The Red Feedsack

Candy Bar Greeting!

2013-05-19T21:11:00.001-05:00

Have you ever made one of these before? If not, you really need to! They are fun to make and fun to give! I've made many of these through the years. I loved making them for my kids, my neices and nephews, my kids friends, my parents, teachers.... and on and on!

They are simple to make. This is how you do it.

Gather your supplies:

Poster Board (the heavy styrofoam kind)

All colors of Sharpie Markers

All kinds of candy - about 10 to 12 different ones

(You can figure up your "story" before you buy your candy, or you can just buy all kinds of candy and then write your story to fit - thats what I do.)

Heavy two-sided poster tape

Lay your candy out in front of you, take a pad of paper and start writing your story to fit the occassion. The one I was making was for a graduation gift, so I was focusing on that. Have fun and make it silly!

After you have it written out on paper, you can get very particular and measure out your sentences and words on your poster board. I don't get that particular. However, I do write everything out in pencil first, so that I can erase if it gets too sloppy. Usually I just kind of wing it. Then take your black sharpie and start writing!

I like to do the words in black so that they really stand out. Once you have all your sentences written out in black, take your color markers and do some embellishing!

I'm not very artistic - but I do like to doodle, so I like to add that sort of thing. Basically anything that adds color and excitement!

Then tape on your candy with the double sided poster tape and you are done! You can spend hours on this project.... or you can spend 30 minutes like I did.

Here is the finished poster!

This one (below) is a blast from the past. My son and his wife had a destination wedding on the beach in Florida three years ago, and so we all met there for a week. I made them one of these the night before their wedding. They were going on a cruise for their honeymoon - I figured candy would be a bit hit. More than that it was a special memory for my son of when he was litle and I made them for fun occassions. They loved the poster - here they are smiling as they read it.

Next time you're not sure what to do for someone for a gift, or just a fun pick-me-up, choose to make a candy bar greeting poster! And have fun. (Incidentally, I think its time to make one for my five year old grand-daughter. When I pulled this out of the car at the gradutation dinner we attended this evening her eyes bulged out and she said, "Wow Gram. Look at all that candy"!)

Hope your week is sweet!

A Strawberry Kind of Day!

2013-05-15T07:36:00.002-05:00

My daughter and I took the girls to the strawberry farm today to pick berries. It was such a beautiful day. This picture was taken before we got started - you can tell because our faces and hands are still clean!

We go to Browns Farm in Alabama - it is close and very family friendly, with public bathrooms and a huge pavilion with picnic tables. We've been going since before Jillian was born - back in the days when I flew from out West to visit Andrea and her husband. Now I get to just drive 30 minutes to pick strawberries!

Jillian was old enough this year to really help with the picking!

Rosetta? She ate more than she picked!! This evening when I dumped one of my buckets in the sink to wash the berries there were a lot of half eaten ones!

I love strawberries right off the vine. As a matter of fact, I can hardly stand to eat a strawberry from the store - they don't even taste like the same fruit.

It was such a perfect day. You know its fun when everyone had red sticky faces and fingers!

Andrea and I each bought three buckets of these awesome things!

I came home and made 8 half pints of jam. I love these little half pint jars. I don't like having huge jelly jars in the refrigerator and they are perfect for giving as gifts too. Hopefully we'll get back to pick one more time before the season is over.

I guess my favorite part of the day is that it is still a novelty to go and pick strawberries. Where we lived in the Southwest desert there was no such thing as a strawberry farm. Things (besides tumbleweeds) just don't grow too well in pink sand! I am thankful that I now live where things grow in abundance and I want to cherish that.

Hope your week is wonderful.

House on The Hilltop - Part Twelve (and other things!)

2013-05-07T10:39:00.000-05:00

Continued from House On The Hilltop - Part Eleven

We've had rain for three entire days (and nights) so yesterday evening when the sun came out I grabbed my camera to try to catch some pictures of the evening light. I walked around the house and this was what greeted me! These calves really love trying to prove who is the strongest!

And who is the fastest!

Can you see the little black calf on the left that has a white speck on his belly? He and the white calf are best friends. They chase each other, nap together, and just hang out together. You didn't think calves had best friends did you?

So, as for our house progress? We started to feel like we were spinning our wheels, so we sat down and wrote down everything left to complete in each room. There were lots of little (and big) things. But, the great news is that it all fit on one big poster board which is posted up in the house and we get to check things off every day! It seemed like it got us back on track and also gives a bit better visual of what we've got left to do.

We installed the flooring in the kitchen...

... and the dining room. Its so hard to see it in a picture, but it is really lovely. We are ready for the cabinets to be delivered.

And speaking of cabinets. The cabinet shop is letting me come and take pictures of their process. Its pretty fun to see how it all works. Here I am with the owner of the shop and his assistant as we discuss a few details.

Andrea brought the girls up the other day and I was wearing my knee pads and Rosey went crazy trying to pull them off of me to put on her so she could match her Gramps! She walked all over with my knee pads on!

Installing vanity lights in the bathrooms...

...wall lights in the Barn Room (upstairs)

... all window trim up, sanded, caulked and painted.

Bathtub in master bath, shower in guest bath installed and plumbed, electrical outlets and switches complete in all but the kitchen (waiting on cabinets and back splash). Ceiling lights in bedrooms, hall, and laundry room going in today and chandeleir in the dining room.

One step (and check mark!) at a time.

And in the middle of building a house, mowing the rapidly growing grass, taking care of cows, new calves being born, and continual rain, I've been trying to get my garden fully planted. Jillian helped me one day - her favorite thing to do while I'm in the garden is pretend the bars on the Ranger are her Monkey Bars!

I hope your week is off to a great start! Thanks for reading and thanks to all of you for your encouraging comments on our house! We're really been needing the positive feedback lately!!

Home-Made Hamburger Buns

2013-04-27T10:04:00.000-05:00

We often combine meals with our daughter, son-in-law and those precious grand-daughters and last night was one of those occasions. Hamburgers sounded so good to me so I told my daughter that I'd bring the buns, burgers and fixins and she said she'd make the sides. You can read her blog post on what she brought here.

If you've never had a hamburger with home-made hamburger buns you are missing out on something really special! Think its too difficult to do? You are in for a big surprise on how easy it is. I'll help you.

Gather your ingredients:

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon instant yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup hot water

Throw all your dry ingredients in your mixer equipped with dough hooks (see note below), add your wet ingredients and mix on low till all ingredients are incorporated. Then knead on medium setting for about 3 - 5 minutes. You've kneaded your dough long enough when it is smooth and has a nice shiny gleam to it!

Note: I would recommend a mixer with dough hooks; however, you can certainly mix this up and knead it by hand. My mother always did! As far as mixers go, my personal preference is the Bosch Universal Mixer. I'm on my second Bosch mixer in 25 years and I use it practically on a daily basis, so that tells you how wonderful they are. Some people prefer a Kitchenaid and I've heard they are just as wonderful. It simply comes down to preference.

Remove the dough from your mixer and place into large bowl that has been slightly oiled with olive oil. Cover with a clean tea towel and set it aside to rise to double size. Depending on the temperatures, it could get to this point in 20 minutes or an hour so keep a watch on it. (We are living in a travel trailer right now while building our house, and my camper was warm and toasty and my dough was double in size in about 20 minutes.)

When your dough has risen sufficiently, separate it into 9 pieces and form them into nice little balls. Pour a little olive oil on a cookie sheet (I love my jelly roll pan for this) and place your dough balls a few inches apart. I kind of roll them in the olive oil on the pan so the top sides are oiled as well as the bottoms. Cover with a tea towel and let them rise about 15 minutes.

Then, with the palm of your hand, squish the balls into flat disks the size of hamburger buns! Cover with your tea towel again and let them rise til nice and puffy - it was about 30 minutes in my warm camper, but could be as long as an hour.

Place in pre-heated 375 degree oven and bake until they are a beautiful golden color. Brush the tops with butter, let cool slightly and then with a serrated knife cut them in half horizontally.

Grill your hamburger patties and assemble your burger ingredients. I used butter lettuce leafs, sliced tomatoes, sliced purple onions, home-made pickles, and sliced avacado.

