Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas!!!!  What a great day!  Hubby and I have been together for over 10 years now and on December 29th is our anniversary of the day we got engaged!  I can't believe we've been together for so long.  That first Christmas we shared, 10 years ago, we made graham cracker houses and decorated them!  They were so awesome!  Then, the next year or two we did them again and we haven't done them since. But this year was different.  We did them this year!  YAY! It was so awesome!

But first...A Christmas miracle!  For the first time in many, many years I received a surprise in a box of cereal!  This is my new (super duper awesome) Star Wars Pen!!  Yeah!!!  (Please disregard the gross carpet!)

And, in honor of an annual tradition I have shared with a good friend at work, I made a snow angel this year!  This was after the first good snowfall!  Before last weekend we had only had an inch or two, nothing that would make a real good snow angel.  Hubby took the picture and his finger made an appearance in all the pictures! :) hehe..

And on to the Christmas houses!  YAY!  I have 2 Christmas Lego houses that I built, but I haven't put them on here yet (obviously).  Next time hopefully...
This is Hubby's graham cracker house/farm.  We do not take this lightly...we do toys and everything too...its pretty awesome! Fyi, the stacked spearmints to the left of the tractor with the grain bin are his silos!

His turned out sooooo cool!!!
And on to mine...he finished before me, so while he was done and took a nap, I finished mine up. I know the snowman is out of place because there isn't any snow, but we had them so I decided to use them.  The marshmallow trees didn't want to stay standing up.

They turned out pretty awesome this year!!!  I have no complaints other than it took most of the afternoon! :) It was really fun though!!!
Merry Christmas Everyone!!!
xoxo
c

Fencing, garden and some random stuff!

Well, I seem to be having a lot more free time on my hands lately, so I get to blog more! Yay! Except I'm running out of things to talk about! Hmm...  Why do I have more time lately?  Let me explain.  I have been telecommuting to my job in Utah for the last 5 months, some days are frustrating and others are awesome!  But, I was nearing the end of my rope and started looking for work where I could do a little bit of socializing in the process.  Even though I haven't found any work yet (still looking...), we decided that I should quit my job last week.  I worked for them for the last 6 1/2 years, I am super sad and will miss everyone at work, but I think it was for the best. I have learned so much and gained so much experience working there, I can't thank them enough! And it turns out it was at a really good time, and I'm happy that I left on my own terms.  The real estate market in Utah is quite low at the moment, so my place of employment were doing some layoffs anyway, so, really, it was good for both of us.  I have decided that I want to start school in the Spring and finish up my Bachelor's degree.  My plan, so far, is that I want to get a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration with an emphasis in finance and a minor in Accounting.  All in all, I think I want to be an accountant.  You can do it all online for the most part, and doing the degree this way can make you eligible to take the Certified Public Accountant exam for the state of Wisconsin.  (I'm planning on attending University of Wisconsin-Platteville, which is about a half hour away if they accept me.  Still waiting....)  Accountants can make pretty good money, and I have always enjoyed playing with money and numbers like that.  And, since we eventually want to start our own farm business and maybe a few other things, it would be nice for me to have some background in business to help us out.  Hubby is thinking about getting his Master's in Business Administration (MBA), but we aren't sure when and where and what not. That would be really good for him and probably help him a lot in his future.  We will see what happens and how things play out though.

We've had some pretty productive weekends lately!  We've been wanting to make a fence to go around the chicken coop so that they could play in my garden and fertilize and things like that.  So, several weeks ago, we got some posts and some 6 foot fencing.  We finally decided to put everything up!  Here is the view from the corner of my garden.

We used the PVC pipe from the temporary run to make the little gates, they are kind of redneck, but I'm just fine with that! :)

Here is the view from the side of the house...

I love that they can just run around if they like and have more fun.  Some day, we hope to have a nice big back yard where they can just run around and play free and be safe!  Hopefully...But they seem to be enjoying themselves! :)

Do you remember that rusty cast iron pan?  Well....on Monday the 14th, we had a large crew of stupid roof people come to replace the roof at the request of the landlords.  I stuck myself inside the whole time because I didn't want to see anyone or anything like that.  So, I finally attacked the pan!  Here it is after my attack!

