I'm going to just skip over Christmas...

For this post anyway.  It's too many pictures and details to go over!  I've only scrapbooked 1 Christmas for the exact same reasons.  I'm getting ready to go to 'ScrapCamp' in a couple of weeks and my goal is to catch up on all of my Christmas layouts.

Aside from the holidays, we've been busy around the pseudo farm.  Just before Christmas I sold my guinea hens.  There were originally 12, but 1 got dead, and one got missing.  So I sold 10 to a man from Elk Grove.  Those poor neighbors.  2 weeks ago I sold my goats to the contractor who has been doing some work on our house.  I was sad to see them go, but the difference in the amount of work has already been a relief.

Otis hurt his leg over Thanksgiving, pulled a muscle.  He continued to re-injure his leg to the point that it was non-operable.  So, two weeks ago we had his leg amputated.....  I know!  Add it to the laundry list of major expense this dog has been.  Greg says we're not getting anymore pure breds!  LOL!  Now we have the zippiest 3 legged whippet around.  He seems to feel much better and gets around fine with the exception of going up our wooden stairs.  But honestly, I've seen those stairs slow down a human being.

We've also got a trip planned to Disneyland.  We'd been talking about going for quite some time and I'd been asking my friends when was a good time to go (ie: not as busy).  We booked the trip and I began thinking of a way to surprise the kids to tell them.  Should I make a pizza like on a commercial I saw...  would I make a banner?  Well, Greg took that additional stress away by just walking in the front door and telling them!  Phews.

Well, I've got a wild, currently unsupervised 3 year old heading upstairs, so I'd better sign off for now.  Thanks for coming back to my poor, dusty blog.....

Man. That house is YELLOW!

We decided to see what it would cost to have the house painted.  I figured that since the "To Do" list doesn't seem to be getting any shorter that it may be wise to have the really big jobs done by the pros.  We don't know if this is the original paint or not, but it was in bad shape.  The trim was painted white and two different shades of green and the balusters on the porch were all green.  I took this picture the day they started the prep on the house.

Here is our yellow house after!  See, even the sky looks bluer!

They scraped the paint down to bare wood on most of the house.  Those poor guys.  The entire time they were working my 12 guinea's were squawking at full volume.  One of the guys asked me if we were going to eat them.  I think that was a hint. I tried chasing them all into the goat barn one day in hopes of shutting them up.  I think I just entertained the painters.  Have you ever tried to get 12 guineas to all do the same thing?  Didn't think so....

The after....  too bad they didn't have to take the satellite dishes down to paint.  I would have had them put back up somewhere else.  Like on the roof.  Where most other people have theirs.  Although I have yet to see another satellite dish quite as LARGE as ours.  Lovely.

This is down the hill outside my kitchen nook and master bedroom.  We had some wood siding replaced around one of the kitchen windows few weeks ago.  You can see the two different colors of green trim the best in this picture.

Here is the end result from this view.

Over all, we are very happy.  I love the white trim.  We are going to do the back deck as well, it just needed a lot more cleaning, repairing, and prepping.  I have new screens on order.  Most every screen on the house had rips or holes from the previous owners cats.  In the spring I'm going to order some shutters for the front of the house too.

Thanks for looking!

Catch Up...

The pizza extravaganza. 

 

I should have taken pictures of the finished pizzas.  Greg ate his, most of Teagan's and Maren's.  He kept saying he couldn't believe I had made them.  How's that for encouragement!  LOL!

Next is Halloween pictures.  Declan is Darth Vader, Teagan is Strawberry Shortcake and Maren is Cinderella. 

A rare photo with me in it.  Rockin the orange and my new boots.

We Trick-or-Treated in historic Georgetown.  It was very charming, and we had a great time. 

We've owned this house 1 year today!

And in celebration, we're making individual pizza's from scratch!  I'm taking pictures and will post as soon as I can!

