Old Singer Sewing Machine...

I found this beauty at a estate sale shop for a really good price, we had just got the Tahoe and were headed to town when my husband saw it sitting outside of the shop, we stopped and I looked at it (not that I actually knew what to look for) and decided for $35.00 it was a good deal, the needle moves fine, I know it needs a belt though and as far as I can tell its all in working order it just needs a few parts. Anyone have any ideas? The only number I can find on it says "C6998852" according to this site it was possibly made around 1908. Its paint job is pretty much gone, I cant figure out how to figure out what model it actually is either. All I have is this number and the one site that says they started making them in 1908, I would really like to restore her and start using her, and if the end of the world ever comes I can still make clothes and quilts!

Another Quilt

I finished another quilt last week, this one is for a little boy that is not born yet. Hopefully he and his parents love it! This is the first quilt that I did the "proper way" I guess you would call it and I stitched the binding to the back by hand... it took 6 hours alone just to do that. I love making things or this would so not be worth it. Its not as wonky as it looks in the pictures, it is actually quite strait which surprised me because as I was making it I thought it was going to be very wonky. And comments are greatly appreciated! Even constructive criticism is welcome :)

Front:
Back:

Pumpkin Picking wtih Aleric!

This post is a little overdue, we went on the 1st because I am obsessive about how I do my holiday decorating, October 1st Halloween and fall goes up, November 1st Halloween comes down, fall stays up. The day after Thanksgiving the Christmas Tree and the lights go up, Christmas day the tree comes down and I hang snowflakes on the windows for January. We picked out 5 pumpkins this year, we always go to Vic Mauro Produce, they are just down the road from us and we get to go out into the patch to pick our own. Here are a few pictures!

Autum is here!

I spent today with my Mom and Aleric, we went out to eat and then to the park to play. I love that fall is here, they live closer to the mountains than I do so they have a lot more fall color. On to the pictures!

Brave Aleric (seriously walking across this thing made *ME* dizzy):He went down this ladder like contraption without any issue. My little man is growing up so fast!
And then we went over to the stream area and away from the playground, my Mom got him to show his muscles so that he wouldn't cover up his face:
And then he got to play is some trees that we picked (isnt this the cutest face?)
And this one really looks like he is big-foot but you know... not as big as big-foot:
He had such a fun day playing outside :) And I just love the outdoors. We picked lots of fresh wild peppermint while we were there also so its drying in my extra room and hopefully I will get some good tea for winter out of it!

Laundry Soap

I went to do a load of laundry today that had some fabric in it that needed washed before I can sew it up, got all the clothes in the washer and then it hit me... I am out of laundry detergent. I have known this for over a week but in my busy life I just forgot to make more. I am trying to save money, use less, waste less and be more self sufficient. Well all the ingredients are bought from a store but I still save tons of money and I am happy to make stuff myself. There are probably hundreds of recipes for homemade laundry soap on the net so I will add one more. This will be my second batch and I love it. I was using soap nuts for a while, they cleaned my jeans and 5 fingers (shoes) but my shirts just never came clean enough so I went to making my own, 95% of my shirts come clean now (apparently I am kinda hard on my shirts and I get them really dirty). So what I do is take my ingredients:I use one bar of fels-naptha soap
1 cup Borax 20 Mule Team
1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 cup Oxiclean (its whats in the measuring cup)

Shred or grate the bar of soapmix everything in a big bowland wah-lah your done. Really it IS that easy. I use less than 1 tablespoon per load (HE front-load machine) and have not had any problems so far.

I'm going insane!

I am seriously going insane, after having my hernia surgery 11 days ago and spending most of the last 11 days doing nothing I am seriously about ready to freak the fuck out! I am bored, I dont want to watch tv anymore, I want to go outside, maybe do an Al Kavadlo workout, or a Jungle Fit workout - I mean look at Al and Tim they are freaking monsters when it comes to a workout, how am I ever going to become like that sitting on my ass??? Eating Primal is not so easy for me right now because all I want to do is eat crap because I feel like crap from not doing anything. I had got to where I could do 3 pullups and I am scared that by the time I am "allowed" to do more I wont even be able to do 1. Bullshit I tell you. I am going to the doctor tomorrow and hopefully he will tell me all is well and that I can start doing at least some things again. Something tells me that's wishful thinking. Tomorrow is another day and I am going to go back to a 100% whole food diet again, I feel better on it, I will heal quicker on it and really I don't need to be eating chocolate chips if I cant get out and burn them off.

Eggs are here!

We got the chickens and ducks (and a goose) because we wanted eggs, well the goose wont lay because its a boy goose, but we have finally started getting eggs from our hens and we even have 2 duck eggs in the fridge now! We have been getting chicken eggs for just over 2 weeks now, but we don't get them daily, mostly every other day we find one or two of them. And yesterday we thought we had gotten a duck egg but we weren't quite sure, well today we are damn sure it was a duck egg and we got another one. The one we got today was HUGE! Once we get one more we are going to try them out and see what they are like. Everyone cross your fingers that Aleric will be able to eat them!