I used Brillo steel wool soap pads.  It was hard to get all that rust off, but I think it came out pretty nicely!  I also baked the pan the same way as I did the other one, about 350 to 400 for an hour and let it cool in the closed oven.  I think it turned out really nicely, lets hope I can just keep both pans maintained.  I do like cooking with them, it cooks really evenly and browns pretty nicely. I need to figure out some other awesome things to make in them.  I think maintenance will be the hardest part.

Apparently it is the season for raspberries at my house!  I am not complaining, they are soooo good!  The raspberries on the right were picked a few days before the ones on the left.

I can't believe I am getting so many raspberries from the one plant, its incredible.  Funnily enough, we aren't getting anything from the other plant.  Maybe its not as well rooted or something.  By the way, all of those raspberries in the picture were gone within 30 seconds of taking this picture! Hehe...YUM!!!

I went grocery shopping earlier this week and I saw my favorite pumpkin display ever outside a grocery store.

I love how clever they were and made it a really nice display, rather than just throwing pumpkins out.  

Also, I have decided to try to learn how to knit.  Here is my learning swatch.  

The bottom 6 rows-ish is the "knit" stitch, the next 6 or 7 rows is the "purl" stitch, and then the top 7 rows is the "rib" stitch (even though you can't really tell, but you can kind of tell...).  I'm still trying to perfect it and become more consistent, but that will take some time.  Its kind of cool though.  I think its a bit easier because my mom showed me how to crochet when I was young, so I feel decently comfortable around yarn and stuff.  Knitting is a whole different ball game though.  I wanted to learn because I really like the stitch patterns that you get with knitting.  Someday I hope to knit a sweater, but we'll see how things go from here.  Since I don't know many people out here, I'm learning from a book.  I picked this and everything else up at the Hobby Lobby in town.

Here is all the materials that I use/have...(the book said I should get a little kit going, so there we are).

Its kind of fun, but we'll see how it goes, as I've already said.
Well....I think I'll go play with the chickens for a few minutes and see if we received any delicious presents.  :)  Have a good one!
xoxo
c

Cast Iron pan fun...

Last year sometime, hubby and I bought a cast iron pan.  We used it several times (it makes amazing steaks!) and then it sat in the cabinet for a while.  When we moved, it didn't have any apparent flaws and looked pretty good, I wrapped it in paper and all sorts of other things to keep it safe during the move.  It survived, and I put it in the bottom of a cabinet.  Perkins family restaurant here makes some amazing breakfast potatoes and we wanted to make some for ourselves.  I pulled out the wonderful cast iron pan because many of the recipes I was looking at called for using a cast iron pan.  Much to my dismay, this is what I found.  (RUST!!! NOOO....)

Look at how much is on the handle?  Crazy!
And...because I am impatient and nervous about dealing with the rust...I purchased a new cast iron pan for $20 at Wal-Mart.  Here it is before I got a hold of it.  I washed it good with dish soap and got it ready for seasoning.

Through more, more and even more research, I decided to use Crisco shortening instead of vegetable oil.  So, after I washed it, I dried it with a towel and applied the Crisco with a paper towel. 

Here it is before I put it in the oven.

Again, with all the research I did, I heard there was going to be lots and lots of smoke.  This really intimidated me, which is why it took me so long to season these pans.  I also found out that the smoke point for Crisco is 440° F. And, on the Lodge Cast Iron web site it says to season it in the oven at 350-400.  So if I did the Crisco at those temperatures I shouldn't have any smoke.  So, I broke down and did it.  350 ish for 1 hour.  I say "ish," because my oven is a million years old and runs hot, and I think I've finally figured out where my temperatures really are on the dial.  Hence why I have stickies on the dial telling me where the 350 and 400 degree marks are.  We also put a pizza stone in the bottom of it to help regulate the temperatures.  Anyway, long story short, after the hour in the oven, I turned it off and let the pan cool in the oven.  I'm happy to report that there was ZERO smoke!  But, it did smell like cooking shortening which is to be expected, but not bad at all.  Like 4 hours later the oven was still at 200, so it definitely was a slow cool down.  Here is the pan, in all its glory after

I did get a little excited with the shortening so some spots on the pan got sticky.  I put the pan in the oven with the opening facing down, so it was sticky where the top was touching the oven shelves. You can see that right in the middle of the top rim if you look closely.

I made breakfast with it yesterday and it performed very well!  I really liked how everything browned and cooked.  Very very pleased! :) Now I just have to do the other rusty one!
xoxo
c

Chicks, garden pics, and painting, oh my!