I would also recommend using the very best of ingredients. From King Arthur flour, butter from grass fed cattle, cage free egg, organic sugar and sea salt for your buns to the best meat you can buy for your patties. My husband and I are lucky to have a farm where we raise grass fed beef, so I feel the hamburger meat is the finest quality. My pickles are ones that I canned last summer, and soon I'll have fresh tomatoes from my garden. All those ingredients make for a hamburger that is better than anything you can find anywhere!

These home-made hamburger buns come with a warning: You will never want another hamburger with store bought buns and neither will your family! So, once you make them, you will always be making them!

For your convenience you can click here for a printable recipe. Enjoy!

Pretty In Pink (alicious)!

2013-04-24T20:21:00.005-05:00

My darling grand-daughter turned five this weekend. She is the most precious five year old there ever was (of course)! She told me many months ago that her birthday this year was going to be a Pinkalicious birthday and would I make her a Pinkalicious skirt for her party? So, in the back of my mind as I'm working and working on our house, I've been thinking about Pinkalicious. What does she wear? So I did what every smart person does - I googled it. I looked at every Pinkalicious outfit on Pinterest, I read every blog I could find about Pinkalicious and nothing seemed quite right. What I had in my mind was pink satin and ribbons. So...

I pulled out some ribbon scraps, bought a small bit of pink satin and looked at it until I had an idea in my mind. The light bulb came on and I thought "circle skirt".

This is a link to the best circle skirt tutorial I have ever seen.

She makes is so completely clear on how to measure and cut for the perfect circle and all without a single side seam! After cutting, I simply sewed all my ribbon scraps to the waist and then made a satin waistband, pulled my elastic through, sewed a simple rolled hem, attached a silk flower and it was done!

There it is! The perfect Pinkalicious skirt.

The ribbons really made it a super fun skirt to twirl in!

And even more perfect for practicing those ballet moves!

Paired with a pink leotard and some leggings is was completely adorable.

I had left over satin and I purchased a bit more pink ribbon and made a Pinkalicious Bunting. It was very simple to make.

I made a pattern out of cardboard and cut all my satin diamonds, then folded over the top inch and pressed it down lightly with the iron.

Then I folded that over a long pink ribbon and sewed each diamond in place.

When that was done, I tied all the ribbon pieces between the diamonds. Perfectly Pinkalicious bunting.

Its pretty amazing what a little pink satin and ribbon can do when it comes to a Pinkalicous Birthday!

It was a perfectly beautiful spring day with all kinds of fun and games outside. And the funnest thing of all was watching a darling little blonde five year old with braids and ribbons running around smiling and twirling everywhere she went. I think the skirt was a success!

Hope you are having a lovely week.

This week I am linking up to the Inspiration Gallery at Crafty Scrappy Happy!

House On The Hilltop - Part Eleven

2013-04-17T21:15:00.002-05:00

Continued from House On The Hilltop - Part Ten

Do you SEE this? Its my temporary, thrown together sewing spot in our upstairs craft room!! My husband took pity on me and let me move in our old kitchen table and I set up my machine so I could feel at least a tiny bit of normalcy. Eldon is not the type to move anything in until we can just about call it done... so that tells you how close we are to finishing in our upstairs.

I love the room, it makes me really happy to be in it! There is a lot of nice light from the dormers and we have two overhead can lights, a fan with a light, and then the lights that will be on the back wall. It should make for a great crafting area. I painted all the walls and trim Simply White by Benjamin Moore. I know it is a lot of white and I am a huge color person so I intend to bring in color in lots of other ways in this room.

What do you think about the flooring? We are positively in love with it. It is Dunes Bay Driftwood by Lumber Liquidators. It looks a lot like driftwood that was made into planks. It is just perfect for this room. Eldon will be building a barn look door for the little trap door on the back wall that leads into the no mans land of space that we didn't want to waste. We've been calling our upstairs "The Barn Room" and it seems to have stuck.

This is looking up at the Barn Room from the kitchen area downstairs.

I've had a few people write and ask for an update on the pendant light cords. The update is this: one of my readers who is married to an electrician wrote and told me that her husband says they use these heavy plastic sleeves that are split on one side so they can be sort of opened up and placed around the cords. They hold them stiff and help to straighten them, then you can remove and discard them when the cords straighten. I had several conversations with Barn Light Electric and they offered to send us new cords; however, we decided to go this route first and see if we can get them to straighten. We plan to keep them on til we move in!

We hung another Barn Light Electric pendant over the stairs and it also is a little kinky, but the cord is much shorter so not as noticeable and it does appear to be straightening. (Positive thinking!) I love the lights though, kinky cords and all.

The focus has now shifted to the downstairs living room where we are installing bead board on all the walls under the eight foot line. It is looking beautiful and I love how it breaks up that huge cathedral wall so that you see something besides dry wall.

For whatever reason, the bead board tongue in groove has been a two person job and rather slow to install. In between helping Eldon with that I've been filling nail holes, sanding, and caulking trim. (I've used about five rolls of Frog Tape. That stuff is awesome.)

The bead board will also go on that wall next to the stairs (up to the white trim board already in place). The actual wall below the stairs is unfinished (as is the room under the stairs) as we are designing and building a steel tornado shelter that will be bolted in. That framed wall that you see is actual only temporarily attached and will slide out so Eldon can build the shelter and slide it in. Then we will sheet rock and install bead board on that wall also. That is a big job ahead of us and we will tackle it soon.

This is the flooring we picked up last week from Lumber Liquidators for the entire downstairs (except for bathrooms). We had a hard time choosing what we wanted but we found one we're really excited about. My kitchen cabinets are being built right now and should be installed the first part of May so we need to get our flooring installed there first.

So, what have I been sewing? My grand-daughter is turning five this weekend and has requested a Pinkalicious party. I told her I would make her a Pinkalicious skirt. There are no patterns to be found on internet that were what I had in mind, so I was sort of winging it. I pulled together all different types of pink ribbon and satin and went at it. The end result was a perfect Pinkalicious skirt to go over her leotard. I'll have more on that next week.

Its beautiful here in Middle Tennessee with the grass growing, the dogwoods in bloom, and our baby calves running and chasing each other down the hills. I hope you are having a good week.

Continued in The House On The Hilltop - Part Twelve

The Story Of A Garden

2013-04-07T22:28:00.002-05:00

I think that most of my readers know that almost exactly two years ago my husband and I moved from the Southwest desert where practically nothing but tumbleweed grows to the lush, green grass of the Southeast. (You can read about our move here.) Quite a number of years prior to moving, we purchased our farm and waited with bated breath for the day we would make the move.

Because we were moving in the Spring, all I could think about was, for the first time in my adult life, being able to have a garden without watering day and night to get a few cucumbers and tomatoes. So... I ~~sweetly asked~~ begged, pleaded, bribed my son and son-in-law to please put my garden fence up for me before we moved. They agreed and when asked where I wanted it I said, "The hilltop, of course. I want to be able to look at the view and get that great cool hilltop breeze while I'm gardening". They spent hours putting in the posts, the wire, the gates and a few times they mentioned to me on the phone, "It sure is rocky on the hilltop". How could it possibly be rocky - the grass on that hill is just about the most lush stuff you've ever seen.

We moved, we bought a tiller, we started tilling. And there were rocks EVERYWHERE. Big rocks, huge rocks, and some tiny rocks that grew overnight into boulders. We tilled, carried buckets and buckets of rocks to the tractor loader where we filled it up and hauled them off. Over and over and over. How could that fertile hilltop soil be so rocky? Finally Eldon said, "You've just got to plant the garden and hope for the best". So, I did.

Every morning, Jillian (my little three year old grand-daughter) and I drove up to the hilltop where we bonded working in the garden.

And the garden grew and grew.

I had bushels of squash and cucumbers every single day. Who knew you could get so many vegetables from a garden that didn't even need to be watered?

The end of the season came and Spring rolled around again and the rocks had multiplied times ten. Eldon said, "We have to move the garden. There is a perfect spot at the bottom of the hill by the pond." So we pulled the wire off, dug up fence posts, and started over the next Spring at the bottom of the hill.

