25 Things - The 2012 Year in Review Edition

It's true that 2012 is ending on a somber note for most of this country. The tragedy in Newtown, CT and the senseless shooting of two firefighters in Webster, NY didn't put most of us in the holiday spirit.

Because of all the dreary news, it's easy for me to overlook all of the good things and fun times I've had this year.  I've compiled some of my favorite trips/home project accomplishments/happy days from the past year (in no particular order):

1. I celebrated two years of marriage to my darling husband. 
2. I got a new job about 20 miles from home, which saved me at least 370 hours (that's 15 DAYS of my LIFE) and 26,270 miles of commuting this year (based on working 37 weeks, since I started working in March).
3. I started this blog. :)
4. Built a chicken coop and raised 10 chickens from peep-hood for fresh eggs.
5. Had a fantastic time on a cruise to the Bahamas - had the best snorkeling experience ever at Paradise Cove in Freeport.
6. My sister-in-law Colleen visited for two weeks over the summer and we had fun drinking too much wine, making zombie detours, parties, chickens and all sorts of stuff. 
7. Had an awesome day in Caroline County with some fabulous ladies (including Colleen) - alpacas, outhouses and tattoos, oh my!
8. Traveled to Rhode Island for a paranormal investigation of Rose Island Lighthouse... complete with a rather creepy and foggy ferry ride across Narragansett Bay to Rose Island. During this trip, I also experienced Connecticut style lobster rolls at Abbott's Lobster in Noank, CT, visited my cousin Heather (& family) in Boston and Jay's cousins in Naugatuck, CT.
9. Built a raised garden bed and started a compost pile. Sadly, the chickens destroyed most of our plants, but we got a lot of jalapenos and green peppers.
10. I purchased a canning kit, made and canned apple butter for the first time.
11. We finished our upstairs bathroom - drywall, tile, trim, and paint. 
12. Close to finished on our fourth bedroom - drywall, laminate flooring, and paint. Trim has been cut, it just needs to be nailed to the wall.
13. Finished the upstairs and downstairs foyer/hallways - drywall, laminate flooring (or refinishing hardwood) and paint. 
14. Finished the reading nook - drywall, laminate flooring, paint, installed banister & railing, AND scored 2 fantastic chairs at a great deal.
15. Finished the kitchen - ripped out and replaced previous tiling job, installed cabinets, sink, dishwasher (although it's still not hooked to power), installed laminate counters.
16. Installed exterior siding with R-5 insulation value.
17. Got a subpanel installed for Jay's to-be-built shop/shed/man-cave.
18. Had a great time at the Southern Summer Cocktail Party. :)
19. Had many fun nights with my book club ladies.
20. Making an effort to buy local, organic, and/or natural foods when possible- I'm now a regular at Nice Farms Creamery and Cedar Run Cattle.
21. Hosted a crazy fun party and featured aforementioned local food.
22. Participated in many happy hours at Harry's on the Green with some of my favorite ladies. Some of these happy hours turned into late night shenanigans. One such night ended with a potted petunia in the bottom of a friend's hot tub. Oops!
23. I survived the release of my first holiday schedule and planned the holiday party at work. The schedule was awful, but the party turned out great. I'm still getting compliments on it... mad props to Lorraine at The Milestone and Jimmy at It's Your Day DJ. They did an awesome job.
24. I began putting myself first again and started enforcing boundaries with people.
25. Celebrated Christmas quietly with Jay - we opened presents, feasted like Kings and watched TV all day.

Soon I'll be posting 25 goals or plans for 2013. It's not going to be a resolution list (although I imagine a few things are resolution-esque), but more of what I'm looking forward to in the next year.

I've also seen an idea that I really like on Pinterest... it's cheesy in some ways, but I think it's a great idea. Each time something good or fun happens in 2013, write it down on a scrap of paper and put it in a mason jar. At the end of the year, for Christmas or at NYE, open the jar and read all of the scraps. I think it's a lovely idea... even when you're feeling a bit blue, you can open the jar and smile at the great memories you've made. 

I plan on 2013 knocking the socks off of 2012!

What's been going on

I don't have much time to update, but I thought I'd post some photos...

