Puppy Cookies

We spent some time together making some dog treats, or as Pandi calls them, puppy cookies.  It was a lot of fun for the girls.  We used this recipe, largely since we had most of the ingredients and didn't have to leave the house, and also because Appa really likes peanut butter.

I like to include the girls in cooking.  I think it helps them take ownership in the food we eat, teaches them great skills like measuring, counting, and following directions, and it's also just fun to see how excited they get over stirring.

Pandi's first time using the mortar and pestle
to crush sunflower seeds-our substitution for
chia seeds since we didn't have any.

We used a Hello Kitty cookie cutter. 

I think the best bonus of doing dog treats, other than how simple it was and how fun for the girls, was that, when you're making dog treats, you don't have to be quite as worried over kitchen hygiene.  For instance, Appa is much less worried if someone sneezes in his food than I am.

Trying the first puppy cookie.

The results are in, and Appa is really enjoying them so far.  Ours came out softer than a Milk Bone, so we are keeping them in a Ziplock baggie to keep them fresh.  It made a pretty big batch.  All in all, we are really pleased.

Decluttering Challenge:

I am also doing an August decluttering challenge.  It is from the blog of a wonderful Australian woman that I've been following for years, Down To Earth.  I stumbled on it Googling backyard aquaponics and was really amazed by their setup for growing tilapia fish in tandem with veggies.

I am following along with the August challenge and have, so far, tackled the girls' closet.  I cleaned out a garbage bag full of clothes that they have outgrown and will pass them on to someone who can use them.  We cleaned out and gave up so much when we moved to our new state (cutting down from a large four bedroom house to only what would fit in a 12 foot box trailer), but I am amazed by the things that could have been further pared down.  There are still things that haven't been used in our year here, things that I originally thought were important.  Those things are all going to be going in the next few weeks.   It's incredibly liberating to cut the ties to the things that I used to think I needed.  It makes me feel independent and light to know that there are very few things tying me down.  I am excited about the challenge and hope to have some more updates on it soon!

Eggs!

So, let me share my biggest thrill right now with you (aside from Shark Week, that is).

EGGS!

The ladies started laying earlier this week, and we are now getting two or three eggs a day consistently.  I cannot even tell you how happy this makes me feel.  But, I will try to show you with some (fuzzy cell phone) pictures.

So careful with her precious cargo!

I love how they are all different colors and sizes.

We had two eggs out of our first six that were double-yolked! 
And look how golden the yolks are!

Eating the fruits (my Dad used to call eggs
"rooster fruits") of our labor.

The Funkbeds

The girls have been growing.  Which is a good thing, generally, but it also means that they OUTgrow things.  Things like clothes, shoes, and eventually, furniture.  Pandi was, until this week, still sleeping in a crib.  Since she is newly two, it has been convenient for her to be there. For instance, it is incredibly nice to put your toddler somewhere and know that they will still be there in the morning.  But, she had finally reached critical mass for the crib and it was time for something new.  Enter the FUNKBEDS.

I'm not entirely sure why Sephie latched onto "funkbed."  Maybe because the word "bunk" doesn't mean anything to her at three.  But, thus christened, Preston took on the project.

Doesn't he look like a man on a mission?

Working from a design of his own, Preston put together a pretty adorable pair of toddler-sized bunkbeds.  Better still, he only used lumber we already had around the house that was scrap, so the project was totally free!  It took a little trial and error (for instance, we didn't measure the door to their bedroom ahead of time and had to undo a little of our progress to get them in the room!), but they came out nicely.  The girls love them and the only problem so far is the fighting over who gets to sleep "arriba" (up) or "abajo" (down).

It's hard to tell from the pictures because you can't really get an idea of scale, but the bottom of Sephie's bed is only about waist high.

Diggin' the crazy carpet?  That's a project for another day.

A nifty, homemade set of beds, just their size!

Restoring a Home, and a Wood Stove

So, in the time since I've last posted, we have suffered a death in the family, been through a horrible bout of some kind of nasty virus, and moved to a entirely different home.  It makes me tired just to write it out.

