Handy-man? Nope, Handy-woman!

Well, part of buying an older home with a lot of 'originals' is that some are easy to replace and some, not so much.  This was an easy one.

About a month before our wedding, our friends/Chris's former employer/our vet gave us an extra shower head (a new one) that they had from when they remodeled their bathroom.  It has been sitting in our cupboard for a while and I totally forgot about it until our trip to AZ last week.  AZ has some crazy water conservation laws, and the shower head that is in my sister's new home is...well...very low flow.  And with my incredibly thick, curly hair, it took a while to even get it wet.  This reminded me that we had a brand new shower head sitting in our bathroom cupboard that hadn't been installed yet.  I decided that that was going to be my project for Monday.

Old showerhead...


Typical shower head.  Flow and pressure was decent, but it was old and we have really hard water out here so it was all corroded. 

Now, I've never done any type of plumbing work by myself, so I was just hoping for the best.  

This is what I ended up with...



Then of course I had to take a shower that afternoon to try it out.  

Quite wonderful!!

Thanksgiving Trip

We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  

Ours was fast but enjoyable.  We made a trip to AZ to see my sister, brother in law and two nephews.  My parents were there too.  Left Wednesday, came back Sunday.  Not a whole lot of words this time, but lots of pictures.  

In RANDOM order...

G wearing 'Oh Kiss's' hat (Uncle Chris) We kept laughing cuz it almost sounds like he is saying "Old Chris"

Mallie did soooo good in the car.  Slept almost the whole way...both ways

My dad & G in the Milo field across from their house

Baby S all wrapped up

G & Chris holding hands in Wal Mart.  So cute! 
We went out to dinner for mine & my dad's early b-day.  Mongolian food.   So yummy.  They had a cardboard cut out in front.  G & Chris had fun in it.
He just stood behind there and kept smiling.  Even when we weren't taking pictures of him.
More to come tomorrow! 

DIY?? Who me???

Sitting here enjoying a peach margarita after a fun, successful day.

Started off with us taking a ewe lamb to the sales yard.  She just didn't make the cut & with feed prices so high, we can't settle for "I like parts of her".

I was talking to my dad yesterday and he asked what my plans were for Saturday.  I told him I didn't really have any plans and Chris was going hunting for most of the day.  He suggested that we do something together since my mom is in AZ with my sister and sweet baby Sawyer.  I suggested that he come down (a 2 hr drive) and help me with a project that I saw on Pinterest.  I told myself I would never join that site because I didn't need another excuse to sit in front of the computer.  I caved on Friday.  SO many good ideas!  He willingly agreed and he was going to be here sometime in the morning.

He got here about 10 this morning and we got to work.

These are the ideas that I saw on Pinterest, and knew we had to make something like this, this, or this.  If you don't have a Pinterest account, you may not be able to view the last 2.

We have so much extra wood behind our barn.  I had an idea of which wood I wanted to use, but my dad and I headed out there to take a look.  Amazingly enough we found what probably used to be an old barn door or something but it was pretty much already put together and we just had to cut it down to fit.  The color was nice, it had worn pretty evenly so there wasn't any bleached spots or really bad boards.  We hauled it over to shop and started working on it.

First, we had to remove some of the old nails so we could make it all the right size.


Then had to cut it down to the right size


Then nailed on the legs that were to be attached to our bed frame



(And for those of you who think I just stood around and watched, oh no.  This girl knows how to use a hammer.  When I was probably about 6 my parents bought me my first tool belt for Christmas.  Not one of those plastic play kinds either...a real one!  There are some fun pictures of a much, much younger me helping my dad add on a master bedroom to their house)

AND Taaaa Daaaaa...this is the final product.  I LOVE IT!!




My grandma was a very avid quilt maker.  She made quilts for everyone and I have at least 3 of hers that she made.  This one on our bed is the largest one I have from her and she made my sister and I one specifically for when we got married.  I love her quilts.  Reminds me of when we were growing up.


I love the rustic-ness of the headboard.  It fits well with our house and our room.

