Strawberries!

 Pixie loves strawberries. She would ask for them and gaze in awe of them at the grocery store. I have fought myself on it because I know they are on the "dirty dozen" list of conventional foods, but I have even more gained the desire to have my own patch after hearing about the possible approval of a new pesticide to be used on them.

“I’m not in blanket opposition to the use of pesticides, but methyl iodide alarms me,” said Theodore A. Slotkin, a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke University Medical Center and a member of the scientific review committee. “When we come across a compound that is known to be neurotoxic, as well as developmentally toxic and an endocrine disruptor, it would seem prudent to err on the side of caution, demanding that the appropriate scientific testing be done on animals instead of going ahead and putting it into use, in which case the test animals will be the children of the state of California.”

Full article here.

Besides all of that, they are simply so expensive to buy in a constant stream from the local grocer. I would love to have a bumper crop of my own and stuff ourselves silly with strawberries every year. 

Moving a few months ago, with all the many things that have to be done inside and out in this house, I have attempted to get a strawberry patch. At first I tried to put some in one of those Topsy Turvy things that we found for almost free at Menards. Some of the root balls never grew and all but one of the plants died. 

I discovered that on the less sunny side of the house, a previous owner had planted lots of strawberries, but I wasn't sure how much sun they got on that side, so I wasn't in high hopes for a good crop. 

I took a look at the other side and decided to shovel out the rock garden, rip up the plastic, cultivate sand from the pit and peat moss into it.  

I was pleasantly surprised when the rocks and plastic came up easily and almost in one sheet, then horrified when I found a horrendous colony of ants beneath it. Sadly, I had to wait. I bought those granules that can be used around gardens, then had to endure torrents of thunderstorms until my patch was ant-free and dry enough to dig in. Yesterday I worked outside for hours and hand cultivated the patch. I planted my lone alive strawberry plant, along with three others I got at a local store. I meandered to the other side of the house to see if those part-sunned strawberries were, in fact, going to ripen.
And this is what I found! 

They were delicious! And I say 'were' because Pixie at almost the entire bowl. There are more ripening and I'm planning on taking some cuttings to plant in my new patch on the other side of the house. 

Hooray! Get rid of your rock gardens and plant strawberry patches!

Home in Progress

So, my intention was to show before and after pictures of each room in our house as I finished it. Well, here are before and 'progress' pictures. It's just taking too long to do it all! We went on hiatus to start doing the gardening and landscaping, now we're putting it off to start on the basement. 

I painted the dining room and kitchen walls (our bedroom too, but I'm waiting for furniture and new carpet for the transformation pictures). The dining room and kitchen were two different colors, so I had to prime first. It took about 4 coats total! Quite the pain. Eventually I want to paint the living room (maybe!) and definitely the trim, but that will have to wait. I reused lots of our furniture, hiding all of it's falling apart flaws, but we did get to pick out a new leather double reclining sofa, glider/recliner chair and dining room table. I love them! We took forever to find exactly the right ones at the right price.

Haven't found my candles for my candlesticks yet....

Our first picture we've picked out together. We looked through hundreds, maybe even a thousand, prints before I settled on this one. I like it because it's not too realistic, but not too abstract. Perfect! It's called "Aspen Glow". I recycled a frame from a print I found at Salvation Army for $7, just cleaned it up and applied Old English stain to it. It looked so much better! Frames are so expensive, especially big ones like this!

The kitchen cabinets are a work in progress too...they are taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

Framed some prints from our photo shoot with Sam last October after she started up her photography business called Orange Photographie.

This bookshelf is really falling apart, but I rigged it and it doesn't look too bad...

Pixie wanted me to take some pictures of her with Perrin. We never did give him away and I want to keep him anyway. Put a bark collar on him and he's an angel outside, even with the 4 dogs next door.

She loves him and he's good with her, unlike Nova who wants to be alone and finally bit her last week. He's a good watch dog, even though he is a stubborn dummy at times. He's very loving. :)

Anyway, we are still loving our house and can't wait until we just have to maintain it!

Our New House!

I know, I know. I've been asked multiple times when I'm going to post pictures of the new house.

