I'm exhausted, so have a present!

What a crazy weekend!  It's only a little bit after 8:00 Sunday evening here, but my internal clock is striking at least eleven dongs in my head.

Yesterday, we (finally!!!) designed and built a chicken tractor for the ladies.  Their pen is quite a mess, considering a winter's worth of snow and ice in now trying to melt each day, but solidly refreezes each night.  Some Brussels sprouts erratics have emerged from the wintry mix, and I can't even tell you the last time we had Brussels sprouts.  Maybe mid-October?  Ewwww... Anyway, I feel bad for the hens.  They want to be in the flowerbeds scratching up the little bits of green trying to poke through. 

"Compromise!"  I keep yelling this at them. "You can have the lawn, but the flowerbeds are mine!"  The gol-durn chickens refuse to cooperate OR compromise, and my blood pressure keeps rising above healthy levels.  Thus, a chicken tractor.  I'll show you some pictures and our plans in a later post.  It's easy, effective, and fairly inexpensive.  Yay, for that!

Today was Mr. Boom's Grandma's 87th birthday.  We all went to lunch at a local restaurant, so I didn't get to make her a cake.  I might take her something later on in the week.  We'll see how the week goes, first...

Also today, we drove up into the hills for a little bit of turkey scouting.  Saw a good dozen or so down low on private property.  The yard of the house was totally torn up from the birds.  I started to mentally design a turkey tractor in my head.  I wonder if the landowners would be interested?

So, did somebody say presents?  Sure!  The Pollinatrix, one of my first readers (if not THE first reader?) of this blog got me into this happy mess. 

I promise to send something I make myself to the first 5 people who leave a comment on this post and who, in turn, promise to make the same offer on their blog. The rules are that you need to make the items personally and send them to your 5 folks within 2011.


So there you go.  Presents!  Just pretend the "strings attached" are ribbons!

Debating a move out onto a limb...

Mr. Boom and I are very conservative when it comes to spending money.

We camp instead of renting hotel rooms, we buy generic tinned food, we drive our vehicles until they're just about dead, we wear t-shirts and jeans, we don't eat out much, and we live in houses that are less than we can afford.

The latter provides me with such a sense of security. Our mortgage could be paid with either of our incomes alone. In fact, all our bills could be paid with one income alone. I like that. That, my friends, is true financial security.

But there's this house, you see. We're looking at it. It's in the country on two acres with a creek and woods and gardens and a hot tub. There might even be a masterbath...

There's a separate kitchen--something I've always wanted for putting up canned goods, making beer, making soap--that would be so nice to use when I don't want the temperature in the house raised about a buhzillion degrees.

But this house, this land, is literally and figuratively expensive. I'm pretty sure we'd more than qualify for a loan, although it will increase our mortgage payment drastically. But the hidden expense, the more dear expense, is the loss of the safety net.

I'm scared to go out on that limb without a safety net....

We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, BTW, my hand finally healed up enough for me to finish the face cloth for the give-away.

I think it turned out okay. Hopefully, Pollinatrix will think so, too!

Winner!

I wanted to come up with some sort of unique method to pick the winner of the our one year anniversary present.

How cute would it be to get a chicken to pick one?!!

I carefully spread the names of the entrants (two pieces for each Google follower!) on the ground in a somewhat random order. 

Chirp chirp went off to find a good chicken candidate.

Cloudy came along in the interim, offering up his services as a random name on a paper picker.

After given the go-ahead, he clearly froze.

"I just can't do it" he said.

Meanwhile, the chicks (hard to call them that anymore, but harder not to!) answered their summons and appeared on the scene.

"Help me out, guys!  This is really tough!"

"I may be wrong, but these aren't either feed nor worms."

"Nope.  Too weird.  You do it, Cloudy!"

Bracing himself...

Contemplating the situation...

He goes for a slip of paper!

Congratulations to the Pollinatrix!  Have you seen her blog, the Whole Blooming World? 

Please go help her celebrate one year of blogging, too! 

"I need more catnip.  And a nap."

Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate, and everyone who's been along on this crazy ride with us!

Pollinatrix, send me your address, and I'll send you some homemade pampering!

Glass beads for boring people

Yesterday evening found us sitting around trying to figure out what to do this weekend.  I came up with the great idea to get in the car and drive to Crater Lake.  We could be halfway there before bedtime, spend a couple more hours driving on Saturday, spend the day in the park, and then return home that night.  In 24 hours, I said, we could be sitting right back here with a trip to Crater Lake under our belts.

Nobody else was willing to entertain the thought.  Not even a little bit.  Not even in the teensiest little bit.  IN fact, the idea was shot down before it completely left my mouth.

In return, I pointed out just how annoyingly boring they were.

Mr. Boom said we could do whatever I wanted to do as long as it didn't entail spending the entire weekend in the car driving to a large hole in the ground that the weather service had a 100% chance of rain for the entire  weekend.

