The Year of the Farm Pants

Happy New Year Friends! I know it's already February, but I am consistently running behind. Every year I try to post my holiday letter on the blog, and I didn't get that out until a couple weeks ago. In fact, our family pictures were taken after Christmas this year, so I just went ahead and ordered  New Years cards instead of Christmas cards. Whatever works, right?

The annual letter is below, although this year I took the liberty of using the names you know, like Peanut Head, instead of referring to my husband as Clark. That's just so weird. I'm also sprinkling in the photos we had taken for the cards, and then some, because I can . . .

We’ve been settling into the farmhouse and making it our own for more than a year now, and we’re starting to see some satisfying progress. There is still so much to be done, but it no longer feels like those things have to happen yesterday. I’m in a groove now where I go from room to room, cleaning, painting, and organizing. With each room I finish, the house feels a little more like home.

Also a little less like a fire hazard, if we’re being honest. We’ve run into quite a few electrical nightmares that Peanut Head has had to address along the way. I’m learning more than I want to about electrical myself, because apparently there is only one of Peanut Head and he can’t do everything. He’s not buying into my version of the marriage contract wherein he has to do the yucky stuff and I get to do the fun stuff.

In fact, I spent the months of March through October digging a drainage ditch. We’re actually calling it a dry creek bed, because we’re fancy like that. I’ve been digging and cleaning dirt, if you can imagine that. I used to make fun of Peanut Head for doing that sort of thing, but it’s strangely satisfying.

Here’s how it works. I throw a shovel of dirt on my wheelbarrow, which Peanut Head has fit with a screen for sifting the rocks and other treasures out. The rocks are thrown into buckets, depending on their size, and later washed [yes I said washed] and then used in my dry creek bed. Never did I ever see myself cleaning dirt and washing rocks, but here I am, living the dream.

Not only am I digging a ditch, but I am also sloping the ground away from the house and the shop so that water flows away from the structures and into the ditch. A very long level and getting down on the ground on all fours is involved. It’s crazy town. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard, and for so long, on anything before in my life. But again, it’s strangely satisfying.

Peanut Head has turned into a farmer. He’s always buying various potions and seeds for his field. He has a sprayer attachment, a seeder attachment, and a rack for his shovel on the ATV.

He has farm pants.

Funny story about his farm pants . . . he ripped them right below the buttocks when he was fixing fence one day, so he patched them up with iron on patches which just so happen to form an “L.” Now we call them his  “Loser Pants.” He is not amused. He also has a walking tractor. He’s living the dream too, except really this was his dream and now we don’t call it that. This is a family letter, so I’m going to keep it clean. 

Zoe Bug and Stinkerbell love living on the farm despite the fact that their chore chart has morphed into a multi-page spreadsheet. Two of the four horses we were boarding now belong to them, and they have continued to take very good care of all the horses, without having to be reminded by us. They have had to tend to horse wounds and do gross things in the care and keeping of animals, and it hasn’t hurt them a bit. In truth, it has made them better people.

Annika (Stinkerbell) and Zoe Bug

The girls moved to another high school in the district where I work, but on the side of town closest to us, so it’s a lot more convenient. I also moved my office to the north side of town, so we’ve cut our commute in half. The girls ran Cross Country this year, and they grew a lot as runners.

Zoe is a junior and starting to freak out about college. She has started filling out scholarship applications, and we get all sorts of junk mail from colleges wanting our money. Obviously they don’t know yet that we don’t have any. At this point she still wants to be a veterinarian. She spent another summer volunteering at the zoo, and also at a local veterinary office. She’s basically Snow White. She goes outside and starts singing “Aaaaaaah-ha-ha!” and birds land on her arms, and rabbits and deer frolic at her feet. Okay, not really, but almost. She’s crazy good with animals. Annie and I just scare them because we lumber up to them and try to control them. Zoe is nice. 

Annika is a freshman and enjoying high school. As usual she is overextended, and by extension, so are we. We’re very bitter about it too. She started the year with Marching Band, which started during the summer, and then required attendance at school during zero period for the first trimester. Zero period is from the Devil, as you can imagine because it isn’t even a proper number, and it starts at 7:00 a.m. It’s stupid. Because that’s not enough, she is also doing Pep Band, which requires attendance at games that we don’t, as a rule, ever attend. And I might add that the word “pep” and Annika don’t belong in the same sentence. She is non-emotive, just like her father.