Lots of things happening at the house - the house has been sided and right now we're working on tiling the kitchen. Once we're finished tiling the kitchen, we'll be installing cabinets. Some of them are mismatched, but in time we'll sand them down and refinish them.

I have tons of tomatoes, jalapenos and zucchini. I was hoping to start canning tomatoes, but a) I have no canning kit and b) I have no kitchen/range to use!

Dresdy is still alive and has rejoined the flock. Her bone is still exposed, but she's doing great!

I heard Mouse crow for the first time this morning. It sounded a little pathetic, to be honest. I was worried that he would be too noisy, but it's really not bad at all. Hopefully he won't get much louder. He's been kind of a jerk to the hens - I think it's because he's trying to mate with them. No eggs yet. We could get eggs anywhere from now until a month from now. I'll try not to anticipate it too much, as I'm sure that once they're laying, we'll be wondering what to do with all of them!

I think that I may hatch out some of the eggs next year, just to see what they grow into. A white silkie/black star chicken would be really interesting. I thought about getting new chicks next year and selling/giving away some of the girls (3 or 4) that are already laying... but now I think I'll hatch out a bunch of eggs and sell the extras to keep my flock at around 12. My boss said that I can borrow their incubator, so I think I'll take him up on that.

New siding is hen-approved

Upstairs reading nook! We installed laminate flooring in our reading nook, throughout the upstairs hallway and the third bedroom. Photo is a little dark, will have to take more pictures. This area used to be a room at the front of the house, but it was too small to serve much of a purpose. We knocked out the wall and made this inviting little space. We can either spy on our druggie neighbor or look out over the dairy farm across the street. I prefer the latter option.

One of our bargain chairs - we ended up getting a 36% discount... I can't begin to think how much money I could have saved in my life had I actually haggled with salespeople. 

Piper, aka Trouble, aka Kitty Whore, aka Princess Kitty Whore hiding out under the blanket

Siding project started. When we began this project over 3 years ago, this side of the house was covered by pine trees and vines. The square hole with the plywood over it on the right side is from the monstrous a/c unit that cooled the downstairs. We now have split system central HVAC and a pellet stove downstairs for supplemental heating. However, we still need to have the heat pump and air handler unit installed downstairs. We're expecting to do that after the summer, once demand dies down.

Dresdy in her hospital room

Mr. Draco checking out Dresdy on her trip outside to rejoin the flock

High heel race in downtown Denton.

They didn't have size 14W men's size in women's shoes, therefore the duct tape. Next year perhaps we'll get Jay a nice set of heels.

Shakespeare Alive. Jay playing a tree as part of a scene in "As you like it."

Tiling, tiling, tiling. It's all we do. This is the second time we've had to tile the kitchen, as the first time we used the wrong stuff and the tiles broke or came off the floor.

Chicky poos enjoying some corn from the garden... my corn blew down during that Derecho and ended up falling into shadow. At least the chickens got a chance to enjoy it! Check out the coloring of the black stars... I love their iridescent feathers. They're such pretty girls!

Finished siding! We still have to complete the siding on the attic dormers and some of the sofit.

Kitchen cabinets waiting to be installed

I took my first bath in the completed tub/bathroom, even though it's been done for 2 months now. It required a Sawzall, because Jay didn't install an access door. Our niece had taken a bath previously and we suspect that she tripped the breaker because she turned on the tub before it was filled. :-/ 

Morning chickens

We'll be attending a wedding this weekend. I'd much rather be at home trying to finish the kitchen. We are getting really close to having things nice in the house.

The farm is coming along

We have our first green beans! I didn’t even realize that they were growing until I was weeding yesterday and saw something weird coming off of the plant. It looks like we will be having green beans with dinner this weekend. :)

Our cucumbers are going to be crazy this year – there are about 20 blossoms on our plants and some baby cukes are growing already. We are going to try making pickles this year. I found some recipes for fridge pickles as well as canned pickles. I suppose that we’ll be trying the fridge pickles first. That should be a fun project while my sister in law is visiting.