Thanks dad for coming down for the day and helping me with this project.  It was a great day!

Incoming Storm

There is a storm rolling into our part of CA.  Tonight we were on our way to town to get some stuff from Home Depot and the sun light was peaking through the clouds right before it got dark.  It was pretty neat looking.  I wish I had had my other camera with me instead of just my phone. 


There is big irrigation pond on the way to town and the sun was reflecting on the water.  We stopped and just looked at it.  So quiet and peaceful.


I'm pretty excited about tomorrow.  My dad and I are building something that I've wanted for a long time.  Since my mom is in AZ with my sister and my hubby will be hunting tomorrow, my dad and I are are going to get 'crafty'.  Except it's going to be with a saw, a hammer, barn wood and a bunch of nails.  I'll take pictures along the way so you can see what we are doing.  It's gonna be great!

Linking up to Farmchick's Farm Photo Friday, you should too!

Not her finest moment

So I was working around the house this morning and I suddenly hear a strange sound coming from the back yard.  The strange sound was soon followed by barking.  Now, this dog has not proven to be a barker.  I've only heard her bark just a few times in the (almost) 3 weeks that we've had her.  

I walked to the back door and saw this.  Watch it all the way to the end.  




What dog chews on a terra-cotta flower pot?? 

She has already found another one to play with. 

This week's randoms

Not a whole lot going on this week.  Just a lot of little stuff.  Here's a few pictures to show you what I've been up to.  

P.S. I love Instagram...can you tell?

She does pretty good with riding in the truck
I've been working on organizing all our paperwork and filing it, good think we have a semi-large living room
I was unloading hay yesterday and found this poor gopher all smashed
This is what the back porch looked like when I went to leave for town.  A shoe, gloves, toys, weeds, wool, giant sticks and a very guilty puppy.

We are working with her retrieving and sitting skills right now and she is doing pretty well.  Here's a little video.  And she weighs 13.2 pounds.  She's gonna be big.


Home Sweet Home!

Well, as I sit here in our living room, writing this blog, it is a balmy 54 degrees INSIDE.  When escrow closed on this house, it was March and we didn't move in till May, so there was never any need to run the heater.  Had the A/C fixed in July & now the thermostat isn't working and we don't trust the heater.  Not knowing the last time it was serviced, I'd rather not die from carbon monoxide poisoning or our house burning down.  The heater fixer guy is coming tomorrow to service it, so then maybe I can get the house above 60 degrees.  That would be glorious!

Anyways, the sheep were out on a pasture of sedan grass for the past 2-3 weeks.  That was wonderful for us to not have to buy any feed.  However, it froze here Friday night and so that stops the grazing on sedan since it turns toxic after it freezes.  Chris & a few of his friends put of a make-shift pen here at our house until we can get the barn all done.  So they are ALL here at home now.  It is so nice!  I love going out there and watching them.  

I help with our town's Fellowship of Christian Athletes on Monday's, so after we finished today, it was off to the feed store to load up the truck.  Here are a few pics of the ladies.  We should start having babies in late January.

Love my truck-16 bales and 3 sacks of feed

My first ewe I bought while dating Chris-she's crazy


So glad they are home now!

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That could have been bad!

Well,  you see we are feeding out some sheep for the Arizona National Livestock show in December, I think I've mentioned it before.  So Chris usually feeds it its morning and night feedings and I do the afternoon one.  Chris takes the dog out with him in the morning and evidently after he fed it the dog started screwing around and he had to go after her.  While doing that he forgot one VERY important thing.  We'll get there in a minute.

So I was getting reading to go work at Kid's Club at our church, something I do every Wednesday.  I took the dog out of the back yard to let her do her thing before I had to put her in her kennel, and when we went out, I planned on feeding the sheep.  I discovered that Chris didn't chain the gate shut (since he had to chase after the dog) and it was wide open and the sheep was gone.  Nowhere to be found.  I quickly called Chris to tell him what happened, and since I was in a hurry to get to kids club, I didn't have a whole lot of time to look around for him.  I knew he had been gone for a while because he hadn't eaten all of his feed for when Chris fed him at 6:30.

