Little update

GARDEN/HOUSE:
We finally got rain.  I could hear the plants and trees sighing, no actually I could, really.  The seeds we planted while waiting for rain all came up so looks like we might be having some cukes and beans after all.  DH has off this week and we are going to do some work around the house.  We want to finish the floors in the living room and two small bedrooms.  And we are going to tear out the carpeting in our bedroom and put down laminate in that room as well.  We also have to do all the closet floors.  Then DH is going to till the garden again and we are going to plant some more seeds for our fall garden.  We have never planted a fall garden so this is all new to us.  With the drought, there was one nice thing.  Not very many bugs.  But then there weren't very many plants either LOL.

I have been getting a lot of little peppers and tomatoes off the garden.  I have been freezing them until I have enough to can up some sketti sauce.  I found a recipe for hot sauce I want to try since the peppers that survived are all hot ones.

KITCHEN:
I actually canned some plum preserves the other day.  DH saw them and decided to buy them.  We brought them home, he tasted one and said they are sour and hard as a rock.  Yep he was right they are sour and hard as rocks.  After spending a couple of hours pitting and chopping them up, I told him do not EVER get these again.  My fingers were sore until the next day.  But and here's the thing, they made wonderful preserves.  I had to taste test them before they were canned LOL.  I put them in the slow cooker and let them go on high for about four hours.  That softened them up.  I still didn't use all of them either so I was thinking maybe I could put them with another fruit (blueberries or boysenberries since I have lots in the freezer) and make some jam.  Has anyone done this before?  I think they are Damson plums but I'm not sure.

I got some green peppers from the Amish last week and cut those up and put them in the freezer so I can make my grandma's pepper relish since we are on the last jar of that.  When I make up a batch it usually lasts a couple of years.  At this rate I won't have to make up any relish or jellies/jams/preserves for at least 2-3 years.

I also have all those potatoes I got from the garden.  I'm thinking of canning most of those up.  I had canned some store bought potatoes in the fall and those were real handy to make some hashbrowns for breakfast.  I also have a bunch of hamburger I want to can up too.  I don't want to wait until we loose electricity and then say I should have canned it up.

CHICKENS:
The girls are doing fine.  We had been giving them watermelon and had a fan on them during the heatwave.  Maybe we were giving them a little too much watermelon cause they kind of got the squirts, poor things.  We have two that we are going to have to clean their butts up.  This is something that we always look forward to...next flock we get will be handled more cause chasing chickens is not a lot of fun.

CATS:
The cats are doing great except Roxy who seems to be feeling his age lately.  Penny is loving the outdoors and in all that heat she wanted to go out but she wouldn't come in when you called.  Crazy girl!  And she crawls under the door to the chickens fenced in area and stays with them.  I don't know maybe they have a girl get together :)  Tikki has been his lazy self but has been jumping up on the bed after DH leaves in the morning so I can make a fuss over him.

QUILTING:
I worked on a small quilt and got most of the quilting done on it.  I just have to bind it and it will be done.  I also started quilting on another one and almost have that done except the binding.  I knitted up a little pair of footies for me.  I only had one little ball of yarn in this particular colorway and thought I would try to make a pair.  I even had a little bit left over.  The ball only had about 200 yards in it which isn't quite enough to make a decent pair of socks.  I have a couple of more 200 yard balls in my stash so I think I will be making some more.

READING:
Right now I'm reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.  It's not bad and really interesting that it was written before the Civil War.  If you haven't read it, it's about slavery.  Some parts kind of slow down the narrative but when you think that the author actually lived during this time and saw these things going on it really makes you think.  I have a lot more to read after I get done with this one.  I checked my Kindle and I have 7 pages of books on there.  Each page is 10 books so that's 70 I have to read.  Like I don't have other things that have to get done...

NEW PLACE:
We called around to see how much it would be to put in a water well.  The two places we called it was going to be over $6000.  Crazy.  Of course, it was just a guesstimate because they really don't know how far down they have to drill but that price was the minimum.  We have a couple more places to call.  Hopefully we can find someone more reasonable.  We have decided to get a little cabin.  We looked at a few and really liked them.  DH is saying now maybe we should have bought a piece of land with a house and well already on it.  I could say I told him so but I won't ;)  He thought it would be cheaper to get a piece of property and put a cabin on it...ummm NO.  We went to Marvin's (a building supply store) today to look around.  And we kept saying we need one of those and a few of those and....you get the picture.  This cabin is just the shell.  If we have extra windows we want to be put in they will put them in for $50 extra but we have to buy the windows.  Marvin's has excellent prices but I told DH that we should check at Home Depot and Lowe's because they have returns and scratched and dented things that they put on sale.  Now of course I know that windows and doors can't be too dented.  You have to be able to open and close them but a few cosmetic scratches doesn't hurt the operation of them and I have seen some pretty good deals before in those stores.  Oh and the well situation, we asked about whether they douse (you know when someone goes around with a stick or two metal rods and locates water) and the one driller just laughed.  Hey if someone can find water and there is less ground to drill through I think we might try it.  Jeez Louise we all aren't made of money.  Anyway I remembered that one of my books in the Foxfire set had something about wells in it so I looked and yes in volume #4 there is all about dowsing and well digging.  So DH and I decided that we will try to douse.  We're not going to dig however.  That can be dangerous.  Wish us luck!  I'll let you know what we find if  anything.

