He said he wanted a purple wall

The youngest boy has been asking to have a purple room for over a year.  He finally agreed to have a purple wall.  So while he was away at summer camp I got to work.

I added several large super hero pictures to complete the room and he came home with smiles on his face.  Three layers of paint!  So glad that it was only one wall that I had to do. 

Not as Lucky in the other bedrooms

I pulled up the corner of the carpet in one of the other bedrooms.  While the floors look like they have so much potential, they definitely need to be refinished and can't be uncovered and temporarily enjoyed until the refinishing starts.  This will definitely have to wait until next year.

A project that came too soon

Three of the bedrooms have carpet, and after a little peek at the corner I knew there were original hardwood floors underneath.  My goal is to one day pull them up and finish them myself.  I thought that project might happen next year.  

And then we had a bad house guest that ruined the carpet in our main guest room.  I had no choices but to take on the project now.

 So I started here.  Thinking I'd tear up this section first to see what was underneath.

And I lucked out, big time!

Perhaps I should turn the heater up

It's a little cold inside the house apparently.  I find my fingers and hands getting cold when I'm working on my computer and other than not  using the computer, there isn't much I can do about it, so I created a solution.

Now I can still use the computer since it has a touch pad mouse.

Firewood

I came home from the gym this morning and decided it was time to start cutting up the trees that the county chopped down.  I knew it would be easier to cut them when they were still fresh, and I figured it was an eye sore.  I cut them into firewood size chunks with the chainsaw and then had the boys come out to help me.

We loaded up our little trailer and I'd drive them up the driveway to unload behind the house where our firewood pile is.  

The first load

 I told the oldest that he gets to split them with the ax and I went back down to get a second load with the youngest.

When I came back, I was suprised to see how much he'd split.

No water

We woke up Wednesday morning to no water.  This is one of my biggest fears.

I had to run to the gym to shower for work and I called my handyman and a well guy.  I came home early from work to try to figure out what the problem was and we determined that the pressure tank had a busted bladder.  This meant that the tank wasn't creating and holding the pressure to keep water.

So I had to buy a new pressure tank.

Even after that was installed we were having a minor issue so we had to put in a check valve.

This all took a couple days to get to, so for the first two days, every time we needed to use the shower or a sink, we had to run downstairs to turn the power back on to the well pump so that we'd have water in the house.  It wasn't until Saturday night that things were back to normal.

Happy Mother's Day

This year for Mother's Day, I decided to make sure I got something good, so I made myself a raised flower bed.

This was the bed after I put together the lumber and filled it with the soil I had on hand.  I had bought a few perennials to plant in it as well.

The Spring Break Project

Some friends were over a week or two ago and mentioned that we could damage our foundation and be having water leaking in to our basement due to our raised beds.  They said that the best thing to do was to pull all of the soil out, put down a barrier, that would go up along the walls, and then put the soil back.  

So that's what we did.

I think shoveling the soil out was the worst part of the job.  I worked on it alone the first day and the second day I had a little help.

This was all of the dirt that came out of the bed.

The second day was non-stop shoveling.  We took a break for lunch and a break for... well just for a break.  But otherwise we worked from morning until 5PM to get it finished.  We even brought over some of the compost to add to the top.

I replanted the rose buses and a couple other plants that had already started growing, my fingers are crossed that they will re-establish themselves.  It isn't completely done as I'd like to add some more boulders, transplant some day lilies, and put some more soil in to make sure it's angled correctly to shed the water away from the house, but I think it's going to be better once it's done.

The new coop

I just found the pictures of the new coop that was built a couple months ago.  Apparently I never posted them.

I was pretty proud of my nest boxes this time.  I will probably add some curtains just to make things cute.

The roost bars are three bars that are each about 8 feet long.  I think this is plenty of space for them to roost.  I got smarter and have them spaced a little further apart so they won't poop on each other.  :)

I've noticed some birds have trouble getting up to the higher two bars, so I'll probably add a ladder to the lower bar at some point.

My first sewing adventure

Despite my great intentions, I still haven't made anything, until now.  The coop has been very cold and the wind hasn't been making the chickens very happy so I bought some material to liven things up and I made curtains.

Apples and Storage

I woke up this morning knowing we had to get those apples taken care of.  It turns out that making apple sauce is really easy!  Luckily a neighbor loaned me a sieve to attach to my mixer and we ran to Target to buy a grinder so this made it even easier.

The first recipe that we tried only had us core the apples before tossing them in a pot for awhile and then tossing them through the sieve.

The first batch was a little thin compared to what I like, but man it tasted good.

This was the stuff that the sieve filtered out.  It was all the seeds and peels with the juice squeezed out.  Pretty interesting.

I even realized that I could sit in the living room and peel while I watched the football games.  The oldest snapped a picture of me hard at work, with Faith just waiting for me to toss her some apple peels.

We put a lot of peels in the dehydrator with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon and I'll slice up the rest of the apples and dry them as well.

We managed to get through a full box of apples (40 pounds) and about 15 pounds from the second box.  I already told the woman that we bought them from that I think I want another box before our order from another source comes in next week.

Once we had all of that done, I finally enlisted the boys' help to carry the boxes of jars down to the basement storage room.  Last week, the oldest and I built this shelf.  It's not quite done yet because I need another 2x4 to finish the lowest shelf, but we were able to fill one shelf with all of the tomato products and we put the jams and peaches on the top shelf.

Then I moved another shelf into the room to fit all of the other jars.  I'm not sure if I realized just how many things I had canned this summer until I started filling the shelves.

Peaches

Pickles 

Some of the apple sauce and canned apple chunks

Pie Fillings 

I plan to can a lot more apple slices and then to do some apple pie filling with the next batches.  It may look like we have a lot, but really it doesn't seem like it would last very long with these two boys and considering how many cases of jars I purchased during a recent clearance sale, I have a lot of work to do still.  We'll be building a couple more shelves in that room soon.

