Green & chilly spring days

We are in that glorious phase of spring where the open space around our house is greening up and starting to look really nice as if we spend a lot of time caring for it. Soon we will be in that stage where it's obvious that they are mostly non-native species, and lots of noxious weeds at that. We have a few areas of actual yard grass, 2 areas in fact, that we seeded last spring after doing a bit of moving dirt around with a day tractor rental.

One grass area is on the east side of the house by the fruit trees, making it really nice in the evenings in the heat of summer. The dogs and Little M and I go back there after summer suppers, when the shadows start getting long, and we relax in the shade. Sometime this spring & summer we are hoping to build a play structure, and it will go on the edge of this patch of grass, in the late evening shade from the house. I can imagine hot summer evenings spent pushing Little M on the swings and sending her down the slide, the dogs relaxing in cool green comfort beside us.

Ah, the warmth of summer... It has been rather windy and chilly the past couple days here. On Wednesday I volunteered at the region's Envirothon competition, which was fun as back when I was in high school my friends and I competed in Envirothon as well. In fact, I partly thank Envirothon for where I am today in the work world -  employed in the biology field. The poor students must have been pretty cold, though, and not all of them came prepared for the windy chilly weather we experienced. When the sun was out, it was nice, but unfortunately that wasn't all of the time!

At home, even though it has been cold some days and many nights (we even had a frost yesterday morning), we have had enough warm periods and sunny days to get the fruit trees up and going. The apricot in particular is almost ready to burst into bloom. I took a bunch of pictures that I was planning on sharing, but at the moment I think my computer is needing a reboot and I can't seem to upload anything... Oh well! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

To-Do List Update

I just realized it has been almost two months since I last updated our to-do list on here, and almost as long since I sat down and tallied up all the projects we had crossed off the list! Oops! If you want to check out what I had on the last list, check out February's ongoing project to-do list here. Although I gave you an update on what I did off of that list at the end of February (here), I am realizing that although I updated the to-do list for March and put it up on the fridge, I never blogged about it, and still haven't updated and printed a new list for the fridge for April - double oops! Since it's now almost May (wow, how did that happen?), I guess I really need to move on and focus on May!

We've had some very busy weeks since the end of February, with several interesting little upheavals in our lives. Although there have definitely been some downsides, one upside has been in the amount we've gotten done around the house & property! Can I hear a YAY for spring?!

So the reason I'm updating this list now, when we're sitting near the end of April, is that we have some deadlines coming up - the chicks will be arriving in early July, so we need the chicken coop to be ready by then, and my parents are visiting in early June and my Dad would feel lost if we didn't have a project for him to help with while they are here.


I figure if I set a deadline at the end of May to get a bunch of items on our To-Do list done by, then we'll have just over a month to cross items off our list. I even think I'll make a weekend plan for each weekend or week between now and the end of May to put up on our fridge, so that we know what needs to happen weekly to get everything done on time.

The neat thing about going through that old To-Do List from February is I am realizing that I have crossed (or mostly crossed) several things off the list and although I know I took pictures of the process, I obviously haven't managed to completely finish them or blog about them. Look out for some reno-type posts in the next week or so when I have some more time.

Current To-Do List:
Finish black trim in hall/living area
Screw down the connector trim between hardwood & the kitchen floor & same for the front hallway
Finish the exterior nails & insulation & trim on the sunporch
Finish setting the west sliding glass door in place & sprayfoam it inside
Finish chicken coop
Design play structure
Order play structure components (large beams, slide, etc) that we can't get locally

Next Goals:
Nursery Trim
Bedroom Trim
Build 2 garden gates
Sunporch...

Chicken Coop - progress update

Well after weeks of slow work we finally have the doors hung on the inside of our coop! We left off a section of chicken wire that should separate the two pens, so right now we have one large pen on the inside where longer term there may end up being two (hence the two doors!).

On the outside, my husband has been hard at work stripping and smoothing out logs to serve as posts for the outside fenced in run. I think the posts make the run look really beautiful, and makes the old run-down coop look pretty ratty!

My husband went to elaborate lengths to make sure all the posts were the same height, leveling out trenches to make it all look perfect for me (he's such a keeper!).

And check out how he cleverly hid the screws in the half posts he attached directly to the coop! He whittled little sticks to pound into the holes, and then planed them off to match!

notice the screw hole in the shadow of Little M's head

tapping the whittled stick into the opening

hidden screw - looks just like a branch grew from there once!

Little M had so much fun spending the day outside with us working on the coop. Her dirty little face just lights up my day :)

Little M helping Papa hold the post level

 I'll be linking up to the homestead barn hop, head on over to check out what homesteading families all over have been up to this past week!

Bright new color in the kitchen

I'm finally done enough in the kitchen to share our new color. It's Mirage Lake by Behr. And I LOVE it. I got the color from this rug that I've had for years. When it ended up in the kitchen several months ago, I realized how nicely the color went with the cabinets. Even though we intend to totally redo the kitchen at some point in the future (I'm talking in the next decade here!), I thought a fresh bright color in there would some of the dingier aspects of the space more bearable :) We really don't like the open cabinets (I mean, some would be nice, but all of them?!), and the floors are livable but in pretty rough shape, but we are saving up for other things and having a beautiful new kitchen isn't high on the reno list right now since the kitchen is in good enough shape to use.

Isn't the color so bright and cheery?!

Here are some bits that I was very happy to remove from the room. First, the crazy wallpaper that was hidden behind the window trim - crazy, right?!

Then there were all of the gouges from whoever it was that removed all that wallpaper from the rest of the room. Oh, and the pin marks everywhere. I can't imagine what all they had up on the walls... but it was bad! I had to patch everywhere! And I can't easily forget the various shades of tan & white all over...

I was lucky when I selected the color though, I had the best helper ever! She was very interested in the paint color chips, and playing with them kept her busy for quite some time :)

Here is the end result again - it took me several weeks to get it all ready to paint, paint the first coat & all the edges, and then roll on the second coat. Totally worth all the time I spent! Sorry that in this picture the kitchen is pretty messy with dishes and things all over the counter, but I have been finding that the only times it's clean during the week is after dark!