Spirea Bush

I wanted to share with you all this picture of our spirea bush. I think it is the fullest this year it has been in many years. So bright and cheerful. Not much happening around here. We went with Hubby to work yesterday. Today we went down to Jessica’s but we forgot to take the camera. I want to remember it next time. You all will not believe how much Katie is growing. She just grins and grins. I love it.

We have been getting rain almost every evening this week. Just enough to keep us from working outside. Oh well, I know rain is really needed. Everything is really popping out green here, so the rain and the warm temperatures are doing their job. Our pastor said his peach trees were in full bloom. I certainly hope they are not too early.

I guess that’s about all for today. As I said, not much going on. Enjoy your day and God bless.

March 23, 2012 4

Now and Then

I posted this picture on March 11, 2012.

10 days later it looks like this. Amazing! Things are really popping out here and I am so glad. Monday and Tuesday, I had to help Hubby with the electrical at the the job site. Today, I am very glad to be here at home. We are hoping to get some outside work done this afternoon after school. I’m not sure though. The morning has been chilly with lots of fog. The fog is lifting now and the sun is starting to lighten things up. It is looking hopeful for outside work.

I wanted to share with you all something I just recently purchased for our kitchen. It is called a butter keeper. Are any of you familar with them? Well I just love it. I love using real butter but do not like the fact that it is so hard to spread when kept in the fridge. Well, this butter keeper allows me to leave the butter sitting on the table without spoiling. And it looks cute, too.

Here’s how it works. Every couple of days, I put cold water in the bottom of the crock. The butter then stays nice and cool but spreadable. I really like it.

Well, it is time for me to give a history test. I hope you all have a wonderful evening and God bless.

March 21, 2012 6

Thursday

Hello Ladies, it has been another busy week for us. Monday we went with Hubby to the job site. This is a picture of one of the rooms he is working on. He has gutted all the upstairs and Monday we put the new subflooring down in 2 of the rooms.

He put these on the rafters upstairs to give them extra support. This is a very old house (over 100 years old). He will be running new electrical throughout the house, hanging sheetrock, lots of updates. We are VERY thankful to the Lord for this job. It is the biggest job he has had in several years.

We took our school books and when the girls had finished with school they wanted to go exploring.

Then on Tuesday, Grace had an eye doctor appointment in Salem. This usually takes all day. It takes about an hour to get there from our home. Wednesday, we did school in the morning and then went to help Hubby again. Today, we went back to Salem to pick up Grace’s eye glasses prescription and then made a trip to Rocky Mount Wal-Mart to get the prescription filled. Tomorrow we are going down to Jessica’s. A week spent on the road.

It has been warm here this week. A beautiful week for being outside. We slept last night with our bedroom window open a little. I love falling asleep listening to the frogs. We are getting rain now. The rain and the warm temperatures will get everything blooming and greening up. So exciting! I hope you all have a great evening and God bless.

March 15, 2012 5

Thursday

I took this picture this morning as Hubby and I were sharing our morning coffee on the front porch. You all remember our glassed in front porch we worked so hard to redo not too long ago. It definitely gets lots of use. We have our morning coffee on it, the girls and I do school out there, we love it.

The Horn’s came over for a visit today. I had to show Vicki our new chicks. They are doing very well. We were a little concerned the other morning when we got up our temperature was 17 degrees. That was the actual temperature not the wind chill. I went to check on them but they were all nice and warm under the heat lamp. So I am hoping this means they are hardy little ladies.

Yesterday was beautiful here. Sunshine and temperatures in the upper 50’s. Today we are getting some rain. It is still warm though- upper 40’s. I tried a new recipe for supper last night. It is called Crockpot Teriyaki Pork. I got the recipe from http://homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/ It was very good. I will definitely be making it again. Sorry about the print being different. I’m not sure what is going on.

Lunch is over and time for school to start. Enjoy your day and God bless.

March 8, 2012 2

Finished

Hello ladies. We are finished with our part of the redo. Here we are getting ready to texture the ceiling.

Hubby does the rolling.

I do the stomping.

The finished ceiling. There are 11 recessed lights in her kitchen now. When we started it was pretty dark in her kitchen now it is very bright.

Here we are just starting to put down the floor. Now I must say, this floor just about did us in. It took us 2 days on our knees to get it down but it was definitely worth it.

It looks beautiful! David’s sister will be coming tomorrow to paint the walls. Jess chose buttercream for the walls. After the walls are painted, the next step will be to finish taking the doors off the cabinets and stripping off the laminate. The cabinet doors will have to be sanded. Then the cabinets themselves will be ready for paint. Jess has chose black for the cabinet paint. I will continue to show you all pictures as the process comes along. I think it will all look really great.

Well, that’s about it for today. I have lots of catching up to do with everyone. Enjoy your day and God bless.

February 19, 2012 5

Grace and Sam

Grace and Sam are pretty big buddies. She is usually his watcher and Julie has Daniel. As you can see, Sam must be barricaded away from the construction zone. He is just a little bit too much help.

