Whirlwind of renovating......

We have done a ton of renovating since my honey came home from Iraq. Here is just a snippet of what we have done.....

First of all, we took up the hardwood and laid it back down right. The previous owners didn't lay it right around the door frames and it really drove my husband and I nuts. It looks so good now. I hope to eventually put the hardwood in all of my bedrooms too. He also laid new ceramic tile in both of our bathrooms. It's a light terra cottaey color. It, too, looks great.Now, we are on to the hall bathroom. We just added these accessories yesterday. We added this white shelf.
Our house is about 40 years old and has the original iron sinks, and tubs. The hall bath's are this yellow color. I don't want to replace them because you just don't get quality like this today, so we are working around them. We chose this aqua blue set to go along with the yellow.

This is the new shower curtain.

Now on to the really big project. This was a wall with a pocket door opening. It separated my living and dining room. My kitchen was off the living room and you walked through the door opening to get to the dining room. Well, no more. We took down the wall and made a nice cased opening. I also switched my dining and living room. Now the dining room is off the kitchen and it's all one big open space. I love it!!!

This is the Before:

And the After:

I painted the walls in the living room a nice chocolate brown (Valspar's Pretzel Twist). We also got new furniture, as what I had before was 11 yrs. old and showing quite a bit of wear and tear. This set is a nice rusty/red color. I hope it lasts at least 11 yrs.

This is the "new" dining room. I painted this room Benjamin Moore's Adobe Beige. It is the perfect like ivory/khaki color. We plan on trimming out the chalkboard this weekend.

The Before:

And the After:

This works so much better for our family because we live with us all in the same area reading, playing games, watching movies, or playing on the computer.

Here's another view. I would like to eventually paint my chairs black. I am working on a family photo collage for that big empty space. I also want to put a verse on the top of the book shelf. I am thinking,

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 1:4.

This is probably one of the things I am most excited about.... My honey changed out my old two sided sink for this huge single tub sink. I wanted the single tub because it is huge and I can fit a whole cookie sheet in the bottom. My oldest daughter is a budding homemaker/chef and she has put this thing to good use.

We have several more projects but they are on hold. It's about to be canning season and that will consume my summer. Praise the Lord.

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Proverbs 10:5~~ He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.~~

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And last but definitely not least.......

The newest member of our family. We are still working on the name.

I hope you all have a great weekend. We are thinking of going camping.

So many posts.... so little time....

Here is our HUGE project right now, besides all of the remodeling (pics. coming soon). The garden!!! It is bigger this year measuring about 75X110. I have 60 tomato plants, 4 rows of corn, 3 rows of peas, 1 row of beans, 1 row of squash and zucchini, 2 rows of melons and cucumbers, a half row of peppers, and a row of sunflowers. We will add pumpkins later. Lord willing, it will all make and I will be canning like a mad woman come June and July.

Here are the 60 tomato plants. So far so good, they look healthy and strong. I hope to make all of our preservative free ketchup and tomato sauces this year.

We planted two blueberry plants last year and they are loaded this year. I also planted one more blueberry this year. They are all still small but in about 3 more years I will have blueberries, figs, and blackberries running out of my ears, Lord willing. Hopefully, we will be able to add peaches and plums to our little orchard soon.

Here is the bumper crop of muscadines. I will be canning quite a bit of jelly this summer, Lord willing.

These are the newest members to our flock. We have 3 hens and the white one is supposed to be a rooster. I try to add a few every year so that our flock stays at an even level. Right now, I am getting about 8 -10 eggs a day. Which is more than enough for us and allows us to give them to friends and neighbors. Eph. 4:12, Heb. 6:10

Those of you from the South, primarily Mississippi, know that this past winter was record breakingly cold and wet. I think it added to the depression we already had from Ronnie being gone. I can tell you right now that I would probably die if I lived above the mason dixon line. (not really Ha Ha)

However, one great thing about an excess of water this past winter is that it has produced some amazing roses this spring. Just look at them showing off. Oh, and yeah it has already gotten so hot here we have had to turn on the AC. I will have to remind myself to Praise God when it's 100* outside this summer.

Last but not least my oldest daughter, a true Ruby, has started a blog featuring all of her amazing photography. I would love it if you would swing by and give her some encouragement.

Here's her blog address:

http://katherinespencerphotography.blogspot.com/

Wow..... That was quite the dry spell.....

I am back from my incredibly long hiatus. During my honey's deployment, I was extremely busy with 3 kids, homeschooling and trying to keep up constant contact with the man of my dreams 5000 miles away. It was just too much. I also got on Facebook so that we could keep in contact even more and that was about all I could do. I think I am now ready to start documenting our day to day here again. My sweetie has now been home 2 months and has been off work the whole 2 months. He goes back to work on Tues. During his time off we have done so many remodel projects. I don't even know where to begin but I hope to post them next week. Until then, have a great week friends!!!

An end of the season trip and so much more....

This is a post full of pictures. We have had some adventures lately and the true love of my life is now, on occasion, reading my ridiculous blog so I want to share some pictures with you and him..... Here goes.

Well, at the beginning of the week, we loaded up the car and I do mean loaded, and headed for Gulf Shores, Al. My sister and her family got a beach house for a week and we decided to take my mom (mimi) and go have some fun in the sun with them. Here is a picture going through the tunnel in Mobile.

This is a picture taken in the hotel. My niece decided to go back to the hotel with us every night. So the oldest is mine and the youngest my niece. I just thought this was a beautiful picture.

