Week in photos

Free range afternoon

Mouse always has his eye on me

Jay has taken up juicing. Apparently all the guys in his firehouse are doing it? The first few rounds did not go well. I'm thinking that recipes are there for a reason.

Our septic tank runneth over and started backing up into the downstairs shower. Talk about gross. So we had to get our tank pumped and the line flushed. Farewell $460, I will miss you!

Gorgeous church  outside of Chestertown. My friend Christina is thinking of getting married there next year. I had to go to our Chester River Hospital last week to train my vacation back up. Afterwards, Christina took me on a tour of Kent County. We also visited her parents' gorgeous home in Rock Hall, where we had a few glasses of wine on the porch. Her mom also made some heavenly guacamole. It was a nice visit!

This beautiful tree on the church grounds is 400 years old

Marker from the tree

Jay hard at work on chicken coop #2. It will comfortably house our entire flock!

Mouse was about to attack Jay, so he gave him a good chase around the yard

Mom visited for a Scentsy party over the weekend

She loves her grandpeeps

And she brought me some flowers for my birthday

After mom left on Sunday, I went to Martinak for a long walk and some photos. I was taking pictures of this cherry tree sapling when this tiger swallowtail came out of NOWHERE and landed on the branch. It's not nearly warm enough for butterflies to be making an appearance. It reminded me of my dad. Maybe this was his way of saying hi. 

Watts Creek... kayakers enjoying the spring day

More cherry blooms

An osprey left its nest after I got too close. :(

Early spring at Martinak

Official Party Business

Our Green Carpet Unveiling party is tomorrow, and I’m starting to freak out. We’re going to have between 40 and 50 people coming. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be like other parties we’ve had and people will be staggered throughout the day (there’s certain to be lots of staggering by the end).

I have a 16 pound pork shoulder, 5 pounds of London Broil, ~3 qts of buffalo chicken dip, however many mini quiches I can make, 6 lbs of burgers, 4 or 5 lbs of hot dogs, 60 deviled eggs, 100 oysters, 8 lbs of macaroni salad, 10 lbs of potato salad, 4 pounds of cheese, hopefully enough bruschetta (I bought 4 pints worth of tomatoes to make it), and….??? I think that’s all. We’re making Grown-up Arnold Palmers… Sweet Tea Vodka & Lemonade, 2 cases of pumpkin ale for slutty pumpkins (pumpkin ale w/ vanilla vodka in a cinnamon & sugar rimmed glass), 4 30-packs of Miller Lite, plus some wine. OH! And I’m also making mini ice cream sandwiches… homemade vanilla ice cream sandwiched between chocolate chip cookies. Last night I scraped the vanilla beans and infused ice cream with the vanilla. I found that working with vanilla beans is kind of a PITA.

All of our dishes except for the burgers and hot dogs are being made with local ingredients. I’m pretty happy about that. I hope that it comes out in the taste. The meats came from Cedar Run in Sudlersville, the oysters are coming from Choptank Oyster Company in Cambridge, cheese is from Chapel's Country Creamery in Easton, any egg dish came from our chickens, milk products came from Nice Farms Creamery in American Corner, and other various ingredients came from Clayton Farms in Denton. So basically everything came from within about 30 miles of our house. Pretty cool.

Now if we can somehow pull this all off in the next 24 hours, I will be a happy camper. I’m praying that the weather holds out for us. We’ve been incredibly lucky in the past during all of our parties being on beautiful days. Let’s hope that trend continues!

Finished Tattoo in memory of my dad

Had my tattoo finished this weekend. It's a little larger than I was expecting. The artist free handed the stencil. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

Farewell Blackberry and weekend activities

I've had my Blackberry for close to three years. I've used and abused it and it is now held together by tape.

Lately I've had to reset it multiple times a day. I get no reception at work and my calls constantly cut out.

I've been drooling over the iphone 4S that my friends and family own, but I decided I'd wait for the iphone 5 to be released before I pulled the trigger and made the switch. I couldn't warrant paying $200 for a phone, but I decided that $100 was reasonable. The iphone 5 is an impressive piece of technology, but it's not worth the extra $100 to me. I'll just be happy to not have to carry a separate ipod with me to listen to my music and audiobooks. I've left my ipod at work a few times and haven't been able to listen to my music/audiobooks, but I don't foresee that happening with an iphone.

All of that said, yesterday I ordered the 4S. I love having a keyboard, so we'll see how I do with a touchscreen. Here's hoping for an easy adjustment. The cool thing is that the website said that the 4S wouldn't ship out for 3-5 business days, but I got a notification yesterday saying that it shipped. It should be here Monday!

So farewell, Blackberry. This will be our last weekend together. I suppose that I can take you with me tubing tomorrow, since I'll have Siri arriving on Monday. I have to admit that I'm a little bit tempted to drop you in the water and go off the grid for a few days. 

So as I mentioned, tomorrow I'll be Tubing on the Choptank. Then I'll be heading directly (late) to my arts council retreat. After that, I'll be attending the Denton VFC crab feast. Crazy busy weekend... not to mention that the Alpaca Festival is also happening this weekend, which I'm hoping to find some time to check out. 