Well, hubby and I have been on a work trip this week, during which I have been quite bored and been able to read books that I have wanted to read for quite some time!  It has been very nice, even though hubby has been gone for most of it.  But we have taken a few chances in the evenings to do a few fun things in the area, but for the most part we like our vacations pretty boring. :)

So, I'd like to take the chance to post about a few things that I have had in the queue to blog about for a while, this way I should be slightly caught up.  You remember how we made the pvc and netting run for the chickens?  We use that now as an attachment onto the coop so that they have a lot more run area and it seems to be working pretty well!

Here is a picture of Parker, the partridge rooster...He has so many nice colors and is really filling in to be a very nice looking rooster!  I'm afraid that Basil is still the number one rooster though!

We decided to finish off the garden, so I picked all the carrots and all the rest of the watermelons, whether they were ready or not.  I think we are going to end up feeding all the watermelons to the chickens because we kind of have to be in the mood for watermelon, and we haven't really been in the mood for it.  But...the chickens are absolutely in love with watermelon and I know they are hoping that all the cucumbers I take out to them are watermelons...I can see the disappointment when they discover they are cucumbers, hehe...

Here are the flowers on the raspberry plants...I hope that we don't miss them.  I'm hoping they are red, ripe and ready when we get home and that we are able to eat them.  YUM!! So glad we did the raspberries!

I have to figure out how to save some strawberry starts so that we can make some more pots, I have been getting tons of strawberry starts, but just been putting them back in the pot.
And, alas, here is the garden.  I cut out the tomato plants from their mangled cages and pulled them from the ground.  I wasn't going to use any more tomatoes and decided it was time to call it done. It was fun though, wasn't it?  While hubby was mowing the lawn I sprayed the garden with round up just to kill anything growing in there.

After hubby mowed the lawn and I raked it all up, he distributed the grass all over the garden just so it would help kill some of the garden greens.

Next year, I think I will use newspaper in between my plants to keep the weeds down and aid my gardening skills.  Plus, I think newspaper just decomposes and adds some nutrients in the soil, I think...I'm quite sure.  (Hubby is looking at pictures of goats and I want some pygmy goats soooo bad!!!)
On a different note, here is my finished painting from the acrylic painting class I took!  Ta Da!!!!

I think it turned out okay, and I really like how the red of the face of the bottom brown one turned out.  I'm not sure that painting is one of my skills, but it was worth a try! :)

Here is a quilt that I am in the process of kind of making.  It is no where near perfect...

And it may not be to anyone else's taste, but its a collection of my favorite fabrics that I have.  It has been pinned together in my fabric box for quite some time and I've been able to take some time the last few weeks to sew the pieces together.  Many mornings it can take quite a while to get any work to do, so I have been taking that time to clean the house and sew this thing together.  I still have to get some batting and a sheet for the back side and sew it all together.  I want to make it a bit heavier (I like heavy blankets), so maybe I'll see if I can add something in between the sheet and the batting to add some weight.  I think its a twin size blanket, if not a little smaller, so I might have to add a border around it to make it work with the sheet.  I also have some more large pieces that I want to use to make something else, not quite this crazy though.  I need to post pictures of the 2 king size quilts that hubby and I both made with the help of his wonderful mother...They are incredible!!!  :)

Also, I kind of want to learn how to knit, so I thought I would take the time to learn how this week. I have a little swatch working, but I'm still working through learning the stitches.  When I finish learning them I'll post a picture of the swatch and the book that I'm learning from.  I think that because I already know how to crochet that maybe that has helped maybe a little bit.  Maybe not, I dunno.  We will see how this goes.  :) It is kind of fun though!

xoxo
c

Chicken adventures: 3 months!

Well, the babies turned 3 months old the other day!  Very exciting!  We are only 1 to 3 months away from getting our first eggs!  Which of course, is not why we got the chickens, they are our pets, but I am extremely excited to have my own eggs again.  And brown eggs.  I don't know why but I like brown eggs, but I'm too cheap to buy them in the stores and it doesn't matter that much to me.  Even if that means a 10 egg omelette on the weekends!  Because most of our chickens are bantams and the eggs are super tiny!
Here are some pictures of the kids that I took the other day...

Basil.  I love his facial expression, he looks really stern and kind of angry...haha!

 Dusting in a hole...She seems so happy!

Parker.  He's turning out really really handsome, look at all those colors!  Filling in nicely!

