Thanksgiving and the Chicken Coop

Thanksgiving was this week. That makes me feel obligated to talk about all the good food we made and how much we loved seeing our families, or maybe gripe about the insanity of early-morning Black Friday...

But the thing is, we got our chickens today! I'm on an emotional high from having sorta finished the coop, so I feel more like talking about chickens than about turkey.

I will try to reign in my enthusiasm long enough to talk about things that happened, gasp, two whole days ago! Thanksgiving! It's funny that I could be so excited about it for weeks but completely over it the next day. Life is so short and so fast sometimes...

Here's our beautifully set table for Turkey Day:

I was happy that I had an excuse to use the fine china and silverware, and the pretty glasses. Nate was kind enough to do some decorating last weekend (clearly I just wasn't going to make time for it) so we actually had some leaves, pumpkins, and my "Pioneer People" set up. I think I'm going to leave them up through this week, just so I can enjoy them a little longer. Besides, it feels too early to start doing Christmas things. There's still a whole week of November left! A whole week for pumpkins and pioneers!

I didn't have time to photograph the food spread before we dug in. It was standard fare (mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans, cinnamon-pineapple yams, rolls, stuffing, turkey, gravy; salad, ham, and apple pie from the PILs; pumpkin cheesecake). The baby loved eating carrots, green beans, and turkey. We've been chowing on leftovers the last couple of days.

After a full morning of cooking, we enjoyed our feast at about noon. Then the baby went down for a nap, the grownups had dessert, we cleaned up, and the PILs went home. Nate and I alternately worked on the chicken coop. When Baby Girl woke up, we hopped in the car and went to see my family for the latter part of their festivities. We got to spend a couple of hours with my side of the family, so it was a wonderfully well-rounded day!

The next day, a bit of early morning Black Friday. (Why do I do this to myself?) We tried the craft store, it was crazy busy and a bit disappointing, so we just got a couple of things and then went on to Freddy's. Sock sale! I think Fred Meyer's has to be the nicest place to go Black Fridaying; the other shoppers are relatively nice, the staff is friendly; there's free coffee and donuts; and the socks! They are all half price. It's really the only reason my mom goes out, I think. I also got a few extra things for Darling, since the prices were decent.

The rest of Friday was spent finishing up the chicken coop. Actually, that's been the focus of any and all free time during the last week. Evenings, afternoons -- any time we had a few minutes, it went to the coop.

Now I know I said we brought home chickens today, but I want to make it very clear that the shed is not completely done. As I mentioned in my October Recap post, I can't finish painting it until it the weather is sufficiently dry and warm (i.e. not until this spring), so there's a lot of painting yet to be done. We also need to add the rain gutter and hook it up to the rain barrel. Nate is less concerned about this task, but it's still high on my list! I didn't paint that rain barrel and schleck around in the mud to build it level foundation just for looks! Also, on the inside of the coop, we (Nate) would like to build a bit of shelving and storage space.

Finishing up the electrical work was a lot of fun. When you get to the home stretch and everything is coming together, it really is great. Very rewarding. When I got to turn on the breaker, flip the light switch, and go out to see the light shining brightly (and not electrocute myself, start a fire, or destroy anything in the process), I let out a whoop of joy. It gives me a bit of encouragement and motivation to work on the basement.

With that, here are some pictures...

The outside of the coop (needs more painting!)

The inside (you can see the light I wired and installed, upper right corner of this pic):

These are our chickens (Bitsy Crowing and Doreen LeWing):

The side/back of the coop, with a view of the chicken run:

Before-and-After Pictures of the back of the shed:

I'll share the before-and-after of the other side when it's actually all done... in the spring.

And then she walked! (Plus other updates and a bunch of pictures)

Years from now when my daughter asks me, "When did I start walking?"
I will tell her, "November 10, 2012."

We went to visit my parents last week at their new house (it was Nate's first time up there). As soon as we stepped in the door and I set Baby Girl down so that I could take off my shoes... and she toddled away from me, across the room.

Up to that point in time, my daughter's walking was pretty limited. She'd use furniture and other objects to help herself stand and walk, and she would sometimes take two or three steps on her own. One time I even saw her take about six unassisted steps. But mostly, she wasn't interested.