The place we've moved to we absolutely love.  It's definitely more of a permanent place for us, and we have the option to buy if we decide we would like to make it ours for good.  But, the moving in was incredibly difficult.  It's a very long story, but the short version is our very sweet landlady was taken advantage of by someone close to her and the home was hoarded and then pretty much abandoned.  It was supposed to have been clean, safe, and ready for us to move into, but that didn't happen either due to some bad circumstances, so we ended up doing a lot of the work ourselves.  It was hard, dirty, gross, and there's still a lot to do, although the main living spaces are clean and are renovating nicely.  After Christmas, we hope to take on the apartment and storage spaces that are still full and badly in need of some tea tree oil.

So far, we have, in addition to cleaning out the home (many truck and trailers' worth of trash hauled out, a metric ton of cat hair, urine, and feces cleaned, and making everything fresh, safe, and non-sticky), added chandeliers to the dining and living area and a ceiling fan to the girls' room, painted the girls' room, added solar lights to the sidewalk, taken out the upstairs carpet so we can finish the wood floors, oiled and polished all the wood surfaces, fixed the dryer, cleaned off the front porch and added a gate, chased away a million spiders, and generally made the place a home again.  All in the last two weeks.

Tonight's project for me was refinishing the wood stove.  It is a sweet, sturdy, cast iron thing, just wanting to be loved again.  It was covered in rust (and cat hair and dirt) and the first thing I did was vacuum it.  I wish I had taken pictures...actually, I wish I had taken "before" pictures of the entire place, but I was in survival mode just trying to get us into the new place on schedule and make it on that ragged edge of acceptable for the girls to be in.

Anyway, the top was covered in loose rust and I just vacuumed it away to see what I was working with.  It was pretty rough, pocked and pitted, but seemed to be just surface damage.  That was as far as I got until tonight.  I bought a tub of Imperial Stove Polish from Lowe's for less than five dollars, and some SOS Pads.

I began by using the steel wool to scrub away as much of the rust as I could.  I was really surprised by how much of it came off, it actually came away very smooth.  I was worried I would have to sand it, but that wasn't the case.  I washed off the soap with wet rags and let it dry.  I then began applying the stove polish with a piece of cloth.

Ugh, so sad and dingy!

I started at the top and just covered the whole thing.  A word to the wise, wear gloves.  Unless you have no common sense, like me.  Then just plan to paint the rest of your nails black.  Also, don't touch your face or you'll look like you've been making out with chimney sweeps *again*.  Don't ask how I know.

 The last step is to buff the finish with a soft cloth to bring out the satin finish.  There is no odor to the polish, it's just carbon black in a paste form.  It may smoke a bit when you put your next fire in, it will only last a few minutes as the finish cures and is nothing to worry about.

Then, just enjoy the beautiful heart of your home!

Isn't he gorgeous?

Cedar Chest as Chalkboard Coffee Table

When we moved, we had a LOT of things.  Our home was pretty big, with a garage, attic storage rooms all along the second story, and a basement.  We also had tons of closets.  When we moved here, we knew we were going to have to pare down and simplify.  I wasn't horrified by the idea, since we've been trying to embrace voluntary simplicity for quite a while.  It WAS a challenge to figure out how to fit our entire lives into a 6x12 moving trailer, though.  It really gave us a chance to evaluate what was important to us, what was necessary, and what we were ready to let go.

In the end, we ended up giving away and donating truckloads of our things.  We also had to rethink our furniture because what we had just wasn't going to work in our new small space.  One of the things I had hiding in a spare room was an old cedar chest.  It had a big ding in the top and the finish was flaking off, but it had a lovely shape and I really just love cedar chests in general.  They make me think of family.

We decided it would be a perfect coffee table, taking the place of our large octagonal one which was simply too big for the space and too heavy to move.  The chest would be both narrow in the room and would do double duty as a storage space for blankets.  I didn't have a chance to do any refinishing on the chest at all before we moved, other than a good wipedown as we had less than a month to pack and move after Preston accepted the job here.  So, once we got here, I decided to simply give the top a coat of chalkboard paint (thank you, Pinterest!).

Everything is sort of temporarily arranged until we get a chance to get our new couch.

I think it looks pretty nice, and it's a great spot for impromptu art!