I thought the soil was fertile and the garden did great on the hilltop, but the bottom land was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I went a little overboard with tomato plants... and they grew and produced like crazy. My okra plants grew to the size of small trees. Before I knew it I was almost sick with dread at the massive amounts of produce. And living in a travel trailer isn't very conducive to canning!

I took some zinnias and bags of produce to the little cafe down the country road and they happily took them off my hands. I gave produce to everybody I could think of. I said the words I never thought I would hear myself say, "I am really sick of this garden." Well, guess what?

Its spring here in the South and we tilled the garden this weekend and I'm excited to plant again! I say that I'm not going to plant as much this year, that I'm not going to overdo it again. But, I know it will happen again and I'm excited! (I'm even very tentatively holding my breath that by harvest time I'll have a nice, new kitchen to can in!) My daughter and I bought heirloom seeds and I have darling little tomato plants that seem to be growing nicely in the window of the house. The owner of the little local cafe has expressed a desire to have me provide her with produce and flowers this year. What a great reason to plant all those beautiful packets of seeds right?

I am thankful for Spring, thankful for the desire to dig in the dirt and plant again.

And now... meet McKinley - the newest addition to our farm. Our beautiful new Angus Bull!

I hope you have a wonderful week and that wherever you live Spring has arrived for you too!

House On The Hilltop - Part Ten

2013-03-28T18:40:00.000-05:00

Continued from House On The Hilltop - Part Nine

I'm sure you're getting just as sick of looking at these cathedral ceiling/planking/beam/ pictures as we are of looking at it in real life! But, I'm happy to tell you we are very close to climbing off the scaffolding for good!

Eldon worked a couple days on veneering the beam and column in oak, which I sanded, stained and oiled before he put it up. Once up, it required a bit of wood filler to get the mitered edges to come together nicely but overall we were happy with it. He trimmed the long edges of that in pine trim.

Then it was on to the trim against the cathedral wall. We spent a lot of hours in Lowes and Home Depot looking at trim. This house doesn't seem to call for some of the fancy trim available to purchase. Not that there isn't some absolutely gorgeous product out there that we loved, but we just kept coming back to the select pine trim. It fit the look of our house a bit better.

Once the trim on the walls was done Eldon started on the trim of the big dormers. He had really been dreading this as there are 3 angles that come together. I can't seem to get a good picture showing it, but you can sort of see what I mean by the above picture. It required some mathematics and great mitering cuts to get it all to come together nicely.

And because we were working with wood and not an MDF product (an engineered wood product), then we could sand away at the areas that didn't fit together exactly! MDF sure has its place but in this case we said yay for wood!

You can see the dormer trimmed out in the above picture. It still doesn't show the different angles too well, but you get the idea!

Then came the debate for window trim. We struggled with the same thing as the ceiling trim.... what to use in a house that we want to be custom, but yet keep with the country farmhouse feel. Eldon did a lot of reading, I did a lot of looking online and finally one Sunday night supper at our daughter and son-in-laws house it hit us - we wanted to copy the original trim in their 80 year old farmhouse! It has just simple painted wood trim around the top and sides with a ledge on the bottom called a stool and below that another piece of trim called an apron. Evidently this sort of custom trim on windows goes way back. Above is the picture with the stool piece just sitting there as we were doing the custom fit. (Incidentally, you can purchase the "stool" from Lowes but it was an MDF product and it wasn't as thick as we wanted. Eldon used stair tread wood with the bull nose edge and he cut it to fit.)

Here is the finished trim! It was my job to do all the caulking, filling nail holes, sanding, and painting. I absolutely love the look. All three dormer windows are trimmed out and beautiful! We plan to use this same style throughout the rest of the house.

The scaffolding doesn't reach into this middle dormer and the only way to get in there to work is this home-made tower with a scaffolding plank on it. It is a lot higher than it looks in this picture above. It took me quite a bit of courage to put my step ladder on the wobbly thing and walk the plank to get in there to work but I did it. The scariest thing for me is that I can just picture myself forgetting that I'm on a narrow plank 15 feet up and step off my ladder to the floor that is not there. But the wiggly tower sort of kept me reminded that I wasn't on solid ground!

I got the final bit of painting done in the upstairs craft room and sat back to re-evaluate the fact that my original goal was for this room to look a little bit like a barn loft. I would've loved to have had old barn wood walls and floor but never could talk Eldon into it! Life is all about compromise and I'm okay with that but I was still yearning for the barn loft room! I started really thinking about the floors... what could I do that would be a good compromise but would still give me the feeling I was going for? I was in Lumber Liquidators looking at the flooring we had chosen for the rest of the house when BAM it hit me. For up here, I wanted this crazy looking laminate that is called Dunes Bay Driftwood but is an old barnwood replica... sort of a grey/whitewash color. I took a sample home, set it in the craft room for a few days and fell in love! I went and bought it yesterday.

I just laid a few planks down to look at. Use your imagination because I could not get a good picture no matter how hard I tried. But I love it. (Lumber Liquidators has a good picture of it in a loft bedroom on their website here.) Next week we will start the ceiling trim in here and then the flooring! (And build some sort of custom door for the little storage area that is in the rafters!) I am confident it will give me the feel that I want. Plus keep the room light and happy!

Then.... the cherry on top of the whole week! My Barn Light Electric order came! Four gorgeous red pendant barn lights for the kitchen. This was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make on the house (for me anyway). I knew I wanted these lights... and I knew I wanted red, but I had the hardest time taking the plunge. When I opened the box and pulled one out I was so happy I had the courage to do it. The red color was gorgeous. And then this happened...

Eldon hung them and I went into panic mode. There was a little problem.... the 7 foot long black cord that came attached to them is this super strong industrial strength electrical cord and in the packaging it was folded in an accordian like fold with a rubber band and we could not get the kinks out. I worked on them all morning trying everything I could think of - from the warm sunshine to a blow dryer. Eldon finally went ahead and hung them and then we hung weights on them and tried that for awhile. No change. So here we are with these beautiful Barn Light Electric pendant lights with kinky cord that make them look cheap. I contacted the company and they are going to email me with some solutions. All we can hope is that with gravity and time the kinks will work themselves out. If not, I don't know if I can stand to look at them.

But, I will say they are absolutely beautiful, the red is everything I had hoped for.

I took a few days off and went to South Carolina with my daughter and her friend and their four girls. They attended a homeschooling conference while I got to be Gram to not only my two beautiful grand-daughters but honorary Gram to two other precious girls. (My grand-babies are the two little ones in the photo above; Rosetta is the baby and Jillian is almost five.) It was so refreshing for me to be off the hilltop and doing something completely different! While the Mommies were busy, the girls and I did the zoo, the Falls, and the swimming pool at the motel! (And I even let them jump on the motel beds for a full five minutes! Isn't that what all good Gram's do? shhhh!)

Eldon stayed home and took care of the farm; however, he and our son-in-law did take a day off to go canoeing and fishing. When we got home, there were two little girls that were really happy to see their Gramp! Especially Rosetta. I think it was a good 15 minutes before she took her head off Grampy's shoulder!

Its been a good couple of weeks on the farm. Calves are still being born, older calves growing in what seems like inches every day, Eldon bought a Bull that will be delivered in a week or so, there's a hint of spring in the air, and our house is getting closer and closer to being finished. There is a lot to give thanks for. (I made and shipped the above custom sign to my winner of the "guess the day the calf will be born" contest!)

I hope you have an absolutely wonderful Easter weekend.

P.S. If any of my readers has a solution to the kinky cord problem, I'm all ears!

Continued in House On the Hilltop - Part Eleven

Wooden Quilt Square (And A Winner)!

2013-03-19T19:33:00.001-05:00

For a long time I've loved the thought of having a Barn Quilt. (Of course I love the thought of having a barn too, but since we're building a house first the barn may have to wait a year or more!) We live where there are a lot of barns with quilt squares painted on them. I never tire of looking at them.

Source

The above pictures are not my pictures - they can be found on numerous barn quilt sites, pinterest, and other places on the world wide web.

