Monthly Archives: April 2008

Meet Isabella and Daisy

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We finally got our kitties! We’d been putting it off until we were in the house. There is still a ton of unpacked stuff and clutter that they can get into, but we were ready to have them come home. They are roaming around the house right now, figuring out where everything is. They chortle at each other to keep tabs on where the other cat is. Isabella is a 3 year old black and white devon rex and she is really beautiful. Her coat is so shiny and soft. She has really cool racing strips on her hind legs! She’s a total love, too! She runs at you, head butts you, and rubs against you as hard as she can. And if you put your hand above her, she will grab it with both front paws and rub it with her head. She wasn’t being very photogenic though, so I’ll post more pics later.

Her daughter is about 3 1/2 months old and a little wild child. She’s a tortoiseshell in color and very pretty also! She found a toy that we attached to the door and played with it for ~1 hour tonight. Kaia has decided to call her Crazy McDaisy… Daisy for short. So now we have another Daisy the curly haired cat :-)


Max is not the happiest of cats. He has been cranky and hiding most of the day. When the cats get close to him he growls and hisses. Hopefully they will learn to be friends! He could use a good snuggle friend!

Delicious non-dairy ice cream

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I tasted this at the local health food store and it was delicious!. So I fiddled with the listed ingredients and think I’ve got it pretty dang close. So here you go. A fantastic substitute for those who like mint chocolate chip ice cream, but don’t do dairy:

2 cups Raw Cashew butter
1/3 cup Coconut oil
1/2 cup agave syrup
1/2 tsp. Mint extract
handful of chocolate chips.

Gently melt the coconut oil on the stove. Turn off the heat and add the cashew butter and agave. Mix well until creamy. Add mint extract and chocolate chips, mix well. Cool it in the fridge and then eat up! Oh, and you don’t need much of it to get full satisfaction!

making nests of all kinds

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Toby built his first top bar hive today. It came out really nice! Robbyn, he didn’t really follow any design. He mainly talked with a few friends who have built them before and put together what he thought would work well for us. It’s 12 inches deep and long enough to fit 28 frames. It has a partially screened bottom for ventilation, and a tin top that you can lift off to check on them. We had some small cell beeswax, so we cut strips to put in the frames for the bees to build on them. The frames are 3 sided without a bottom, so the bees will probably make more of a rounded comb design.


He drilled some entrance holes for them, too.

I don’t know if we will collect honey from this hive or just let them be. Right now, it’s sitting on some concrete blocks and nicely viewable from our kitchen window. We expect we will have another swarm from our other hive, so we’ll put the swarm in here.

While he was doing that, I closed off a section of the chicken yard and built a little brooding box for Ralph. She wasn’t too happy about being moved at first, but she quickly found her eggs and went back to sitting on them.

And here is the house so far. They need to do all the trim work, but the main body color is done. We were supposed to have a creamy yellow, but the painter called me the night before starting and said he really didn’t think the yellow was a good idea. He said yellow is the quickest color to fade and doesn’t cover as well. He had mentioned this before, but I really wanted to have a yellow… but when he stressed this again I felt like we needed to go with something else. So, we picked out a grey/blue that looked really nice on paper. Unfortunately, I’m really not that happy with how it turned out on the house. I was wanting a cheery, light color that would stand out from the green around it, but still look like it belonged. What I got was a cold color that sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s not a bad color, I just don’t feel like it fits. I know it will look much better once the trim is done. When we get screens, I may paint the frames with a pale yellow or something to lighten up and warm the house color.

Inside, we are done with all the messy work, so we are trying to get things moved in. Then, we can take care of the other little details while we are living in and enjoying our house. Here’s how the kitchen counter tops turned out. We just need to put up a back splash. (I know, it’s hard to see ’cause of all the crap all over them… I’ll take more pictures soon)

Broody lady

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Ralph, one of our Black Australorp hens, has gone broody. Since we don’t have any roosters, and thus no fertilized eggs, I got 7 fertilized eggs from my brother-in-law. We marked them with a big “F” (fertilized) and slipped them under Ralph. She settled back in and happily covered them all with her wings. She’s keeping them at a constant temperature and humidity, and turns them 3 times a day to make sure they develop correctly. From what I understand, broodiness has been breed out of chickens (’cause if they are sitting on eggs instead of laying them, they are not a financial benefit to big chicken corporations). Have any of you ever hatched chicks from a broody hen? Tomorrow, Toby is going to build a top bar hive for our bees and I think I’ll build a little nesting house for Ralph. That way, her nest can be on the ground, where the chicks won’t fall out, and we can separate her from the other chickens. In 3 weeks, we might have some little baby chicks!!