Chicken Eggs:
Duck Eggs:
Duck Eggs next to the Chicken Eggs:

Warrior Dash!!

Oh how time flies when your having fun. Last weekend I ran the Warrior Dash in Copper Mountain, Colorado. I ran it in just under 44 minutes, which to me was pretty amazing considering for the last few weeks I had only had time to run once. I had grand plans of running every other day (or even every day) when I signed up back in March but life just didn't agree with those plans. I do hope to run the race again next year and hopefully with more time and more training going into it I will be able to do it in under 40 minutes. Depending on how the winter goes this year I may even decide to run the Tough Mudder race that is at Beaver Creek Ski Area here in Colorado. Who knows, but I know for sure if I get the chance to do the Warrior Dash again I will be there! No pictures of me at finish line but here is one of Aleric and I before the race, and then one of Aleric with my helmet on.

It's about the journey, not just the destination

I have been trying for sometime now to live life by this rule, right now I am having one Hell of a journey. Last week I lost my job, its not the end of the world, but I'm sad about it, afraid of the unknown future, and mostly scared shitless that I won't be able to get another one. But in the end I think it was the best thing for my family, we will get through it and we will be ok in the end. I have been sewing more. I am making a quilt to put for sale on etsy.com and will have another one in the making right after this. I have been riding horses with my friend Cassie, although today that was also a train wreck because both her and her daughter got thrown off in a fluke accident. She is in the ER right now getting looked at. Luckily on only my 3rd ride and 1st one out of the arena I stayed on my horse and safely dismounted when I needed to. Then I come home from that and my doorknob doesn't work and I can't open the door and find out apparently our cistern is letting mud in somewhere and now we have to get it clean..... like today.... or better yet right now. Life, its about the journey and I love it because I feel that I am married to my soul mate, have the best kid ever, and yet some days just really suck.

(Any typos or errors I am sorry for in advance, this is my first post from my phone)

Chicken Door Hinges

Ok I said I was going to do this so long ago, but this weekend I finally got the little hinge/ lock things on the Poultry houses!

Mail Pouches!

I got some sewing done this weekend, even sewed my own finger - but we will get to that soon..

First is the Mail Bags, we keep losing the checkbook and bills and by we I mean I keep losing them, so I decided to sew up 2 little pouches, one for outgoing mail and one for incoming mail and the checkbook / stamps. This is a very easy project, and would have been done in a day if I had a maid to do my cooking and cleaning for me, so it took about 3 days to complete. Pictures:So while I was finishing up my mail bags my friend Tiffany came over and sat with me, she tells me that she is scared to sew because she is scared of sewing her finger. I told her you had to practically be a fucking retard to sew your own finger. So the next day I decided to make Tiffany a mug rug, she picked a fish shape, I cut it out, started sewing it, got about halfway done and I sewed my fucking finger. Now in my defense I know why it happened (the needle was in sewing position of all the way left - I usually sew with the needle in the middle position), and really it could have been much worse, I caught my middle finger right on the edge of the nail, not through it, I was using a small needle and luckily I have Chris to fix my mishaps. So we disconnected my finger from the machine, the needle had jammed itself into the foot on the machine so we had to take lightly pry the foot away from the needle, and then had to pull the needle from my hand. It really wasn't that bad, it stung, it was tingly for a few hours, but overall its fine and even kinda funny in hindsight. I mean it was ME who said you had to be a retard to do something like that. Right before we pulled it out I thought we should take a picture :)
And this is just a must see picture of Cocoa Bird!

Chicken Play House

I wanted to get outside and build something this weekend, we still have about 200 or 300 feet of fence to line with pallets but I decided instead to build a little chicken playhouse! I took 4 standard pallets and made 2 a-frames, then put a larger pallet on top of them and a stick through them for roosting fun. It took them a few hours to decide that it was in fact not going to eat them and they started playing in it and chasing each other off the perch. Its not the prettiest piece of chicken furniture but I don't think they care, and hey - you cant beat FREE!

And last night I also made some Jalapeno and cream cheese poppers wrapped in bacon, I have made them once before, this time though I used thick sliced bacon, and I used 1 whole jalapeno per popper, so you take a jalapeno, cut it in half, scrape out the seeds, stuff both sides with cream cheese, put back together, wrap in bacon and cook in oven until bacon is nice and crispy. Poppers are pictured with pulled pork with avocado and broccoli. (Must eat with fork, I don't think they would hold together well as finger food, and they would also squirt molten lava like cream cheese at you...)
And lastly I tried sewing some this weekend. I went and got some beautiful material to make my bedroom new curtians, but before I can start those I needed to get a blanket mended and I tried to make a pair of underwear for me. The blanket is done, doesn't look great but oh well, I would much rather mend it and use it then buy a new one. I am not that good at hand sewing yet. And the underwear were a disaster. I made a pair about 5 months ago that were almost right but not quite, so I figured I would try again, all was going pretty good until the last 4 inches of sewing needing to be done, and them something went wrong (im not even sure exactly what it was...) and now the foot of my sewing machine is sitting INSIDE the seam on my panties and I cant get it out without ripping the material :(. Lets all hope my 3rd try will be a charm because the first 2 tries are fails!

