Our backyard

Took this picture a couple months ago while I was digging furrows out in the garden.  I feel lucky to have this as my backyard!

It's that time of year again

As most of our friends and family know, we are in the club lamb raising business.  We raise ewes to lamb during certain times of the year depending on when lambs are needed most.  We usually lamb in the middle of winter through mid spring.  Winter lambs can go to summer fairs and the spring lambs are available for fall fairs.  Our fair is in October, so we always make sure we have enough to supply the kids that we are partial to.  :)

There is a young girl in our church that has decided that she wants to star showing sheep, and she is going to show 2 different lambs at 2 fairs this year, and because they live in the middle of town, we offered our place to her.  

That was one of our tasks on Saturday...get 2 sheep from Chris's parents house to our house & get them vaccinated before the day got too hot.  The lambs have already been banded (castrated) so it was time to vaccinate.  Not usually a good idea to do it on the same day because when the animal is under stress (banding) the vaccine isn't as effective.  However, before we could do any of this, we had to catch them, lift them over the fence because the gate on the pen sucks, drag them over to the truck because the don't walk well yet & then lift them in the truck.  One of the lambs is about 110 lbs, the other is about 80 lbs.  I'm still sore.

The dog kennel is where the two sheep will be living since the barn isn't ready yet

Chris is cleaning out the feeders and you can see one of the heads of the sheep in the Popper

We vaccinated both sheep with CD&T.  The "CD" stands for Clostridium Perfringens type C&D, also known as "Overeating Disease". The "T" stands for Tetanus Toxoid.  If CD&T is not kept in the refrigerator, it has to be on ice.  Once it warms up, you might as well throw it away.  A bottle like this (25 doses) costs about $8.00 at our local feed store. 

Sitting on ice, before we were ready to vaccinate

The sun was amazing last night when we went to Chris's parents house to feed, just though I would share few pictures that I took with my phone...

These were taken while I was waiting for our vet to show up to check one of the lambs' legs.  Never a dull moment. :)

New Stove Top-YAY!!

We had a busy Saturday this weekend.  It started off with going out to breakfast because this is what was pulled out of our kitchen last TUESDAY. 

Yes, this is one I've been cooking on for a MONTH.  Isn't it lovely.  There was really only one burner that worked correctly.  The others would heat up, but they either set too far down in the hole to where it didn't heat up the pot, or the burner sat so high that the pot or pan almost fell off.  Thank you to Chris's best man's parents who bought us a new stove top for our wedding present.  The person that was supposed to come and install it had an extra busy week at work, so he wasn't able to come over last week.  So here is Chris installing it.

Ta-daaaaa!! Isn't it beautiful??  AND all four burners work like they are supposed to!!!

I will be back later with the rest of our Saturday...it involves sheep, loading, hauling & vaccinating.

More Wedding Pics!

Well, my sister is an amazing photographer, but for the wedding day she put down her camera (for most of the time) and filled her roll as MOH.  However, between her and her husband they caught some pretty fun pictures of the rehearsal, pre-wedding and during the whole evening.  They are on her blog, HERE.

Check them out, they are pretty fun.

And if anyone needs a photographer, here is Erin's website.

And here's this, just because I l.o.v.e.d. my bouquet that Erin made.

Enjoy!

Wall Decor

We have huge, blank walls in our living, so I’m trying to figure how to fill that empty space.  Now that I know we will have our wedding pictures in a couple weeks, I want to get started so we can put something up asap!  The wall above our couch, which is the largest wall in the living room, is where I want to put our family pictures from the wedding.  I’d like to put up the word “Family” somewhere on the wall, but I’m not sure how I want it to look.  A few months ago I saw a whole wall collage set up at Bed bath & Beyond that had the word “Family” with about 10 pictures frames, and I should have bought it when I saw it because they no longer carry it.  Booo!  There are some out there, but I want separate pictures frames, not all in one frame.  We have a whole wall to fill & one small collage frame would look ridiculous!

Yesterday I was looking around online and these are the things I’m thinking of…

This pictures is off of a shop at etsy.com, here.  I may not end up putting it on this wall, but I still love it and may buy it anyways for somewhere else in the house. 

Now, this idea is probably what i will go with.  It's super easy & I think this has a cost of $41.009(ish), depending on the word.  However, we have a TON of old bard wood out behind our barn that would make perfect pieces of wood for this project.  I can find something to hang them from, or even put door knobs straight into the wall.  If I do it myself, then I customize it the way I want it, and I'm guess I can do it for less than $41.  I have turned into the master of spray painting. :)

Now, the maker of the sign in the first picture has some a.m.a.z.i.n.g. signs that she creates on pieces of wood.  Most of them are with vinyl lettering, and I'm not ready to try that yet, so this may be my next purchase, here.

What's next?

The barn & weed patch/pasture are the next big project at our place.

So when you have a free moment, you are more than welcome to bring a hoe & a shovel and get started!  The area around our barn is about an acre of our property.  All the weeds will get disced under and we will stretch out fences to make the area into 3-4 pastures for the sheep.  As for the contents in the barn, it is going to require a large dumpster.  The previous renters and owner used it as a place to throw their garbage, needless to say we have A LOT of cleaning up to do. 

We are taking volunteers.

TV Stand

Well, we have some of the coolest friends ever.  Not only because they give us free stuff, but just because they are awesome.  Our good friends decided that this couch table no longer 'went' with their brand new mansion  house they built, so they decided to give it to us instead of the thrift store!

Before:

After a little (7 cans) of Rustoleum Textured Spray Paint

Now, before they even brought it over, I had decided that this was going to be a new 'entertainment center'.  This is what we had our TV sitting on before we moved the new one inside last night:

Lovely, huh?  It's an old coffee table that my grandpa refinished YEARS ago that I somehow inherited when I moved out of my parents' house almost 6 years ago.  Just way too short for a TV stand!

And this is what everything looks like now.  

Yes, those are rabbit ears for those that have never seen an antenna...we are too cheap to get satellite. :)

Wouldn't get too close

The sheep are still at the Mr.'s parents' house until we can get our fences built.  Sunday night we went to go feed and on the way home he swirved and then threw the truck in reverse.  I had no idea what was going on.  "Snakes" he says, and I automatically want to jump out and see them, but on the other hand, I want absolutely nothing to do with them.  I got close enough to take a picture with my phone and then as he sits on his happy butt in the truck, he tries to convince me to move them off the road and back into the blueberry field that they came out of.  I don't think so, Mr.!!  He got out and moved them both back into the field.  Before we could even drive away, the larger one was already making its way back towards the road.  We all know how this story is going to end up...

The next morning, the big one was smeared laying across the road.  Such is life.

The start of a new beginning

As of May 14, 2011, we started our new life as The Coolidges.  My husband and I dated for almost 5 years before we tied the knot.  It was a long four and a half years as he finished up 2 years of college and I finished 4 years.  We were engaged Christmas Eve and 4 1/2 months later, we were married.  It was a whirlwind of planning and stressing out, but we wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way.  We got married at the same spot where we met for the first time, which is not something that most people get to do.

Here are a few pictures from our big day.  There will be more to come as people share them with us and when we recieve our final proofs from our awesome photographer .  I absolutely love the way these 8 pictures have turned out and I can not wait to see the rest of them!