lesson learned on that one...they snub their snouts at beets, turnips, rape seed, and corn plants (but they will eventually eat it), then they go wild over plain old garden weeds.  Go figure!

The turkeys are doing great, Butterball is growing nice and large.  He is the guardian of the smaller turkey we hatched out a few weeks ago, he really looks out for him.  The smaller one, Snowball, is growing quite well also.  He follows Butterball all over the farm.  They both love to follow us while we do chores, they are very personable, and so far they are enjoying the free-range life.  As long as they remain gentle on the garden plants and they stick close to home they can remain free.

We still have meat chickens for just one more week.  We are finishing out the 4th batch which will bring us to 300 birds raised this year.  The project has went extremely well and we are pretty pleased with how it is turning out.  That being said, raising that many birds are a LOT of work.  Lots of heavy lifting with moving the pens twice daily, hauling bags and bags of feed, dragging hundreds of feet of hoses or hauling buckets of water, handling or moving the birds and not to mention the actual processing day to get them ready for the freezer!  Oh and don't even get me started on how expensive they are to feed!  I had no idea we'd be going through over two ton of feed in one 3 1/2 month stretch!  I will have to post a meat bird review soon to give you an idea of what we liked or want to improve on for next year and if we even plan to do it again next year.

I have had to be realistic and step back from a few commitments and other things to make it easier and more realistic to keep up everything we are doing right now.  We've had to change our lives some to make sure  I/we can still keep up with schooling the kids, caring for the animals, and maintaining this place. We've also given up the freedom to take off and go camping every couple weekends like we used to.  So far I have struggled to keep balance more often than I thought I would.  There is so much to try to keep up with when you have schooling the kiddos, church activities/ministries, friends, family, and social events, but hopefully everyone can be patient with us as our priorities change focus with the seasons of our lives.  That was really hard at first, but then I looked at it like a gift after a while.  A gift to focus on simply what I felt God was calling me to do THAT day, without all the other stuff hanging over my head.

Even though I go to bed most days exhausted and I have sore muscles just about daily, I always feel at least a small sense of purpose and satisfaction even if it was a so-so day.  That sense of contentment has always seemed to escape me before we lived on acreage.  For that, I am truly thankful every day!

Second Round of Pigs...

We got 4 more pigs last week!  They are pretty cute and oh so curious.  Spud Man is pretty excited to have a new batch to watch grow.  Our first batch are all sold (we are keeping one for our own meat supply), and they will be slaughtered tomorrow.

This new batch will get to enjoy all the crops we planted for them in one section of the garden, as well as any surplus we have from the rest of the garden too.  We can't wait to see how they do!  The largest crop we planted was rape seed/canola.  Then we also planted mangle beets, carrots, turnips, wheat grass and of course other garden crops in surplus to allow for sharing with the pigs and chickens.

Their names are Oreo (because it is black and white), Swiss (because it has circle dots all over like Swiss Cheese), Ring (as in onion ring), Nacho (no idea where that name came from).  They all have to have food names....because that is what they will be....food.

So we are off on another phase of the project.  We can't wait to try the first batch of bacon in a month or so.

The Making of a Bed...

We needed a bed frame, it was about time we had some real bedroom furniture.  I loved the Pottery Barn style furniture, but couldn't afford it, so I looked around to find something similar that I might be able to build myself.  I am not carpenter but I have done a few projects that turned out reasonably well.  A couple years ago, I found this great website that was full of Pottery Barn knock off ideas and had FREE plans! I knew I had found my kind of place.  The website is Ana-White.com and she has fabulous plans, tons of pics from people who have made them and great tutorials.

Here is the start of the head board an foot board for a queen size bed frame.  This was pretty easy to build.  I cut the arch in the top boards with a jig saw and sanded (and sanded a LOT more).  Then I lined up 1x8 inch boards until I was close to the width I needed then trimmed the last 2 boards on each side to get the right width.  Next I laid a top piece and a bottom piece on top and below the 1x8 inch boards and glued and nailed them in place.  I let it dry overnight, and went on to the next stage.

This image shows the gentle arch (after some serious sanding).

Eventually, I had to come up with a way to attach the leg posts to the head and food boards, along with the side boards.  It was a challenge but I managed to carve out the area for the boards to fit into.

I added some very simple trim boards to help make it look a little more like furniture, added some top boards to both the head and foot board sections, and got busy painting.

I let Sunshine paint the primer coat, she did a great job!

Once it was all together I added a coat of white paint (or 3), and sanded the edges some for a distressed look.  In this image you can see the basic trim boards I used.

Then it was time for the set-up process.  Bob made sure it was all square and secured tightly.

Spud man tests it out.  FYI this sucker is HEAVY!  You don't want to have to move it...trust me.

 Ahhh....all done.....satin sheets and all.  That was the night we discovered we don't actually like satin sheets.

Obviously this was finished near Christmas time, as we have our Christmas comforter on there to be festive.

Official testing committee.  We've had the bed in use for a couple years and so far so good.  The only thing I'd do differently is to add a better primer coat to seal the wood before adding white coats.  The yellow from the pitch in the pine wood did bleed through just a little on a few boards but it isn't too noticeable.  Other than that it is wearing like iron and still sturdy.

Let the silliness begin!

Shortly after this we read them a book called No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!

February Photo Challenge

Ok first this is a just for fun picture. I should warn you, I don't have any photo editing programs that are worth anything so I played with black and white but that was about as exciting as it gets around here. I really liked that the texture of the barbed wire showed up.

Ok on to the February photo challenge. I completely enjoyed this challenge but I was totally stumped on the last one and ended up just skipping it. I know slacker right?

So here we go, on with the photo challenge....

Something ending in ...ing "Shooting"

This is my oldest son shooting a .22 rifle. I love that his eyelashes are in focus and nearly nothing else is. I probably should have cropped this but you get the idea.

Something Dangerous...."Gun Fire"

This picture was so much fun to take, trying different angles, and every second the fire changed so I got a different look each time. This picture was taken through the campfire flames of the guns resting against a nearby burned stump. It was fun to play.

Stripes

This was all I could come up with for stripes, just road striping close up. I love texture and unexpected things.

Road Sign

I love the angle of this one, the blue sky and the deer crossing sign was a fun one to play with. I also love that while I was trying to get just the right shot, my son was right next to me trying the same thing with his new camera he got on his b-day. It was just a fun memory for us.

The one I wasn't able to conquer was the "numbers" challenge item. It was much harder than I thought it would be. All the pictures I took of numbers were so utilitarian and boring I just couldn't put them on here.

Dutch Oven Cooking Adventures....

We I finally did it. I cooked my first meal using a dutch oven outdoors with charcoal briquettes. I would like to point out, this isn't a cooking blog....as you will see from my poor food pics. HAHA

I had to do it in a make-shift way because I don't have all the neat outdoor dutch oven tools...like say an outdoor dutch oven. This dutch oven is a cast iron chicken fryer that is probably 50+ years old. Grandma used to fry chicken in it. It is well seasoned and I love it for cooking inside. I have been wanting to try outdoor style meals too.....in preparation for the heat wave of summer, I am trying to find ways to keep the heat out of the kitchen for summer dinners.

What is inside the dutch oven you ask?


Elk Steak, onions, Morel Mushrooms, BBQ sauce, Worchestershire Sauce, garlic, and seasonings.

Here it is, all done ready to serve, the steak was super tender, the mushrooms were yummy and all partakers were HAPPY! I will definitely be doing more dutch oven cooking this summer.