You see, we have a lot of the neighbor's dogs that roam through our property.  I thought for sure they busted through the gate and chased down the sheep and had their lunch, courtesy of our checkbook.  Chris swung by in the middle of checking on his turkeys and drove all around, down by the tracks and all through our vineyard, and nothing.  No sheep to be found.  Chris had been having the week from hell anyways and this was just the icing on the cake.  Poor guy was sick.

This all happened on Wednesday.

Thursday evening Chris was working a little later than usual, so that gave me some time to finish up what I was doing in the backyard.  Fighting off the dog, so I could dig a hole to plant a new tree.  Evidently she thought it would be way better to attack the shovel, making it very hard to dig a hole without chopping her paw off.  Anyways,  while I was in the backyard, a truck pulled into our half circle driveway and the guy got out of the truck and came to the gate to our backyard.  I had no idea who this guy was or what he wanted.  This is how the conversation went:

Him: "You guys have a sheep, right?"
Me: "Yeah, but he got out."
Him: "I found him."
Me: I'm thinking "This guy is going to tell me he found him the the field over by his house all torn apart by dogs and being eaten by vultures."
Him: "I have him tied up to my tractor in my backyard"
Me: "WHAT?? REALLY??"  I almost jumped over the gate and hugged the guy.  Seriously.  
Him: "Yeah, he was just wondering around and I caught him and tied him up."

Seriously, people.  There are still nice, honest people out there.  I could not have been more excited.  You have no idea.  Come to find out this guy lives at the end where our street dead ends.  He said they were going to town and would let us know when they got back and we could come pick him up.  I immediately called Chris screaming that the neighbor found the sheep & it WASN'T dead!!  So when he got home, we loaded up the popper and headed down the road.

Yesterday, I made them a batch of cookies and we took 'em over to their house last night.  They invited us in to sit down.  We met his wife and their two daughters.  Truly amazed that the sheep was still alive.  

It was nice to meet some of our neighbors, but we couldn't have definitely done it under different circumstances.  That's for sure!

Sheep is doing well & Chris won't ever forget to chain the gate shut.

Sweet, Sweet Baby

A few months ago, I showed you an ultrasound picture of our nephew that was due to be born in November.  Well, he has arrived!  My sister went into labor on Halloween, in the afternoon, and was determined to not have that baby on Halloween.  She claimed it was a lame birthday.  So her and the Dr.'s worked together to deliver that baby at the strike of midnight.  So he has a cool birthday of 11/1/11.  I love this little boy so much already and I haven't even had the chance to meet him yet.  My sister and her family live in AZ, but we will be heading there for Thanksgiving in a few weeks.

Introducing...Sawyer William DeZago
7 lbs 12 oz, 19.75 inches long & 15 days early




I am just amazed at how similar he looks to Greyson when he was born.  This is Greyson right after he was born.


So proud of my sister and I just have to say they have the cutest little boys.  
Can't wait to meet you Sawyer!!

PW's Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Ok, so I'm sure most of you know who Pioneer Woman is...she is a cooking genius!!  I follow her website, I get her RSS feeds, I have her cookbook & I 'Like' her on Facebook.  Stalker? Maybe so.  But I know I'm not the only one.  

Anywho, Chris mentioned the other morning before he left for work that he like cinnamon raisin bagels, so I knew that PW had a recipe for cinnamon bread, which is totally easy to add raisins too.  And trust me, we have plenty of them!!  I thought it would be pretty simple, but had no idea it was going to take about 6 HOURS to make.  Yes, it's pretty much an all day thing!!  But, oh so worth it!

Her recipe is here, along with her amazing pictures, but below are my wonderful iPhone pictures.

After beating the dough for 10 minutes and letting it rise for 2 1/2 hours

All rolled up after the filling was put in and rising for 2 1/2 hours.  I had to kind of stuff it back in the loaf pan before I cooked it

All baked and ready to eat.  

It's pretty yummy!!

 

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