Up To...

We've just been plugging along here at the Lyman house.  It's one project after the next, phew!

After the carpet went in, we took a few days to decide what to work on next, and the kitchen won out.  So anyway, here's a few in between pictures:

The other day, we had some random black cat perusing through our garage.  He was a sweet little thing, and Marin just loved him.  He was ready come inside when we tried to go inside! 

 And yes, we *finally* have a laying hen!  About 10 days ago I was outside and noticed a small, round thing on the ground, and upon closer inspection, it was an egg!  The next egg ended up on the floor inside the hen-house, and the rest have been inside the nesting boxes where they belong.  I think it's one of the Barred Plymouth Rock's, since the majority of the feathers in the nesting box are black and striped.  So far we've received about 8 eggs!

 Sometimes we let the chickens out into the grassy yard, they love that.

 The kids requested to make cookies, and they then requested to watch the buffalo hunt scene from Dances with Wolves.  That was something my dad did with them before he passed away; the kids still remember it, and I *cling* to that.  I don't ever want them to forget those few, precious memories they have with my dad.  So we watched the buffalo hunt together, and I don't think I'll ever be able to watch that scene and not get choked up.  His memory is just as bright as day when I see that scene, and hear the music.  I love that my kids still remember.

 If you are wondering, yes, I am still getting my dinner recipes from The Fresh 20, and I LOVE it, still!  This is just a dinner from last week.  I use the meals 100% of the time, maybe 80% of the time?  But it still saves us money, and we eat so many veggies for dinner.  It really expands my kids pallet's, which I love.  It's been a whole year, bring on another!

 Every so often, when I am the closer at work, I get stuck LATE, and it stinks....especially having kids.  So this was my cheese and cracker dinner at 6:15 one night.

 This was the first offering from our ladies that we cooked up.  The eggs are still a bit small (I hear they'll get bigger), but they were delish!!  Super yummy, way better than store bought.

 I had this strange unused space beneath my cooktop range, and it made me crazy.  It had an opening cupboard door, but there was nothing there!  It was just empty to the storage space below.  And I reeeeeally needed a place for my cookie pans; they had been sharing space with my cutting boards and it was not a happy match.  SO, one day, I took it upon myself to put in a shelf.  It was more of a project than I thought, but I got it done and I'm so happy with it!  It's a great use of space, and I got to use my husband's power tools ;)

 We saw a rainbow outside of kitchen one night while eating dinner.  Marin had *just* been talking about rainbows, and was SO excited when she saw this.

 The kitchen, a before.  Well, just one.  I have more, but I'll save those for when we're done.  Here we are emptying out the cupboards.  Meh, having a chaotic kitchen is not my favorite, but it will be worth it!  We're painting them a slightly off-white "Swiss Coffee" by Behr.  Those cabinets to the left of the window are gone, and in their place, we are putting open shelving, dark stained wood, and I'm debating on doing beadboard behind or a stencil...I haven't made up my mind yet.  I'm leaning toward beadboard.

 So far the bases have all been primed, and the doors/drawers have had their first coat of primer and need to be sanded.  Progress is slow, it's kind of tedious, especially when you have an evil paint sprayer named Chucky.  Chucky has now met his maker.  And below, you'll meet our new paint sprayer...Glenda.  She's just lovely!

 The garage.  It's been unpredictably rainy/windy outside the last couple of weeks, so my paint studio has been temporarily relocated to the garage.  Here are all of our doors/ drawers ready for primer!

 We had Trine and Barry up one Saturday evening and they offered to paint the chicken house, sweet!  We decided on "Farmhouse Red", Behr, and I love it!  I'll need to add some white trim and pretty it up with details, but I was so happy they painted it!  Marin helped, and she loved it!