Somehow, I thought it was a new thing - this trend of painting quilts on barns. I did some research and found out a very interesting bit of information. The history of the barn quilts can be traced back almost 300 years!! It is believed that it began in Pennsylvania by European immigrants. The story goes that it was a great way for travellers to find families or cross roads, as townspeople would tell them what quilt pattern to look for!

Source

The above pictures are not my pictures - they can be found on numerous barn quilt sites, pinterest, and other places on the world wide web.

So... the point of this post is that one day recently I was standing in our living room and looking way up to where my husband was working on the scaffolding and I was thinking about the 22 foot high bare wall and thought to myself, "Wow, a quilt would sure look good hanging there" and before I could even follow that train of thought - it came to me: "BARN QUILT"!

Doesn't that look like the perfect wall for a Barn Quilt? (Even though I don't know of anyone that hangs barn quilts in their house!) So, I mulled it around awhile, did some reading and looking at patterns and enlisted the help of my quilter friend at The Scrappy Appleyard. She came, we sat and drew my pattern choice and I was off and running. I started small thinking that if it came out great and I loved it, I would make a bigger one.

I bought a gorgeous piece of 4 x 4 oak plywood (the most common barn quilt size is 8 x 8), sanded, primed, drew my pattern and started painting. And hated it. So, I started over with a new pattern, new colors, smaller size and thought, "this looks like something my daughter would like"!

When I got it finished, I set it where I could really get a long distance visual of it and I had to admit that as much as I liked it, I didn't love it. It wasn't the look I was going for. (I still don't know what that look is but I think it will come to me!) A few days later my daughter was talking about their recent living room redo and she said, "I need something for that bare wall". Long story short... my Barn Quilt now has a home in her living room!

I still love the idea and someday I will have a barn quilt on that big wall in our living room. But for now, its just an idea in my head as I'm sanding, staining, and waxing oak vineer that my husband is installing on the huge beam and column in our living room. The latest on the house is that the pine planking is all up and we love it!

And FINALLY we have a winner on the "pick the day the calf will be born" contest! "Paddy" was born on the 17th and since I had numerous people pick that day I did a random drawing out of those contestants and the winner is Kathy - she's been notified and I'm excited to make her a wooden sign. And you can be sure I will never do another contest that relies on a calf being born!

I hope you'll share your favorite Barn Quilt pattern with me... it just may be the one I've been looking for!

House On the Hilltop - Part Nine

2013-03-09T12:47:00.000-06:00

Continued from House On the Hilltop - Part Eight

Before I get deep into this blog post, I thought I better let all my readers know that the past due pregnant cow that we are all waiting on has NOT HAD HER BABY YET!!! I will say that as of this morning her stomach looked completely different (which is a very good sign)!!

We are to the point of installing the knotty pine planking on the living room and kitchen cathedral ceilings now. The planks are so beautiful, I love the knots in the wood.

We had such a debate on what to finish it with. (The planks in the dining room and upstairs craft room I painted, but these we wanted to leave natural.) We played around a bit with wood stains and didn't like any of them, then we left the wood natural and tried a coat of poly and didn't like that either. At the advice of my daughter I looked into the Rustoleum product Watco. She uses their food safe oil for her butcher block counter tops as well as other things in her home. It is gorgeous.

We chose their Danish Oil in Natural. They offer many different stain finishes in their Danish Oil but we liked the natural look. It creates the most amazing transformation on the wood. It deepens the color, gives it a beautiful sheen (but not a shine, if that makes sense), and it dries and is ready for use very quickly.

I do the cutting and oiling of each board and try to stay about 20 planks ahead of Eldon! These planks have been oiled - see how gorgeous it makes them?

Getting started on the ceiling above the kitchen.

Working our way up - almost done on one side! I absolutely hate looking at Eldon up there. It just about makes me sick.

When Eldon got up to the third level of scaffolding it no longer worked for me to climb and hand planks up to him so he rigged this rope system and I tied the planks on and sent them up!

One side done! We also painted the large gable walls while we had the scaffolding all set up. I love this color. It is a nice light tan color called Elmira White by Benjamin Moore.

In the meantime I've managed to get all but the final coat of paint on my dining room ceiling. I love this bright, happy white! It is Simply White by Benjamin Moore.

We also managed to get the planks installed on the ceiling of the upstairs craft room and I have the primer on. I'm so happy with the planking... the ones I've painted and the ones we've left natural. It gives it such a warm feel.

If anyone is interested in installing these planks, here's a bit of info for you. We purchased our first batch (for the dining room and craft room) from Home Depot. It was a good price at roughly 70 cents a linear foot. Then, in between finishing those ceilings and starting the living room and kitchen we went to Lumber Liquidators to look at some flooring and found out they also sell the tongue and groove pine planks. The quality seemed better and the price certainly was at 44 cents a linear foot.

Installing this planking has been fun. I realized that since starting our building and helping Eldon there is something I've gotten VERY good at. It is reading a tape measure! It seems strange as I've been reading a measuring tape for sewing for lots and lots of years. But reading a measuring tape for building? Hmmmm, not so much. When Eldon hollers down to me "I need a board at 68 and 5/16ths" I don't even have to count the little 16th marks anymore! And I haven't made any cutting mistakes! I feel a huge accomplishment.

Its such an exciting time for us seeing things really take shape on the inside now! Our cabinet man was here this week to take the final measurements on our cabinets and it just hardly seems real that we are finally this close!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend. We started out the day this morning with a big breakfast out in our house with our son, his wife and her siblings, and our daughter and her husband and our grand-babies. Then we all went down to the corral so that Jillian could give Mercedes a bottle. It was a great start to the day.

Continued in House On the Hilltop - Part Ten

A Give-Away If You Can Guess It!

2013-03-05T08:50:00.000-06:00

Today it has been one year since my first post on this blog. I had such a hard time getting started - I had actually thought about it for a very long time but getting started and putting yourself out there for the world to see is kind of hard to do. I've sure come a long ways... I'm even posting a picture of myself in muddy/poopy/huge Carhartt Overalls!

(Somehow my husband looks much better in his Carhartts than I do!)

We have a Momma cow that is just not producing much milk. Her poor little baby girl, Mercedes, just wasn't getting enough milk to do much more than just exist. So she now gets supplimented with that awful smelling stuff from the Co-Op! The Momma is fairly tolerant of us as long as we keep Belle out of the pen...

And poor Belle. It is really, really hard on her. She whimpers, cries, shakes, and quivers she wants in the pen with us so badly.

So, for fun I thought I would celebrate my one year of blogging by having a little give-away this week! (No, the prize is not this hugely pregnant Momma Cow!)

However, she plays a big part in who wins the give-away. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment guessing her delivery date! The person closest to the day she delivers is the winner! (Hint: she's past due.) If I have more than one guess of the correct day I'll draw names. Please make sure your email address is attached to your comment so I can notify you if you win!

Now for the prize.....

I will make you a custom wooden sign! Your choice of words and colors. Size will be 12 inches high by 18 inches wide. I'll even work with you to choose the font style you like. A country farmhouse sign made just for you!

Get guessing.... She may have her baby today!

The House On the Hilltop - Part Eight

2013-02-25T20:57:00.000-06:00

Continued from The House On the Hilltop - Part Seven

Its been over a month since I wrote about our house progress as there was only so much that could be said about hanging drywall! Eldon and I did manage to get it all hung and then we stood back, took a very deep breath and hired someone to come in and do the finish work on the drywall. We felt it required more expertise than we had! (And frankly, we were exhausted.)

We got a few quotes and then went with our gut instinct and hired the men that were brothers, had worked together their whole lives, and gave us a warm fuzzy feeling!

The warm fuzzy feeling was important because Eldon was going to be gone for almost a month and I would be the one overseeing the work. I needed to feel comfortable with the men that would be here. Let me just say they were good ole Tennessee boys and very fun to have around for the ten days they worked. I was "Mrs Dori" immediately and they tolerated my presence very well!

I don't have any pictures of their work in progress. It was a huge, huge mess that I tried not to think about too much because I knew I would be the one cleaning it up!

It took me two full days to clean up the mess! And a trip to the dump with a huge load of empty drywall compound boxes. And then guess what?

You guessed it... I started painting! The master bedroom painting is complete except for this wall because I am still debating on that blue.