Well I think I caught you up on everything for now.  I hope to get some pics up soon.

Talk to ya later!

Denise

Update on the flooring

On Thursday we started the flooring in the craft/computer room.  Needless to say there was a lot of stuff to be moved out of there.  Hubby just kept shaking his head and mumbling dont know why...:)  Told him not to open the closet (good thing we didnt have to do that floor in there yet).  It is a good reason to get rid of some stuff though.  I even (gasp) got rid of some yarn.   But everything needs to be looked over and either donated or sold.  We didnt get the room done but almost.  It took a lot of time to take off the baseboards, pull up the carpet, pull up the little wooden strip with nails and pound down the nails into the cement.  We have a cement slab and it was easier to pound down the nails than try to pull them up cause if you try to pull them up some of the cement usually comes with them.  Then we laid down the foam (this is for a floating floor) and then I stayed on the floor fitting the pieces while hubby went out and cut the end pieces I needed to complete each section.  It went pretty quick but we tuckered out.  Must have been all the moving out of stuff LOL.  Needless to say we were very sore the next day.  I'm still a little sore.  My upper downer is pretty sore.  Hard to sit down and even harder to stand up.  Getting old and too fat I guess for this kind of stuff.  We are planning to finish up the floor here next week when hubby has another day off and then we will have to go to Home Depot to get some half round to put with the baseboards to make it all look professional.  Will try to get pics but half my "stuff" is in other rooms and I put together my computer just last night. 

The truck still isnt working.  Hubby got a brand new battery but it wouldnt start.  He thinks its the starter.  He has put one of those on the truck before so maybe we will be getting that part and he can put it on when he has time. 

We're supposed to be getting up to 7 inches of snow and if it snows that much he probably will not be going to work.  They dont have snow plows here that I know of and usually use sand on the roads if we get dustings of snow.  It's not the snow that worries my hubby just the crazy people down here that have never driven in it.  Kinda scary.  He works at Kroger and they were so busy yesterday that he had a hard time putting out lunchmeat there were so many people in there.  Its crazy to have to run to the store immediately because of a storm coming but thats what they do.  No planning.  And the things that they buy kind of crack me up.  Its always toilet paper, milk and bread.  We lose electricity your milk will go bad (in the summer) and what they dont need something to put on the bread?  We're set unless we lose electricity but even then we'll be OK.  We have a fireplace and some fake logs.  They dont make much heat but some and if worse comes to worse we can go get a kerosene heater although hubby's sinuses cant take that smell too much.  We have the cats for heat too :)

Has everyone got their seed catalogs yet?  We have gotten so many.  Cant wait for spring!

Talk to ya later!

Denise

New Chicken pics!

Here she is again with the camera...I have more important things to do than go blind from camera flashesWhere's the food?Lovely Little Lettie!Who are you lookin' at?I think there's some good stuff over hereAnd finally here is a pic of the modifications we made to our coop.  It was way too hot in the little coop so DH made a little screen door and put a chain on the main door so it wouldnt slam shut.  He also made a little platform for the waterer so there's not so much litter in the water now.  Since this pic we added some little sliding locks so the screen door stays in place.  As the wood dried out it started sliding around pretty good.  What's up next?  Maybe some easy chairs for the little ladies...dont think they're spoiled any do ya?

Talk to ya later!

Denise

Toilet chuckle

DH put the old toilet out front to be taken by the garbage men. About three days later our neighbor across the street also put out his old toilet. This guy copies everything that the other neighbors do. Just had to chuckle about that...Kind of looks funny with two toilets being across from one another on the same street. Wonder if the other neighbors will be changing out their toilets as well?

New toilet!

These are the Jerusalem artichokes on April 30th. They are much bigger now. I'm looking for recipes for these. I hope I like them. We planted eggplant last year and discovered that neither of us likes them so did not plant them again this year even though we had a really good crop of them last year. They must be related to zuccini...

Yes we have put in a new toilet. It is a Jacuzzi (ooohhh ahhhh). The old toilet had been rocking and when DH tried to tighten it down he kinda cracked the bottom and it still rocked. So we went and bought one and then it sat in our bedroom for a couple of weeks until DH had off. We had problems of course. No problems taking the old one off except that the bolts were corroded. But DH got it out of there while I unpacked everything out of the box and then cleaned the floor arnd the old toilet. Surprisingly it did not stink at all...thought it would but it didn't. DH cleaned off the old wax and then I got out the screws to fit into the flange. They didn't fit...hmmm. DH tried every which way to try to get them to fit and the heads were just too big. There weren't any other screws that I could see anywhere so he got his trusty hacksaw and sawed off part of head and put them in the flange. He then put the wax seal on the main toilet part and carried over and we lined it up and dropped it. Well I noticed that there were some other screws in with the wax ring and guess what? Yes the screws that were to be on the flange were in with the wax ring...sigh. So after removing the toilet DH went to the hardware store and picked up another two screws. To make a long story short, we got the toilet in! And guess what it rocked! Seems our wonderful house builders didnt get the floor level. So we shimmed the stupid thing! Now it doesnt rock! Yay!! The seat is higher off the floor too and it uses a very small amount of water so it should save us money in the long run.

So DH and I have a new Kibow (for the Park family members out there, you know what I mean). The only thing is that it has a plastic seat but it should last I hope...

DH rotilled another patch so I could plant beans, peas and sunflowers. Dont know whether all the peas will come up though (the seeds were from 2004).

Denise