Labor Day Weekend

We had lots of labor going on this Labor Day Weekend!

It'll be a few days for me to detail all of it, but here are the highlights:
-digging
-wallpaper steaming
-painting
-subfloor installing
-more painting

But before the work started, we kicked off the weekend by going to a flea market...
I look forward to this one the entire year!

I only ended up coming home with this medium size enamel pot (disregard the little purse I was using for scale!)

It'll look really cute with greens at Christmas, filled with apples in the fall, or with some kind of salad for a 4th of July BBQ (these are the things I daydream about while deciding to get it!)
Best part is it was only $3 :)


Mike also came home with something... this pick ax for $10.

He had just bought one from Lowes a few weeks ago, and the handle broke the first time he used it!

So, now he has a nice sturdy antique one :)

And just in time... since he definitely needed it this weekend.

More to come on that soon!

Catching Up- August 2013

Just a collection of random little stuff that has been going on this month!

We had a good harvest of raspberries & blackberries.








I was completely shocked when I stopped in to buy a pie at a farmstand and saw them for sale for $5.99 per HALF pint!  That made me feel pretty good about our bushes :)



We also harvested the pear tree the other night.

The kids picked a grand total of 66 pears! (Not including what they ate while picking!)


Tonight we plan to can a bunch of them, and maybe make a pear tart too.






There weren't as many hot air balloons this summer- maybe because it's been rather rainy?  Or maybe we just haven't noticed them, since we didn't grill outside as much as we usually do.
But I got a couple of shots the other night...

Going up across the street
(you can see it hiding behide those trees)

Lastly, here are some flower photos from the picking garden...  I'm going to add these to the next batch of photos I get printed for the downstairs hallway.

I'm thinking that adding some mums to the garden for fall would be a good idea.  We have some planted in the front yard, but this is the perfect place to do mix-matched ones!

Sizing up the Eggs

Last week, my mom gave us a little vintage egg scale that she had.

We had so much fun sizing up our freshly laid eggs!

The smallest of our eggs weighed in at high end of "Large"...

By pure coincedence, we found a HUGE one during the egg collection one day last week.

It measured off the charts!

Normally, most of our eggs are in the "Extra Large" range...

I love the vintage scale not only for it's practical use, but also for decorative purposes.
It's a fun conversation piece!


Related posts:
Fixing up the coop
Baby Chicks
Egg Report

A Harrowing Experience

Well really, Experience Harrowing!

We have a sand paddock behind the horse barn, but without frequent use (since we don't have horses) it's become overrun with weeds.  I tried to keep up with the weeding for about the first month we lived in the house, but then just got too overwhelmed!

We've been keeping the weeds cut short, figuring it would just grow in for now.  But it's been two years & it's still very splotchy.

The best solution we could find was to purchase a Harrow.  Tractor Supply didn't have them in stock, so we ordered it and had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive.

It was all rolled up and tied together with wires...

We unrolled it...

Flipped the prongs the way we needed (there are 3 settings for each of the two sections of prongs), and hooked it up to the tractor...

Here's how it looked as we got started with the first pass...  Progress!!

A few passes later, and it was looking really good!  Hooray for the sand!

I'm not sure how frequently we'll need to do this, but I'm thinking it will get better and better each time, once the roots of the weeds are all gone.  

I'll post an update in a few weeks, showing how it's going!

Then & Now #2

There are so many changes that have taken place since we moved in.  Some of them I completely forgot about until looking at the old photos from when we had the home inspection before we moved in.

Here's a picture of more fencing around the garage. You can see it on the left side of this photo taken from the front porch, the weekend we moved in... That little fence was just to keep deer out and was very easy to remove.  It's a good sun spot- so we put my picking garden here.

The other thing missing is the pretty tree in the field.  That came down during Hurricane Sandy.  I'm very sad about that.

This probably isn't the best comparison, since the top photo was taken in April, and the bottom in July.  It does point out that the forsythia bush is due for a trim!