Merry Christmas to all.......

We woke up this morning to about 7" of heavy, wet, perfect snowman snow!  The snow makes the horses and dogs frisky and the kids (and Jim) anxious to get out and play.

 The front door is decked......

 ......and to all a good night!

God bless us everyone!

The New Critters

LUCKY

WAY back in March, Karryn hatched a duck egg in her incubator that Jim bought on Ebay.  The little guy was so cute as a baby.

Lucky Ducky Patrick (hatched right before St Patrick's Day - thus the name....) loves Karryn.  He follows her around and snuggles her.  

And he loves a bath.

Patrick lives with the chickens and seems to rule the roost.  The pair of chicks shown on the blog last year are a hen and a rooster.  The hen, Mrs Captain Davy Jones, is a sweet little hen.  She will let us hold her, lays eggs for us and then sits on the last few eggs to hatch them.  Snufflles is a really pretty rooster and produced a few chicks.  Then he got aggressive and we shipped him off to the farm down the street (really - the farm down the street really did take him).  We also took another rooster down there and traded for 4 baby chicks............ALL of which turned out to be roosters!  We took them back to the farm plus another rooster chick that was hatched here and traded for a hen from the hen house.  The first night we had her we went down to the barn to check on her a few times, each time she was out of the chicken stall and somewhere else in the barn.  The chickens are locked in the stall but she must have flown over the wall.  Her name is Houdini. 

  Karryn just hatched 3 baby chicks, also from Ebay, and they live in the kitchen............yay!  So the final count is 1 duck, 2 hens, 2 roosters, and 3 baby chicks.  Thank goodness there is NO partridge in a pear tree!  (Actually, the pear tree fell down across the road during a storm this last summer - but that's another story.)

SALLY

We got Sally the first part of August, right before Brennan's birthday, so he got to name her.  When we got her we thought that Maggie would help train her - she spent the first couple of months completely ignoring her.  They have recently started to play together.

and she grew, and she grew and she grew.......... (and I bought a carpet cleaner!)  She is now almost 5 months old.

FINALLY, A New Post!

OK, so my "New Year's resolution" was thrown out the window as soon as I typed it.  So here it is - the highly anticipated updated post.......

One of the coolest additions to our home decor this year is a blown-up copy of a handwritten manuscript.  Dennis Awe, a friend of Jim's, has played with some famous bands through the years.  Dennis loaned us a handwritten manuscript, written by Frank Como, from one of these shows.  I took it to Ivar at A & D Technical Supply in Omaha, NE and he worked his magic.  He blew it up to 48" x 48" and printed it on canvas.  Jim and I stretched it on a frame.  We found a light on ebay and voila - it's art!

 



































A New Master Bedroom!

Come on in!

We finished "Phase 1" of renovations to our master suite.  In the bedroom, we replaced all the moldings and painted everything.  The chaise lounge is going to be recovered - in fact, I bought the new fabric today (new photos to come..... I hope).

Eventually, where the armoire is sitting,  we'd like to put french doors out to a deck.  The view out of these windows is our favorite.  Also, replace the floors with hardwood.  (That's Phase 2, I guess.)  This isn't the best pic of it, but this is a drum shade ceiling fan from Lowe's.

Here's the before shot.  There were rough cedar boards as trim at the ceiling, an old ceiling fan that only worked on low speed, and ugly trim.  I also painted the windows black in this room and bought new window hardware.

The Master Bath................... bigger than it looks but hard to get a good picture.  The "column" on the right side of the pic is the wall which separates the tub and the shower.  Above it is the skylight.  The wall used to extend up to the ceiling - which was a little weird.  Jim shortened it and now we get light from the skylight in the shower!  We painted and glazed the vanity, replaced and added moldings, and painted everything.  We took down the large mirror above the sinks and hung 2 mirrors.  The mirrors started life as cheap gold framed mirrors from Home Goods.  They were close to the right dimensions that we needed but too short.  I added a board and moldings then painted and glazed them to match the vanity.  We attached picture lights to the top - yes, it's a Restoration Hardware ripoff - but we thought it was a cool idea!  Jim added the sconces between the mirrors.

The before pic shows how really sad this bathroom was.

You might even say "depressed".

Next on the list is the laundry room!  Hopefully it won't be another year before the next post!