Goal this weekend--met!

After such a tough week with the sick puppy, I was afraid I'd never get finished what I wanted to do! But, even though it isn't quite the goal I had set at the beginning of the week, it's still done. The laundry room and kitchen are both painted! And I even have time to spare... well, not really! There's still dishes to wash and laundry to fold and if I braved the pouring rain and mud I could get another can of paint and start on the trim. Wouldn't that be exciting?! With painting the entire main floor the same colors on the ceilings and walls, I'm ready to break out the color! And hope it meshes to look like I want it to! Yikes...

Jere faithfully worked at the plumbing and finished up with that yesterday. He was so excited about having a working toilet in the new house he hollered to me across the yard to tell me! I went to applaud his work, as he finished up something else in the basement, and narrowly escaped getting soaked by water coming through the floor in the bathroom. Here, the toilet hadn't been winterized when the other folks left the house, and it has a HUGE crack in the tank. So, now no toilet till we can get to Menards again and buy one... Well, at least it will be ready to use once we do get it! And still no running water, since we have no working faucets. BUT it's all ready once we get the new faucets in place, and so it shouldn't be too much longer now!

We also pulled the onions, and dug about half the carrots before it started raining. The onions are SMALL this year, very disappointing. But, at least I planted two double rows, so there's still some volume there. And we got something, despite weeds so thick Jere had to take the machete to them so I could even find the onions... Got a few beets as well. And now we just have to finish digging the carrots, dig the potatoes, and wait for a killing frost to dig the sweet potatoes. Besides eating a few fresh peas and a zucchini or two, and a few tomatoes, that's the extent of our harvest this year. Oh well. Hopefully next year we'll not be QUITE so busy? Maybe? I'd REALLY like to be able to have a nice garden again!

For anyone wondering about Chase, she almost seems back to normal. Maybe a little wobbly at times, but she's acting perky and running around and she just looks like she's feeling better. Whew. What a blessing.

Pictures!

To make up for the post earlier with no pictures, here are some I managed to take today! :-)

Sick puppy Chase. Doing better today, but won't be out of the woods for a few more days yet.

Eliott enjoying the sand pile.

Little Miss with her toys--precious Teddy and a rope!

One shoe off and one shoe on--why do they never STAY on?!!!

A corner of the kitchen. Right wall has fresh paint. Whoopee!

And that's all for today! :-) I was badly hoping to get some more done on the house, but that will have to wait till tomorrow now. The goal tomorrow is to finish the first coat of paint in the kitchen! That will feel awfully good!

Puppy-full days

Well, things have kind of been put on hold around here for a bit. We sold our last two puppies, then one of them got sick. Very sick. So, this week "all" I've gotten done is run to the vet and doctor the sick pup. Please pray that "Chase" gets better and her new owners will be able to come get her. And that none of the other puppies gets sick.

Last week, though, thanks to some help (and neglecting the laundry and dishes--oops) we DID get some paint on the walls. The main floor bathroom is now painted, and all the main floor ceilings are done. We have the first coat on the laundry room, and one wall in the kitchen. So, there IS progress made, just not any this week. Oh, never mind. Jere worked till late one night and got all the drain system hooked together, so now we have drains, even if we don't have any running water! :-) So, that was one piece of progress! He's hoping it won't take long to hook up the water lines, but we'll see. He also needs to do some work on the cabinets so that they're ready to paint. And we need to get this place cleaned up, at least a little, for when the new puppy owners come to get their puppies. The first pup leaves us Sunday, I believe, and that's always an exciting event!

I hope I have time to take the camera for a walk today and get a few more pictures of our progress. We'll see! It's foggy and chilly today, reminding us that soon it will be fire starting season... and we still don't have the furnace hooked up in the new house, OR firewood stashed for the winter. Well, it will come. Meanwhile, I'm actually wearing socks and a flannel shirt. :-)

I'm also VERY excited to be starting the THM (Trim Healthy Mama) "diet". I've known for a long time that my diet wasn't the best, with a fair amount of processed foods, and sugar. What I didn't realize was that wheat in general was also causing problems, and a visit with my healthcare provider informed me that in order to improve my health I needed to go on a low carb diet. With visions of diabetes around the corner if I didn't listen, and the pressure of having no time to dive into research, I bought the book "Trim Healthy Mama" as I knew it contained low carb recipes. Wow, did I ever learn a lot through that book about healthy foods, things I never knew. And why my body was slowly going downhill health wise. So, no more wheat, corn, sugar, potatoes, or rice for me! But lest you feel too sorry for me, I get to eat brownies, chocolate muffins, pudding, and other such delectable treats for breakfast if I want to--and NOT feel guilty because I know those foods are supporting my body. Ok, I don't gorge on that stuff all the time. Even chocolate gets old when you eat it three times a day... :-) And I'm a chocoholic. I'm SO glad I found a way of eating I can make into a lifestyle of healthy choices. I've cheated a few times (thanks for inviting us for a campfire doughnut fry, Aunt Eunice!) but I know that's OK as long as it doesn't happen too often. (They are carefully chosen cheats, and I go right back to my chocolate muffin once I'm home if I need to feel indulged.) And, as a bonus I've lost a few pounds, so that's exciting too! :-) I've had more energy, too, which is incredibly helpful these days, even though I still don't reach around. I'm very excited about it, and just wanted to give you another brief glimpse into what's going on around here!