She also joined Civil Air Patrol, which has been sort of fascinating. She has uniforms, which require meticulous upkeep, and there are stringent rules in the wearing of them. We were told early on that “Cadet Scott’s hair can only be dyed a natural color,” and that was the end of the Elmo bangs.

Cadet Scott

It has been fascinating, because Stinky takes no interest in cultivating her appearance. She gets up, puts on shorts or sweats and a t-shirt, maybe runs a comb through her hair, and that’s it. I watch her dress and arrange her hair for Civil Air Patrol and I’m all “Who are you, and what have you done with my child?”

Gunny regains the top for a few seconds

Gunny is still with us and very happy to be on the farm. He’s still very pampered, and spends most of the winter napping. He and the goats share the paddock, and he is the low man on the totem pole. If he decides to jump on top of his dog house to bask in the sun, one of the goats will promptly knock him off and keep him off. He then walks away like that was his plan all along.

Lucinda Gooseberry, aka Lucy, tossed out of the house in order to expand her horizons.

Lucinda Gooseberry doesn’t seem to know that we’ve moved because she never leaves the house. All she does is eat, sleep, meow, and poop.

Cecilia, Warrior Princess

Cecilia, on the other hand, is the best farm cat we ever could have asked for. She kills mice and other rodents by the dozen. Not only does she kill them, she eats them too. It can be horrifying to watch if it’s not from the comfort of the house with a pane of glass separating you from the sound effects of crunching bones. It gives me the willies, but it’s always good to have one less mouse that can get in the house.

The horses are amazing. We have thoroughly enjoyed having them, and they’ve become part of the family.  

Sweets

 Sweets is exactly what his name implies, a sweetheart.

Mr. Bo Jangles

Bo is a grumpy old man, but also Mr. Dependable.

Rey

Rey is a Mustang and has been known to chase coyotes off the property. She brings a lot of sass to our little herd.

PJ aka Mr. Pajama Pants, Pajama-Rama, Peej

PJ is obsessed with eating and usually looks like he’s about to deliver multiple litters of kittens. PJ is probably the biggest character of the bunch. He and Zoe have a special bond that melts my heart. Zoe has been working with him because he’s a big scaredy-cat over every little thing that’s new. One day she had returned from a training walk with him in which she was exposing him to new sights and sounds, and being the big lug that he is, he stepped on her foot when he spooked over a noise. She was very upset with him and gave him a tongue lashing when they returned. She was all red-faced and yelly, and he wasn’t the least bit repentant. He was snorting and pulling his lips up over his teeth, smiling and nuzzling her. I just want to kiss him on a regular basis. Which I shouldn’t because I’m allergic to horse lips, and I get instant hives when I kiss them.

I should also add that PJ is a Delicate Flower and he sunburns easily. Last summer Zoe was out in the field applying sunblock for babies to his Arabian snout twice a day. He’s a lucky guy.

In conclusion, we have a happy herd, and they have been so fun to have in our family.

Other than the continuous hemorrhaging of money since moving out to the country, life is good on the farm. We are all happy and healthy, and so fortunate for all that we have. We hope this letter finds you and yours happy and in good health as well. Take care of yourselves, and have a fantastic 2018!

Dog Stalker

This is our dog, Gunny Sergeant. We never call him by his full name because look at that face.

My name is Jill, and I'm a Dog Stalker.

It all started innocently enough. Peanut Head and I were fretting about what to get our spawn for Christmas, when Zoe Bug showed us the following video commercial.

You really have to watch it to get a full appreciation of its awesomeness. My favorite part is 53-56 seconds in when the Dog Mom's coworker is looking at her like she has completely lost her mind.

I can really relate to that part.

Once we watched this video, we knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that our household needed this product. You see, the last couple of years the Bunnery Sergeant has been spoiled rotten and has been allowed to stay inside whilst his family treks off to work and school. We feel sorry for him because it's so c-c-c-o-o-o-old outside. And windy. And the house is cozy and warm.

I should mention that Peanut Head's heart does not soften like ours, and he scolds us for letting the Bunny Man stay inside.

If loving a dog is wrong, then we don't want to be right.

It would be just fine and dandy if Gunny Bun Bun weren't such a Mr. Naughty Pants. You see, he sleeps on the couch when we're not at home.

I know, I know, it's horrifying.

I also know that many of his peers regularly sleep on their couches, but in this house it's 100% unauthorized behavior. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal if he were cat sized and didn't lick his goodies. But it is because he isn't and he does.

So, see a need, fill a need is how this story goes. The Furbo is basically a spy cam for dog parents. And it is So. Much. Fun.