Not until the magic of Grandma's House intervened. A magic spell was cast when we walked in the door, and now my daughter is walking. She still crawls a bit, especially if she falls down while walking, but for the most part she is just toddling around as though it were the most normal thing ever.

I LOVE IT.

A lot of people tried to tell me that walking wasn't going to be much fun. They said she would get into everything and run away all the time, and that she would be too fast. I think these people must not have waited for seventeen months to see their children walk. To date, of all the things my daughter has learned to do, this is my very most favorite. It is amazing and adorable! I don't miss crawling. She's too big and too old to crawl, and created plenty of its own worries and nuisances. Bring on the walking! Heck, bring on the running!!! I love new adventures and challenges.

The next day, on Sunday, our very good friends who live an hour south (in our college town) came to visit. You might remember them from previous blog posts -- Nathan and Kimmy, whose son "Little" is nearly the same age as our daughter. We made them dinner and Kimmy took some pictures of me making my beloved new treat, pumpkin cremes! Kimmy has a food blog and wanted me to write a guest post. I was/am totally flattered! But since I'm not a great photographer, I convinced her to come and take the pictures. You can check out the post, pictures, and recipe on the Bake Shop's blog, www.kimmysbakeshop.com (here's the direct link).

Monday was a day off work (Vet's Day, belated) so we were all home and having fun. We went to see Nate's dad and then worked a bit on the chicken coop. (More on the coop in a minute.) I finally finished my edits to Queen Witch, J.R. Pearse Nelson's latest work. I sent them along and final revisions are underway. I am grateful and pleased to have participated in the writing process for such an inspiring, self-published author! The new book should be out by the end of the month. Do you want a copy? I'm going to order some extra prints to give away; just let me know.

There's a job opening at work that has me very excited. It's for the Senior Analyst position, which is one step up in pay and about five steps up in awesome from my current job. The position came open two years ago and I very much wanted to apply, but after many long deliberations, I decided the timing wasn't right. For one thing, I was four months pregnant with daughter so I knew I would be out of the office (parental leave) during a critical workload period. In the end I applied for a promotion to my current position, and I am very happy about the route I took. I've gained great experience in my job, and developed leadership skills that will be invaluable if I'm promoted again. It also gave me time to better understand and appreciate the workload of the Senior Analyst.

Now, I don't know whether I will be the top candidate. I'm a strong contender, but several smart, capable people are applying. I do know now that I am very seriously interested in the job, and I feel ready to tackle it, should things go well. The whole process will take a couple of months, so for now... stay tuned!

Today was a pretty normal Saturday. We ran a few errands and got a few things done around the house. I finally got most of the wiring set up for the chicken coop, so that we can have a light out there to keep them warm this winter. There's a covered patio out back with several lights and outlets -- too many, in fact. So I axed the last two routes on the line, hijacking them instead for the coop. I installed a light switch, and then ran wires through conduit out to the coop. (In the rain. And mud. And cold. The conditions were ugly and shoving the wire through long plastic tubing required more muscle than you would think, but when I was done and got to head inside to take a nap with the baby... total satisfaction.)

The thing is, I'm going to have to redo a bunch of work. The switch box is too small to comfortably hold all the wires, and the box doesn't mount securely. So I got a different box after nap time, and I will have to spend another hour out there sometime soon so I can swap out the switch and boxes. It's okay, it will be worthwhile in the end.

As if that wasn't enough stuff, I also tried a new bread recipe today. The goal was a bread with lots of seeds.  It has five kinds... but... it's hard to explain. The bread didn't have a big rise, so it's dense (not bad, just not great); the flavor is a bit... bitter? Some of the seeds have a great flavor, but others are kinda sour/bitter. So maybe more sugar/honey/agave next time? We'll see. I'm not going to make bread for a couple of weeks; too much is going on.

This week is Thanksgiving! Nate's parents are coming over for "dinner" at noon on the big day. We are making most of the goodies. I'm actually excited. I didn't think I would be -- who wants to go through all of that effort? -- but then we went grocery shopping today, and I got yams and potatoes and green beans and pumpkin puree and a turkey... and now, I'm feeling festive! I love Thanksgiving. If only it didn't have to be followed by the madness and annoyance of the Christmas season. (Bah humbug, I despise the holiday commercialism, masses of people everywhere, and stress. Can't I please just skip Christmas this year?)

