It's July?

July? Wait. How did that happen? I really wonder where the time goes some time. Is someone siphoning it and stealing away with my time?

Renovations continue and, par for the course things are breaking along the way and making progress difficult. Last night the freezer,The night before a drill, 2 days ago the dryer that we FINALLY got over from my parents. I thought I was officially free of the laundromat but possibly not. Oh, did I mention we had another roof leak? *Rolling eyes* Fell like I'm trapped inside the movie "money pit"

However things are starting to come together. Slowly still, but it IS happening.

 
Shopping for a dining room rug, and the kitchen completion. What a difference the new floor makes and just a few simple touches.



The laundry room before hot yellow and lavender... to a muted teal.

 



Along with the muted teal this bead board/wainscoting I run the bottom 4' of the wall. This project is incomplete as well. I need the cap board and put up some hooks and a few places for brooms and the like.









Progress on one of the 2 planters on the pool deck. Dang it was nice to start and finish at least one of our projects that we were working on. We also made a nice small planter of succulents as well.

             

 

The fence is in! WHOOT! The dog run is still in the works, but at least the biggest part of that project (The fence itself) is done. I'll need to add some mulch, rocks and either sod or artificial turf in there yet.

SO much more is still in the works. The new front door, the girls vanity and sinks, and the new freezer should all be finished by the end of the weekend. Things are looking up. We are keeping our chin up and looking forward to completing a few of the things that have been in the works for so many weeks now. 

Moving forward, keeping on.

Barb

Chicken Little or better known as Bunny

Funny, I found this post in my draft folder. I always meant to follow up with a picture of the grown bird. Unfortunately Bunny passed almost a year ago when she tragically went over the fence, and a dog got a hold of her. She'd never been out of the yard so  I think it was a shock to all of us that she managed to find her way out.

Anyhow, Here is a post all about this lavender/buff Easter Egger and a quick chronicling of her growth.

I little while back I introduced you to the newest generation of chicks around this house.
This is Bunny, and I just wanted to share it's growth pattern. Bunny is a lavender and buff Easter Egger. Not a usual combination and since it is so and I spent so much time online searching for info on how it might turn out.

 Early on it looked pretty much like any chick really. Yellow with a hint of grey on it's breast and at the back of it's head. Maybe if you looked really close you'd say that some of that fluff was a tan color and not really yellow.

The first week or two it had those characteristics little cheeks as seen in the photo below. They were not nearly as big as some, but they were there none the less. 

 Wing feathers developed and the cheeks just sort of disappeared.  Pretty quickly the down of the chick was being replaced by these adolescent feathers. Pretty little thing striped with a steel grey and just starting to see a little buff coming through as well.

As it's head feathers came in they turned a beautiful dark grey with light shafts.

Now this juvenile is starting to look like a chicken! 

The buff color is beginning to be replace with a little darker of a color and is really quite striking.

Below is a set of shots of this birds comb. Easter eggers are known for being easier than some birds to sex by their comb shape and color pattern. However, this bird is proving difficult. It started out with a non-existant comb, then it was a single comb, then it began to turn colors YIKES! Rooster? Then the color faded back quite a bit. I'm thinking that the first few days of 90 degree weather caused the change of color. 

 Here the first wing feathers, and then again around 8 weeks. While the darker color is a concern for a roo it seems to be coming in spread out and not together at least so far....

Here she is all grown up. She really was a beautiful bird. I miss having the chickens around and I don't know if I iwll get away with "flying" under the radar at the new house. I'll probably try first with a duck or two next year. The girls will be in FFA so I'll have an excuse at least. :-)

6.14.19 The renovations continue

Still stuck on paint color. I don't suppose that's a huge surprise. I finally broke down and ordered paint samples from Samplize. I am SO EXCITED about this. They are essentially giant sticky notes you put on your wall. They can be moved around to see different types of lighting and locations throughout the house. I am expecting my samples Monday so you'd better believe I'm gonna have lots to say by next week. I ordered a bunch of very similar colors so I can really test out what the undertones are of each of them and get a feel for how truly close they are to a true color match. No more flesh toned pinkish brown paint for me, thank you very much!

The tile is nearly done in the living/dining and family rooms. Still a ways to go but it's really coming along. With any luck... and we all know I don't have much of that...in the next 2-3 weeks we'll wrap up all the BIG projects and be able to start on the small ones.

So I leave you a little tease... the front door/entry way as it stands now...not quite an after picture, but it's close.

Band Aid Colored Paint

Or maybe the better title is Chameleon paint. I swear this color was a grey taupe when I picked it out in the store. However, when I got it home... not so much. In the can it looked like an exact match for the Band Aid brand bandages. On the wall it was a putty color. Now I've also seen it turn pink, and purple as well. It doesn't photograph well so I'll have to pull out my good camera once I find whatever box it is in. Living in boxes is so much fun! With any luck we'll be settled in by mid summer.

What color do I speak of? Old Map, by Behr. Here is a sample

Taupe/Grey if ever I have seen it...the paint chip card, Old Map in the middle...Now I'll just say that when I saw that color I thought to myself, "Self, that color is probably going to go dark and grey at night and lighter and beige during the day" Apparently even when I talk to myself I don't know what I am talking about, because it looked absolutely NOTHING like that chip. Please, allow me to show you all the ways this paint has irritated me. Introducing, the vast array of colors i've now seen this paint be...