 And here's Glenda, our new paint sprayer.  Let me tell you the story.  Yesterday, I got everything ready to spray, and Chucky (who was named after this whole ordeal), the old paint sprayer, didn't work.  The suction wasn't there, I replaced the tubing, I cleaned the whole sprayer like a boss, I fooled with that stupid sprayer for 2 hours, and Kristoffer finally looked at it....nothing.  I told him to chuck it.  I was absolutely fed up with that stupid sprayer, it has given me so much grief (a Ryobi, battery powered sprayer, it's supposed to be nice).  We went to Home Depot (our other home, lately), and I wasn't even thinking about getting an air sprayer until Kristoffer found them.  I had totally forgotten that Kris had purchased an air compressor!  We decided on this one and took it home.  I was scared stiff.  After all of the nonsense I experienced with Chucky, I held my breath while we fired up the air compressor and I pulled the lever on Glenda.  She puffed out the most beautiful, soft spray I have ever seen, it was a paint-spraying miracle!  She sprayed and sprayed the most even, and lovely line of spray...no dripping, and clogging piston that sounds like a hammer, no clumps, she performed 110%, and I am over the moon in love with her.  I know, this has been the longest sonnet ever about a paint sprayer, but I am so happy, and confident that my cabinets will look fabulous!

The Master.  We started on the Master bedroom a few weeks ago.  We painted the wall behind the bed a plum color, and the accenting walls will be a slate/pewter gray.  I'm still deciding on my accent color...green?  yellow?  turquoise?  Not sure. 

 Two of the pewter walls will spill into the bathroom, and the rest of the bathroom I want to keep pretty light, like a rich, silvery white.

 You can see the peach-ness of the walls right now.

 The windows really highlight the plum color.

So, this is what we've been "Up To...".  More updates to come, hopefully soon!

Shazaam! New Carpet.

It finally came!  We ordered carpet almost two months ago, and it's finally in!  We decided to do the upstairs first.  Only because the carpet on the main floor which is the same blue, goes right through into the dining room, and we really don't want carpet in there.  I'm sure carpet in the dining room would be fine if you didn't have little kids, or friends with little kids over for dinner, but it just doesn't make sense in my book.  And we want to put hardwoods on the main floor, haha, that's only going to take us, oh, a few years to save up for.  ANYWAY, the basement has other carpet that we also don't like, and it's old, but only half of the basement is finished, so Kristoffer wants to wait until the whole thing is finished before we change out the carpet down there.  So here we start, the before:

 The actual color of the blue is quite pretty, but I just can't swallow it as a carpet.

 After!!!

 We went with the twisted texture carpet, only because it's relatively forgiving of the inevitable dirt/stain from children.  I'm pretty happy with it.  It completely changes the look of the house.  Now I only wish I could get the REST of that blue carpet out!

 Ok, this room.  This is a little bit of a side trip, this room is SUCH an awkward shape.  It's kind of an 'L' shape, and as a singular room, it's too big for one child, or for a future nursery, but if we cut it half and have each side take one of the existing windows, the one room would be waaaay too small for an actual room.  I think it could be maybe a brand new newborn room, but it couldn't fit a bed with anything else.  I'm a little torn as to what I want to do with it right now.  We've just had the guest room stuff in there for now, and office stuff, but I don't think that's going to work out permanently.  Any suggestions, let me know, I'm all ears!!

 The leftover carpet.  It's actually quite a bit, I'm trying to figure out what to do with it, can't let it go to waste!

 Totally unrelated, but we finally attached our house numbers back on the house.  Before, they were cheap, gold numbers stuck to the house with superglue (many things in this house we've found have been fixed with either duck tape or super glue, yeah).  So I pulled them off, sprayed them with bronze spray, and mounted them on a piece of wood I sprayed white.  It's nothing huge, but it looks a ton better, and it's one more way to make the house our own.

My mind is filled with a zillion more things I wish I could do right away, but we're waiting for...ca-chiiing.  Yeah, the realities of owning a home.  It's ok, I know no one talks about money, but I'll say it, if only for my kids' sake, children if you're reading this someday, a new home is tons of fun, but you WILL run out of money, haha!

Awwww, Honey, Honey!

This year, Kristoffer pulled his VERY first honey harvest.  We were both pretty excited.  You ll have to excuse my lack of pictures...I got a new camera for our anniversary, and I haven't figured out how to activate the Wifi on it yet, so these two limited phone pics will have to do.

Here is the honey!  There is actually a half full fourth jar in the back...which would have been full, but Kristoffer already shared some ;)

That front jar is a jar that my dad filled with honey last October for Kristoffer from his own hives in NY.  Glad to see we're keeping things in motion.

We had some friends from the ward over for dinner with their 5 kids (!) and they all helped scrape the comb into the bucket.  They gave us such a nice compliment, too.  They told us that so many people in the ward were talking about how quickly the Lyman's have adjusted and have become a part of the ward; most new families have a period of adjustment, and evidently we've jumped right in.  What a nice compliment!  I was totally flattered!  I guess we've moved around enough to get the hang of things?

