Building A Shed & A Raised Garden

Back in February, after we got our tax return, Hubby got to work on building us a shed. We were in Desperate need of storage space!!!!! We have no attic so everything got crammed into our "extra" bedroom. I hated to even walk in that room to find anything because it was SOOO packed and unorganized. Hubby was a 'little' off on budget and we quickly ran out of funds. But it was all resolved when Hubby got rear ended! Instead of fixing the van we put the repair money towards the shed and got it finished! Yay! :) I now have a extra bedroom that I can actually walk into, move around, and have it suitable for if any guests decide to sleep over! 

Here is the process of building the shed and also a garden for me!

First night we got supplies at Lowes Hubby's brother & family were out at the house. Here is KFC and Cousin P riding on the cart

Framing the floor and the walls, and putting siding up

Adding the "attic" part of the shed, framing a door, and finishing the siding

Our little helper

Shed completion along with a lean-to surrounded by a gate so our German Shepard can't eat up everything. Hubby really wanted the shed to match our house, he did match the shingles but the color was a little off. The color swatch her brought home did look like it should have matched, oh well, still looks good. And he designed and built it all himself!

Next was to make a Vegetable Garden for me. I attempted a small garden at our old house but things grew out of control. I am attempting again this year. I am starting simple, squash, zucchini, cucumber, tomato and jalapeño is all I planted. If I get success this year I will try more of a variety next year. I planted kinda late in the season so the plants are still small. Some have started to flower and the jalapeño plant has a tiny jalapeño starting to grow. Since pumpkins are my absolute favorite, I am going to try and grow some this year. I just read that they need to be planted now, so hopefully I can get some seeds started this weekend!

Hubby added this picket fence to keeps the dogs out. We added white pebble rocks around the bed. We also moved our iron bench down there too, just need to get a cushion for it.

Kitchen Update

Finally got around to redoing our kitchen counter tops and I am loving them! Before they were a very plain off white color - which wasn't bad, but the UGLY green tile back splash that someone else put there was just not okay with me! I eventually want to tile a back splash above the counter tops but knew we needed to figure out what we were going to do with the counter tops first. We headed to Lowes last weekend to see what they had. We agreed on sheets of laminate and doing it ourselves. But which color to choose??? The nice Lowes lady showed us all of our MANY options, 95% of which needed to be specially ordered! The color we chose they did have in stock at the store but it was a flat sheen, she said we could order the same color in gloss. Flat sheen was $45/sheet while the glossy was $84/sheet!!! And there was our decision! We also snagged a Lowes coupon that came in the mail last week. How did they know!

Before: These were taken when we went to view the house for 1st time. I hope not to offend anyone, but the wallpaper grapes had to GO!!!

After we painted the walls orange!

Here is what the counter tops looked like up close. As one can see that ugly green tile looked horrific against the orange walls!

Some of the process of re-gluing laminate counter tops...

Glue sides of the counters first and Rip ugly green tile off!

A little blood catasrophy here and there. Well a lot here and there, that laminate is sharp! Hubby sliced his hands all up! After washing his hands in the bathroom he came out to find blood dripping down the wall of the hall and on the floor! Don't worry, we cleaned it up and he has no known diseases ;-)

KFC entertaining herself. Yes, she is completely inside this tiny bucket!

One side complete, except for the back splash not put on yet, that hubby so skillfully created

All done!

Again... the Before & After

With time and extra money, we will eventually have a nice tile back spash and curtains for the back door and window. These past few scorching days I have really needed some nice thick curtains to block out the hot sun.

Another One Bites The Dust...

Unfortunately our Silkie 'Fro' is gone! :( She of course is the one I knew I wanted this time around. Silkies are so interesting to look at and I just had to have one! I was standing in the yard tonight and noticed only 4 walking around. Sure enough, went down there and she was 3/4 of the way eaten, still left in the pen. Hubby did cover the gaping hole up top, but there were a few slivers of space where fencing didn't meet up. There was fur on the top of the fence so I am pretty certain a fox was the culprit this time and last. I guess since the spaces were so small in the fence that the fox didn't take Fro out with him. Hubby got to work on closing the spaces tonight. All are now done except where the top meets up with the coop. He says it should be fine, I guess time will tell! The above picture is of both Fro and Paprika. With only 3 hens left, and 1 rooster, I guess we are back in the market of looking for more hens! I like them as pets but really need them as egg layers, and these three won't make as many eggs as I want.

Pitching Tents in VA

Friday after hubby got off work, us three and Chessy headed to Sherando Lake in VA to meet up with hubby's bestie and his wife. It was located right near Wintergreen ski resort. We arrived with just enough daylight to set up our tents, air mattresses and sleeping bags. The first night was FREEZING!!! And of course the air mattress that we just bought last fall and used only once has a hole in it! Hubby and I hardly got any sleep that night between laying halfway on the ground and air and also from shivering! I was awake the next morning around 6:20am, managed to lay there till 6:50am and couldn't take it anymore. It was warmer to get off the cold sunken air mattress than to be moving around outside the tent! I made hubby get up and start a fire for me. :) Breakfast soon followed with pancakes, bacon, and eggs. I decided to go ahead and get a shower, hoping that the warm water would un-thaw me. The showers were CrAzY! You had to push a button on the wall to start the water, then the water would only stay on for a very short period of time (9 seconds according to Chessy, she counted!), and then you had to press it again and again and again... BUT first you had to get hot water coming through the lines, which took about 5 minutes!!! In the end, the water did get warm, I did un-thaw, and I didn't smell like smoke anymore. Success!

