Life on a little urban homestead in the making, showing ideas for self-sufficiency, Permaculture, DIYing, organic gardening, food preservation, Chicken keeping, cookery, crafts, thrifting and more...

Dec 2, 2018

First Snow Fall!



First Snow Fall!
It started snowing last night about 7 p.m., then stopped. During the night it snowed and we woke up to about 2-3". Still snowing, very pretty! We're still under a winter weather advisory, so hard to tell how much more will fall. With 35 degrees forecast it may melt, but enjoying it now!


  






Sun room to the left of coop, more dry space for hens, just in time!

Ellie not sure if she wants to come out?





Dec 1, 2018

Thrifting Scores! First Snow Coming, Egg Competition? New Job = Decorating Fun!


Thrifting Scores!
Last week I found some really great stuff! I also made more donations. I found these 2 heavy ceramic topiaries, $5.00 each! What a find, very nice!!!


Base, heavy planter


I knew these would work great on my entertainment center shelf and I can decorate seasonally. Easy to move around as well. I added these lights (didn't fuss much) love them! The large ceramic bird below was $3.00, also very French Country!



I found this made-in-France Pyrex baking set, only $5.00! I never knew they made glassware there! 


 I saw this cute galvanized Autumn metal sign for $3.00 at a local grocery store, will save for next year-




 First Snow Coming-
 We have our first snow on the way, very cold and rainy yesterday. I put out a lot of bird food right after work. The birds really came to feed! Doves, squirrels and finches-


We did get snow in the foothills and I'm ready to pt up some winter decor this weekend. Christmas decor will come next. I'm ready for snow!!!





 Egg Competition?
One of our young hens first started laying, then #2. Now we're getting 3 per day. **Update- we got 4 eggs today! All are laying. Is this a competition or what? Maybe their hormones all kicked it at once? We LOVE having fresh eggs again. It's a real part of our urban homesteading, producing our own foods. The hens eat bugs, weeds and fertilize. And lay eggs. Win win.


Mine coming soon!
New Job = Decorating Fun!
After a long, thoughtful process I decided to transfer into another job in my company. I just wanted something simpler, and with more room for growth. I will have a cubicle about the same size as the one above. It will be fun to personalize my space more! I'll have a sit/stand station, a real bonus. Much easier on my back. More soon, doing lots of research on Pinterest! I'm looking forward to the move, new things to learn.

Nov 23, 2018

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm, Thanksgiving & Family, Blog Re-Vamp



Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm-
Unlike some people I was really thrilled last night when I heard some really strong gusting winds hit the windows and heard the rain! It is been so long since we've had any rain, probably a couple months. We really don't get summer storms that produce any rain anymore. 20+ years ago, when we first moved to the Boise area, we would pretty regularly get some summer storms with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Those days seem to be over. This morning when we woke up there were lots of leaves on the ground and everything was really wet, perfect. Air smells great and there's still more rain headed this way today. David cleaned out our gutters a few days ago knowing the storm was coming in. It's so much easier to do in the leaves are dry in the gutters! Our maple tree still has quite a few leaves, but that's just the way it goes. Every year.

Sunroom on left

Dave decided to put the coop sun room up Wednesday since he had that day off work. We were both off work all week on vacation, a nice treat! Dave created this sun room for the girls years ago after I saw something similar online. We salvaged lumber, and bought some really cheap, used shower doors. Dave then built a frame for it and made it removable, so we can store it when spring comes. The chicken started exploring it as soon as he had it up. n space and they were taking dust baths yesterday. It just gives some extra room for the birds if the weather gets really bad. Ironically two winters ago when we had Snowmageddon 2017 we had decided not to put it up, go figure. That winter turned out to be the heaviest snow on record, or close to it, in the Boise area ever-






It's been really fun collecting eggs again! We've been getting one small egg everyday and I'm not sure if it's from one chicken or both of the younger ones? They're a little smaller so I suspect they're not from our two older hens. The really nice thing about having younger hens is that you know you'll have several years worth of fresh eggs. While the older hens are doing pretty well, they stopped playing when they went thru their Autumn molt. I suspect they will probably start laying again but time will tell.

With the colder weather I brought out my faux sheepskin chair cover from Ikea last summer, nice and toasty! My back always gets cold sitting next to the glass in the dining area-




The morning after

Thanksgiving & Family-
We had a really great time yesterday for Thanksgiving, and we hosted. I provided the following (sorry no photos)- the 22 Lb. turkey, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, homemade cranberry sauce (Emeril's), Indian pudding and a Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake.  Since Dave can't really eat dairy anymore I wanted to have a dessert that he would enjoy. My one daughter brought a pumpkin cheesecake and I made Indian Pudding, both with dairy. The chocolate almond tart was a big hit with everybody! I could go the rest of my life without ever eating another pumpkin pie anything. I'm just not a fan. Between an apple pastry my daughter brought, a berry pie, pumpkin cheesecake and the chocolate tart there were just desserts galore! I must say I really miss having a separate dining room that we had at our last house.

Dining table needs to be put back together

Our current house is smaller and has one space for the kitchen/dining area. With the table leaf we can seat 6 and you can squeeze in 8 if you need to. We also had a card table set-up that works next to that. It was a tight squeeze but we all had a good time and lots of great food and that's all that matters. We also had an unexpected guest which was fine, someone was at their families house and wanted to drop over. I'm a big believer in the idea that a house full of love has elastic walls. Ironically I had roasted an extra turkey breast for plenty of leftovers.The next day or two and I will clean off the carcass to make turkey soup.We don't watch football here, play computer games, we just talk and it's really nice to have just family. Someone in our family has gone to other Thanksgivings elsewhere and said there were just way too many people, friends, neighbors etc. They missed just having family time to just hang out. That's the way we like it! I hope you had a great one!




Blog Re-Vamp
You'll be seeing some changes on the layout of my blog soon. You may have already noticed a few? I'm eliminating a lot of the Amazon links on the left side bar since it wasn't really generating much income. For whatever reason people just weren't looking at various items. The reality is that I found I earned more money as a Hometalk featured blogger in two months than I did in the last year or so with Amazon, so I'm concentrating on that. My total out of all the years I have been blogging has been less than $120.00 or so. While I don't mind working for free I would actually like this blog to generate some income at some point. Time will tell, but you'll see some changes. I still may have specific items in specific posts with a link, but many of the other generic links will go away. Everything else is still there, just maybe on the other side of the blog.