Alternate title: Tomatoes, Grapes, and Apples, Oh my!! What are you canning?
Continue readingMonth: September 2012
Paint Samples: Definitely Worth It!
Painting is not my favorite thing to do. Not even close. So, when I do paint a room I really want it to be done for awhile. I’ve decided it is finally time to paint over the hideous green color I picked for our kitchen and entryway 5 years ago. I’ve been putting off because someday we will be renovating the whole kitchen anyway. Realistically, though, that is probably 10 years away. I can’t look at that color for 10 more years!! When I picked it I wanted a nice country green – maybe sage is the word? – like my Mom had in her kitchen. Instead… it looks like mint ice cream. Seriously. Yuck. This time I’m not taking any chances. For less than $10 total I picked out three different colors of paint and had little samples mixed. I bought mine at Menard’s. The lady at the paint desk assured me it won’t really matter that the sample size paint is a different brand than what I will ultimately go with. Likewise, I was able to pick from all of the paint chips and not just those available for that brand. I want gray this time. Here are
Continue readingTot School Week #3: Yellow
What are you doing in your house to learn about colors? Or do you have suggestions for fun activities we should try?
Continue readingChit Chat and Haircut
I think Saturdays may be a good day to do casual posts. We’ll see. The whole idea of jumping back in to blogging is appealing but I’m just taking it as it comes. Here’s me with my new haircut. It looks lopsided in this pic but it’s not. It’s so light compared to my long heavy ponytail. When I get to the point where all I do is put my hair in a ponytail I know it’s time to change things up!! Tomorrow is my birthday. We’re going out to dinner at our favorite place: Red Lobster! I have a lot to celebrate this year with having Kent and eliminating debt. I feel so blessed! I’ll be turning 26. The farm is keeping us busy. We’re forever expanding it seems like. We’ve had to hire some occasional help to keep up. We’re in talks with a restaurant about potentially supplying them with meat. I am working on the zoning application for a little on-farm store where we can sell our meats by the cut. I had hoped it would be done this month but it looks like that won’t happen. Kent is growing fast and thriving. He is 14 months
Continue readingTot School Week #2: Red
Expect a couple more of these posts in quick succession as I’m still catching up. We continued our Color Themes with Red. Kent was 12 months old. What fun pre-writing activities does your child enjoy? This post is linked to the weekly Tot School link up at 1+1+1=1.
Continue readingDetails on our Debt Free Status
As I mentioned here, we became debt free except the mortgage on August 28th, 2012. You can follow our journey from the very beginning in Our Money Story. We got serious about kicking the debt habit in October of 2009. So, it took a lot of meandering along and then 3 years of pretty focused work to eliminate our line of credit for the farm, Brian’s truck loan, and my student loans. Along the way we continued to cash flow our (big) farm expenses and paid cash for a semi, a dump trailer, two pickups, a loader tractor, and a new barn. In the interest of full disclosure a couple of those things were purchased with an insurance check after our shed fire in 2009. The rest, though, all came from our own efforts and God’s grace. Over the last 3 years we have also expanded our farming operation extensively by growing our cattle herd and sheep flock and renting more acreage. As always, I’m being transparent here in the interest of encouraging you and spreading the word that it is possible to live without the constant pressure of bills. There is no way we could have done this on
Continue readingTot School Week #1: Blue
I have a few weeks of Tot School to post about so I can get caught up. We started with Color Themes. First up was Blue. Kent was 12 months old that week. Have you done Color Themes? Any must-do activities to share? What does your kid do with a Magna Doodle?
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