Here's my girl on the alligator in the ocean. My son is the one at the end of the line on a boogie board. They had a blast.

This is my oldest playing Frisbee on the beach with my nephew. She hates the beach but even she had a really good time.

Here's our temporary man of the house showing off more of his board skills.

And here is a flag that was at the beach house next door, I just loved it waving along the ocean front.

Now, we are back home and back to reality. No one wanted to leave but Mimi had to go back to work and so the fun was cut short. We had a great time but we sure did miss daddy being with us. Although, I don't think I would have been able to frequent as many little stores had he been with us. (ha ha)

Next, I wanted to share with you my new pot rack. I am hanging my cast iron on it. It has freed up some space in my hobbit kitchen and I really like it but I am not sure what needs to be put in the opening.

Then today, our neighbor came over and put up a temporary electric fence for us. The grass back here has grown to a level that we can not control so he fenced it in for us to put our horses on. I really need to borrow some goats.LOL

Here the horses are enjoying some new pasture.

I also thought I would share our baby chicks that are no longer babies. Every year we get about 5 or 6 new babies and here are a couple of this years crop. I think this one is so pretty. She is an Auracauna and she will lay blue/green eggs.

My honey loves a black chicken and our last one disappeared so here is his new black chicken.

Now for the bad news, before we left for the beach, I was of course, canning tomatoes and I heard a loud pop. I had blown up my cook top. So I just decided I will deal with it when I get home. Now I am on the hunt for the best deal on a cook top. In the mean time, I still have tomatoes running out of my ears, literally. So this is what little man and I fixed up today. We put my Coleman camping stove on a table outside and I began canning on the porch. I really should have been doing this all along, as it really saved my kitchen from heating up.

Oh and by the way, so far the best deal is at Cowboy Maloney's in Jackson. However, I have a few more calls to make.

I thought last but not least, I would end with a beautiful picture of our mammoth sunflowers. They started blooming while we were gone and they were quite the site to come home to.
Have a great weekend!!!

July is flying by.....

Well, we had a pretty good 4th. It was as good as could be expected without the love of my life here. My mother came down and my sister and her family. Our little version of Mayberry has a big Lena Day every 4th of July. We have politicians and speakers come and give their .02. My girls spent the day signing in participants for the antique car and tractor show. Then they moved on to making snow cones.

Last year my honey did the color guard. So this year in lieu of him being deployed they asked if my son could do the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag. It was great. He was so nervous but it was truly a treasured memory for us all. Here he is on stage.

There are all kinds of events for the kids. The big one is the turtle race. Kids decorate their turtles and then race them around a circle. My son did it last year and my nephew wanted to do it this year. Here he is with his turtle.

They won 3rd. place. Needless to say, my sister and family will be back next year.

It was a great day and a great way to take our mind off of the circumstances of our day to day.

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Her"s one of my projects that I have somewhat completed.

Now keep in mind I did this myself and really could have used the expertise of my honey but I think it came out pretty good. I love Rue's new pantry and she was my inspiration. I love her wooden brackets and I think I will change mine out one by one. These shelves will be holding the majority of my canning. I have 19 jars of muscadine and pear preserves left out of the 75 I put up last year. If any of you would like for me to send you a jar leave me a link to your email. The harvest will be coming in again in Sept. and Oct. and I will be starting all over.LOL I would love to share our abundance.

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~~ Indeed, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its produce.~~

Psalms 85:12

And here's some of the produce this week. I am putting up corn, tomatoes, and peas this week. All of this harvest is slowing down the process of my really big project but it is making the days go by faster. Most days I look up and it's 2:00 before I even get the day started good.

I pray that we put up enough that we can eat from the garden all winter. We will see.

Have a great week.....

Whew.... It has been a while!

We have had so much going on and so many changes in a month.

About 3 wks ago..... we put this man, the love of my life, my very best friend and the father of my babies ......

On this bus, to go to.....(actually to go to the airport but you get the picture)

Iraq.

Here he is in front of a palace.

To say it was one of the worst days of my life would be an understatement. I have cried and cried and just when I think it is getting better.... I cry some more.

On a more positive note, he made it there safely and praise God for technology. We are using Skype and a webcam to see and talk to him via computer everyday. So to say it could be much worse is so true. When we did this 4 years ago it was much worse. When he starts working 16 hour days we wont talk to him as much but right now, while they are transitioning troops over, we are getting very spoiled.

While he is gone, I plan to do a lot of my projects. Here was the first one....

This is my living room that we painted a nice dark Khaki a year ago, when we moved in.

Well, I was never really happy with it because it was so dark and this room does not have a lot of natural light. I need light and airy. So last week, I repainted it Benjamin Moore's Adobe beige. I love this color. Here it is now. I will be painting all of the trim a bright white tomorrow.

Now, this is our other huge project. The garden is coming in.

Today, I put up 3 gallon bags of corn. My corn is not ready yet but a neighbor gave us a good bit. We ate some for dinner tonight and it was so wonderful.

I also put up 7 qts. of pickles. We love homemade pickles.

Now, here is some of the rest of my bounty right now.

I hope to put up lots of canned tomatoes, ketchup and spaghetti sauce. That is if I win the battle on blossom end rot.LOL

It also looks like we will start picking peas tomorrow.

Here is a picture of one of our sunflowers. We always plant a row of sunflowers for our middle daughter. She loves them and they are beautiful in the garden.

It is a busy, busy, time but I love harvest time.

I have a really large project going on and I can't wait to share it but it will be a while before it is completed.