Category: Uncategorized

Kent was 17 months old. Ha, the only pictures I have from December are these two.  We made cloud dough.  It was fun but I think he tried to dump it out and I lost my cool.  We moved it to the bathtub and then the bathtub was greasy for a long time. We also did a few activities from The Truth in the Tinsel.  I googled and googled before I bought it trying to figure out if it would be age appropriate for a 17 month old.  The few comments I could find made it sound like the answer was yes.  I think the answer is yes, BUT you’d want to: a) have all your materials prepared ahead of time, and b) tell yourself to relax and let it be what it will be.  Neither describes me in December.  I was trying to pull supplies together with him at my side and he would (understandably) try to grab at them before I was ready, and I would get irritated.  Also, I had a long list of Christmas gifts to finish at the last minute so I was generally struggling in December anyway.  I’m still glad I bought the ebook,

Kent was 17 months old.

This has been a good week.  I am finally feeling comfortable with life being full of projects.  I used to want all the “special projects” done as perfectly and quickly as possibly so I could get right back to my normal life and routine.  Now I’m learning to roll with it.  It’s okay that I’ve been canning for months.  It’s okay that three walls in my living room are completely painted… and one is not even started.  Yeah, it’s all good.  It appears that special projects are the norm when you’re a new little family living on an old, old farm.  I’m starting to redo all the things we did to the house when we moved in.  Can you believe we’ve been here for FIVE years!?  Crazy.  It was five years on Labor Day weekend.  Anyway, when we moved here we did a lot of work but it was mostly all hard labor and low dollar stuff.  My Mom helped a lot.  We stripped the cabinets and tore down wallpaper.  I put up new trim.  Brian rearranged the kitchen cabinets and installed new counter tops.  If you’ve been reading since the beginning you probably remember some of that.  If you weren’t

It is Saturday, right?  😉  With me home and Brian on four 10’s it gets a little confusing. Let’s see what’s new. I’m in the midst of painting our living room, to be followed by painting the kitchen.  I found my dream couch on craigslist yesterday so my Mom and Kent and I drove down last night and bought it.  This is one project that I hope I actually get around to posting pictures of.  The room transformation is pretty amazing.  I keep walking in there and just sitting down and looking at it.  Taking the time to pick the perfect paint color really paid off.  I love the way it looks. I finally finished canning applesauce only to be gifted with another box of tomatoes.  Our garden is still producing tomatoes, too.  We do need more pizza sauce yet so I just keep putting up as much as I can.  Our freezers are overflowing.  I need to update my freezer inventory and start cooking with more variety.  I did a menu plan this past week for the first time in a long time and that was time well spent. It’s a busy time on the farm.  We have more

Alternate title: Tomatoes, Grapes, and Apples, Oh my!! What are you canning?        

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