Swarm

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The painters were out working on the house when one of them called me to tell me the bees had swarmed. Toby raced home to find this:


They had landed on our out house and were looking for a new home. So, Toby pulled out an extra hive box and put a little lemongrass essential oil (which attracts them) in it. Then he brushed them into a bucket and shook them into the box. They seem to be settling in well. Guess we’d better keep watch on the other hive in case they are gearing up to swarm too.

A+

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Howdy Folks! Just a quick note to let you know we passed our final inspection yesterday!!! The electricity and gas get hooked up today, the phone gets hooked up tomorrow!!! We still have a lot of little details (like shelving, cleaning, oiling the stairs…) before we will completely move in, but we are done with inspections!!!
Painting starts today, so I’ll post pictures later!

Hey there again!

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Sorry for the brief interruption in the site! We got hit by a porn hacker who was trying to download viruses onto peoples computers. But, we have cleansed ourselves of their porny ways and are back up and running!

SOOOOO! Here’s what’s happened in the one day that we were down…. WE passed electrical, mechanical, and plumbing final inspections!!!!!!! We have a few more things to do and then it’s on to the final final inspection before we can move in!!! Can you see me doing another dance????

So, here are some pictures from the last week:
Putting the plywood, and then the backerboard down for the marble countertops (with the help of our amazing carpenter cat)

We had to buy a special tool for cutting the granite and marble. We are doing a mosaic of the pieces that we have, but we still needed to make some cuts.

Here’s what the area around the sink looks like so far. We haven’t grouted it yet…

Installing the fan…

…from a precarious position

Fixtures going up!


This week’s progress

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The cordwood is done!!! I’m sorry, I don’t think you heard me loud enough…. IT’S DONE!!!! Yeah, I said it! It’s done!!! No more lime putty, no more sawdust insulation, no more holes in the walls!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!! You now have my permission to get up and do a little dance with me!!! :-)

I’ve got some of it cleaned up, but I want to do a better cleaning before I publish an indoor picture, and I’m sure I will be posting lots of pictures after this next week!

The electricians, plumbers, gas guy, and painter (for the outside) are coming out to finish up in the next week and a half. We’re still trying to arrange a mulch blower truck to come and blow the soil on the roof (but the inspector said that he won’t require us to have the dirt on the roof for our final Certificate of Occupancy, so we don’t have to worry about the soil right now!)

We’ve got the bathroom vanity mostly done, started laying the marble on the kitchen counters, got the railing up on the stairs, put up all the battens outside, and a bunch of other things! I hope to take a bunch of pictures in the next few weeks for you all! We’re in the final stretch!!!!

Discovering the roof

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Max has been staying with us in the upstairs bedroom, and seems to like it there.  Today, while I was doing some more cordwood, I left the door to the bedroom open so Max could explore the rest of the house.  He seemed to get a kick out of running up and down the stairs.  The temp. got to 70 today, so I opened all the windows and doors, and Max decided to explore the roof.

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I think he likes it out there!

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Toby took the pics with his phone camera, so the quality isn’t too great, but can you see the smile?

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We had a busy weekend doing things other than working on the house.  But, 5 of the cordwood walls are now done inside and out, (WOOHOOO!) and I will hopefully finish them off early this week.  A lot of the ‘big’ stuff that needs to be done so we can move in are things that we are waiting for others to do… like plumbing, electric, and gas finals, finishing the stairs, painting the house, and dirt on the roof.  Oh, speaking of dirt on the roof… I may have found a way to get it up there that doesn’t involve us and a bunch of 5 gallon buckets full of dirt!  I’m going to try to hire a mulch blower truck.  They work well with dry, light dirt also and can blow it up on the roof!  There is a long hose and someone stand at the end and directs the dirt exactly where we want it.  Wouldn’t that be great!!!???

My Mind Is Rotten?!?!??

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From a conversation in the car on the way to Kaia’s school:

Me- Papaw is coming up today!

K- Yay!!  He’s never come up on a school day before!

M- Yeah he has.  Lot’s of times.

K- No he hasn’t mommy.  I would remember.  My mind is better than yours.  Your mind Mommy, well, I don’t want to say it’s rotten, but it’s a little rotten.

M- WHAT??!!  My mind is not rotten!

K- Well, my mind is better than yours.  You don’t ‘member things  like I do.

M- Well you only have 4 years of life to remember!  I have 34!  I have to be selective about what I remember so it doesn’t crowd my brain!

K – Well, my mind is still better than yours.

(this conversation was followed by Kaia singing a song she had just made up that she said was called “deep memories”.  But, it was whispered inaudibly, so I couldn’t understand the words.)