Barn Charm Tuesday - Number 100!

I'm a little late today, but I still want to Barn Charm !  Especially since this is Barn Charm number 100.  What a milestone!  So, please join me, and all of the charmers, and hop on over to Tricia's to check out all of the other barns captured worldwide.

I found this charmer in my files.  I think it was taken somewhere near Olean, Missouri.  Other than that, all I can tell you is that she is loved and well cared for.  Sure wish all barns could say the same!

Out of control

I've always considered myself lucky to have a small corner of my inside world dedicated to my scrapbooking fetish.  A place where I can start a project and leave things out without messing up the rest of the house.

As you can see, things had gotten out of control.  There was no rhyme or reason to where I had stuff and scrapbooking and card making was almost becoming a chore.  It isn't much fun working in the middle of chaos.

The lightbulb came on when we got Jim a drafting table to use for his art work.  It has great work surface.  The height is perfect for standing and working or sitting on a bar stool.  His table was so much easier on my back than sitting down at my plastic folding table.  Jealousy was consuming me.  I had to have a drafting table!  So the search was on. 

Jim has become a Craigs List officiado.  He scours the lists for the unusual, the hard to find, the one man's junk is our treasure, type stuff.  And he spent many hours looking for the perfect drafting table for me.  He finally found one in a damp, moldy, basement in St. Charles, an hour and 1/2 down the road from us.  The table had originally been used at the McDonell Douglas Boeing Plant in St. Louis. 

W(H)e had to dismantle it to get it out of the basement because it appears they had put the table in all those many years ago and then built a wall around it.  Frankly, it was gross.  But it was an oak drafting table and held promise.  So we loaded it up and brought it home.  I lost count of the number of buckets of water it took to clean the mold off.  At one point I was questioning our sanity (actually I do that a lot).  But we persisted.

Then we were faced with the dilemma of fitting it into the small space allocated for it.  We had measured, of course, but still, tables don't bend around doorways.

 

Frankly, I'm not too sure how we got it in, but we did.

 

No, Jim is not putting the table back together.  He is trapped behind it and trying to crawl out.

 

Errr, putting in a computer table we no longer use to give added surface space.  Can we say trapped again?

 

 

I'll have to admit that by now I was in a fits of giggles. 

 

And now my scrapbook room is a work in progress.  I love spending time in there playing.  When the guy we bought the table from threw the long arm florescent light in free, I figured I'd never use it.  Love it!  It is so nice to be able to swing it over whatever I'm working on and really see what I'm doing.

 

 

Now I'm a card making, scrapbooking, freak.  Definitely out of control!

 

 

How did you spend your 16th Birthday?

Grandson, Travis, turned 16 yesterday. 

The first thing he did was get his driver's license.  Of course that is after waking up, checking facebook for all of the birthday wishes, brushing teeth (he skipped breakfast - bad boy!), and getting dressed.  I'm sure there was a text or two in there somewhere.  But the first important thing he did was take his driver's test - and he passed it (no surprise there). 

How do you think he spent the rest of his day? 

Driving around showing off?  No car. No gas money.  So no. 

Hanging out with friends?  Nope

Moping because he has no money and no friends?  Ha.  True about the money, but not true about the friends.  And no moping.

He spent the day working with Grandpa. 



Travis stacking brush

We have an eyesore on the front of our property in the form of a septic system that sticks up out of the ground.  When they installed it oh so many years ago, they hit rock, and couldn't set it into the hillside like it was supposed to be.  For all these years it has stuck out like a sore thumb.


Jim cut trees around the system so we could get dirt to the area.  As Jim cut, Travis stacked the brush.  He stacked, and stacked, and stacked!  Jim quickly discovered keeping up with a 16 year old is no easy task. 



Would you believe me if I told you this is six dump truck loads of dirt?  I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen for myself each and every truck that brought a load in.  This is turning out to be a bit of an expensive project. 

Of course it wasn't all work.  His family came out for supper and birthday cake later in the evening. 

Happy Birthday to you.  Happy Birthday to you.  Happy Birthday, dear Travis!  Happy Birthday to you!

Thank you for spending your day with us... working, no less!  We are proud of you as a person, and we are proud to call you Grandson.

A visitor... or two... or three...

Guess who came to visit us over the weekend...

She brought her children along...

 


For the most part they were very well behaved, although they did tend to help themselves to what little food was available.... much like my grandchildren :)



Come on in little ones. Join the birdies and squirrels.



They only stayed long enough to grab a bite to eat and let me snap a few memories

Tori, we had a mama deer and her two babies come visit us over the weekend.  They are just beautiful.  The babies still have their spots.  They almost walked down our brick sidewalk, they were so intent on grazing on what little green remains in our part of the country. They are struggling along with the rest of the wildlife and are welcome to whatever they can find.


Happy Saturday

The torrential downpour of rain that we were blessed with a few days ago was shortlived.  It would be so nice to experience a day or two of nice, gentle, cooling, rain.  Our farmers are devastated.  Of course we can't fully understand how far reaching this drought really is. 

Our normally green hillside.  The pond to the left was bank full at the end of May.

Trees look to be dying all around us.  Are the leaves just turning brown early or are the trees really dead?  Time will tell, I guess.  Food prices are going to sky rocket.  Something I've never understood, though, is why the prices don't come back down when the crisis is over.  Farmers are having to sell livestock because they won't have any hay to feed them this winter.  They could have (and some have been able to) made silage out of the ruined corn crops, but if insurance covered the crops, then the corn could not be used for anything else.  That would have been double dipping.  Could they have given it away?  So many things in our world just doesn't make sense to me. 

On a bright note, our temperatures are downright wonderful right now.  We enjoyed temepratures in the 60's as we sat on our porch, drinking our morning coffee, the past couple of days.  The highs are reaching only in the 80's.  What a relief.

I'm pretty sure I have overdone it on the bird feeding front.  A few days ago the feeders were empty.   While sitting on the feeder a little guy looked my way and gave a chirp.  I thought it was cute, but definitely a coincidence that it looked at me just as it chirped.  But then last night while sitting on the porch (we seem to do that a lot these days), a Titmouse sat on the porch railing and fluttered its wings at us.  When we paid it no mind, it came further in.  Then it came back again and looked straight at me and chirped.  Yes, I fed them this morning.  It's no fun to be fussed at!

Time to get busy with fun stuff like cleaning the house.  Hope you have a great weekend!

A cause to run outside

THIS is what we experienced about 8:00 last night.

It was a sight we have not seen in a very long time.

It came so hard and fast that the new oversized gutters couldn't handle it as it rolled off the metal roof.

Oh thank you God for the blessed rain.  I don't mean to be greedy, but can we have a bit more, please?  Pretty please?  Pretty please with cherries on top?  Thank you.  Amen.