Then Eldon got home from his month long consulting job and went straight to the lumber yard for this beautiful pine planking.

And we started on the dining room ceiling! It is gorgeous. It will go in the dining room and in my upstairs craft room ceiling. I will paint it the same color white as the walls.

The planks are one inch thick tongue and groove and actually very fun to install.

My husband is really letting me branch out. I got to do the cutting! Not that there is anything to it, but it made me feel important anyway!

Dining room walls are painted, planks are installed on the ceiling and its looking like a real room! Tomorrow we start on the planks in the craft room.

And this is a peak at some of the projects I worked on to keep myself busy while Eldon was gone. Now the sewing machine is put away, the Annie Sloan paint is back in its box, the porch furniture projects are on hold and its back to working on the house!

Continued in the House On the Hilltop - Part Nine

A Marathon Weekend

2013-02-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

I promise not to continually bore you with stories and pictures about our calves, but this is a story I couldn't resist. You might remember my post back in January about our cow #173 that we thought was expecting a calf any day? Well.... she just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So big that we were really worried about her. (Even Jillian, my four year old grand-daughter would ask me every day about Number 173!)

Everyday Belle and I would drive out to check #173. And everyday the report would be the same: no calf. We were gone over the weekend and left our wonderful son-in-law, Justus, in charge of checking things at the farm. We got a phone call from our daughter on Friday morning and this was what she said, "Well, Mom. Number 173 isn't pregnant anymore. AND SHE HAD TWINS"! There were times when I would think she was so big she must have two babies in there, but twins are actually pretty rare in beef cattle. (They say the chance is 0.1%.)

Its been a bit of a rough few days as we all held our breath with the babies. The Momma "hid" them. On opposite ends of the farm from each other. Knowing that it is very common for one of the calves to be abandoned when there are twins we were so worried and anxious. My son in law was so worried he carried one calf across the farm and delivered it to the Momma - only to find it back on the back side of the farm again the next day.

After a very stressful day today of driving over hill and dale back and forth between babies and Momma, wondering if I should start bottle feeding, talking to everyone in the "know", calling my poor husband (who was out of town) every hour asking his advice, this is what I came home to this afternoon! Contrary to all the stories you read about a Momma cow not remembering she had twins, THIS Momma didn't forget and she knew right where she had them hidden and knew the exact right time to bring them together. She is a good Momma.

Its been a marathon of a few days. Oh, speaking of a Marathon......

I went to Birmingham to see my son and daughter-in-law run the full Mercedes Marathon!

I managed to see them at a few different points along the run; usually just the backs of them as they flew on by!

They completed the full 26.2 miles and I was so proud of them. It was a really awesome thing to witness as I stood at the finish line and watched hundreds upon hundreds of people finish that run. I almost wish I had the courage to try. (Almost!)

Fresh Eggs

2013-02-12T18:27:00.001-06:00

I love vintage wooden signs. We have a little local cafe that we love to go for lunch and he has an amazing old wooden sign on the wall and all I can think when I go there is that I love the sign! I've recently done a little looking for a vintage sign. I finally decided to try my hand at making one.

I bought a nice pine board - six feet long and twelve inches high. I used my little handy dandy Mouse sander to sand it nice and smooth. I also sanded the edges till they were slightly rounded.

I took the board inside our house where I've already got a work table set up for the painting I'm doing on our recently finished drywall! I painted a light coat of Annie Sloan Coco and let it dry.

(Incidentally I discovered the BEST drop cloth to put on a table, the floor, etc... for projects like this. We had a roll of roofing paper left over and it is slightly adhesive on one side, so you roll it out, cut what you need and it sticks to the surface. It is strong, stays put and NOTHING is going to soak through!)

Then I painted another light coat (should actually have done it lighter) of Annie Sloan Emperors Silk - its my very favorite color of her paints.

I traced on the letters I printed off of my word processing program. (I used tracing paper I had on hand which was for sewing - it worked great.)

I painted my traced letters white and didn't bother to be too precise about it. I don't have a picture of this process, but I used a tiny little childrens art brush.

I also painted a sloppy white line around the border. And then I took my Mouse sander and gave a good sanding. It looks pretty rustic, which is the look I was going for.

I waxed it with the Annie Sloan light wax and then gave it a coat of the Annie Sloan dark wax. It gave it a wonderful antique finish. I let it sit for a bit and then buffed it with a soft t-shirt until the wood is as smooth as butter!

I absolutely adore how it came out and I cannot wait til we move into our house and I can hang it up. I have the perfect spot all picked out! It looks cute in front of the shed too!

The drywall finish is complete inside our house and I've begun painting! I wish you could see what the living room/kitchen area looks like as I am painting walls and have several other projects going on at the same time. So when I get tired of one thing I hop over and work on something else for awhile. And inside our travel trailer my sewing machine is set up where I've been working on quilt blocks and patio furniture cushions!

This week I am linking to the following fabulous parties:

Savvy Southern Style Wow Us Wednesdays

Cedar Hill Ranch Cowgirl Up

Miss Mustard Seed FFF

Joining A Quilt Along!

2013-02-02T22:59:00.000-06:00

When my friend, John'aLee at The Scrappy Appleyard, first invited me to join her Quilt Along I refused. Here I am living in a travel trailer right now, helping my husband (almost full time) build our house, and trying to squeeze in time with the grand-babies! But, then she came to visit me and she brought her project and it got me pretty excited. I thought about the beautiful fabric I have stashed for a special project and decided to jump right in and just do it. So.... here is my start to the Quilt Along!

I absolutely love fabric. I would like to just collect fabric and display it in gorgeous bundles like this all over my house! I especially love soft, beautiful quilting fabric made by Moda! This is their Noteworthy Collection.

John'aLee has her Quilt Along very organized on her blog with a new quilt block every week for the year! (She started in January so luckily I was only behind four blocks!) She does great tutorials and has step by step pictures.

Its been a long time since I made a quilt (a few years actually) and once I got my fabric spread out I was a little stumped on where to begin. I decided to make it easy on myself and since I have this fabulous collection of colors I made the choice to basically stick with a consistent color combination for each block.

This was Block One in the series and I have to admit that I am so completely out of practise I had a terrible time lining things up, getting my points to point, etc... I was almost in tears with this block. Can you tell? (I may actually re-do it sometime in the not so near future.)

This was Block Two in the series, and it went much smoother. I started to get my confidence up a little bit! I love this Noteworthy Collection of fabric. The colors really make me happy!

This is Block Three. I love, love, love this one! I love the color combination, love the pattern, love that my points are actually pointing!!! It was a little tricky I have to admit.

Block Four was a disaster. I guess I'll blame it on the fact that it was late, the lighting in the travel trailer was terrible and this block was just plain hard!!! (John'aLee do you hear me?!)

There are my January blocks for the Quilt Along. By the way, this is called The Rancher's Daughter Quilt and is the design of John'aLee's. I love that she has a little story behind the blocks she is designing. I can relate, as I too am a Rancher's Daughter.

I'll hope you'll check out her blog and join in the fun of The Rancher's Daughter Quilt Along. Its not too late to start!

This week I am linking to these fabulous parties:

Cowgirl Up!

The Scrappy Appleyard
Uncommon Designs Online
Savvy Southern Style Wow Us Wednesdays

Our First Baby!

2013-01-21T12:35:00.001-06:00

We have a morning routine where Eldon gets up and goes out to check the cows and I have about 30 minutes to just lay in bed and slowly wake up.... this morning Eldon loudly came in the camper door and said, "We have a new baby that was just born". I tore out of that bed so fast, threw on some clothes, grabbed my camera and we were out the door.

We ran to the woods and got there just as the new little precious baby was making her way up for the first time! Her Momma gave her a little nudge and her back legs came up. She paused a few minutes and then...

... she wobbled up on her front legs!

She got a sweet lick and reassuring soft "moo" from her Momma. And I started crying. I just stood there taking in the miracle of life and the wonderful nurturing of this sweet old Momma cow.

We left them alone and came back to the camper and called our daughter to let her know to bring up the girls! When they got here about 30 minutes later and we all walked back out to the woods, she was already nursing. Her little tail was just wagging away!