Some House Pictures

Here is the entry.  We haven't done anything here, except clean.  To the left is the family room, and the right is the dining room.  Neither of which are in this post, I didn't take pictures of them yesterday.  I have been dragging all of the Halloween decorations out and spookifying the house.  One of my favorite things about this house is that it is neutral enough to change the accessories for the seasons.  I have Halloween things through the house!

ETA:  Here is a post I did when we first saw the house:  http://looptloop.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-house-cont.html

This is the hallway off the entry that leads to the laundry room (also not in this post) and the kitchen.  I'm looking for different wall sconces, or I may paint those white...

This is the little powder bath downstairs.  It had the red gingham wallpaper that made your eyes go wonky.  I painted the same color as my master.

Here is the kitchen.  We have installed the cabinet doors (new hinges and knobs), roman shades, baffles on the recessed can lights and the ceiling fan.  We still need to do base and crown molding, and I'd like to un-distress the cabinets.

Turns out that I love orange.  Another who knew....

This is looking into the master from the hallway.  Why, yes, that is a double vanity sink at the foot of my bed.  There is currently a single pedestal sink in the master so we bought this at Costco.  It's been sitting there since February and I think I'm going to miss it when it finally gets installed (possibly at the end of next week!!!). 

We changed all light fixtures, painted, new carpet and window coverings.

We just got those 2 chairs at Cost Plus last week.  Once the vanity is installed, I'd like to get a brown leather storage ottoman for the foot of the bed.  Initially I wanted to have a 4th bedroom built in-lieu of the large master, but then I would have had no where for my scrap space.  The girls will share a room until it's an issue

There's Jack Jack modeling the scrap space.  No, actually Otis is taunting him with that bone in the picture above!

And for the last photos of this post, the front porch.  Greg repaired several broken balusters and fixed and sanded many other areas.  Then he countersunk all the nailheads.  This was a huge job, as this was just raw wood.  We cleaned it too, it was filthy.  It may look dirty now, but at least it cleans up nicely.

Thanks for looking!  I'm going to do another post with the family room, dining room and kids rooms once I straighten them up some =)

So I Found the PERFECT car!

A 4 door CONVERTIBLE!  I can probably even get 3 carseats in the back.  Plus, can't you just *see* me driving it???  While wearing these cowboy boots and a sundress, of course.

   I didn't even know what this car was, but I have seen a few of them around and finally saw that it was a VW.  Now, I just have to find one that isn't up on blocks in someones back 40.

I'm honored to see that even after not posting anything on my blog for months that I have 9 followers.  Who knew????

I would like to take some pictures of the house to upload here.  You know, to show the progress of doing nothing but working on the house for almost a year.  The funny thing about me though, is that I want it to be perfect and clean before taking the pictures.  The logical side of my brain knows that: 1. you can't really tell if something is clean or not in a picture, 2. that none of you really care if it's clean and 3. it's probably clean enough by most normal people standards.  Plus, I love to see other people's homes and imagine that you would all really like to see what all we have done around here.  I will just move my piles of clutter and take pictures.  Solved.  Stand by while I do the above mentioned.....

It's been, like, forevah.

I'm so behind on blogging that I don't even know where to start. There have been 3 birthdays, 2 kids starting school, one kid hangin with me, company, my Mom moved here, my chickens started laying eggs, we stained the front porch, I talked my mom into letting me 'borrow' her wicker furniture for my front porch....... ummmmm..... Let's see, I know there is lots more.... Greg and I took a solo trip to meet Bart and Carla in Denver to see Rush, we're talking about getting a tractor (and a truck...... ) the fan broke on Maxivan, so I have no air in the front vents, lots of mice live in the wood pile, we have a contractor coming to fix a few things and install the vanity in our master bath (finally) and I'm going to design a hall/linen closet for upstairs.

Phew. I'll come back to elaborate and add pictures as soon as Greg puts whatever showed up in the Newegg box today (because our big computers took a big crap at the same time).