Yard Work: Project Trees

Last week the weather was nice, the wind was for once not blowing and with temperatures in the 70's and 80's I was not about to sit inside all day so I went outside and gathered up lots and lots of rocks and made rings around my trees with them. They went from this:

To this:

(I have 6 trees that I did but really who wants to see 12 pictures of trees??)

I have added mulch to them to help them retain water better, last year we used straw and while it did help a lot and kept the mouisture in, it looked crappy and blew away. I hope to get my other trees soon so I can keep digging holes and planting them.

And a little ladybug that I was SOOO excited to see!!

First Run

Ok so maybe it isn't my *first* run but today was my first run outside in a long time. I am seriously out of shape. I am using the mapmyrun app on my phone and the stats suck, I went 1.40 miles in 22 minutes, Now in my defense I had to walk more than I wanted to due to my new neighbors dogs trying to start shit with me and Orion, and I had to stop at the half way point to try to get my hydration pack to work and after a few minutes of trying it still would not work so I gave up. Now I feel like a weakling because I felt that I needed to carry a hydration pack on a 1.4 mile run but it was almost 80 degrees outside AND I am so out of shape. I felt so horrible that I couldn't even run 1.4 miles, I had to stop and walk for a bit. But this being the first real run of the season I know I will improve a lot on my skills with some time. I have not ran at ALL in over a month due to being sick and the fact that the treadmill is buried under so much shit that needs to be put in storage. Ok anyway I was just seriously excited to run outside and had to share, no pictures today but with any luck I will be going again tomorrow and the next day, and the next day and the next day :-)....

Chicken Yard Reconstruction

Well spring is here, and that means I will be outside a lot more than I care to be in the winter time. The grass is starting to grow and soon the bugs will be out in force, my trees will be budding new leaves and I will be off to dig up more trees from my friend Eds house. We also ordered 20 trees from the Arbor Day Foundation so I am awaiting them to show up to plant. And I also have some peach trees and apple trees that I have started from seed that will hopefully be ready to plant outside sometime this year. Thinking about all these trees makes me want to get outside and plant my garden also but in order to plant my garden this year I needed to move the chickens to the other side of the yard, so we did a complete chicken yard reconstruction today. We moved out thousands of tumble weeds (I hate hate HATE tumbleweeds), we removed and replaced all the support boards for the fences and re hung all the fence and of course had to move the "Chicken play things" I had made out of pallets. And I figured while we moved the things we would create some new things for them to play with. It was a long day but it was worth it and I LOVE being outside in the sun. So anyway now for pictures!

They were on the pen on the far right that is overfull of tumble weeds, all 3 pens were like this, in fact there were so many tumbleweeds we found over 20 eggs that were lost and hidden in the weeds so these will become dog food eggs:

This is the new pen on the left:

Closer up picture of the new pen, with my new "Chicken playground toys":

The baby gate pen attached to the dog house is the isolation pen for Miss Chicken Bird who was attacked and partially eaten alive by Dogitar (she is recovering very nicely):

And this is a picture of all my chickens and I think the ducks are somewhere in here also:

And thats todays work, I had more things planned to do today but this was really important and it really needed to be done so we got it done today and the rest can hopefully get done over the next week!

Oh My Gosh

I can not believe its already March. I have not got done half the things I wanted to do so far this year. I have managed to read almost 2 books this year, and I have been doing a small bit of crafting but not anywhere near the amount I should have done so far. Aleric is now fully potty trained and I am SO happy! I really thought he would be in diapers forever but he is doing great and has not had an accident in weeks! I have like 5 quilts that need to be done, they are in the stages of started, not started and still in my head. I seem to just keep adding things to my plate when I really don't have much more room, but I feel they are all important things that need to be done. I am NOT a good housekeeper, I really fail at keeping the house in perfect working order but I am trying hard to work on getting the house in order. I am doing it just in time because our good friends just moved in with us from Salida and I am so happy to have them staying with us. I also am going to hopefully do some craft shows with my good friend Martha this year and hopefully sell my wares. I will be trying to get on that sewing along with the quilts previously mentioned. And as if that is not enough I just got clearance from my amazing husband to sign up for the Warrior Dash again this year. I have already booked the hotel and am signed up for the race all I gotta do is get running and hopefully I will be able to beat my time from last year. It was seriously the funnest day of my life and I cant imagine not doing it every year from here on out. Also I saw a really awesome video on the chive today about a girl and her hula hoop. Its amazing, you should check it out so I am going to either order one or make my own and hopefully start hooping to build up some long lost core muscles from when I was pregnant with Aleric. So this is why I have not been blogging for a while, and I have been sick for the better part of the last month and seem to have just got back a cold AGAIN so hopefully I am on the mend soon and can start running regularly and crafting regularly, and just generally get back on schedule and back to life.

Happy Birthday Aleric!