As soon as we set it up, we ran into another room and started calling to Gunny Bun Bun through the app to call his attention to the strange, new device.

Honestly, he was not amused, but once we got his attention, we launched a treat at him so as to hook him.

Huh?

Gunny Man turned with a goofy, suspicious look on his face. Actually, he was slightly terrified so he swooped in for the treat and ran away with his shifty eyes darting around.

We've spent a lot of time launching treats at Gunny in order to get him comfortable with his new friend. In fact, we launched, or maybe I should say "tossed" so many treats to him that we ran out and had to start filling it with cat food.

Cat food because he loves cat food, and he would not be impressed if we launched dog food at him because, obviously, he's a dog and that is so yesterday.

The only problem with cat food is that it's too small, so instead of launching a piece of cat food, it instead peppers him with a shrapnel spray of cat food. In every direction.

If he wasn't afraid of the Furbo before, he sure is now. His current MO is to dart in to Hoover the cat food up, and then dart out to the other room in order to escape the incessant coos of his people.

Several times a day we get notifications on our phones that tell us "Your dog is barking. Would you like to see what's going on?" 

Um, yeah. 

So whichever one of us can be discreetly available pulls up the Furbo app, and gets the 411. Typically the cattle ranching operation next door to us has arrived to feed their cows. As you can imagine, Gunny simply cannot allow that to happen without attempting to give himself an embolism via a fit of barking.

Other times the UPS man has delivered a package, thereby throwing Gunny into a hysterical fit of barking. I've tried to explain to the Bunnery Sergeant that no one is ever sad to see the UPS man. It just doesn't happen. He's not the brightest bulb in the box though, so we're still working on that one.

Early this afternoon I pulled up the app just to see what Gunny was up to and I actually caught him  climbing up onto the couch for a long winter's nap. Which then prompted a lot of "Gunny! Get off the couch you B-A-A-A-A-D Dog." At which point he thrust his head under a couch pillow because if he can't see us, we obviously can't see him.

And I'm not too proud to admit that the Furbo is not just for dogs. Peanut Head and I were taunting our girls with it last weekend while they were watching a movie. We were unable to get their attention by calling their names, so we tried barking at them like tiny, hysterical poodles.

That worked. Zoe got up off the couch and came and peered into the camera. And that was the perfect moment to launch a spray of cat food shrapnel. Score!

Then, because it was sweet little Zoe Bug, she went to get a broom to start sweeping the mess up. Once we saw the broom, you guessed it, launch number two.

I seriously love that kid.

Finally Gunny wised up and ran in to assist, exclaiming "My job! My job! Back away, Sister Girl!"

I seriously love that dog.

Farmhouse Love Episode 9 . . . The Bathroom is Finally Finished!

I thought I would never see this day. We started on this bathroom a year ago in September, and it was finished thirteen months later. This is the reality of a typical household in which people are expected to hold down jobs while they DIY on the side. It's such a buzz kill.

Before I show you any more of the after, let's first take a trip down memory lane, to what was when we moved in.

When we bought this house, the bathroom was painted this tan color with a pinkish tint. Everything was in need of replacing.

The floor was bare plywood with a piece of carpet cut to fit the room. I've never been a fan of carpet in bathrooms anyway, but this carpet had seen better days. Or maybe not. It was nasty.

The tile was poorly installed, as you can see from the buckling at the base of the tub. There were holes throughout the grout as well.

To be honest there was so much wrong with this bathroom that I won't even bother to point all of it out, lest you catch my #moneypit hives.

The first step was to pull everything out and start demo on the tile. Our dirty little secret is that for awhile we had a white trash junk pile behind the barn, where the bathroom vanity and the toilet sat. And they were not lonely. We have made many trips to the landfill, and I'm happy to say that we now appear to be respectable property owners.

Appearance is everything.

Next Peanut Head laid down cement board for the tile.

And then I came in and laid the tile. It only took me six or eight weeks. Who's counting? I am not a professional. I watch You Tube videos, obsess, and blunder on.

I can't tell you how many sections I had to pull up and fix because I am not a professional. I am pretty proud of that detail work around the tub though. I wouldn't have wanted to do this job without a tile saw.

The next, and probably most satisfying step, was paint. I love paint. It makes everything new again.

The day Peanut Head installed the toilet was a beautiful day. Angels sang.