Standing close to her Momma's side.

Such darling little sleepy eyes taking in the new world around her.

We didn't want to leave. I wanted to bundle her up and bring her inside where we could all sit and snuggle her! But her eyes were drooping and she was starting look a little weary.

So all six of us (our son-in-law is off today with it being a holiday) piled into the camper and had some hot chocolate and talked about the first baby calf born on our farm. And the name.... hmmmm. We all threw out some ideas and settled on.... Holiday!

And, on a side note here. Our son-in-law, Justus, helped Eldon on Saturday with the final bit of hanging sheetrock that required being on the third level of the scaffolding!

So, as of Saturday afternoon - THE SHEET ROCK IS ALL HUNG!

We will be hiring someone to tape and mud - we think we'll take just a little mini break while that is being done!

Hope you are having a wonderful start to the week. I think that seeing a new little calf into the world was the best start of the week for me! (Oh, and not having go out to the cold house to hang sheet rock!)

Cabin Fever

2013-01-16T16:10:00.002-06:00

This is what we've been looking at for the last four days... rain, rain, and more rain!

Its been a really good week to work on hanging sheet rock, because we certainly didn't want to be outside. This is my craft room. It took us HOURS to put the sheet rock in those wonderful built-ins.

The good news is that all the sheet rock has been hung.... except for this massive wall in the living room, which requires scaffolding, which requires a trip to the rental place, which requires getting our truck and trailer off this muddy hilltop!

Today I decided that it was time to get off the hilltop - even if the only way I could do it was in our four wheel drive Ranger! I put on my muck boots, rain gear and a coat on the wet seat (smile) and away I went.

The first order of business was to visit the cows. This is #173 (she needs a real name). She should be having her baby any day now. It looks to me like she's "dropped"... her tummy is not sticking straight out anymore and I can see her hip bones again.

This is one of our little steers. He still thinks he's a bull - has the face full of mischief all the time!

This is Old Red. She's our oldest Momma Cow. When you call "Sooook", she's the first one to come running!

This silly ole Momma Cow is the one that escaped the pasture to the highway a couple weeks ago. She looks innocent - but don't let her fool you!

I love the woods in the winter time. They thin out to where you can actually get in and hike around. These trees stand out in the dead woods with all their shimmery gold leaves that never fall off.

I have a sweet friend in her eighties and last Fall she and I dug up about 100 daffodil bulbs out of her yard which I diligently planted alongside our road. I could envision them in the spring blooming as we drove through the woods. Well.... with the warm weather last week they got a little confused and started to bloom; now with the freezing weather this week they are all dying and falling over. I'm afraid the picture of 100 blooming daffodils is not going to occur.

This is my very blurry (rainy) self portrait, but Belle and I had a very good time traipsing around the farm, in the woods, and checking all the animals. It was the perfect cure for Cabin Fever.

Hope you've been having a wonderful week!

The House On the Hilltop - Part Seven

2013-01-03T21:32:00.002-06:00

Continued from The House On the Hilltop - Part Six

Well.... the job of hanging sheet rock has begun! We figured up an estimate of sheet rock needed, ordered it and had it delivered. This is just one stack in the house!

The first place we started were the ceilings. We have this handy hoist thing that works like a champ. You set your measured, cut and marked sheet rock piece on the top, roll it up to the ceiling and lock it in place. It holds it while you screw in the screws!

See how easy that is? (smile!) Notice the cut holes for the light fixtures and smoke alarm? That is my job. Measuring where they are and cutting the exact size in the exact location. It should be pretty simple and straight forward.... but, well not exactly. We ruined a couple sheets because I made some pretty big mistakes at first!

These are my tools that hang out in my pocket all day long! I also have a really nifty T-square that doesn't fit in my pocket and I'm constantly looking for it!

There's my T-square! Sheet rock is really interesting stuff to work with actually. It is super easy to cut; you measure your mark, score it with an exacto blade, snap it off and cut the paper in the back. Its kind of fun. (It won't be my permanent day job though!)

This is what makes working in the house in the middle of freezing cold winter bearable! It works amazingly well!

Measuring and cutting the outlet boxes is my other job! It requires quite a bit of measuring and double-checking before I cut.

While I'm doing the measuring and cutting, Eldon is hanging the previous piece. I try to stay one stop ahead of him but usually he's waiting on me!

He's got this great gun that has the sheet rock screws on a plastic strip that feeds through as he goes. Makes is pretty slick for installing.

The only problem is that it doesn't always feed the screws smoothly. And its heavy.

And there's Belle. That's where she hangs out to watch! Ocassionally we throw her frisbee to the upstairs room and she bounds up the stairs and back down faster than you can blink!

And this is the other place she hangs out.... with her cows and her horse!

We are working slow and steady and making it around the house. I don't think we'll ever say that hanging sheet rock is easy, but it is certainly a great job for seeing results fast! I'm starting to dream of paint colors now! But then Eldon reminds me there is a lot of sheet rock still to be hung! (AND taped AND textured!)

Continued in The House On the Hilltop - Part Eight

Vacation at the Yellow Cottage

2012-12-26T08:20:00.000-06:00

Several months ago Eldon and I went on a much needed vacation. We were at a place in the house progress where we could get away and the cherry on top was that it was our 30th Anniversary! Eldon had seen on the news, just out of the blue, an article about a town called Magnolia Springs in Alabama that is the last place in the United States to receive mail year-round via river delivery! He read the article to me and it sounded very enchanting. We filed it in the back of our heads and when we decided to get away for our Anniversary, Eldon remembered the town. We did a google search and found a cottage to rent, we booked it and away we went.

It was the sweetest place to stay. Just a little old cottage with original hard wood floors, old doors, darling little kitchen and bathroom, fireplace, and front porch. All the things I love in a little cottage! Its always a little scary to rent something over the internet, pay your money, and then get an email that says: "The key is on the back porch sitting inside the ceramic frog's mouth"! We needn't have worried. It was perfect.

The first thing we did after unloading our car was to walk the block to the river and check out the canoe unloading point. The little Magnolia Springs River was absolutely gorgeous.

The cottage even had a canoe for us to use!

The community of Magnolia Springs was established in 1891 - it was named after the ever flowing springs and the towering canopy of Magnolia trees. Some of the homes along the river are original to that time.

Every house had a dock with a mailbox. Even though we knew that was part of the history, it was still pretty cool to see that. I wanted to see the mail boat come, but we didn't manage to time it right.

There were also some very, very old boats.

The water was so calm and so clear that the reflection was beautiful. It was perfect water for canoeing; not so much of a current that you couldn't turn around and canoe back! We went until it widened way up and we could see that we were heading into Weeks Bay. At that point I got scared and said, "take me back to the little yellow cottage"!

Speaking of Weeks Bay. I guess I failed to mention that Magnolia Springs is right on the Gulf Coast; just a very few short miles from the ocean.

Yep. That ocean... the one with the perfect crystal white sandy beaches!

I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to finish telling you about Magnolia Springs. Just a block from the yellow cottage was the village market. They sold a few simple groceries and had a wonderful restaurant next door called Jesse's.

The little town had some very beautiful old buildings. Gorgeous old Magnolia trees lined the streets.

And speaking of old buildings and architecture.... one day we drove across the Bay and walked miles around the downtown of Mobile. It is a gorgeous old city. We loved just walking and looking at the buildings. I guess I never realized how old the city is.

I think our highlight of the day in Mobile was the A&M Peanut Shop. They still roast peanuts from the old original roaster - it was almost like a museum inside the little shop. We each got a bag of fresh roasted peanuts and snacked on them all day.

Eldon enjoyed his very first oyster for lunch; I passed! But the ambiance of Wintzell's Oyster House was the best fun!

Have you heard of the island called Dauphin Island? I've always loved the sound of it. Well, here we are: the second car on the ferry ready to explore the island and do some "shelling"!

I've never been one to enjoy swimming or sunbathing, but I could walk the beach for miles and miles. And we did. We actually walked the beach til we came to the end of the island and could go no further. I collected some very fun shells to take home to Jillian, my grand-daughter.

