I know everyone is waiting for some new pictures and I have quite a few! I’m going to see if I can upload them and see if I exceed my limit of activity for the day with the sat dish! Let’s cross our fingers and see how it goes!

We’re been having a lot of visitors and all to the farm, and I’m sure the neighbors are keeping tabs. Haha… after all, there is not a lot to do around here. This was a busy day with Jeff and Steve both out, helping with some electrical issues and helping to move our big office desks and most of the business stuff. Lots of work!

I took this to show really the closeness of the road and the house. It seems a lot closer in some photos then it really is. It’s almost 20 feet from the road. Yeah, it’s a little close, but the house is very well insulated and the traffic seems to vary. At night, it’s very low. Weekends are not bad either. Just during the week, during the day is the traffic a little higher. But that’s a lot of the time we’re busy working, so it’s really not that bad. In fact, I kind of like the fact that all of our land is back yard. We can utilize every bit of it without having a big lawn that no one wants to use in front of the house. It’s very easy to mow, Maggie got it done in less than an hour today.

Our first official mail at the homestead! Maggie got two birthday cards on her birthday! How cool is that?

This is what we found underneath Maggie’s yucky carpeting up there in her gal cave. It’s not good, but it’s not too bad. Right now, sanding and refinishing and all is not in our budget. So we are going to paint it with a good hard coat porch paint and get a couple nice rugs. I think it will look wonderful and perhaps in a year or so we can considered doing it nicer. She’s happy either way.

My dear daughters. They are my best buddies for sure and we all get along so nicely. We had a little birthday celebration for Maggie on our first night at the homestead. The glowing smiles tell the story so well. We are all very very happy here.

Maggie is transformed. She is all smiles and eye contact, she’s happy, helpful and active. She’s loosing weight, she’s outside all the time, and she loves the place. She is just so relieved to be getting her routines in place and her room in order. My heart is so very happy for her, she’s found her home for certain. She’s protective of the place, even to giving her Dad heck for accidentally breaking a window! There is no doubt that she has claimed her share of the ownership of the place and is already invested in it’s care and developement. It’s so cool.

Our first full day! We decided that we really needed to get the kitchen in order because there are just too few choices of “fast” food around here and we really wanted to feel a little more settled. So we all pitched in and got started, and managed to get some headway after a few hours. I am happy to report that we are now quite done with the first phase of the kitchen and it is functioning quite nicely.

The living room is really quite simple and empty… we sure do need to do a little furniture acquisition in the coming months! We have our little loveseat and a table and two dog crate end-tables! haha… But it works and we’re content.

The big office is all put together and functioning. What a difference for Jessy! She loves it! Everything is laid out and easy to find. She’s been doing a little adjusting here and there as she works with it, but so far, she is the queen of her lair and a happy camper for sure.

Being at the front and at the easy stairs to the house, the parlor was a bit of a dumping grounds for a few days. But we’ve gotten it all moved throughout the house or into the storage room and it’s nice and empty now. Ready for dancing! It’s such a big area, and empty… I’m going to have to start saving for that grand piano sooner than I thought! (I’ve been seeing them on Craigslist for just super low prices! No one plays anymore and they are just big and take up space. So I’m hoping soon to get one and get back to playing…)

If you didn’t figger it out by now, there’s no doubt that there’s some hillbilly blood in my veins, especially when you see how good we can overload a stationwagon! Poor Blue… she was at her max on the last trip from the Moby. We just wanted to get done and she had a full load inside and then flooring, trees and a vaccuum and a bike strapped on top! My neighbor laughed so much, I thought he’d get sick. She was surely loaded but got us all the way home safely! After 25 trips, I can say, this is one good ol’ car.

Next morning we found that she had a flat. A big nasty screw was the reason and I’m pretty sure we got it at the dump area at the mobile home park. We took a bunch of stuff over to throw away and there was junk and nasty bits of stuff everywhere there. I’m so thankful that she got us home and safe before finally letting go. We got to have a homeschool lesson on changing tires that day!

Well, Maggie got a lesson on tire changing. Thank goodness, Gunnar had a spare, because when we looked, Blue had none! Learned all about tires and jacks and such. Of course, I’ve changed tires before, but Maggie had not and she was keen to learn it all. After we got the little dinky donut spare on, we headed to town to find out where we might get the flat fixed. We discovered that the closest town has no car repair place. So we were directed out in the country more a bit to a business that was repair and salvage and that was a fun adventure. Got two good decent tires for the back and changed for under $70. And might even have someone interested in buying Gunnar. Yeah, 4 transmissions is my limit. I think it’s safe to say my dream car is a lemon. I’m going to sell it to the highest bidder pretty much and cut my heartache and losses at this point.

My plants are doing pretty well, those that we brought from the moby. Most are fine, a few are a little iffy. We planted all the trees and about 75% of them are fine. These lilac bushes by the garage are thriving! I think as the weeks progress those that are little stunted will come out of it. I’d rather have brought them then to have left them to the park scavangers. They meant a lot to me and represent a good amount of cash invested as well. 12 fruit trees alone, that’s some good cash and potential as well. And all my Mother’s Day irises and such… just glad I brought them with me.