It was at that point I remembered seeing something online that I really wanted to try...

Thus, we spent our Friday night learning how to make glass beads from broken bottles.

A few hours later we had these two beads to show for the effort.

I can't wait to try a few things...

I'm thinking icicles for the Christmas tree, maybe little pendants for gifts, maybe enough made that someday I could make a little bracelet or necklace...who knows?

Blogger is giving me grief, even though I'm logged in as the administrator this evening.  I'll try to explain the process of bead-making sometime, but I've spent hours just getting these photos uploaded and this little bit of text inserted into the post. In fact, it has taken me longer to write this post than the entire bead project itself took!

In the meantime, take a look at this Instructable to get a really good feel for the process.

Also, don't forget that sometime tomorrow I'll be posting the winner of our one-year giveaway!

PS Anyone want to go to Crater Lake???! I'll drive!

Color wheel

Sometimes when looking around my garden I'm overcome by the number of colors I see.

Martha, of course, plants wide swaths of color-coordinated plants that people from all over the world admire.

Me? I see it, I like it, I throw it in the yard. With luck, it survives. Without luck, I may never even remember where I put that poor sucker in.

This evening I was wandering around the yard and the cacophony of the pallet totally overwhelmed me.

True, I'm easily overwhelmed, but still, I though maybe you'd like to see it too.

Pssst: Don't forget to sign up to win our first blog-o-versary give-away!

Celebrating one year

Today this humble little blog turns one year old.

After a seven month long gestation (starting in the spring when Bet sent me an e~mail saying we HAD to start a blog--to which my reply was "Heck No!") I logged onto Blogger and set up this little space.

Then I informed Bet we had a blog, and it's a boy. No, wait, we had a blog and here's the address.

That's better!

And the winner is....

Happy Valentine's everyone!

Send me your address, Kim, and I'll ship the book off to you!

Huh? (by Kat)

Huh?

Not allowing Chirp Chirp, my twelve year old daughter, to superglue earrings (minus their posts) to her ears is enough to ensure my nomination in The Worst Mom of the Year Awards?

Huh.

Oh well.

I just wonder if the title comes with a pay increase?

Just a few more hours to enter our giveaway!

Odd Harbinger of Spring (by Kat)

One of yesterday's tasks involved taking my grandma to a medical appointment in the big city.
On the freeway coming home to our little town, we saw a semi truck with two trailers. The trailers were piled high with bags of bark mulch.

I never thought of bark mulch on it's way to market as a harbinger of spring.

But heck, I think I'll take it...

Bark mulch, coming soon to a garden center near you!

Thursday is the last day to enter the drawing for the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book. It's so good, I'm reading it one last time before it leaves my little home.

Good luck!

Post 100: Our First Giveaway! (by Kat)

I do this to myself a lot, and each time I do it, I tell myself not to do it again. But, for whatever reason, I do it again. And again. And again.

Heaven help me!

Where have I been this last week? Why did I tell you we're having a giveaway to celebrate post 100, then drop off the earth? What's up with that???

Well, post 100 sounds so monumental, so significant, so amazing, so WOW! I wanted to make post 100 really special. I wanted post 100 to be unforgettable. I wanted so much for post 100.

So, each evening as I sat down at my desk, totally uninspired, totally tired, and totally bleh, I just felt I didn't have whatever it was in me to meet the mighty expectations I had built up for myself for post 100. So, poor post 100 just didn't' get written at all. My strive for perfection often ends up with me doing less than poorly--it ends up with me doing diddly!

No more, say I!

Post 100, welcome to the world. No blog re-design for you. You're stuck with this same brownish-yellow theme all the other posts had to share. Sorry, but you don't even get a new header. But hey, at least you're finally getting written, right?

World, welcome to post 100. More of the same, for the most part, but with just a little touch of new!

Our first giveaway! How exciting is that?! You, gentle reader, might think you're the only one winning something here, but we will be, too. Bet and I have wondered just how many people read this little blog of ours. Maybe this will pull some of you out into the open, let us know who we're talking to, let us know if we should be keeping the light on.

So, some of you may recall back in October I had a streak of luck. I won two books from two of my favorite bloggers. I'm passing one of those books on to you! Suzanne, the Farmer's Wife read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, raved about it, then gave it away. I promised I'd pass it along when I was done, and now I'm finally doing that. I loved loved loved the book, and passed it along to Bet. She loved it as well, and passed it along to her mom. I'm hoping to get it back from her, and will pass it along to you. If not, you'll receive a brand new copy of your own. So you'll either get a famous blogger's copy (Suzanne, not me) or you'll get a brand new copy.

So, to enter the post 100 giveaway, just answer the following question: how do you like your books--new or used?

Enter between now and next Wednesday. The winner will be chosen at random and announced next Thursday.

Good luck, and I wish you ALL could win!