That's the end of our vacation in the little yellow cottage. We went home revived and ready to get back to work on the house building again! If you ever find yourself needing a quiet place to go and regroup - Magnolia Springs, Alabama is it!

(If you are interested in more information on this vacation rental you can click here.)

The House On the Hilltop - Part Six

2012-12-18T21:17:00.001-06:00

Continued from The House On the Hilltop - Part Five

Well, its official! Insulation is complete!

It was very exciting in the beginning... I got to install almost all of the insulation that was under the eight to ten foot height. It was very fun. I thought about making it my day job. I think I actually said to Eldon, "We could be insulation contractors and I could do it". I'm not sure he answered me.

Then.... it got a little harder. See all those crazy angles in the dormer windows? Took me hours to get those cut and installed to perfection. (Not sure perfection was required - but it sort of reminded me of making a quilt and I thought it had to be perfect.) I started getting a bit discouraged. Just a bit.

Then this became my job. We got the scaffolding in place and Eldon moved up to the third level of scaffolding to insulate the cathedral ceiling and I became "the person on the ground". Sounds easy right? I cut and cut and cut.

And not only did I cut, but I had to carry the pieces up the three levels of scaffolding so Eldon didn't have to repeatedly come down to get them. This was R38 insulation which means that it was 12 inches thick, which means that it was pretty heavy carrying up the side of scaffolding.

I had piles like this all over the house.

I did feel sorry for Eldon being on top of that scaffolding twenty feet up in the air all day for three days in a row. He was a good sport. I was the one on the ground (and up and down the scaffolding) that was crying.

But its done now and I survived.

This morning I cleaned every square inch of the place, and decided that I've kept this farmhouse under construction so clean that maybe that's what I should do for a day job: clean houses under construction! (smile!)

Its done, its clean, it passed inspection and we are ready for sheet rock!

Continued in The House On the Hilltop - Part Seven

The Ranch

2012-12-12T21:23:00.001-06:00

This is my parents ranch in New Mexico. It is where my mother was raised. It is where I spent many, many weekends of my childhood. If you look at the map of New Mexico, the ranch is located in the "boot hill" of New Mexico. Recently, my husband and I went to spend some time with my parents and went to The Ranch for a few of those days. My parents do not live here full-time, I guess you would call this their second home!

As we drove along the dirt road to the ranch that was homesteaded by my grandparents before my mother was even born, the memories of my childhood were so overwhelming. I remember my parents dropping us kids off with our bicycles and we rode them the rest of the way; I remember sometimes the wind blowing so badly that all you could see was dust for miles and miles; I remember my Grand-dad meeting us on his horse and letting me sit behind him on the saddle as we rode the rest of the way.

This is the old house. My grandmother and my grandfather built it when they were a newly married couple in the thirties. It is built out of twelve inch thick adobe blocks. It is amazing how warm and cozy this house is. My grandparents have been gone for many years but when I stepped into the house it was like they were still there. I love that my mother hasn't changed a single thing in the house.

My grandmothers cast iron skillets, seasoned to perfection!

This is the window above the kitchen sink. Everything exactly how it was when my grandmother was alive. From the mirror hanging to the old bottles to the ice pick sticking in the hole. (Don't ask me why but that was always where the ice pick belonged!) Notice the thick walls.

I just loved being there and seeing all the old things that were my grandmothers'. She didn't have much, or anything really special but it was her home and it was wonderful.

My grandmother saved funny little things that we kids had given her and it was fun to dig around in the china cabinet and look at some of the little things.

The coolest thing were the records, still in their rack next to the record player in the living room! My Mom said, "We still listen to them"!

And that night we did!

Things were pretty much unchanged on the outside too. The old water tank...

and the tool shed...

the old wash buckets...

the classic tractors...

and the windmill.

The land is so dry and so dusty, it is hard to believe that anyone can still ranch there. A person can look at my pictures and just get a feeling of remote, lonely and dreary. I look at the pictures and I'm thankful for all the wonderful childhood memories of time with my grandparents there on The Ranch. I'm thankful it is still in the family today.

These are my wonderful parents. Mom is sorting ear tags and immunizations for the calves, Dad is getting branding equipment ready. They are true blue New Mexico Ranchers!

My mother wrote a book about her Mother's life in this area of New Mexico. It is such a wonderful book full of history, pictures, letters, poems, and other memorabilia. Click here for information about the book and how to order it.

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

The Cows Come Home

2012-12-08T08:42:00.000-06:00

In the year that we've lived on our farm, we've just had steers. And just a few steers at that. The grass keeps growing, my husband keeps mowing, and we keep saying, "We need cows... Momma cows"!

Well, we finally had time to get away from the house building to find some cows, buy them and bring them home. Thirteen of them - and they are all bred which means that we can be watching for some babies within the next couple months.

This one is my favorite. Jillian and I named her Princess Kate.

We got some black, a pretty old red, a couple white, and then Princess Kate and she is that pretty orangy color. But there is something funny and that is that they seem to pair off by color. Is that strange? We unloaded them from the trailer and the black ones headed off up the hill.

And there go the white and red.

Our horse, Promise (the Queen of the Hilltop) was pretty excited. She had a real hard time containing herself!

We're excited to have cows grazing around the farm now. We're all pretty happy to just stand around and watch them settle in to their new home.

I know you're wondering where Belle was during all this time? Well, she was like a little kid running around wagging her tail, grinning, jumping, and never stopping for a picture. She had to go cool off in the pond from all the excitement.

And while Eldon was watching the cows, and Jillian and I were trying to name them, guess what Rosetta was doing? She only had eyes for her Gramp and about every 10 seconds she was hollering "Grampie" in her little baby language!

Jillian and I are still trying to name them. Have you got some great Momma Cow names for us?

For MaMaw

2012-11-07T14:53:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this post today in memory of my wonderful grand-mother who we called MaMaw. I think of her a lot through the days and years of my life but recently I've had her on my mind every day. This is my round-a-bout story of why.

When my husband and I retired out here to the South one of the first things I noticed was that on the porch of practically every old farmhouse was an old metal glider. I would look at them and my heart would race a little bit and I would find myself ~~coveting~~ wanting every glider I saw. Didn't matter if they were rusty, broken, or perfectly white. I just knew that for some reason I had to have one.

The quest began. I looked on Craigslist every few days and never saw any for sale. I looked on ebay and found plenty but they were terribly expensive and how do you ship one of those things? I looked at new reproductions of them and they were expensive and not the real deal.

Reproduction

I have to admit that a few times I contemplated stopping at houses and going to the door and asking if they would sell their glider. I was actually a little embarrassed at how much I wanted one.

One day I went into one of our favorite local antique stores and THERE IT WAS! My glider!!! The price was right and I bought it on the spot. I did notice that it had probably been spray painted to spiff it up and that it had a couple pretty good dents in the edge of the seat, but I didn't even let myself think about the negatives. It came home to reside on my porch.

So.... I was talking to my mother on the phone and telling her about my glider. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "I just feel so weird to say this but I had to have one. I was starting to dream about having one of my own. You know what I'm talking about right, Mom? It is one of those old metal gliders that have the shell shaped back on them."

Mom: "Well you figured out why right?"

Me: "Why what"?

Mom: "Why you wanted one so badly"

Me: "Uh.... no".

Mom: "Well, honey, MaMaw had one. Everytime we would go visit, she would be sitting on the porch in her rocker watching for the car to drive up. You would run and sit on her lap and she would rock and rock you. You loved her glider - you would sit on it for hours with your dolls. When you were older you asked if you could have it!"

Suddenly it all came back and I couldn't believe I had forgotten. I was so thankful to have the memory come back to me. I could so vividly see my MaMaw sitting on the glider, watching for our old station wagon to pull up, and I could actually see my little girl self cuddling on her lap. It is such a miracle to me to think of memories that are tucked away in our brain - events that we may not actually remember but yet things will trigger that same feeling that is deeply hidden in our hearts.

Recently my cousin visited MaMaw and Grampa's old homeplace (long since abandoned) and the only thing I was looking for in the pictures she shared was MaMaw sitting on the glider. I could almost see her there.

My grand-babies love to climb all over it! These precious little girls would be MaMaw's great great grand-daughters.