Band-Aid colored

greige

beige

nearly brown

Taupe

pink

purple

I swear to you everyone one of these pictures is taken with the same "camera" and is the same paint color. So yes, a cameleon. What you don't see is in many of these pictures it has a fleshy tone. Not something appealing, either. I love it in the bedroom where it doesn't get as much natural light but where the space is light and bright it feels drab. Ho-Hum. Shouldn't have bought 5 gallons of paint without trying it out in the space first, I suppose. Live and learn.

Barb

Progress, FINALLY!

5.14.19
 Finally, some progress has been made.

This past weekend I painted baseboards once it started to get dark outside. I don't like cutting boards or using any power tools outside once it gets dark in the summer. I know at least one of the neighbors has a toddler and I have experienced first hand neighbors that disturbed the sleep patterns of my kiddos. I don't want to be that neighbor.

Since i had some of the baseboards painted we went over last night. I stacked up the ones that were cured and started on the next set. Rich normally gets home about an hour after we do so once he ate he began putting in the baseboards for Savannah's room while I finished hanging the closet rods on the new organizer for her small closet. All that is left is the baseboards for the right side of the closet, to caulk the new baseboards and she'll be moving in by this weekend.  She's super stoked and even though we started with a paint that didn't turn out quite right the room has truly come together and is just so sweet.

The blue that at first looked like a very BRIGHT neon blue settled down into a "babyblue" for the second coat, and after getting the woodwork back up and adding lighting is now very close to the color she wanted. It's kind of an icy grey/blue. What she wanted was an icy super light teal/grey. Either way it's turned out rather darling. She's happy...we're happy.

The new closet organizer is the icing on the cake. Poor girl is going from a full walk-in down to a 5' closet. The shelves and extra hanging space on one side will be monumental as she edges ever closer to that dreaded word.... "teenager." Over the next few years i'm sure this area will be the hardest hit in her room. ;-)

Tonight it's the year end Orchestra concert. They always do such a wonderful job. It's quite amazing how nice they sound. Especially compared to the elementary school productions. Hopefully she is getting better as well. She refuses to let me hear her play any more. over the summer she'll be forced to practice at home so I should hear more of her playing soon.

With any luck by this weekend I'll have more rooms to show you completed and even some with furniture! (Imagine!)

Soon I'll be onto picking out a paint for the overall living areas of the house. I'm dreading it already. I love some of the newer warm grays, but I'm just not a gray kinda gal. My entire work/office is based off a gray theme so it's just not a color I want all over my home as well. Problem is, I don't want a pink base, or a yellow base and I surely don't want green picking up either. That makes it a bit difficult. It leaves orange and purple based paint and I'm not specifically fond of the idea of them on the wall. Stay tuned, I'll keep you posted on the color drama.
Barbie.

Mother's Day Weekend

It's Mother's Day weekend.

I'm thinking heavily of those that will be spending their day without their child(ren). My heart hurts for them. Aches for the losses that we share. While I take joy in the children I have here on Earth there are so many families that are hurting.

This weekend is sure to be a whirlwind. Lots going on at the new house. Construction continues though it will be very slow this week for sure. This week we will concentrate on bringing our plants from their temporary home at my parents and making a few trips to bring more of our personal belongings as well. The goal? Be able to move into the bedrooms at least by next weekend.

Great things are happening here:

Sorry for the crummy lighting it was starting to get dark.

Can't wait to share the progress!

Barb

The year, Two Thousand Nineteen.

It's 2019. Not one, but 2 years after my last post.

It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly time flies.
Update on Alabama - The 40 acres were cleared, burned fertilized and replanted. The new trees are roughly 1 ft. tall. Just infants. It turned out to be a good year to plant as rain has managed to hit the area at least every 7-10 days so there were no prolonged periods of drought for the new seedlings to tolerate. Our lass to date less than 10%. Mostly due to hogs and a few that simply were not as strong as the others.

Overview of the 40 acres. Looking down from the trail head.

The cabin FINALLY has a sump pump and the basement is now dry. We never could get the work done though and had to hire it out. Leave the dirty work to the pros, and I'm glad we did. Too much, and not enough time up there to accomplish everything else, much less the 7-10 day project it would have been for us provided nothing went wrong.




The old cabin also got some upgrades. We
refinished the exterior. Rather than messing with the wood and trying to refit already retro fitted wood we decided to simply lay siding to protect what was already there. It may not look like much, but the contrast is stark when you compare it to the peeling paint and mismatched wood. This should keep us from needing to do much to the outside for a good 20 years or so.(With any luck at all)



My home gardens are no more. For that matter my home is no more. It's now a house, and someone else's not mine. We were technically "homeless" for the last 7 weeks, but we have closed on what will be our new home. LOTS of work there to complete. Roof issues, flooring issues, appliance issues, pool issues...the list goes on, and on. Not the list is the fact that we almost burned it down the first day we went by. We got a great deal, but the return for it is the work it needs. The backyard is wild and steep with a small creek with a conservation area at the bottom. We'll fence that part out so we don't lose the water loving dog, or endanger any small children that come by.

I'm excited about this next house. Excited to make it mine, to make it a home.

Barbie