Next weekend is more of the same, but it should be a little more relaxed. Black Anchor is doing their annual March of Dimes fundraiser, so I'll be getting the (Carl Sagan) quote around my tattoo - "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever." Then we'll be attending Harry's goes to the dogs - a wine tasting for the Humane Society.

I have more to post about the house... we are on the home stretch. We rented another dumpster and are finishing the clean-out of my dad's workroom. We should be getting drywall up in there soon. The kitchen is pretty much done, Jay surprised me by putting up slate around the chimney. Our friend Jared had slate leftover from one of his jobs, so he came over last weekend and they worked on that, as well as beginning the workroom clean-out. 

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.

Friday was awesomesauce

The day began with eight ladies and two babies at Outstanding Dreams alpaca farm.  Levi and Liam (the babies) had a great time gallivanting with the alpacas, although Liam was not happy that Meghan wouldn’t let him down to crawl around the pasture. Babies + alpacas = cutest ever.

The alpacas were so soft that I had to buy some fiber at the farm store… so I guess I need to learn how to knit/crochet. The girls tried to convince me to get some alpacas (you can raise up to 10 on a single acre). I think that we need to buy siding more than a $5,000 animal – those adorable critters are expensive!

I stole some of these photos from the Caroline County Tourism page on Facebook. Our buddy Christina (who works for the tourism board) took us to the alpaca farm and the place with the crazy outhouse guy who is obsessed with hoes.

Now on to Shore Good farms. The owner Jack is born and bred Caroline County. Jack loves his hoes and outhouses, but his real passion is to use his farm to educate kids about growing vegetables and gardening. He has a large amount of acreage on his farm, but the part that we visited is farmed strictly by hand. Jack can hoe his entire farm in 16 minutes.

Here is a blurb from the agritourism website:

Take a step back in time to Shore Good Farm, a heritage farm located in Preston. Shore Good Farm highlights Caroline County’s rich agrarian history, featuring an unmatched collection of antiques and heritage artifacts from yesteryear, fresh-cut flowers, artisan carpentry including vintage outhouses and chicken coops, the plumpest blackberries on the shore, old-fashioned kettle corn and more!  Jack Stieff also runs his peanut roasting operation on the farm, offering 15 varieties of his signature peanuts.

We all became 12 year old girls when he started talking about the proper way to hoe a garden. He told us that all you need to grow vegetables is a small area of land and a good hoe. Now, lots of people tend to use big hoes, but Jack likes to use small hoes. You’ve got to make sure that you keep your hoe in the ground. He showed off his mother’s hoe and had all of us take turns holding it. “Yep, that’s a light hoe.” Cue us giggling like little girls and making “Your mom’s a hoe” comments.

Jack is a purveyor of moonshine and tall tales. He doesn’t trust the government and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on Doomsday Preppers someday.

Here he is greeting us when we pulled up – we caught him in the outhouse, of course:

Some more pics at Shore Good Farm:

Sadly, the blackberries weren’t ripe enough to be picked, because as Jack said, “That Mother Nature is a hussy!”

We’re planning to go back after Mother Nature wises up and cooperates with Jack. I’m looking forward to talking to him about his chicken feed. He makes his own and according to him, he gets 14 eggs a day out of his 10 chickens. Tall tales, indeed.

We found ourselves famished and thirsty after the farm visits, so we headed to The Market Street Pub for some deliciousness. I was too hungry to take any pictures of our food, but I did snap a shot of our Orange Crush pitcher.

After the pub, we bid adieu to Meghan, Sherye, and their babies and headed over to Black Anchor Tattoo to get some work done. Sara now has Harry Potter stars behind her ear, Jamie got a peace sign behind her ear (there was a DUDE – SWEET moment at the tattoo shop, which was hilarious), Angela has a gorgeous pattern going down her spine inspired by wrought-iron gates, and I now have this (inspired by my dad's photo on the right):

It looks pretty gross in that photo, because it was newly finished - irritated and weeping. I’ll post another photo when it has healed. I have to say that it hurt way more than I remembered tattoos hurting, and it took a little over two hours! After the first minute I was thinking, “I wonder if it’s too late to get him to stop.”  I’m very glad that Angela ended up getting her back done at the same time, because it was nice to have someone to suffer with. Sara and Jamie’s tattoos were done in no more than 15 minutes. Lucky girls.

I still have to get the Sagan quote added. I didn’t like the layout that the shop did with the words going through the butterfly's wings, so I’m going to go back once it’s healed and figure out a way that we can work in the quote around the tattoo or maybe to the side somewhere.

After tattoos we went to Harry's on the Green for some tasty drinks, plus delicious fried pickles and green beans.

As if all of that fun wasn’t enough, we also had book club on Friday night. Wine, cheese, and tasty noms. It didn’t go as late as usual, probably because the book (Still Life by Joy Fielding) was awful and most of us were exhausted from our busy day.

Saturday brought more shenanigans at the 2^nd annual Southern Summer Cocktail party and we also got a bushel of crabs on Sunday. It was a crazy fun and busy weekend and now I am completely worn out.

I can’t wait for a 7 p.m. bedtime this evening!