All In A Little Over A Week

A lot has happened this last week. I think that the first thing was that Jeff put in the wood floors. He did an amazing job putting them in.

(This picture was taken on Tuesday)

This is the office floor. The wood floors we got when we were redoing our living room, we got 800 square feet of 4" rustic oak wood (rustic means there are knots in the wood) from Siwek lumber yard in Jordan, MN. We have now put the floors in the living room, dining room and office and we still have more wood in the garage.

Since the wood floors are "rustic" once they are in we needed to fill all of the knot holes with putty before the floors were sanded. 

(This picture was taken Wednesday)

Jeff is standing in the living room taking a picture of the dining room and office floors right after he finished sanding them. While Jeff sanded, stained and polyurethaned  the floors the kids and I went to my friends cabin, its a good thing we went because there was so much dust from sanding the floors and Jeff said the whole house smelled like stain.

It was nice to have a few days with my friend Amanda and her little girl. Check out her blog almostevelyn. We had a good time talking about life and life since we had kids and became parents.

 Natalie really liked watching the boats go by, she would wave and yell "HI BOATS".

All to soon it was time to go back home. This is what we came home to on Friday after lunch.

(This picture was taken Friday)

Isn't it beautiful? It was also the only clean part of the house so I set to work right away dusting and sweeping everything, everything had a nice thick layer of dust from when Jeff sanded the floors. Not my first choice of how to spent a Friday night, but it was needed. We also put the last 2 coats of polly on the floors Friday night.

Saturday I painted baseboard while Jeff watched the kids.

 I wanted to go with an older style baseboard to keep in style with our 1913 house, and I'm painting all of the trim with linen white paint from Home Depot. The hard part was painting all of the corner pieces, sorry I dont have any pictures of them because I was COVERED in paint.

Sunday Jeff started putting in the baseboard.

Its coming together nicely!

I just am in awe at how fast these two rooms are coming together. 

Sunday night I painted the door for the room. Its a new door but is the same style of door that is original to the house.

Now that the baseboard is in its time to work on the window and door trim. Jeff buys 1"X 6" or 1"X 4"s and then cuts them to size and uses the router to do the edges. It is really beautiful if you ask me.

Last night (Monday) Jeff got the first set of windows done.

Now I need to putty the holes give it a light sanding and then paint.

I think Jeff does amazing work!

So if you were wondering where I have been the last week you now know.

My Non-Farm Farm!

Even though I live in town I'm still starting a small farm.

Today I got 6 hens from Jeff's uncle, they will not be living at my house because we cant have any farm animals in town.

My 6 hens are living with Jeff's parents 10 hens.

They are  Silver Laced Wyandotte hens. They wont start laying eggs till they are around 6 months old.

They are loving being able to roam outside! I am having a good time watching them, they are great entertainment. Jeff's mom and I will take turns feeding the hens and collecting eggs every other day.

and then over at my friend Melanie's farm I have a really cute goat named Tiberius, Ty for short. He lives with lots of other goats and is such a happy baby goat.

Isn't he cute!

I still have to talk to Melanie about how I can work off his food and shelter until I move to a farm of my own. 

I also have quite the garden in my yard.

I have strawberries, zucchini, summer squash, horseradish, broccoli, onions and carrots in this picture

onions, carrots and potatoes in this picture

and sweet corn. In Jeff's parents garden I have my tomato plants and I still haven't planted my green beans yet but I plan on planting them soon.

Also by the end of the summer or early fall Jeff and I will be getting 2 steers that will be raised for meat, we will keep them at Jeff's parents.

Charlie is 5 Months Old

Charlie has been such a happy baby so far! 

If you look at him, talk to him even if you make funny faces at him he will smile at you, sometimes he will even try to copy your funny faces. 

Even though he isn't crawling yet, he is always on the move; he rolls, scoots and inch-worms. 

He loves people and will willingly go to people he just met, he is very outgoing.

If he wants something that is to far to reach he will find away to get to it. 

He is also almost sitting and is keeping me on my toes. 

Natalie likes to dump out toys and Charlie likes to be in the middle of the mess. He is also a huge fan of the dogs and looking at himself in the mirror.

 If he's not on his belly he is on all fours 

Charlie at his 4 month Dr's appt was 16.7 pounds! So I'm guessing he is more than that now, then add Natalie's 26 pounds and you have one very strong Mama!

(Sorry there isn't any good pictures of his face he moves to much to get good face pictures.)

This Moment

- A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
I go this idea from a blog I like called soulemama.com

Dining room

The dining room is almost all painted! 

The part that isn't painted is where the plastic wall was.

Before.

After

Before

After

Taking down the plastic wall.

There is still a lot to do in the office and dining room, but we are getting so close to being done.

Next step is to finish mudding and sanding where the plastic wall was, then paint and then we can start putting in the wood floors! Once the floors are in we sand, stain then polyurethane the floors. Then we can do all of the trim and move back into that part of our house! That will be a happy day.

On a side note Charlie is almost crawling, he will be 5 months on the 9th of July.

If he sees something he wants he can get to it by scooting or rolling. If you talk to him you can just about always get a smile out of him.

Natalie is singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars and  saying here ABC's till about T thats when she stops. She is also walking up and down the stairs and loving all the animals she meets. Don't take it personally is she cries when she sees you because she has been doing that to just about everyone lately. It doesn't take her to long to warm up though. 

Milk Crate

When I was putting Charlie down for a nap on Saturday I had this idea to make a milk crate for my friend that is milking her goats. 

So me being impatient got started right away!

I got wood from my shed(100 year old wood from our house remodel that I saved), a mason jar(so I would make it big enough for it to fit), a tape measure (Jeff's), a ruler, a square, a basic template (the wood tool box in the picture) and a pencil. 

I got started right away!  I measured all of the wood and then Jeff and I went out to cut it. I cut about 1/2 and Jeff cut the rest.

After the wood was cut I set it up so I could see how it looked before I nailed anything together.

Looks good to me! So I got started nailing it together.

Its all put together by Saturday night, but I'm way to tired to paint so I save that for Sunday.

I use paint that I had in my house to keep it a free project.

I also wanted to be bright and fun! So I was thinking green, but the one green paint I didn't have enough of and the other green paint was rock hard so green was a no go. Orange it is! 

I got 2 coats of paint on there. Then I wanted to paint some words on there, so I used the green paint.

What do you think of the finished project?

So my original idea was to have 4 spots 3 for mason jars full of milk and one for extra stuff. Now that its made I think that it might be really heavy for all that so It could be used for storage, decoration, plants or to keep stuff for her girls to play with in the milk house.

This is my 1st time making one of these but I'm thinking i want to make more and sell them.