The chickens are about 8 weeks old now and get bigger every day. At first we were allowing them access to the garden, but then they started eating all of our plants. So chickypoos are now banned from the garden, although one or two seem to find a way to get stuck in there every day. I’m hoping that once their permanent run is constructed that they’ll be less likely to want to get in to the garden. We should be getting our reward of fresh eggs in about 2 months. Supposedly our black stars will start producing eggs at 16 weeks, which is July 29^th. Our silkies (the white fuzzy chickens - Mouse and Dresdy) aren't very smart and are definitely near the bottom of the pecking order... but they are so freaking cute and SOFT. They feel like bunnies! We've been trying to make the chickens more tame by handfeeding them treats and petting them. When they hear the back door open and see someone, they all come running. It's pretty adorable.

Here is Jay having a mealworm frenzy with the chickypoos

As I think I mentioned before, we are planning to have a green carpet unveiling. It seems that the party keeps getting pushed back to later in the year. When Jay and I talked about a date, it now seems that our party will be at the beginning of October. I really wanted to still have fresh tomatoes to make bruschetta for our party, but I suppose that I could can my bruschetta mixture. Who knows, I may still have tomatoes in October. I sure hope so!  I found this recipe for canning bruschetta that I will probably try out:  http://motherskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/bruschetta-in-jar.html

Part of the fun of the party that I’m planning is that I want to use all (or at least mostly) locally-sourced ingredients. I’m sure that most of the firemen sure to be at our party won’t appreciate it, but I know that most of my friends (and the firemen’s wives and girlfriends) will enjoy it.

Here is the first draft of the menu... we may add or remove some items:

Chips & Salsa (fresh made salsa from our garden vegetables)

Deviled eggs (fresh from our chickens)

Duck w/ goat cheese, shallots, apples wrapped in phyllo (locally sourced duck and goat cheese, if I can find them – shallots from our garden, apples from a local orchard)

Bruschetta (fresh made from our garden on homemade bread)

Buffalo chicken dip (we’ll tell everyone it’s an unlucky chicken)

Salad (not sure on this one yet, but we have Bibb lettuce growing in the pallet garden)

Quiche (made with our eggs and garden vegetables)

Pulled pork (from Cedar Run cattle, a local farm)

London broil (also from Cedar Run)

Sandwich rolls

Fresh pickles from garden

Chocolate chip cookies

Brownies

I want to have a signature cocktail and do a twist on Long Island Iced Tea. I'm trying to think of a fun name to call it – Delmarva Iced Tea sounds kind of lame. I’m going to experiment with it, but it’s going to be some kind of peach sweet tea with a kick. I’ll probably make it with peaches, peach nectar, vodka or rum, and iced tea.

I’m also in the process of attempting to grow rosemary from cuttings. We have a rosemary bush that is completely out of control, and I was thinking that it would be nice to give little potted rosemary plants to our guests. There will be a little sign that says, “Take a piece of our garden home with you.”

Please disregard the neighbor's overgrowth on the left. We're planning to send a formal complaint letter to the county so that he will finally have take care of it. He hasn't taken care of his property in years and told us the one or two times that he stopped by that he was planning to mow his yard. Uhh, yeah. It's not much fun to constantly battle his foliage, plus it's a haven for mosquitoes.  

Some more exciting news on the home front - we should have our siding completed sometime around July. This should fix our leaky family room window situation, which I'm pretty concerned about because of the weather forecast for tonight:

THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR SOME STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS
LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT AS A COLD FRONT ARRIVES. ANY
STRONGER THUNDERSTORM COULD BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LOCALLY
DAMAGING WINDS AND HAIL. IN ADDITION, HEAVY RAIN COULD ACCOMPANY
THIS SYSTEM WHICH MAY RESULT IN LOCALIZED BUT BRIEF FLOODING. AT
THIS TIME, THE GREATER CHANCE FOR A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM APPEARS TO
BE ACROSS DELAWARE AND MARYLAND TO PERHAPS INTO SOUTHEASTERN
PENNSYLVANIA.

Jay sealed up the chicken coop today, which was having some leaking issues along the back of the coop. So hopefully our chickypoos will be safe and dry tonight.

I'm planning to post a recipe soon, but that's it for now.