Since I don't want to end on that Scrooge-like note, here are a ton of cute pictures from the last three months:

Set A) Climbing, crawling, exploring: She'll get into everything. It use to be "Where did we put the baby?" but now it's, "Where did the baby put herself?"

Sitting in a crock pot -- I swear she did all of this on her own:

Climbing on the step ladder -- she loves this:

In her room, she climbs onto her chair, then onto her desk, and perches up there:

And now here are a bunch of cute pictures of various things, many of them with food...

Pretty much one of the worst things I've ever seen:

Halloween Costume: Monkey

(Her) Feelings about Costume: Hatred

Time spent wearing it: Minimal

Playing with Buckle Bear! She doesn't hate him after all:

Diaper Hat -- She can thank her dad for this idea:

The back of her hair is getting long. Sadly, the font is not. Insert nickname: Mullet Girl

(Sleeping. This is what she's doing right now. I love it when she sleeps -- so peaceful.)

October Recap

Hi there. Are you wondering what happened to October? Me too. What a month.

 Nate came down with a cold at the start of the month. Right after he recovered, the baby and I got sick. And  even though that was weeks ago, we're all still feeling a bit sick. In fact, Nate seems to be starting a whole new round of illness. The baby and I have just been battling runny noses for three weeks. It is exhausting; I feel like we're running at full speed just to keep up with the bare minimum. 

I haven't put out a single autumn decoration, even though this is one of my favorite times of year. We were so tired on Halloween that we gave up early, turned off the lights and closed the curtains. (It was terribly anti-social of us and I missed seeing all of those sweet trick-or-treaters, but oh... man... it was nice to go to bed early.) Papers have piled up in our office. I haven't finished my ballot. I didn't post a single blog or even write in my journal.

But that's not to say that nothing got done. Lots of little things got done whenever we found a few minutes or a spare hour. We did a tiny bit more work on the chicken coop, on the chicken run. It's still not done. The coop/shed is partially painted, which I am just going to have to live with it until it's warm and dry enough to paint again. We (Nate) need to wrap chicken wire on the run and we (I) need to wire out a light. It's so close. Maybe a couple more weeks and we can finally bring home a pair of chickens. (I hope!)

I also got a few sections of wiring replaced in the basement. It's slow going. I still have a lot of old wire to remove and it is hard to pull the old, dirty wires through the tiny holes, and it's hard to stuff new wires back through those holes. Plus I have to drill through some of the studs to make new holes since I'm changing the configuration. With only a couple of good hours available each week (in 30-60 minute chunks), it is s-l-o-w. Slow! For the record, I don't mind, I'm not in a hurry, it is just the hallway and utility room after all. But Nate is a antsy, and oddly, I think my mom is kinda annoyed. (Sorry y'all.)

I continued biking to work, except for the week when I was totally knocked out with my cold. For a few days I thought I was finally seeing some great results, then I realized I was just dehydrated from my cold and then over-exerting myself. On the bright side (?) my friend-babysitter is moving farther away, so I will have to bike even more. Yay exercise...?

Just this morning I finished making a new toy for my daughter...

Buckle Bear (shown above pre-buckles)

About a month ago, my mom got a bunch of buckles and some sheer ribbons for us at the craft store. Darling enjoyed buckling the buckles, but the ribbons were kinda floppy and the buckles came untied often. So I dug through my stack of old stuffed animals, looking for one that would make a good "Buckle Bear." I found one, and he sat in the office for a couple of weeks. Then he was in my craft room for a week so I could work on him whenever I found five or ten minutes to spare. This morning before work I was able to put on the finishing touches:

Now, I admit that this is not anywhere near as cool as the commercially available versions (like the Buckley Boo Monkey) but I am really proud that I made the time to do it and had the courage to try this project that was a challenge for me. Buckle Bear is also a lot cheaper than the commercial version... especially since my mom bought the buckles. (Thanks mom! You're the best grandma ever!) To my slight disappointment, my daughter was not especially excited when I presented Buckle Bear with all of his new bling. But she's still learning how to buckle so I have hope that she'll enjoy him more as time goes on.