Agh! Invasion of the cabbage weeds!!!! I am not a fan of Roundup… however…. I might have to systematically kill a few of the more invasive critters in my garden! First is chopping and digging, but if they persist, they will be getting a little cocktail of killer juice! They are growing so fast, you can almost see them enlarge before your eyes! And I have some serious thistle weeds out in the yards here and there… really big ones! Going to need to get chopping at those bad boys soon.

We planted the two little dwarf pears by the bridge, I hope they survive, they will look so cute there. They should only get about 8 to 10 feet tall, and we can always keep them cute and pruned. I just thought they would add a little more to the whole bridge gateway to the back acreage!

A kitchen still life…. flowers from the Moby and clean dishes from Windhaven! Ah…. home!

This is Evee after one of her famous runs in her dog yard. She gets going and rips around the area like a mad woman and the old dogs just stand there and admire her youth. The yard is 50 foot by 100 foot in area and has trees and such here and there as good obstacles. She has a race track mapped out and will run and run and run until her tongue is hanging near to the ground. It’s a good thing.

After she recovers, and drinks nearly a whole bowl of water, she goes and sneaks a nap on my bed. She’s such a little goofball. Just love her expression and her eyes.

Okay, here I am starting my office floor project. With lovely hardwood laminate from some wonderful friends (thanks Pam and Bill!!!) I read the instructions, got the little tool and was ready to make it happen! Being unskilled in this process and of course lacking the internet for those handy tips and such, it did take me a little longer, but well, I kept at it and in a few hours… I had it all done and it’s just beautiful!!!

My office is slightly temporary at the moment, becuase I have bigger plans for the final outcome of it. However, my desires and plans have been tapped with lack-of-money-itis, so for a while, until we recover a bit, my office will be as it is. I’ll try and take a shot of it with the drawing table and such installed, but it’s good. It’s comfy and I can at least get back to work and blog and all that stuff. I want to install some neat shelving in there for my crafts and such, since my bedroom is so small, there won’t be much room in there for most of my non-clothing belongings. Which is fine, because I have this lovely little private office. Maybe in June I’ll be able to do it up the way I’d like it… yeah…. just going to have to save up a little bit. (Hint… it’s going to be using some lovely Ikea shelving units… and a new thin, long desktop. How exciting!)

Ah, here’s the kitchen looking a little bit better for sure! We don’t have a real frig or a stove yet, but soon. We’re in no rush as we have a nice freezer and a great cooler that we’re using and of course, we haven’t had a real big girl stove for three years, so we’re fine in that department as well. We have a nice countertop oven that we love and works great. However, since we currently do not have ANY propane gas appliances, and we have a nearly full tank of propane, we desided that a gas oven would be a good thing. At this rate, that tank will probably run it for years on end! Haha…

We had the most DETERMINED Lady Robin who was bent on making her nest in our screen porch. Now, I might have said sure, but it was right by our dog yard door and she was not happy with us coming and going. Jessy is very afraid of birds and we’re working on getting her over that, so a squawking upset momma bird was not helping matters much. And she would get upset and then couldn’t figure out how to get out and I was just afraid she was going to get hurt or the cats might get her, just all sorts of unpleasant outcomes.

So we kept removing her nest. And she would rebuild. We taped up all the entrances, she would still get in. She laid an egg, and then got upset and left it. We removed the nest again. She got back in and just laid an egg on the ledge! So we removed it. We found another egg out in the yard that some bird must have snatched as it had two little piercings in it, so we saved it with the first two, in one of the nests. And we did more taping and used some cardboard and FINALLY… Miss Robin has gotten the hint. She’s left. I feel bad, but I just didn’t want her to get hurt or to hurt us, or just make things miserable until her babies left. There are SO many lovely spots out in the yard for her. I hope she has found a good one.

Caught an oriole at my office feeder… yeah! We love those! I’m going to make a little jelly feeder for them and see if they come back. We have SO many birds around here… just amazing amounts of different birds. So far we have seen…. goldfinches, red headed finches, sparrows, chickadees, grackles, orioles, bluebirds, cardinals, nuthatch, red headed woodpeckers, downey headed woodpeckers, crows, cowbirds, red winged blackbirds, bluejays, red tailed hawks, red breasted groesbeaks and a little chipmunk. (He eats at the feeders all the time!) Oh yes, and mourning doves. It’s like grand central station at our little courtyard feeders! I just lay in bed and watch them in the morning for the longest time. It’s just delightful!

Love the country for sure, but this was one of the best pictures to see! The satellite man here to get us back in touch with the world! It’s not quite the same as our super fast all the time no limit city internet but let me tell you, we’re just tickled to be back online again. It makes our place absolutely perfect… all the wonderfulness of country living, with the technology that lets us live out here and make a living! The best of both worlds!!!

Well, hope that helps to make up for the lack of news from the last week! I’m off to bed and a little more rest for my achy body. I hope I feel much better tomorrow… I want to hit the week rolling and see how far down our deck of to do cards we can make it! I have promised myself, chickens by next Saturday, so I need to get some work done so I can enjoy the whole process of Chickens 101!!!! Yah!!!!