I'm a Grandma now and I want to be like my MaMaw. Sometimes I think I am. Sometimes I say and do things and I realize that MaMaw said the same thing to me. Things like, "Of course you can have it"! I may not have my MaMaw's glider (I'm sure it was long gone many, many years ago), but now I have a white one just like it and when I sit on it, it takes me back and I'm so thankful for that.

I recognize that it has a lot of "issues". It squeaks when it rocks (no matter how much I grease it!), it is not exactly the strongest thing - two adults on it are a little bit much for it, and it isn't the most comfortable piece of porch furniture ever made. But for me, it is the memories, the warm feeling I have when I look at it, that make me happy with it just the way it is!

This picture is of the next generation - MaMaw's great grand-daughters. My cousin's daughter, Sydnee, on the left and my daughter, Andrea, on the right. Seeing them sitting on my porch in the glider like MaMaw's, I feel like it is a great tribute to her memory.

What a wonderful MaMaw she was. I want to be just like her.

The House on the Hilltop - Part Five

2012-11-06T20:11:00.001-06:00

Continued from The House on the Hilltop - Part Four

October 2012

Its so exciting to be at the place where we are working inside the house now. So far it has been small tedious work that is vital in order to have really huge things in our house - like water, electricity, heating and cooling!!! The plumbing wasn't too big of a deal and Eldon had that complete in no time at all. The electricity and duct work has been a really big job!

See these things??? There are 125 of them in our little house!!!

I helped Eldon pull the wires through the house and helped in the decision making process of where to put outlets, switches, lights and fans. I didn't realize it was such a big deal to decide all that.

Recessed lights and ceiling fan in the vaulted ceiling of the living room. Also, against the wall on the left side we wired it for two gooseneck barn lights.

Somehow I can't seem to get any good pictures of my kitchen ceiling. This one is taken from upstairs. Can you see the wiring in the ceiling?? This is wired for four pendant barn lights.

Upstairs craft room wired for ceiling fan and light, two recessed lights, and two gooseneck barn lights off the back wall.

This looks like a big mess; but it does actually make a lot of sense (well, to Eldon it does).

Almost ready for our rough-in inspection - November 2012

And in case you are wondering, we used 20 foot scaffolding to wire the 26 foot vaulted ceiling in the living room and kitchen. Please don't ask me why I don't have pictures. Maybe I just couldn't stand to look at Eldon way up there.

Some of the duct work in the upstairs.

Air handler in mechanical room upstairs.

Heating and air conditioning unit at back of house.

I hesitated to even do this post as it is such a boring phase of construction! So, to make it a little more exciting here is my choice for my pendant and gooseneck barn lights I've chosen. What do you think?

Barn Light Electric

I love red. I am actually pretty obsessed with red in my house. I can't imagine a day that I wont want red in my house. So, I'm very comfortable with the red in my dining room and kitchen. But when it comes to the gooseneck lights in the living room I'm just not sure on the color. I will also have two of them in my craft room upstairs and not sure on that color either. I am very much a person that loves color, so it is really hard for me to do something like black or bronze. Its a very exciting time for me - I get to really start making some decisions now! I'm really thankful for my daughter, Andrea; she is amazing at decorating and ideas. I rely on her to bounce my ideas off all the time.

This post brings us current on our construction. I imagine it will be awhile before I have much else to add. We are looking forward to being gone for 10 days over Thanksgiving and I'm sure when we are home from that trip we will be working fast and furious on insulation.

Thanks for following along!

To be continued in The House On the Hilltop - Part Six

The House on the Hilltop - Part Four

2012-11-04T21:01:00.000-06:00

Continued from The House on the Hilltop - Part Three

Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan and some things just simply take a lot of contemplation! This was a common sight - "hmmmm".

After all the trusses were up, it actually took quite a number of days for Eldon to tie them all in and make sure everything was spaced perfectly and in the right spot. He was able to do this by himself so I got a few days off! It was tedious work but vital to the overall finish of the roof.

Ready for roof sheeting and exterior sheeting for the upstairs! All I have to say about this is that I was not involved in this part... no matter how hard I tried (and I really did) I could NOT get on that roof. I think it had something to do with the fact that the house is on a steep hill to begin with so it really made it seem high! Or maybe it had to do with the fact that we had Logan (our son) and Justus (our son in law) that live nearby and were willing to give us some time on their days off... so I just enjoyed watching from a comfortable vantage point!

Eldon and Logan starting on roof sheeting between dormers and on gable ends of house - May 2012

Eldon and Justus, going a little higher on the roof sheeting between dormers. Porch roofs all have sheeting - May 2012

While the boys worked on the roof and second floor sheeting I worked on the vapor barrier on the first floor exterior walls. Luckily I had help from Ciara (our daughter in law) but the funny thing is that we had no idea how to do it. And Eldon basically told us to figure it out! So... Ciara did a little research on internet and we watched some YouTube videos and we were off and running! We were paranoid about wrinkles in the stuff so we did a pefectly beautiful job - looked like a pretty wrapped present! (I have since paid a lot of attention to local houses being built by contractors and have seen that their vapor barrier looks like a wrapped present also... but by a 2 year old! So I think we did a pretty good job!). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the progress we made.

Sheeting and vapor barrier complete and doors and windows go in.

Still not sure on the exterior door color, but love it otherwise!

A happy day with all the windows in. (The above picture shows the trim around the windows already. Somehow I missed pictures before that step. Believe me, they didn't just magically trim themselves!) You can also see that the roofing paper is on the roof now too - (there are two different colors because there are two different brands of paper!)

Eldon also trimmed out anything that would be alongside the metal roof before the metal went on, so that when I painted I wouldn't have to do it carefully around the metal.

You can see where I've painted the white on the roof trim (and stopped when it got too scary high for me!!)

Logan eventually came to my rescue and painted up to the peak, as well as the dormers!

The roofers came to do the metal roof and I had something going on the day they were here so I wasn't here to take pictures. I thought I'd get some the next day. When I came home they were done! So, no pictures of the roofers in action.

About this time we began the debate of what to use for the porch ceilings. This seems like it should be a simple decision but since the look we were going for was old country farmhouse it seemed like the best thing was beadboard. It would've really been lovely to find some original tongue and groove beadboard from an old house. Instead we did beadboard sheets and then I painted them. It was a really big job to install (hammering upside down) and even more fun to paint (painting upside down)! Here is a before and after picture:

In the "olden" days they painted the porch ceilings a light blue. The story goes that it kept bugs off the ceiling AND it scared off the bad spirits! I really wanted to paint the ceilings blue, just to go with the old farmhouse traditional, but I didn't have the courage in the beginning (more on that later). So, the color I chose was Simply White (a Benjamin Moore color).

After the porch ceilings were up, Eldon started on the siding. We discussed a lot of different options and considered vinyl siding as it is very popular out here. But we decided to go with the James Hardy Plank Lap Siding. We are so happy with how it looks. It was more money and certainly more labor intensive but it is extremely durable and beautiful when painted.

Charcoal grey metal roof, bead board porch ceiling, trim on windows and doors, Hardy plank lap siding. We love it.

Once the siding was up all around the house, Eldon began the tedious process of trimming out the pillars and beams on the porches. In the mean time I was painting, painting, painting!

Siding on house all painted!

This picture shows the beams and the posts with the trim/vineer that Eldon put on. They looked just beautiful after they were painted.

Gable ends with roof vents in, siding complete and painted.

One last thing to mention on this post. About the time I was finishing up with the front porches, Southern Living magazine published an article on their 2012 Idea House and of course it was a Southern house with all the big porches, white siding, black shutters, etc... AND light blue paint on the porch ceilings. It looked so subtle and beautiful that it gave me the courage to paint our back porch ceiling the same color. It is called Window Pane by Sherwin Williams. I love how gorgeous it is. It is extremely subtle and really only shows up in the late afternoon and evening. Maybe you see it in the above picture? I actually wish it was just one shade darker blue so someday I may change it out; who knows?

Outside complete except for a few things: black shutters, door hardware, and painting the dormers (I can't get up there!!) - September 2012

One more post and it should bring us current to where we are now. Thanks for reading along!

To be continued in The House on the Hilltop - Part Five