Last weekend I tried my hand at making some pumpkin creme candies. (It reminded me of college, working at the candy store. Sometimes I feel nostalgic for those days.) The candies were actually really easy to make and they taste DELICIOUS. I was surprised. But I would really like to figure out how to make the creme center so that the candies don't have to be refrigerated. It will involve cooking the pumpkin and probably leaving out the cream cheese... but I need to do more research and some experimenting. If I can make time. In the meantime, here's a picture of the beauties:

I also made bread twice this week. Twice! I haven't made bread in many months. In my ideal world, I'd make bread every week, but it's hard to find the time. I got lucky in that Nate really wanted home made bread and was willing to haul the baby away so I could get it done. Mmmm... autumn, candies, bread, pumpkins, apple cider, rain, leaves falling... wonderful time of year.

Way back in early August, I  mentioned that I offered to beta read and edit the latest novel by my author-friend, J.R. Pearse Nelson. She was hoping to publish the book this summer but then life got busy and she had to push her deadline. She finally sent me a copy this month and holy cow, it's a good one! I decided to read all the way through it once before making any edits and it was hard to squeeze in book time. J.R. is understandably anxious to get her book out the door, so now I'm trying to blast through the editing process. But I want to be a good editor and I have a lot of ideas, so it's yet another project that's going slowly. In the end, I could see this novel being very successful because it's a great story. It will be the first novel that J.R. has issued tandem as an e-book and print-on-demand. I'm planning to order a few copies and give them out to family and friends. I hope that if I send a free copy to my book-critic-friend Thalia Anderson (<<< that links to her very popular book review blog on tumblr, but she's also on Facebook), that Thalia will do a review of the book.

If you're curious, here's the cover for J.R.'s upcoming book (you know I'll be raving even more when it's published, so stay tuned):

Finally: I've been asked to take on a little bit more responsibility at church. In addition to helping in the nursery (kids ages 18 months to 4 years) for two hours every Sunday, I'm now also going to spend a few hours at the start of the month gathering information for a brief monthly status report. When I was asked to do this, I wanted to run screaming from the room, but I just took a deep breath. If it gets to be too much, I can always go back and ask them to find someone else. God's pretty funny, though... You feel like you have a lot to do, your plate is full, you're feeling overwhelmed... and He says oh no, you think you're busy now? Here's something else. Let me show you what busy looks like. Very funny, Big Guy. Thanks for the lesson.

With that, it's past bedtime, and I'm done. See you... next month?

Painted Rain Barrels

If you had the time to read all of the ridiculously long, round-robin-of-updates post that I shared a month ago, you might recall that we are going to install a rainwater collection system (a series of water barrels) in our backyard. We picked up five 55-gallon barrels, three blue and two white. I was initially pretty excited about the white ones because they were a few dollars cheaper than the blue barrels. Then my mom told me that the white ones have to be painted before we can put water in them, otherwise we run the risk of having an algae bloom in the barrel. Arg.

Thankfully, my mom had three cans of spray paint that she was originally going to use on her own barrel; it's blue and therefore does not need to be painted, she just thought it might be fun to do some painting. Instead she generously gave us her cans of spray paint. She also bought a big can of spray glue. Mom got the painting process started for us by putting green paint on the bottom of both barrels and trying out some plant-stenciling techniques:

Finishing her paint job has been on my mind, but only at the very back of my mind. There are a half dozen other projects that need to get done right now! But for whatever reason, I was feeling the creative bug this weekend, and I decided to finish them up.

The barrel my mom started inspired me to do an "Under the Sea" theme. I used ferns from our yard for the plant stencils, and cut out sea creatures (fish, sea horses, and a turtle) using my Cricut. As mentioned, the lower half of the barrel was painted green. I then painted the top and top half white. In areas where I wanted to paint sea creatures, I sprayed a square of color (purple or orange). Using the spray glue from my mom, I sprayed the plants and paper cutouts. I let them sit for a couple of minutes so they were less tacky, then stuck them on the green and colored parts of the barrel.

In the end, here are some pictures and a quick video of the Under the Sea rain barrel (sorry for the fuzzy picts):

(The sailboat on top is my favorite part.) 

For the other barrel, I wanted to do a garden theme. I used flower stems from the dead gladiolus in the front yard. I again used my Cricut to cut out the flowers, bugs, and grass border. And I bought a couple more cans of spray paint so I could get a little more color in the garden. (This means I now have a bunch of barely used cans of spray paint; what do to with those???) I took a lot more time planning the second barrel -- I measured the barrel, drew a sketch of how the flowers, bugs, and colors would go, and carefully marked the barrel. It was tedious. The result isn't perfect, but it's a lot of fun! The dragonfly on top... I can't decide... the color ran, so it kinda looks like an ink blot, and it's cool but also weird. Maybe I should paint over it? You tell me.