We got word on Friday, January 28th that we were set to close on Monday the 31st. I had planned to just meet Scott down here on Monday, until we found out that a blizzard, yes blizzard, was heading our way. I knew we had to get our little Honda Civic down there early or there wasn't any way it (or I) was going to get down. So, after attending the first hour of church, we booked it home and packed like mad. I thought I was going to get that extra day, so it was pretty crazy. 

We got the only motel room in the small town that allowed pets and spent the night there. I didn't want to touch anything, it was so old and gross. To make matters worse, not only did the next door lodgers have the tv on all night, they decided to get..intimate..at 6am for a long time. I was so ill and horrified that you could hear everything and until Pixie woke up, there wasn't much I could do. Gross. I feel like throwing up.

The day of closing they moved the closing up half an hour, so I had to race to the nearest town that had our bank, to get the closing costs out. It started freezing rain on the way there and Pixie fell asleep just as I pulled into the town. Scott was at work, so I had to haul her out of her seat and gingerly walk across the iced parking lot.

I made it back in time, we went to the closing and everything went well. After we were done, we were supposed to wire transfer the closing funds, but wire transfers don't go out after 2:30pm and our closing wasn't until 3pm. So, even though we technically weren't supposed to stay in the house that night, we did anyway. Our realtor was awesome. She stopped by the house while we were at the bank, to pick up the lock box. She found that the foreclosure company had taken it and left the keys inside, with the door locked. So she found a window that wasn't latched and sent her daughter inside. She even went in and turned up the heat for us.

We camped out that night as the storm started to progress. At about 5am the door bell rang. It was a police officer and it scared the heck out of Scott. His first thought was that he was going to tell us we weren't supposed to be there, but actually, Scott must have left the car door open. It was sitting there open and nothing was stolen from inside.

Here are a bunch of pictures. This one was taken last week, after the snow had melted some.

The dumpster was finally picked up today! Yay!

Living/ Dining rooms and coat closet.

Kitchen (the color is already gone!)

Door to garage and laundry room straight ahead.

Two car garage. The openers aren't working like lots of things in the house. Found out that a troubled young man lived here with at least his mother. They didn't take care of anything and broke lots of stuff.

The garage has lots of storage shelves and even a large bench for tools. 

Laundry room.

Laundry room closet I'm using as a pantry.

 Bathroom off of laundry room

With a shower!

More of the kitchen. This window thing is amazing. It pops out over the house like a little sun room for my herbs!

Double ovens!

Pixie's room. Don't know why it has linoleum in it, but after she played with Play Doh in there, I'm considering just keeping it and getting an area rug I can roll up when she wants to play!

The blue beast of our room. (That color is gone now too!)

Main bathroom.

Another closet in the bathroom. There are also two linen closets on either side before entering the bathroom.

There is a sliding door and a regular door off of the living room, to go to the back deck. If you go right around that corner, it's the stairway to the basement.

 Scary basement!

The view of the back yard when the storm was coming. The deck is covered, so that's really nice.

Front view.

We just hung out. Here is Pixie watching an old Johnny Appleseed cartoon and eating an apple she requested because of it.

We had to wait until Thursday night to load the truck at the old house. After shoveling two feet of snow here and almost that much at the old house (all the way up the hill and on the street for the truck), plus 4 1/2 hours of loading, we were all set. Well, not all. We thought the 22 foot truck would be more than enough, but it wasn't. We ended up getting back down here with the truck at midnight, exhausted, only to realize that we couldn't fit it in the driveway until we did even more shoveling. So, I went in and put Pixie down, then went back out to help Scott shovel until 1:30am. 

The next morning at 6am, we got up and took Scott to work, then Pixie and I headed back up (1 hour 40 min) to the old house to clean and pack up some more. Thankfully Becca watched her for me. We had to be back down here to pick Scott up from work at 3:30, but I had to swing by the house first to empty the passenger seat.

Then we took Scott home and he left straightaway back to the old town to load some more stuff and go to work. He kept his job up there on Fri and Sat nights.

The next morning we had people from our new branch at church help unload us. They did it in an hour! It was awesome. The guy Scott replaced (he retired) at work brought over two crock pots of soup, homemade bread and crackers. 

We took the truck back that afternoon and Scott went back up to the Joe once again for work.

It was quite the hectic week.

Since then we've been trying to unpack simultaneously with painting and fixing things. It's going slowly, but it's going!