After breakfast, Hubby crashed in this very comfortable hammock that C.Z. brought.

Kaile spent the morning running back and forth from our tent site to the C&L's site. Every time she saw us take the camera out she would run

After Hubby's nap, we decided to walk down to a nearby grassy area. C&L and Chessy threw a football from person to person as we walked. The bottom left picture is of a wood carved mushroom we passed by.

I sat under a tree in the shade while C&L and Chessy threw the football and while Hubby took KFC on a walk to look at the pond above us.

L.Z.

Cheesy

C.Z.

Here I am sitting in the shade

and a picture of a flower near me :)

After hubby and KFC's walk, they joined me in the shade.

KFC wearing hubby's John Deere hat

After this, we walked back to our site to eat lunch. Then I decided to take a nap. Man was it hot now! Crazy that I couldn't sleep the night before because of shivering and then couldn't sleep during the day because of sweating. Needless to say, by Sunday I was TIRED! While I was napping, the rest of the group played the Monopoly Deal card game. I joined in after I couldn't sleep any longer.

Later we walked down to the lake area. Very nice through there. Pretty stream running through and had a good amount of beach area where the lake was. KFC made some friends as she always does. She knows no stranger!

Once KFC was done with being in the cold water, we headed to find the rest of the group. What we found was Chessy having a game of "who can skip rocks AND nailing the other person" against 3 young boys. All of them were in it for the kill! I think Chessy got them more times than they got her! One kid did get her in the leg, made her fall down, and was bleeding on her calf.

On the walk back to camp, Kaile was doing the cutest thing. While sitting on hubby's shoulders, she had her hand up at her face, had the cutest smile, while talking in the the CUTEST voice. She kept saying something about "it's so cute", have no clue what she was talking about, but it didn't matter. I wish I could have recorded it! I would have loved to have bottled that up and listened to it every time she is driving me up a wall!

Back to camp we went to make dinner. We had A LOT of food and it was all very good! I had made aluminum foil packets of chicken, rice, peppers, salsa, and cheese. I have only made this in the oven but figured it would turn out good camping. Sure enough, we sealed our packets up and threw then in the coals. Once done, we threw it all in a tortilla and instant burrito! C also made two huge packets of potatoes, one hot and one not.

Before leaving Sunday, we went back down the lake area for more rock skipping and group picture taking.

Our family picture that took many shots to get everyone looking.

Love the timer on my camera for taking our group picture

The tree to climb on. Chessy is on the bottom left hanging from a branch over the water.

Loved the campsite! I will definitely be getting a group up to go again in the fall! Thanks C&L for inviting us!

Poor Paprika

Yes, we have lost another chicken! I noticed this afternoon there were some feathers around their coop, but just figured one had shed a few. After staring at them for a while I realized we were missing one. There was about a 4 foot gap on the top of the 'run' area that we hadn't gotten to closing in. I guess a hawk flew in, attacked, then took our poor Paprika with it! She was one of the friendlier chickens and I really started to get attached. I especially liked around her eyes, it looks like she has eye liner on! Just makes me mad that we started with 8 chickens... 2 died, 1 is a rooster, and now one gets eaten, so we are now down to 4 laying hens! Our Silkie chicken won't lay all that often, and the Americauna and Buff Orpington lay a few times a week, and the red star should lay every day. Not as many eggs per day as I would like! I may end up getting some more red stars. Bryan basically finished off the top this afternoon. Hopefully the hawk won't be able to get back in- now that it knows they are there!

Day at the Beach

The day started out cloudy, so we played under the house and rode over to the park. The weather called for thunderstorms so I wasn't optimistic about being outside too long. But the sun came out and never did we have as much as a grey cloud!

There was a wedding happing right beside where we were sitting. KFC LOVED it! She has been obsessed with being married lately. She enjoyed watching the girl come down. After the ceremony the photographer had everyone go down the water and jump up to take picture, thought it was really cute!

We found a tiny crab running in the waters edge

Snack Time

Hubby and KFC played this 'game'... they would jump over the first wave and then the next wave they would run from it!

The water was pretty chilly. You feet would get used to it after a while, but no way would I have laid in that cold water as KFC is doing! There was also a ton of seaweed!

KFC needed to pee but said the water was too cold to sit in... um hello, you were just laying in it before! She wanted hubby to help her. So off they went.

Snuggling with daddy right before we left

Except for the sunburn on my legs it was a great day at the beach. Later we got together at uncle's house to have a dinner feast. Then we retreated back to our beds for the night. We were all worn out! I think I was asleep by 10:30pm!