Here's the Garden theme rain barrel:

Take a shower by candle light

Nate is downstairs right now, taking a shower by candle light. (I bet you thought the post title was in reference to me, huh? Nope.) As I think I've mentioned, one of our many current house projects is remodeling our downstairs hallway and basement. I've been (very slowly) redoing the wiring in the basement, which means the power is off on a couple of circuits. The whole lower west side, actually... which includes the bathroom. Nate wanted to take a shower, the upstairs shower is right next to the baby's room (and she's sleeping, of course), so he had to go downstairs. Since there's no light, he kindly asked if I would light a few candles. I made sure to pick the prettiest ones with the most calming scents, of course. Ha.

Today was a very busy day. It started with the usual Saturday morning routine (double-stop grocery shopping). Determined to make progress on the chicken coop, I then went out and spent a couple of hours trying to finish the priming. I did not succeed, but it's nearly primed. Of course, then I have to do the actual painting... I think I need another couple of hours to finish priming and probably 4-5 hours to paint. Hopefully during the week I will find time to prime, then perhaps next weekend I can begin painting. Nate has nearly finished constructing the outside run. So maybe we'll have chickens in 2-3 weeks? I hope!

Nate's parents stopped by to pick up some things. I gave away most of the empty moving boxes that I've been hoarding in the "furnace closet" in the garage -- Marie dropped them off with some friends who are moving. It was a little bit hard to see them go, but it's liberating to purge. I think I feel the need to hold on to them because of how many times we moved when we were first married; part of me is always just waiting for the day when we have to pack up and move again. But I let go of the boxes, so maybe I can just finally settle down. (Ha.)

The PILs also took away the oil tank for our old furnace. They are going to set it up at their house and use it to store diesel for their tractor. I am going to use the space in the garage to store the baby strollers. I was not sad to see the tank go because I am very happy that it is going to a new home where it will be used and loved. As we were loading it up, we gave it a name: The Pig. It has already stuck.

We continued to do yard work after lunch and during nap time. Mostly trimming and weeding, trying to get the yard in shape for the winter. It's easier to work with the plants and dirt in the slightly cooler, fall weather. I hope it holds out long enough for us to finish a few more things outside, then we can turn our attention inside for the winter... finish the basement projects and a handful of things upstairs. Next spring we'll be back out in the yard with some aggressive, ambitious gardening plans. Hopefully this time next year I will have grown enough of the right food that I can do some canning. I thought I might get to this year, but no, the garden didn't quite produce what I want, when I wanted it, in the quantities I'd hoped for. But we learned a lot and we're excited for the next growing season.


Last Sunday I made a coconut layer cake (which I originally saw on Pinterest). If you really knew me, you'd know that I am totally a "box cake" girl. I like box cakes, I think they are moist and delicious, and I often prefer them to home made cakes. Say what you will, it is what it is. So when I saw the recipe, it intimidated me a little bit. It seemed complicated. But it looked and sounded, oh, delicious! So I gave it a shot and I am quite pleased with the results. Honestly, the only "challenging" thing about it was gathering up the ingredients, and even that wasn't really hard.

Should you decide to try it out, here are my notes:
- Cream of Coconut is actually usually used for mixing alcoholic drinks, so you'll find it with other drink mixer stuff. (Oregon friends, you can find it at WinCo.)
- If you have 8" rounds, try them out. I used 9" as the recipe directs (it's all I own, anyway) and it was... well... I think I would have liked the look and size of a slightly taller and less wide cake. But it doesn't affect the flavor, just the appearance.
- The frosting is overly sweet, even if you drop the sugar down to 2 cups instead of 3. I ended up whipping some heavy cream and folding it into the frosting, which made for a lightly lighter and not sickeningly sweet frosting.
- The directions say to use one cup of frosting between the layers of cake. Use a generous "one cup" -- I was sparing with my one cup, and consequently my middle layer was too thin, and I ended up with 1/2 cup or more leftover frosting (and yes, I was very generous with the outside layer of frosting).
- Definitely toast the coconut. Beautiful and tastier.