Change of blog

As you all can see I have changed my blog name, I just didn't think I should call this a primal blog, while The Primal Blueprint, Marks Daily Apple, and primal living seem to be a huge part of my life, nothing on here is really primal. Primal inspires me to be better and inspires me to live like I want to live and inspires me to do stuff I never would have done before (Like the Warrior Dash) I don't post recipes, or health info. So some primal stuff might sneak back in sometimes for the most part this blog will just be about my life. I hope to get some new content up over the weekend with my phone, if i fail to do so I will try to get it up next week, I have so many ideas of stuff to make, just not enough time to make it all. Have a great weekend everyone!

Quilt for sale!

I have finally finished my first quilt to sell. I am very proud of it because I chose the fabrics, drew out some patterns and finally decided what design to sew. It took me a good 9 hours start to finish, 2 nights I was up until almost midnight working on it. I already have some ideas for my next one I am going to make, that one will probably be listed on etsy.com once I get my store all set up.

Progress

It has been a while, blogging in the summer is hard, I have so much to write about but I would rather be outside or sleeping. Since I wrote last we have went swimming, after driving all over town for 2 days to try and find me a swimsuit. Swimsuit shopping is probably the hardest thing I have done all summer. And that's saying a lot, because it seems that I have an obsession with digging holes. This spring we brought home 8 trees within 2 days, so we had to dig all of those holes, then I wanted a clothes line - yep we had to dig another hole for that, then we get a 5 day vacation from work for the 4th of July weekend, so I decided to dig up our cistern to clean it - we have excavated a hole the size of our Tahoe, and we are still not done. We have decided to turn it into a root cellar, because after all this digging we might as well. And then my friend bought me a rose tree - it has blue flowers on it (maybe its not a rose tree?!? but a flower tree none the less) So last night I dug yet another hole for it. Hopefully I am done with digging for the rest of the summer. Our farmers stands have opened for the season, but most of what they have is crap still, and out of state crap at that. Seriously I don't go to my LOCAL farm stand to buy peaches from fucking California. So hopefully by the end of the season they will actually have local produce. I also made a quilt, well its almost done. It will be the first quilt I am making to sell. I was up til midnight last night and its still not done because it wanted to give me problems. We went and saw fireworks on the 4th, we watched the City of Pueblo's show, it kinda sucked, Pueblo West does a much better show. And then on the 5th we woke up to a herd of cows in the front yard. All in all we have had a super busy past few weeks, and I predict they will get busier before they slow down.

I dont have many pictures, but here are a few pictures of the cows that were in the yard.

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Renaissance Festival

This past weekend we visited the Colorado Renaissance Festival!

If I could only do one festival a year, I would probably pick the Renaissance Festival, they have good food, great people watching opportunities, and awesome freaking hair toys. I love hair toys, most women like to wear lots of makeup, get their nails done, go tanning - you know that sort of thing, me I wear very little makeup, I only paint my toenails and I would never go to a salon to get them done with all of the chemicals and shit and I am stark white, no tanning here, but I have an obsession with hair sticks and forks and more recently I have started to like slides. So I spent a small fortune on hair toys for me. Aleric had fun also, he got to ride the Elephant, a Llama, and a Camel. He ate cheesecake on a stick with me, got an awesome dragon toy (like a stick pony but a dragon). Each year he seems to enjoy it more and more, I already can't wait to take him next year!

Weekend activities!

Last weekend we went to the kiddy rides at City Park with my parents. While we were eating dinner the Pueblo Zoo's Peacock came over for a visit:
And then Aleric got to go on the rides, he really like the old time carousel and the mini train!

He decided to stand up on this ride, so he didn't enjoy this one very much :(
It was almost time to go, so he got to go on one last ride!

This weekend we had the opportunity to go for a ride on a REAL BNSF Train! My Dad has worked for the BNSF for years and they were letting family members of employees have a free ride on the BNSF Special, it has vintage cars from the 50's with a modern engine, really it was awesome because I had never even been on a train before! We sat in the car that had kinda dome style windows on the top (2nd picture down, 3rd car back). My Dad didn't get to ride with us, but Aleric still had fun. Since we had to drive 2 hours to get on the train we decided to stay in Trinidad for a day trip. We ate at a little cafe called Bob & Earls and it was amazingly good food. I got a double cheeseburger with bacon, cheddar and swiss, and a pickled green chili (without a bun), it was one of the best burgers I have ever had, I ate half of it and was stuffed, Aleric ate damn near the other half and Chris helped me finish it off.
Next weekend we will be visiting the Colorado Renaissance Festival!

**Oh and no, I didn't get the damn latches on the coops!**