What better way to beat the Julune gloom (Julune: a new word coined by my oldest who got June & July mixed up together) than to experiment in the kitchen. In our kitchen these days are:
:: fermenting sauerkraut
:: bread & butter pickles
:: calendula & nettle infusions for soap making
Thinking of making this facial scrub from one of my favorite bloggers.
Filed under In the Kitchen, Recipes
Slowly, ever so slowly this house is becoming our house. Maybe I had forgotten or maybe I never felt that ‘stranger in my own house’ way with our first house. We were so much younger and newlyweds when we bought that house. We were more used to living in funky rental situations, but we worked hard to transform that house into ours and to leave that all behind and enter a new house to start from scratch was an adjustment. The memories of the previous owners were packed up in boxes and taken away and with our memories yet to be made, we moved into a very empty house. This house always had a warm feeling to it, but with all white walls and not a picture hung on them it lacked life & personality. I promised the boys that we’d add life to their room first. While I nixed their ideas of a black and red painted room, we all agreed on a nice blue, the color of both the water and the sky, as they said. And we added red accents from a little bit of a splurge at Purlsoho. Walking into their room now makes me very happy, it gives me hope that this soon will be our house. That we’ll add the life back into this warm house.
With a big hesitant sigh, I put my very favorite, always saved at the back of the linen cabinet, tablecloth on our kitchen table as an everyday tablecloth. It was a brave move with two boys who seems to put more food on the table and floor than in their mouths, but I did it. Of course it hasn’t been without it’s consequences, it is now stained with catsup and who knows what else, but I needed to see something I loved on the table when I walked into the kitchen, to make it feel more like home.
As I’ve been busy trying to make this house a home, Scott has been incredibly busy making this house a more sound house. We aren’t schooled in construction or in any trade at all, but where we lack training, at least Scott, makes up for in gumption. In our years of homeownership we’ve gotten ourselves into a few head scratching situations, as was this one pictured. I mean, really, what do you do with this? Well, through a series of phone calls and educated guesses and executive decisions, this is now all taken care of and our house is more sound. And the deck almost all ready, we are under deadline after all, we have a boy who’s about to turn a year older and no house is a home without it’s first party.
Filed under Musings
Welcome to our new coop. As you well know, we have six laying hens and when we bought this house, we knew building a new coop would have to happen right away. We were able to leave our hens at our old house for a couple of weeks, but what a chore it was to drive back there everyday to check on them. Scott quickly got to work on the new coop. He didn’t use any plans, rather winged it as he went. We had a few requirements, it had to be sturdy to withstand our new country wildlife neighbors, we wanted it tall enough to walk in comfortably so that cleaning it out and visiting with the gals would be easy. And we wanted it to be big enough that when it rains and they had to stay inside that it would be plenty big enough for milling around. It turned out to be about 8′ square. Just big enough without being too big. We still have yet to build the run, but all good things in time, right?
We have a birch tree at this new house, which very conveniently dropped a big branch the first week we were here. It makes a great spot for them to hang out. I don’t know if you can see from this picture, but we thought we were very crafty and resourceful for using old wood wine boxes we had around for their roosting boxes. Well, that idea fell through when the hens quickly fell through the bottom of the boxes. Sorry girls! We’ve put the same old cabinet that was in our old coop as a replacement.
Mabel’s happy! She lays us eggs all the time and this time we built in a little door to open up to grab the eggs, the boys are on constant egg alert and check that little door about every 10 minutes. Sometimes they’ll even stand at the little door while the hens are laying and chat with them.
Would you look at that view? Lucky hens!
Filed under chickens
a sonoma garden
A Sonoma Garden 