On the agenda today....

...cooking down 10 pounds Roma and Amish Paste tomatoes into some sauce to freeze!  We visited the Clarksburg Farmer's Market this morning and came away with the tomatoes, potatoes, and green beans.  Tomorrow is the Bridgeport Farmer's Market where we will be picking up some local apples!

Over the last 2 days, I have harvested about 8 of our heirloom cucumbers.  Not bad for our little plot!  I am searching for some refrigerator pickle recipes to make some quick pickles.  Has anyone ever done this?

We are already getting anxious for next spring and our big garden!  I have been looking into tomato seeds - it makes more sense to buy a $2.50 packet of 25 seeds than to buy a $3 or $4 plant!  Does anyone have an recommendations on good sources for seeds?  I've been very happy with the seeds we got from SSE this year - our cucumbers are doing great and we should be getting some melons soon.

And another good thing - my energy is back!

Cha, cha, cha...changes!

Another long break between posts!  This time, I have a different reason!

I have been absolutely exhausted the last few weeks....taking care of the toddler during the day, doing my best to make dinner, and keeping the house somewhat in order has taken it's toll on this PREGNANT lady!

Yes, pregnant.  MAJOR surprise for us!  We found out the same weekend we moved in.  It took almost a year and a surgery for us to get pregnant with Kole, so this is indeed a major surprise as we had no intentions of trying until at least this fall.

I'm getting ready to go into my second trimester, so I'm hoping the nausea subsides and my energy level returns to somewhat normal.  I have been helping where I can around the house with getting things finished, but it's been hard!  I did complete one task that was my responsibility...chalkboard paint on the pantry door!  We have a nice large pantry door and I am a list maker, so it made perfect sense to have a board close by to jot down grocery needs and menu ideas.  I'll post pics soon once it is completely finished and we try it out!

Blackberries

Hooray for the first full weekend of summer!  We have been celebrating by enjoying some freshly picked wild blackberries and black raspberries.  And by we, I mean Kole :-)

Hoping to add some more pictures soon!

Every clear night....

.....this is our sky.  Just one of the many reasons we love it here.

Home

Wow.  Over a month since my last post.  Our lives have changed so much since then.  And all for the better, of course :-)

We worked hard through the month of May to have the house livable by Memorial Day weekend.  From tiling until 3 AM to hanging lights and installing cabinetry, we made it.  I will be preparing some future posts about each room and the decisions we made.

Dan and I also celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary, complete with cake.  Kole has started to occasionally sleep through the night.  We moved out of our last ever rental.

Now we live where turkey and deer are our closest neighbors.  We can look out any window in our house and only see green.  The sunsets are amazing, with each night looking like a rainbow in the sky.  I am hoping to improve my photography skills soon so I can capture the pure beauty of it.  We now have the problem of the moonlight shining in our eyes at night and the sunshine beaming brightly in our room in the morning.  But, I know one thing.  These are the kind of problems I will happily have. 

Please stay tuned, our journey is just beginning.

Reclaimed wood flooring

I am in love with our flooring.  We absolutely hare carpeting, so we knew we would be putting down hardwood floors.  We weren't terribly happy with off the shelve Lowes or Home Depot flooring, so we did some research.  I ran across an ad for someone local selling reclaimed wood flooring.  The craftsman we are working with goes around the local area and surrounding states to dismantle old barns and homes to relcaim the lumber.  He then remills old beams and other woods into tongue and groove hardwood flooring.  He is somewhat new to flooring, so we are his first customer outside of friends.

We chose to go with a mixture of red and white oak in the bedrooms and a mixture of maple and beech in the great room and kitchen.  The pieces of wood are beautiful - while remilling the wood, he was able to retain nail holes and saw marks.  Some of the wood has quarter saw marks.  It really looks great.  The flooring is almost an inch thick, so it has some serious strength to it.  Speaking of strength - Scott (our wood guy) told us to go to Lowes or Home Depot and count growth rings on their off the shelf hardwood flooring.  He said to then compare it to the wood he has provided.  We counted nine rings on the oak flooring at Home Depot and we counted approximately 36 on the oak that is going in our house.  That is some old growth lumber with serious strength.  

As with paint, we are concerned with VOCs.  The product we are using the cover our floor is called Rubio Monocoat.  It is a European product and has absolutely zero VOCs.  It is a one coat product.  It is unique in that it actually bonds to the raw wood.  If in the future, the floor gets damaged in some way, we can simply sand the spot and put more Monocoat on it.  Since it only bonds to the raw wood, there will be no lap lines and the oil will simply wipe off the wood that already has oil on it.  It sounds like it should be new technology, but it was developed in Europe soon after World War 2.  

We are so excited with how things are coming along!  Three more weeks until we can call it home :-)

Paint!

We have finished drywall!  We were told initially that the drywall would have a textured finish to it, but it is smooth!  We are much happier this way :-)

Paint was something that I tried to do a good bit of research into.  We are really concerned with indoor air quality as our house is very tightly sealed.  I stopped by Sherwin Williams to see what zero VOC paints they offered.  They have a line called "Harmony" which is zero VOC.  It is also $50 a gallon.  Ugh.  Behr offers a line of zero VOC paints as well, but they are a duo of paint + primer, which Dan hates with a passion.  Benjamin Moore also offers a zero VOC paint as well, but it is upwards of $70 a gallon!

In an effort to research appliances and paints, we signed up for a month of Consumer Reports online.  Ranked rather highly in the paint category was Glidden.  I went to Home Depot last week to do some research and the Glidden rep was actually there at the store.  He was incredibly knowledgeable and answered a lot of my questions.  The Glidden paint line, while not zero VOC is a low odor formula.  It really doesn't have an odor and goes on really well.  The rep recommended that we use a drywall primer/sealer since it is fresh drywall.

We did choose Glidden and got the new drywall sealer.  We used 15 gallons of sealer!  It took Dan right around 8 hours total to prime the house, but we did it!  On Sunday, we started to paint the walls and ceilings.  Dan tackled the ceilings, which is quite a feat with our cathedral ceilings in the great room.  Kole and I painted his room, the bathroom, and the laundry room.  We are using two colors, green and a light brown.  Kole's room is of course green!

Sorry my posts are random and rare lately!  We are in a crunch to get things ready to move our of our apartment and into the house in the next month!  And get our garden set up :-)  More later....