 Here is the progress of my painting last week.  This Wednesday is the last day of the class.

I was finding it so hard to paint them!  I was just so worried about making them look like real chickens that I decided to just go with it and see what I could do.  Not worry so much about them looking like real chickens.  And so, I decided to turn the picture that I was painting from around and paint from memory, which actually ended up being better for me and that is how all of this happened!  :)  Hopefully I'll post a picture of the finished product this week!

P.S.  We've almost sold 2 of our metal home decor things that we brought with us! Woo hoo!!!  :)

(not) Busy Days...and Microsoft Excel

Well, it has been an exciting and very busy last few days...(not really).  Yesterday we had a huge rain storm which was really really needed!!!  Its so good that it rained, but the wind blew a whole lot!  I don't think the chickens understood what was happening because when it started raining real good the chickens were still out standing in the rain, so as it was pouring I shooed them into the coop.  Otherwise they probably would've drowned!  I'm guessing, I don't know!  Silly chickens though!  A couple of hours later after the majority of the storm passed, I went out to let the chickens back out and found this.

It is the PVC run thing that we made.  ...wrapped around the coop.

The good news: it bounced right back from that, good thing PVC pipe is flexible!

For my painting class, we had to find something that we want to paint, something that interests us, so I took in this picture.  I thought it would be really interesting!

Here's what happened after the first class...(now we can see the progression).  So far so good, but we'll see how things go.

I saw this as I was taking pictures of the other chickens, I took this in as one of my painting options, but it turned out the other one would probably have more interest in it.   They found one of the old mole mounds and were using it as their dusting spot!  So cute!  

And, this is the wonderful and most exciting events of last night.
We bought our couch from the DI in Ogden, UT almost 2 years ago.  It is possibly the most comfortable and best couch we've ever had!  Best use: naps!  I kind of miss it because I slept on it the whole summer of last year while hubby was doing his internship here in Iowa.  I slept sooooo good on it!  But I'll take sleeping next to him over the comfy couch any day.  :) Anyway, hubby was sitting in his spot and he looked down and found this in between the armrest and the cushion.

A Simpsons puzzle piece.  It is not ours, I know this.  1) we only have one Simpsons puzzle. 2) it is 1000 pieces, so the pieces are much smaller than this. and 3) its a mosaic puzzle (where every piece has like 5 tiny pictures that all work together to make up one whole big picture).  So, we've been carrying this piece and it has made it through 2 years, a 1200 mile move, and a wild car-ride on top of my car when taking it home from DI during which it was rained on.

Another exciting thing that happened last night is this.

Hubby was curious just how many rows and columns Excel had.  Well, the answer is this: Rows: 1,048,576, and Columns: XFD.  My question is, why didn't it just go to zzz?  or a round number like 1,050,000 or something?  Weird!  So...as you can see, yesterday was a VERY busy day... hehe.

xoxo
c

Kind of garden and shelves...

Well, this is kind of a combination post...I'll post pictures of the garden that I'm not real proud of next week sometime.  I made some delicious home made mashed potatoes with my home grown potatoes on Friday...

They were soooooo good!!!! It felt really cool making them from my own potatoes...

I made this second set of shelves a few weeks ago, here it is outside waiting to get painted, which it never did.  It is just like that other one I built, but quite a bit bigger!

Here it is in its place being used! :) Still not painted, but at least its getting some use out of it! Not too appealing with my stuff, but it works just like I wanted it to!  It is perfect for the space and makes it more usable.  It is perfect for us!  And some day when I feel like painting it I might, but for now it works just fine. :)

I have the exact materials used and price list somewhere, but I can't seem to find it.   

Cost including screws: about $95 (-ish, which I'm not sure if it is worth it or not, buying something similar costs about the same price, I think).

Time: several hours, depending on time availability.  

Measurements: 63" wide, 17" deep, and 79" tall.  Shelf measurements, top to bottom (some of them are weird, I'm not sure why): 15.5"; 11"; 15.5"; 15"; and 18".  