I still need to catch up on a few months, but this is so important I cant miss it. Aleric is now 3. I cant believe it, it seems like just last week he was tiny and still nursing, and now all of a sudden he is 3 years old. My little baby is growing up. His party was yesterday and his birthday is tomorrow. I don't do big parties, I try to invite 1 friend for him, and then just my parents and Chris' parents. I cant handle more than that at my house without panic. One of his favorite things is Dinosaurs, so we did a dinosaur party, with dinosaur cake and all. Homemade and gluten free but still a shit ton of sugar in it, one of these years I am going to learn how to make a cake without sugar. Ok so now for the pictures:

The Cake:

Aleric's best friend Lily (he would not stand next to her, he had to be in front of her):

Aleric blowing out his candles:

Aleric eating his cake:

Aleric opening a present that came in the mail today from his Auntie in Wyoming:

I will do a post soon on the stuff I made him for his birthday.

November Happenings

November was a very busy month, It started with Aleric cuddling on the dogs, his best friend is Orion but he loves Cocoa too! And Buddy is just so timid and flighty that he seems to move to much for Aleric to cuddle him, but he does like laying nearby on the couch or floor.

Then the Denver Museum of Nature and Science had a Dinosaur exhibit and even though we had already went once this year we could NOT miss taking him to see this so we went twice this year, I love this place, I love going there and seeing all the cool things, and I love looking out over the city on the sky deck. We actually already have our next trip planned because the next exhibit is snakes and reptiles so we are going for sure!

Its funny and sad at the same time, people kept asking me if we were going to eat Goosebert on Thanksgiving, and I kept saying no. Well I had been noticing that the duck eggs were going missing every morning, so one morning I went out to let the birds out and there was a bloody duck egg, I didn't think much of it, and then I noticed Dr. Duck Duck (formally know as Magnum because he is a Swedish Magpie duck) he was torn up, blood all over, wouldnet eat, was sitting in the corner of the pen just laying there like he was dying, in fact I walked right over and picked him up, got him in the house, put him in a warm bath while Chris went and found the perpetrator... Goosebert :( it broke my heart, I didnt want to have to deal with this but if I want to be a farm girl, then this is one of the things that comes with it. We called my brother and had him come and dispatch him, we put him in the freezer and had him for David's birthday dinner. Mr. Duck Duck is ok now, and we have the thery that Goosebert had been eating the duck eggs and one day Mr. Duck Duck got pissed one morning and tried to defend his duck lady's eggs and him and Goosebert went at it and Goosebert was much bigger and stronger so Mr. Duck Duck took a beating. But we can NOT have mean animals on my little farm, fighting will not be tolerated.

Victim:

Perpetrator:

On to the Joyous occasion of Thanksgiving, I actually did not get many pictures, I had a small dinner at my house with our friend Ed, my Mom (Dad had to work, and David did not want to come) and the in-laws, Grandmother had never seen the ducks or chickens before so she ventured out into the backyard to feed them. I wish I had got more pictures!

And we went to one of my absolute favorite things in the world, the Parade of Lights! I LOVE this parade, we go ever single year (well we didn't make it the first year we had Aleric). It was freezing fucking cold, I think everyone was miserable but Chris loves me so we stayed til the end. Next year I really gotta figure out the key to staying warm, there has to be a secret to it!

There was lots of crafting this month, but none of it got completed until December so it will go on the catch up post for December!

I'm back!

For some reason life just kinda spiraled out of control after my last post in October, its now January - almost February and I am just now getting a chance to get all my thoughts together. So there was lots of crafting over the last 3 months, and even more chaos! I will post a few highlights of the months, this post will be:

October - we did Boo at the (Pueblo) Zoo for Halloween. Aleric was of course a zombie. He hated wearing face paint so it was the only time we dressed him up, we don't do trick-or-treating yet so we didn't need to torture him again on Halloween with more face paint. Hopefully next year he will be better with the makeup.

We also did some home renovations with the help of my brother, when we moved into this house we paid for a home inspector, well apparently we DID NOT get our money's worth. Every single thing that could go wrong has since the day we moved in. Well anywhere there was a HUGE hole in front of the front door, so luckily my brother came over and helped us put in a new door frame and sealed it up real nice, and replaced the floor boards after ripping up moldy carpet. Then we put down some really nice hardwood floor that a friend of ours brought that he had leftover from a job he worked on. It looks 500% better, and when it was done we took turns jumping up and down where the hole was!

Before:

After!!!!:

And it looks like we did this just in time because 3 days later.. First snow of the season!!!! I love the first snow, im not sure why but I just love it so I always take a picture of it.

Aleric was slightly confused with it, and the chickens and ducks and goose had no freaking clue what it was, they kept trying to jump to get away from it. So CUTE they are.

Later in the day Aleric went outside with me to help "clean" the snow off the back fence and collect eggs.

And then I started what seemed to be a never ending sewing fest that lasted the next 2 months. I made a coaster for a gift. It was very well received!

And finally the month ended with Halloween! We carved one of our 4 or 5 pumpkins, its been a while but I think we had 5 to begin with - well 7 if you include the 2 tiny ones we got for Aleric that died after he repeatedly stabbed them with a screwdriver. He was scared of the pumpkin for a bit and kept blowing out the candle from inside it, in the end we had to put a flashlight inside.