First Snow! Winterizing The Coop, Fun Online Ikea Holiday Scores

From Idahostatesman.com

First Snow!

I love snow!!! We had our first really big snow storm come through Oregon and Idaho Friday. Woke up to falling snow in the morning melting on the road to work. A few days before that got some snow up in the foothills, but this was our big first Mountain snow. Story here Ski Area Excited or Early Snow   Just in time as the garden had gotten it's last harvest-

 

The chickens are enjoying having the full run of the garden area now. Made our last couple of pizzas with homegrown tomatoes. We do have some hardy kale and collard greens still!

 

Closed the vents on the foundation, winterized the cars with new wiper blades, snow/scrapers and a spare blankie just in case. The summer quilt and blanket on the bed are gone, I put on our nice big warm comforter! Dave and I switched to our winter down coats, kitty Bonnie has discovered the floor heating vents and gets some nice warm air. Since we adopted her in last December this is her first Autumn going into Winter. I still miss Anya but having Bonnie here has been a real comfort-

 

We recently brought Anya home. One of the things they included with her ashes was a paw print of hers-

 

Made me cry it was so sweet. Anya always loved watching the snow fly. I think she thought the snowflakes were bugs and she'd meow at them!

 

One of my last photos of her
 

 

Winterizing The Coop- 

The weather was really warm in October and then suddenly dropped the last week. After a heavy rain and some snow we decided to put up the sun room and attach it to the coop. Dave pulled out all the components that we stored behind the coop. In the garage we attached the plastic and the frame until it was all put together-

 mid process

After we tie wrapped all the plastic tie wrapped on and got the frame stable Dave and I carried it out into the backyard. Dave attached it to the coop and now the chickens have extra space through the rest of the winter! The sun rooms have worked really great over the years. Dave also deep cleaned the coop so the chickens are ready for a nice cold winter. It's been interesting the price change on bales of pine shavings . We use the deep litter method and pine shavings are great. A bale is currently about $20 which is more than double in about the last 6 months!!! Not sure if this is due to fuel prices or more the popularity of coops in the area or both? I'm glad I did stock up on a couple of extra bags of feed a few months back.  Otherwise they are all cozy! Shot from last year-

 

 

On the low setting

Fun Online Ikea Holiday Scores-

I love Ikea but there's no store in Boise sadly. One of my biggest complaints with Ikea was that they don't sell any holiday decor online. They are finally selling some, but not all. I love Scandinavian folk art and there's some things I really love (not much of fan of modern Scandinavian design).  I was able to finally find a few things online of their holiday decor and I ordered some! One of them was not a holiday item but a pseudo oil electric lamp (see above). There used to be one in a really dark green that I loved but I didn't want to spend the money. I found this one that was cream colored, was $10 off, ($20) and I bought it. I had actually never seen something marked "ON SALE" at Ikea.  It's perfect on my end table when I want just a little bit of light and it's adjustable. Since it's LED it's bright when it's on all the way, and I bought a spare bulb. The glass and metal is very heavy duty and durable.

I also found some really cute Ikea Christmas tree ornaments, candles and a really cute little tray. Tree ornaments $15, very much like Mercury glass! I did splurge on these, even prettier in real life!!!

 

From Ikea Vinterfint Ornaments

 A cute tray $4-