Tribute to Dad

As I was painting away today, I got thinking about my dad. Guess that's not too out of place, seeing he and I have spent hours upon hours upon hours putting miles on paintbrushes. And I started really wishing he was here. Not because my painting would go that much faster (which it would--he's been painting more years than I've been alive!), but because I miss our fellowship. After painting with him for about 8 years, painting all by myself gets pretty lonesome. Oh, sometimes how I miss those long talks! Just he and I, with the birds singing in the background, pushing our paintbrushes loaded with white paint over white painted siding, using our rags to swipe away spider webs, and just talking. About everything. It was so easy to be best friends, to share all that was on my heart, to hear his loving guidance--even when I didn't necessarily want to hear what he had to say sometimes! The memories we made will always stay with me. Swaying up at the top of a ladder, the level of the eave on a full two-story house, when it felt like the sun was about ready to come down and join me and the paint dried faster than I could put it on, and listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Or sitting on the bottom of two extension ladders roped together so he could reach the bell tower on a church--and on a windy day no less!! Learning how to run a caulking gun. Humming along in the little yellow Chevy Luv with the hot wind blowing through my hair, exhausted and glad to relax on the way home from work. Trying to wipe up a drip real quick so he wouldn't notice. Ahh. Thanks, Dad, for all you went through to help me feel needed and loved, and to give me all these happy memories. I miss you!

Progress!

Well, there's progress being made around here! And it's exciting to finally SEE progress that feels like we're getting closer to our goal. I know, all the behind the scenes stuff needs to be done too, but it takes longer and doesn't look as obvious. But now, some of it is obvious. And we get a season of obvious progress for a time... Hooray!

 

 

The drywall has been patched and sanded and textured on the main floor! And a few walls in the basement too. Now we're ready for paint. It's been a bit of a drawn-out process, but so worth it to have things looking nice! We did a light orange peel texture in the kitchen and laundry, none in the bathroom, and a knock-down in the living room. It still looks very odd, with the different paint colors and some bare drywall showing underneath, but painting should dress it up incredibly. Any volunteers? It's an awful big job... 'Specially when I'm homeschooling and dealing with selling puppies on top of it! :) Wow. But, God is gracious to us. Don't tell the folks Jere's working for right now, but I'm terribly glad he got two whole weeks off work waiting for the slow pokes to get the floor poured on his job. That brought us forward amazingly on the house project, and to a place where I can keep some of it going while he's at work. God is SO good!

 

I did get the painting done in the basement for now. We still have some walls to build down there, but we have enough done to move the freezer down there (fall rains have been coming a little now, and it's a pain to walk across the mud soup yard to the shed to grab something out of the freezer!) and I can move some of the clutter out of our bedroom into the sewing nook. A little bit of cleaning, and the pantry will be able to start receiving what produce the garden managed to give us amid the weeds. I'm hoping for a few onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, even if the corn didn't do a thing!

 

The angel, watching the texturing happen.

We replaced the window that looked from the living room to the entry. Here is the entry side of the repairs, freshly stained and ready to go. Jere has to lay the tile on the floor in this room, and then we can install the cabinet and utility sink under the light on the wall.

Field trip day at home--the boys learning about drywall and texturing from first-hand experience.

Jere prepping for texturing.

Me, priming in the pantry.

The "sewing nook" corner of the basement, freshly painted. (The stripes are shadows from the shop light cage, not painted in!)

Drywall!!!!

Well, we are very excited to see some progress with our drywall today! Monty Hamann and helper came to work on patching up our drywall mess. The previous paint had that miserable sand texture in it, but it started peeling off where the drywall was disturbed. So, instead of simply smoothing over it, they scraped that old paint off. Made quite a mess, but it will look worlds better once we have the new texture and paint on it! I can hardly wait!!!!

 

More work done!

I know, it's been awhile since I posted. But we've been BUSY! :) Like, really busy. We did sell two more of our registered Alaskan Malamute puppies since I last posted--only have two left to sell now! Of course, we'll have them all until October 1 at least, but it's nice to know that they're spoken for.

Canterbury Belle, one of the puppies we recently sold. Sorry, the computer doesn't want to upload a picture of the other one.

 

Monday we started feeding them some solid foods. Here's a shot of a couple during their first experience of real food.

Jere got quite a bit of work done on the house since he couldn't work much on the job last week. That was exciting for me! He finished with the support walls, etc, down the basement, and moved into doing things on the main floor. Now we're almost ready for the drywaller to come patch things in so we can get started painting! That will be a happy day!!!

The new laundry room window framed in.

Laundry room window from the outside.

Ripping up the "stage" floor that took up 1/3 of our living room. Looks like they put it there to cover up a big patch in the hardwood. :( The flooring they used was a beautiful slate tile, and Jere cut it out into big, HEAVY chunks that we're hoping to use to make a patio table with. And maybe other things. Any ideas anyone?

 

 

We're hoping to be able to start with the big painting job maybe next week. Volunteers welcome!