He looks a little sad, don’t he?

The electrical is all done and the ceiling is hung. Monday we will hang the walls and start putting the mud on (hopefully). After that, the new floor goes down. Hubby will be building her a pantry to go beside her new stove.

The boys were very happy when they were allowed inside the construction zone to help. They worked very hard pulling up the old tile. Daniel would pull it up with his special tool and Sam would carry it to the trash. Very good helpers.

Temperatures here are very cold. Wind gusts of about 40 mph with an actual temperature of 13 degrees, putting the wind chill below zero. Our wood stove has been working hard keeping us nice and warm inside though. I hope you all have a great weekend and stay warm. God bless.

February 11, 2012 5

Update on Facelift

Hello ladies. Just a quick update on our progress so far. Here is a picture of the ceiling just as we were beginning to tear it all down.

After tearing down all the ceiling this is what it looked like. We now have 10 recessed lights in the ceiling but I didn’t get any pictures of that. We came home late this evening to feed up all the animals. We’ll be leaving early in the morning to go back and work some more. Tomorrow we hope to get the lights finished and start hanging the sheet rock. We also will be tearing up the old floor and putting down a new laminate flooring. We will have to do some leveling of the floor first though.

Her new stove was delivered today. She is so happy with it. Her old stove was just a stove top with the oven built into the wall, probably an early 70’s model. If you look in the background you will see the old oven. This will be coming out and Hubby will be building her a pantry to take it’s place. They also plan on painting the cabinets.

Well, that’s all for tonight. I hope to get caught up on everyone’s blogs tonight but I’m not sure. I’m pretty tired. Please be in prayer for David. He had surgery on his knee back in January and it still hurts him quite a lot. It definitely is not healing as fast as we all thought it would.

Enjoy your evening and God bless.

February 8, 2012 5

Having Fun

Good morning, ladies! We had a great visit yesterday with David, Jess, and the kids. It was a nice warm day and as you can see, most of it was spent outside. If you look on the ground you can see where Daniel’s boots are. I guess they got in the way of swinging.

Sam and Katie. Sam had so much fun sitting with Katie and taking pictures. Every time the we would take a picture, he would just bust out laughing. So of course, we took MANY pictures. I thought this one was the best.

David helped Hubby fix the brakes on the car yesterday. It was a full day’s job but we think they are finally fixed. Thank’s again Dave for helping. Jess and I worked inside on making her some applebutter. She ended up with 5 qts. We had spaghetti with homemade sauce, rolls and cinnamon rolls for dessert. Daniel told me spaghetti was his favorite. I made a new recipe for cinnamon rolls and I really liked this recipe. Much better than the one I had been using. I got the recipe here. http://homejoys.blogspot.com/2011/02/sweet-dough.html I also posted the recipe under sweet dough in my recipe file. I did divide the recipe in half and got 18 cinnamon rolls. I will definitely be making them again. We are planning on starting a remodel at Jessica’s on Monday. Her kitchen is getting a facelift. I hope to remember to take the camera and I’ll show pictures of the process.

I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

February 4, 2012 6

Ice

Yesterday morning we awoke to this. Ice was everywhere. We think the fog froze as we had lots of fog. It was slippery here but once we got on the road it was fine. We awoke this morning to sleet. YUCK! Thankfully, the temps warmed up enough to melt the sleet before Hubby left for work. The rest of the day so far has lots of rain and fog but no sleet. The girls and I had planned on going to Sam’s today but we have postponed that trip until later in the week, for just in case. I do not want to take a chance on running into slick roads.

We have been doing school today and, of course, a little house cleaning as well. Supper tonight will be beef roast with potatoes and carrots and homemade rolls (which I better get busy making). I will leave you all with one more picture. This was taken yesterday about 5:00 p.m. while we were on our way to church. Still a little icy with a little fog.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 23, 2012 7

Thursday

Hello everyone. It has been a busy week here in Floyd. David is gone to a conference in Vegas so Monday evening we went down to help Jess with the kids for a few days. We also had some electrical work Hubby and I needed to do for her. We finished most of it up on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, Hubby put a dimmer switch on her lights in the living room. We then left to come home.

David is having a great time in Vegas. He gave a speech the other night at the conference. He said he spoke to about 22,ooo people. Amazing. We are all very proud of him.

Today was school as usual. We had planned on going over to the Horn’s this evening but Vicki is sick. Please pray for her. She thinks she has a stomach virus. It has been very rough on her. I called today at lunch and Quentin said she wasn’t any better yet. She is never sick. Hubby has been working on cutting out the material for our chairs. I so appreciate all your advice on what color to paint them. I still haven’t completely decided yet but I have a while before he will be at that stage. I am thinking of going with the dark brown and putting chair cushions in them. That way I can change them whenever I want and today I happened to think “Wow, I could make a tablecloth for the table to match the cushions” Maybe I’ll go that route.

I hope you all have a great evening and God bless.

January 12, 2012 5