We ended up getting about a gallon of honey, which isn't bad for a first time honey harvest, and that's only from about 4 frames!  That's amazing!!  I'm still waiting for my chickens to start laying, I think the time is coming soon....Kris finished the nesting boxes, so tomorrow I'll clean out the hen house, add some bedding to the boxes, and some golf balls...just to let the ladies know where the little round white objects are meant to be deposited.

Over Labor Day weekend, we went to Fort Bridger, WY.  Kris's dad and step mom live there and every year the town hosts their yearly Mountain Man Rendezvous.  It's totally crazy and so fun to walk around and see all sorts of....mountain man stuff...leather, skins, dresses, guns, all the things that remind me of my dad, it really made me miss him.  We also went to the mountains for a picnic, and on the way back, my little buddy fell asleep in the back of the Jeep.  Such a cute boy, I love this little guy so much.  Again, my lack of pictures is due to new-camera-non-knowledge.

At some point I'll get this new camera figured out, I have so many pictures on there!

Plum-TASTIC!

So my mom was here this past week (working on pics!!), and we went for a family walk on Sunday down to the little marsh that's near our house.  It was quite the hike, phew!  We must have walked close to 4 miles up and down rough hills.  Anyway, we took a different loop on the way back, and discovered a veritable GEM, wild plums.

We weren't sure what they were at first, they looked like cherries!  So we picked them apart and tasted them and concluded they were wild plums.  I filled up my hubby's cargo pockets, much to his chagrin, and we took them home.  Kristoffer actually offered to go back and pick some more for me, such a sweet hubby, love that man.

Here are a few of the plums before:

 Aren't they so pretty?!

 And last night as they were simmering away to become luscious, tangy jam.

 I filled up ten jars to store, and two jars for the fridge, and this jam is going quick!  It is SO good!!  My absolute favorite jam is still peach jam, but this is for SURE a very, very close second.

 My breakfast this morning, a toasted english muffing with jam and a scrambled egg.

I am so happy to have discovered these wild plum trees, and to put their fruit to good use.  PLUS, we also discovered a wild pear tree while we were down there, so I need to pop back down in a couple of weeks and see if they are ripe...

My First Kinder-Girl!

My sweet little Marin turned 5 last week (more on this later!), and Monday marked the beginning of Kindergarten for her!  I can't believe my big girl is doing the whole 5-day-a-week school thing!

She's ready though.  Last year we did preschool, two days a week.  It was a really great experience for her.  Considering I'm not one of those nutty parents who really wants to throw their kid into preschool at age two (I had no idea people did this!), I only wanted to start when she starting giving me signs she was ready.  And when you're 4, two days a week is plenty.  Besides, I don't get that time back.  And now, she is five (half) days a week.  Those two days a week of preschool really helped to prep her socially for this.  She was a little on the shy side, and it was such a great experience for her.  I'm totally ready for her to be in school, I'll have the mornings with just Owen, which not only makes it easier, but he deserves one-on-one time, too.

Her she is on her first day!

 My two crazy kids, boy do I love them.  They are the sweetest children, and I am one blessed mama.

 Owen has hamming it up, funny boy.

 This is usually how things are...

 They make me laugh, those two.  As different as they are, they are two peas in a pod.

 Daddy and his big girl!  Now that kinder has started, this train won't stop for another.....18 years!

 A quick shot inside her classroom.

So happy for my big girl.  She is moving on to new and exciting things, and as hard as it is to say goodbye to my little baby girl, it's wonderful to see her look forward to new things.  She is such a smart little girl, and has a million questions a day, seriously, this girl can rapid fire those questions!  And her mouth runs faster than her brain does, sometimes she'll stop and say "Wait....what was I talking about??", totally hilarious!  Can't wait to see what this year holds for her and for all of us!

When Marin Has the Camera...

This afternoon I was super tired and passed out on the couch for about half an hour, and Marin found my camera and somehow pulled up the camera...

 I love seeing her perspective on the world, it's so fascinating.

 Close-ups of the pillows.

 She's actually quite talented!

 I've got to say, I'm quite impressed.

 My basil plant.

Love my crazy 5 year old.