It's curtains for me!

No, I'm not about to die... (That I know of!)  

I have curtains up in my kitchen!

This makes me happy.  :)

The kitchen is starting to feel more and more like a real kitchen.  And it's so light and bright and cheerful!

Ethan fixed our plumbing problem and so we have the use of our kitchen sink back again and now that we are functioning daily in our kitchen the way we are used to, I find that I am daily thankful for the simplest of circumstances, such as hot and cold running water and a drain!

My window presented me with a bit of a quandary.   The ceiling is almost right up against the top of the window frame and the above-the-sink light fixture is almost touching the window frame, leaving no room for a curtain rod.

The previous owner solved the problem by hanging the curtain rod below the light, but that made it so that the curtain covered up a third of the window.  This first time I washed the windows I took the curtains down and just could never bring myself to put them back up because I need all the light I can get to come into my kitchen!

I had the idea of using velcro to hang them and Steve thought that would work so he found me some strips of velcro that were 6 feet long and they worked just fine.

I cut the strips the length of the window frame and then cut them in half so that they would fit on the lowest flat edge and Ethan stood on the counter top and peeled the backing off and applied them along the window frame for me.

Then I stitched two rows of basting stitch and gathered the top to give the illusion that it was a gathered curtain hanging from a rod and stitched the other half of the velcro on the other side of that.  My machine did not like doing that and made all sorts of complaints and finally stopped working on me so I had to finish stitching the velcro on by hand.

Then I added a bit of red rick-rack to the ruffle by hand while I was at it.  Naomi helped me for a bit as she is learning to sew and wanted to help.  Emily was taking pictures outside of Ethan painting a barn door and on her way back to the house saw me sitting on the window seat, the sunniest spot in the house, of course, and took a picture of me working.

It worked!

They just fit behind the light and cover up the window frame without covering up any more of the window than necessary to just give an accent to the window.

Steve says they look even better than he imagined they would. :)

I'm sure an interior design expert would have many critical remarks to make and I'm sure I broke at least a few decorating "rules", but I like how it adds a bit of cheery color and personality into the kitchen yet doesn't block much of the light coming in.

I also got my great grandmother's antique plate collection up on the little railing that runs above the cabinets and it all looks so much more homey to me now.

We still don't have the handles on all of the kitchen cabinets and drawers but they're on their way soon!

It took Steve quite some time to scrape all of the handles to all the cabinets and drawers.  We tried scrubbing them but it didn't seem to do anything.  There was years of "gunk" accumulated on them and some turquoise colored tarnish that just didn't want to come off.

Ethan was so very clever as to put nails in the back of some old paneling that we wouldn't be needing for anything else and made it so that each handle stood up ready for a fresh coat of paint.

Steve sprayed them all so they would look nice and new against the white cabinets.


I got my dishes back into the china cabinet with the glass doors and I unpacked my pewter dish that says "Give us this day our daily bread".  That dish always seems to me to be like Laura Ingalls' ma's china doll.  It has gone with us to all of our different homes and it just doesn't feel like home until it has found it's place somewhere.

Now it is beginning to feel so much more like home!

A New Batch of Chicks

It isn't spring-time, the usual time to be raising chicks but since we lost so many of our chickens we decided to go ahead and get another bunch going now.  We won't be getting eggs from them until about March or April, but we will feel better knowing eggs are on the way.

Our batches that we raised this summer will start laying anytime now and hopefully we can get by mostly on their eggs.  We just integrated all 3 of the mini-flocks we raised in with our older layers so that all four flocks are locked into the main coop for the next week to get their pecking order all sorted out.  We waited for the cold nights and the cooler days before shutting them in and began getting them acquainted by feeding them all in the barnyard together.  We have taught them to come when we call, "Oh, look look look loooo-ooook!"  It is such a funny sight! :)

Even more amusing to me is that one day I asked Molly to call everybody in for lunch and Samuel was with her.  They stepped out the door and Samuel began calling, "Oh, look look looo-ooook! Everybody, time for lu-unch!"  

The King of Love

Congratulations to my son, Jordy!

He took 3rd place in a regional vocal competition!

The NATS was a vocal competition for all students of vocal instruction throughout the entire Ozark region.  I wish we could've heard him sing!

He had to sing three selections.  He sent us this link of him performing one of the songs at his last recital.  The song is called The King of Love My Shepherd Is.  

Thank you, Grandma!

The children were given money last Christmas from their grandmother and they took their time deciding what to do with it.  Whether to divvy it up between them all evenly and let each person decide what they might do with their own portion or whether to pool it together and get one larger item.