Nokesville Road Roosters' Makeover

It was time for the Roosters to have a make over.  We are hoping to paint them once a month to change with the seasons and holidays, but first we have to reward the people who helped to replace them by letting them do the dirty work to paint a rooster.  :)

This time it was a woman who commutes over an hour to work each day and drives past the roosters.  She was very supportive of them being replaced and is just a friendly person that we now know.  She came by for her turn to paint and was going with an 80's rock band theme with bright colors and big hair.

The oldest and I decided to celebrate football season starting.

We couldn't figure out how to give it big hair, but then we saw some garland that was still on the mailbox post from last winter (whoops) and added that and an earring to the bird.

 

Those nutty roosters are at it again.

We've already planned out Octobers' themes and have a few people coming to help paint them.

Amazingly pickled

When I made the next batches of pickles last week, I was a bit nervous.  We hadn't tried the first batch of pickles since they needed to wait four to six weeks, and I'm a bit picky about how I like my pickles.  What if I made this second batch and then when we tried them in a few months, they tasted horrible?  What a waste that would be.

I decided yesterday to crack open a jar from the first batch.  It had been seven weeks since they were made and I figured if they tasted bad, I wouldn't make any more.

I passed a pickle to each of us.

I have to say, they were some of the best darn pickles that I've ever had.  My reaction was "Darn, we should have made more pickles...." and I started wondering where I could get larger jars and more pickling cucumbers.

The oldest agreed with me that we need a lot more jars of pickles to line the basement walls.

Growing Potatoes

I decided to record the details about how I planted potatoes this year since I didn't do the traditional route and I am curious about how this method will turn out.  So far it isn't looking great.

We went the cage route this year.  With the boys help, I build 6 tall cylinder cages out of wire fencing.  I used a bale of straw to spread around the sides of the cage, poured in some soil, and then placed the potato spuds on top of the soil.  I topped it off with more soil and watered it.

It started with only about 6-12 inches of soil at the bottom and it didn't seem like it took very long to see green leaves poking up through the soil.

I decided to make have three more cylinders, but this time I used three that were already made and someone had just given them to me.  They were wider and shorter.

 The plants seemed to sprout like crazy, and now, at the end of July it's been two months since things were planted and seven out of the five cages have a lot of green growing in them.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that two of the cages looked dead.  Not only were the plants dead, but they were now completely gone.  Since I have been working in the garden a lot, I decided to knock the two cages over and see what the cages had produced up to this point.

It wasn't good.

There were only potatoes in the bottom 12 inches of each cage and although these will taste great, it really isn't what I was hoping for.

Cage One

Cage Two

Everything I read said that there should be potatoes in the entire cage, as soil is added, potatoes will grow in layers.  That definitely didn't happen with these two.

Based on what I've read, this isn't the best method and trenches are the best way to grow potatoes, with raised beds being the second best way.  I'm hoping that the wider, shorter cages will be more similar to raised beds and will have a better yield.

This blog was shared on the following blog hops (please click the name to go check out their blog hop):
Frugally Sustainable
Down Home Blog Hop
The Homesteaders Hop

The case of the missing rooster

Yesterday afternoon we had a knock on our door.  Someone had seen the huge sign we put up at the mailbox stating that the rooster statue was stolen and we were offering a reward for it.  She said that she saw a rooster in front of a house over the weekend in the next county over.  She told me she'd never seen it before and when she saw our sign just then, she'd made a u-turn to come back and tell me.  

She gave me directions on how to get to it and we got in the car and off we went.  I kept telling the boys it wasn't going to be our rooster.  I didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to put the rooster out in front of their house, less than half an hour away.

Not our rooster

Sure enough, it wasn't our rooster.

We came home.

Today I got a message from someone on Facebook saying her friend saw a rooster that had to have been ours.  I replied and told her that the one on "Green Road" isn't ours, and she told me that was the one that she had seen.

I'm thankful that people are looking for it and noticing things and trying to help.  I just with the thieves had it somewhere to be spotted.  I believe that whoever took the rooster have it tucked back in the woods on their own property, perhaps as a funny target for shooting at, and it will never be seen again.

And that got me thinking about the path our rooster has taken with us.

Awhile back, a good friend of mine shared this blog post with me from The Bloggess.  I laughed out loud.  Several times.  I just knew that when I purchased my house, I had to get a rooster too.  A few months later when I finally did buy my house, I started looking for my own rooster, and that good friend was also trying to find me one too.

Finally, after searching for about six months, I found my own rooster.

When we got him home, I bought spray paint to repaint him just so the colors would stand out a little more, and then we propped him up by the mailbox and chained him down so no one would take him.

Sure enough, a few months later we found him laying on the ground.  Someone had moved the boulders and tried to take him but stopped when they saw he was chained down.

For Christmas I thought it would be funny to start painting him for the different holidays.  We started with red and green.

 And then we added a strand of Christmas lights.

I had been hoping to paint it red, white, and pink with hearts for Valentine's Day but didn't have the paint or the time.

For Easter I knew we would do an Easter Egg, but the vision in my mind was much better than what my artistic abilities could create.

And then for the summer we painted him red, white, and blue and I even got smart and created a stencil to put some stars on him.

The plan was to paint him orange like a pumpkin at the start of October and I hadn't decided how to paint him between now and then.  He was stolen before I came up with any ideas.

Now that I've seen how the community liked him and liked watching him change, I'm determined to replace him and paint him more often.  It still won't look great as painting a metal rooster with spray paint isn't easy to do, but now that I've gotten smarter and I can make stencils, I think I can come up with some ideas.

This post was shared on Thursdays @ the Homestead Blog Hop