I wanted the bottom to go up to 18" so that I could fit the water bottles that we buy our water in under there as well as some other things.  They all fit quite nicely underneath.  I wanted some of the shelves to fit my totes really nicely, like the second shelf, it fits those totes quite perfectly with little space unused.  I'm very happy with it! :)

And...because I think its really cool...I saw this in the backyard the other day.  You can't see real clearly, but its a nice herd of deer! :)  I can't see that far, but with some of them you can really tell that they have a decent set of antlers! Some of them are pretty big!  

xoxo

c

Storage shelves

Well, I've been thinking about trying my hand at making some furniture and stuff.  I really wanted a big table for my kitchen in the event we have guests over...ever.  We are pretty anti-social so we don't have people over very often.  So, thinking about that I got into looking for furniture plans and things that I might could make.  I found a few tables that I really liked, but then it started seeming like the table would be really really heavy and unrealistic for me to build, but right before I got to that point, I found that table on craigslist, which I then bought.  I'm soooo happy about it and don't regret it for a second!  So, now I am still thinking about things I can build, but more along the shelf and armoir lines.  We really could use more storage around this house, like a linen closet, a pantry of sorts to store food in the mud room, and a shelving unit of some type to go in the kitchen to free up some counter space.

I wanted to start small with a very simple project.  So I found some shelves that I could make for my garage to help organize some things in there.  When the humidity gets bad, the floor gets all wet and I am very sure things do not dry out properly.  So, it would be nice if things were better organized and out of the way.  I got the idea from More Like Home.net, she has all sorts of plans on there that seem very doable and easy.  (also if you click that link it takes you to the actual plans for the shelves that I built)  I took a picture of the floor of the garage the other day, just to show a friend what it was like.  As you can see, I desperately need shelves and the time to organize the garage.

In honor of beginning to build things, hubby and I thought it was time that I got my own cordless drill.  Here it is in all its wonderful glory!  Isn't it beautiful?  Its just small enough that I can handle it and still has enough power that it should be able to do whatever we need it to.  (the battery is in the charger)

Okay, on to the project.  The whole thing is supposed to made out of 2x4s.  I decided to mix things up and make the shelves themselves out of 1x4s.

Technical stuff and numbers:
Time: 2-3 hours (probably could have taken less, but I'm new to this)
Cost: about $45
Measurements:  73" tall, 39 1/4" wide and 17 1/2" deep.  (-ish)
Materials used:
4 - 2x4x10 @ $4.59 each (this made the 4 uprights and the 8 shelf supports, and I ended up with 4 - 13" pieces of scrap); and 4 - 1x4x12 @ $5.98 (this made the 16 shelf pieces).  Plus a couple of bucks in screws (approximately 48 - 2 1/2" screws for the 2x4s and 64 - 1 5/8" screws to attach the shelves).

The plan is very simple, you attach the shelf supports to the uprights.  Cut 4 six foot pieces for the uprights and 8 - 17 1/2 inch pieces for the shelf supports out of the 2x4.  If you got 10 foot lengths, you'll have 4 - 13" ish pieces of scrap wood.  Use the 2 1/2" screws to attach the 2x4s to each other.

Then you'll cut 16 - 3 foot pieces of 1x4 for the shelves (since its a 12 foot length, there shouldn't be any scrap).  Then use the 1 5/8" screws to attach the shelf pieces to the shelf supports.

I cut everything to the plan that is in the link, but then when I tried to put the 3 middle pieces in between the uprights they didn't fit, so I decided just to use the 14 three foot pieces as my shelves and adding spaces in between the shelves.  Really, I used 5 1/2 of the 1x4x12s to make the actual unit.  I still have the 6 - 33" pieces to use, I might try to make a little bench or something with those and the other scrap pieces we have hanging around here.  We'll see how that goes.  Here is the shelf unit finished!  I made it all by myself, I even used the chop saw to cut all of my own wood. (scary!)  :) I'm pretty proud of myself!  It isn't perfect, that's for sure...

Here is what the shelves look like up close (that's the bottom one).  

There's about an inch-ish between each board, I think this and using the 1x4 instead of 2x4 will make it lighter and easier to move around, plus most likely its going to hold totes and stuff that shouldn't need a full shelf.  The plan also says to glue, predrill and countersink where you put your screws, but I didn't and it seems to be pretty good.  I also didn't put in the braces, I haven't decided if I'm going to do that or not, but I don't think it needs it.  I'll put lighter things on the top shelf, so it should be just fine.  :) YAY!!
I really really really love it!  I might build a couple of more, depending on what wood we have left around here after the chicken coop is done.  (SOMEDAY!  ACK!)  Here is the web site for something else I'm thinking about building: Cool Jelly Cupboard.

Have a great day!
xoxo