I have a piece of advice where toilets are concerned. Don't buy the cheap one. We didn't buy the fancy pants toilet, but we picked one somewhere in the middle of the price range, and it works beautifully. I don't even think we need to keep a plunger in this bathroom, that's how good it works.

And that's all I'm going to say about that because poop is not a polite topic of conversation.

That's what my Mama always told me. But then she was always telling me what was "not very ladylike," and that pretty much ensured that I would continue to do the not ladylike thing. Nobody tells me to be ladylike. That's why Peanut Head likes me so much. 😬

Once the toilet was in, we got quite a bit done relatively quickly, because by this time Thanksgiving was fast approaching and my sister-in-law was coming to visit. We had been living with only one bathroom for the four of us, and we knew we needed at least an additional partial bathroom to be functional for guests at Thanksgiving dinner. 

I'm talking about Thanksgiving 2016, not this year.

Peanut Head framed this mirror to go with the window trim we knew we were going to add to the window. He also installed the farmhouse light fixture. It's operating room bright in here now, and I love it. We have to turn it on with a pull string because of the way the existing wiring was set up.

Our choices for a vanity were very limited due to the size of the bathroom and the location and orientation of the plumbing. You truly do not appreciate how tiny this bathroom really is until you take a shower in it. I can't even imagine what it was like for the original owners with this being the only bathroom in the house for an entire family. Where did they even put all the towels?

I had fun with my stencils on the built in drawers and cupboard. This doesn't look like a lot of storage, but it really holds a lot more than you might think.

This house has charm and storage for miles. I love it.

I painted the door because it was a hot mess, and we replaced the knob with a lever. There is no trim on the door in this picture, but that changes later as Peanut Head transitions everything to farmhouse trim.

And this is how the bathroom remained until February or so. The tub surround was an intimidating project, and neither one of us was excited to tackle it.

We chose denial.

It was super slow going because Peanut Head had to cut the wall out in sections with his metal grinder. The plaster walls have a metal mesh holding the plaster together, so that's why he had to use a metal grinder. Both of us had to wear masks and I held the shop vac up next to the blade while he cut, in order to try to catch the mushroom cloud of dust. Every weekend we would cut another section out and fill our trash can up. 

We H-A-A-A-T-E-D  it.

Finally, we got it all out and just had some pesky asbestos insulation to deal with.

Once that was replaced, demo was done and we could start making some progress again. By now it was March and we were in the current year. 

The next problem to deal with was the plumbing. Originally this house did not have a shower. At one point a shower spray hose was attached to the tub spout. We wanted to go with a traditional shower head because we have teenagers.

You have to think like a teenager and plan for mischief and mayhem. It's a rule.

Ta-Da! Peanut Head is a magician.

Next he built in some shower niches. I was so excited about these, but when it came to tiling them, I had the stress sweats. I'm so glad it's done now.

Somewhere along the way, probably May, although I can't find the pictures, Peanut Head put up the Hardi-Backer for me to adhere my tile to. 

Then I procrastinated because I was afraid to fail. I put off tiling until July.

I'm a chicken butt.

Meanwhile Peanut Head kept doing little things, like installing the new outlet and light switch with built in night lights.

And we tackled the trim work around the window, door, baseboards, etc.

And I couldn't resist putting up some vinyl to remind my girls that even when they have bedhead and don't do their chores as fast as I think they should, I think they're beautiful.

In my final push towards procrastination, I tiled the backsplash of the sink. For some reason I don't have a picture straight on with the grout in. I used a dark, pewter color grout, and  I wish I would have used a white grout instead. I think it would look better with these glass tiles.

I don't care enough to dig it all out and redo it though, so we're living with it.

Finally I forced myself to tackle the tiling. I started with the niches, because in my mind they would be easy. Famous last words.

I also marked out my level lines for the subway tile and marked the center points to start from on each wall. 

My plan was to tile in stages in order to avoid slippage, because gravity is real.

Not only did the former tiled wall have slippage at the base, but it was also adhered directly to the plaster wall, without a cement board base. That's a big no no because the cement board provides a stable moisture barrier. Without it, the metal mesh in the plaster walls rusted and the wall had rot from moisture seeping through the old grout.

Once I got to this height I kept changing my mind about how and where to install the river rock. The original plan was to have a neat, linear six-inch border of river rock around the whole tub surround.

Then as I got to the edges of each wall I couldn't get the picture of a comic book brick wall with subway tile peeking through it out of my head. Or maybe it's a subway tile wall with brick peeking through it?

I don't know. Just think of Clark Kent ripping open his collared shirt to reveal his Superman get up. That's the inspiration.

So I changed course.

Again and again.

I had to make multiple trips to Home Depot for more river rock.

I don't even want to know how much I spent on the inspiration. The irony is that our property is basically a rock quarry with a house and some outbuildings on it.

Every time Peanut Head checked on my progress he did a little head tilt, trying to figure out where I was going with this. I heard a lot of tongue biting whilst he was following my progress.

I would exclaim "I don't know, but this is fun! I just keep getting new ideas!"

I'm pretty sure Bob Vila would be horrified with my process.

In this picture and the one below, the tile is finished but not yet grouted.

My plans for the finished edges kept changing as well, so the finished product was a surprise to me too.

Grout makes everything look better.

Then Peanut Head came in and installed the plumbing.

And it works!

That was not meant as a commentary on his skills. He's really very handy. It's just that this place is a bit of a #moneypit and it wouldn't surprise us to get to this point and find another surprise, even though he checked that the plumbing worked before installation of all this Crazy Town.

Not only do we refer to this house, lovingly, as The Money Pit, but we are constantly chanting "If you give a mouse a cookie . . ." because if we do this, we have to do that. And if we do that, well then we might as well . . . blah, blah, blah.

Oh look, here's a shot where you can see the grout on the sink backsplash. Squint a little and you'll see it.

The tub has an unusually large drain, so we have this starfish thingy in order to keep kittens from falling to their deaths. And wads of hair from teenagers, I suppose. Although I'm constantly admonishing the girls to "Wipe that nasty wad of hair off the starfish, for the love of Peter Pan!"

Nobody in this house ever listens to me. 😕

We obsessed over the shower curtain rod, and eventually we came up with the idea of repeating the curtain hardware from the girls' bedrooms.

After having used this set up for a couple months, I'm seeing little black specks of paint on the window sill from the curtain rings sliding across the rod. I don't know if this will stand the test of time, but I'm crossing my fingers. I think the bigger problem could be rust, which is why we painted the plumbing pipe and fittings to begin with.

It's possible that the paint is flaking off the rings and not the pipe.

This is me not wanting to make one more trip into town to find dark shower curtain rings.

My next problem was where to hang the bath poufs. I was planning on hanging them from suction cup hooks on the shower wall, but nothing sticks to the tile. Argh!

Finally I remembered about these leftover hooks I had from Ikea, and it was the perfect solution.

I love this toilet paper holder that Peanut Head made. The previous toilet paper holder was the type that sits inside the wall and has a spring rod thingy. We didn't want to patch the wall from the hole it left, so Peanut Head just made this wood piece, routed to match the baseboard, and fastened the plumbing pipe and fittings to the board.

And it's super easy to change!

Although I still need this sign about changing the toilet paper because still, my spawn stack the new roll on top of the empty roll. Why. Do. People. Do. That?

I think they do these things on purpose because they know it makes me crazy.

I have this little sign in both of my bathrooms because I'm super paranoid about septic problems. I've heard horror stories, and one thing an OCD person never wants to see in their house is sewage. Although I'm pretty sure nobody want to see that, but OCD people obsess about nightmares like that.

Peanut Head made the towel hanger too. I like hooks because you can hang more towels and you don't have to fret about making them look tidy.

They hang conveniently over the heater vent because honestly, that's the only spot we could have put it. This bathroom is teeny tiny.

Do you like how Peanut Head adapted his baseboard to go around the vent? He did the same thing on the baseboard he made for the girls' rooms.

I had this same Target unit in the bathroom of our last house, and I had to have it for this bathroom too. I knew as soon as we put an offer on this house that it needed to be in this bathroom, so it was the first thing I bought before we even moved in.

Here's a shot of the whole bathroom with the new farm house trim on the window. The shower curtain is from Bed, Bath, and Beyond online.

And that, My Friends, was the thirteen month transformation of our teeny tiny farmhouse bathroom.

Although to be honest, it's really not done yet because I still need to make a little cafe curtain for the window, and Peanut Head has to install a ventilation fan.

He's really not looking forward to getting up in the attic and dealing with that mess, and I'm just glad that I lack the skills for it. 😬

I told him we should just hire it out, be he's channeling his Depression Era dad and refuses. For now, we both choose denial.

As we scream at the girls to shower with the ding dang door open. Because we're fancy like that.

And here's my Pinterest worthy pin picture. Because Pinterest is where all my traffic comes from, and nobody reads blogs anymore. They're so yesterday.

That's me, always a decade behind the rest of the world.