Five Weeks Old

Another week of growin'!

The chicks upgraded to a bigger coop this week:

Mike was kind enough to expand their brooder into two containers. The new addition is significantly taller, so we were able to add a new, bigger feeder and waterer and keep them off of the ground so they can't mess them as easily. We are so glad they have more room now. Basically they have a whole container for just playing. At this point they are down to a temperature of 75 and it has been warm enough in their space that we haven't been using the brooder lamp.

Work continues on their coop. This week we have completed the coop (post coming soon!) and are working on making it secure. We are still not sure when we will be ready to let them live out there full time though. Probably a couple more weeks.

Not quite as cute as they were a few weeks ago, but so much more cuddly! 

Engineer Print Art

My first attempt at the Pinterest Challenge! I went with something that everyone and their moms have done: the engineer print art. I needed to add a little somethin' somethin' to our bedroom. Here it is in all it's glory:

Nice, but not finished. So I started looking through photos and picked out my favorite picture of our lovely cat Gizmo. She's taken second fiddle since our puppy Leela came home five months ago, so I thought we should show her some love.

I turned it into black and white and ulploaded it onto Staples' website. I probably should have just gone into Staples and they would have been super helpful in getting it the way I wanted, but I like to limit my random trips across town. So I ordered it online and waited a day for the prints to be made. I had picked out four other photos just in case the one I wanted didn't work out.

When I went to pick up my prints, the kind folks at Staples had put together a special poster for me with one of my photos! I love it and need to find a good place for it.

Anywho, I picked this pin to use as my guide:

Source: bowerpowerblog.com via Jackie on Pinterest

Katie gives a pretty good tutorial on how to do it, so I basically just copied what she did. First step, picking out my insulation board and acrylic paint and adhesive. I purchased a 4'x8' insulation sheet at Lowe's. It was huge. I had a guy at Lowe's cut it in half for me and I still had trouble fitting it into the husband's Prius. When I got home, I measured the photo and cut the board down to size. Then I used some rough sandpaper to smooth out the edges.

I picked out black to paint the edges. It was a good call.

Adhering the photo to the board was super difficult. Katie used a glue stick and I should have too. I used spray adhesive. While it worked pretty well, it was so hard to get the photo straight on the board. Luckily, Mike saw me struggling and offered to help (I'm one of those stubborn people who will probably drown before asking the lifeguard to save me. Random Fact). With his help we were able to get it on the board semi-straight.

Once that was done, there were no more issues. I found some cotton string in my craft box and duct taped it to the sides of the board. Then I hung it!

There she is. What does everyone think? Does anyone else hang large pictures of their pets in their house? Or do you find this creepy?

Consider me addicted to Pinterest projects. Next up? Convincing Mike to help me make this pallet swing for the front porch:

Source: sherylsalisburyphotography.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Linking up to the Spring Pinterest Challenge Ladies

Sherry at Young House Love

Katie at Bower Power Blog

Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop

Renee from Red Bird Blue

Fence Progress

The fence is nearly finished! Woohoo! This is where we left off last time:

 Posts up, after working on it for nearly three weeks. Well, it is a lot different now!

There's almost a real fence there! I was really worried that the lattice would block out all of the sun, but I'm happy to report that the sun shines in just fine. The garden faces east so it gets lots of morning and early afternoon sun.

The first thing we did was add side posts to give the lattice something to rest on. We went to Lowe's and bought something like 72 u-brackets to hold the 2"x4" boards in place. We set the bottom board in as low as it could go and then leveled it and nailed it in to the posts using the u-brackets. Then we tried our best to put the top boards in four feet above the bottom boards. With the horizontal boards in, we were able to nail the lattice on to the boards. Some of the lattice required trimming on the sides, which was long and tedious work.

We were able to get these steps done in a couple of days. All that's left now is making it look purdy. There will be trim around the lattice on the outside of the fence and caps on all of the posts. Also, we'll be needing to put in a gate. Making progress right?

A Dip in the Pool

Our dog Leela is a Newfoundland. These dogs were bred for water rescue and hauling things up in Canada, where it is almost always frigid. She is the perfect dog for Iowa, where it is cool 8 months out of the year. Leela loves winter and had a blast frolicking in the snow for the first four months that we had her.

She never seemed to mind the weather, even when we had a blizzard with over a foot of snow on the ground. In fact, she loved it. While I dreaded putting on all of my winter gear to take her for a walk twice a day, she looked forward to it. Now that the weather is starting to get warm, she is starting to get wiped out at even the slightest bit above 70. Let's fix that.

We bought her a kiddie pool last weekend and had fun watching her splash around. She's taken to water like a natural and we're so excited to introduce her to lakes where she can actually swim.

We don't have a fence in our backyard (a lot to tackle, maybe in a year or two?) so she has to be tied to a leader line. She doesn't let it affect her though (except when she's trying to walk around every garden fence post and gets tangled in a massive heap) and she seems to have a lot of fun in her pool. So far, she most likes to chase/fetch two liter pop bottles and her squeaky ball. I'm betting when summer hits she's going to lay in it to stay cool.

She's not very photogenic yet. That's probably because she's an eight-month-old puppy and has the attention span of well, a goldfish. Getting her to stay still for a photo is the equivalent of pulling teeth to her. But we're working on it.

One Month Old

Holy cow! Our chicks are little chickens now! I know I say this every week, but time is really flying by. I can't believe how big they've gotten.

They are now pretty much overflowing in their brooder box. They are going to be upgraded to a bigger box soon since the weather is not agreeable to letting them outside.

They have reached their awkward teenage stage where they look kinda weird, but they are all very cuddly. Their feathers are so soft and silky, it's really sweet to hold these girls. It is also a lot of fun to walk by their box and see every chick go up to the side and watch us. They all know by now that we come bearing treats. We're still just feeding them their starter crumbles and meal worms. I'd love to give them some yogurt or boiled egg, but I'm trying to wait until I can take them outside (I've heard they make quite a mess). They seem much more outgoing than they did a few weeks ago.

Gizmo continues to enjoy being near the chicks. She doesn't seem to want to eat/harm them, which is a relief. We still supervise them closely when the brooder box is open though. Pretty soon they will be the same size!

That's about it on the chicken front this week. Coming up next week: chicken coops, picking out which chicks are going to stay, and more info about their eating habits!

A little something for the living room...

The weather is finally getting springlike and that means that our family is spending more and more time outside. Our focus is much more on getting the garden finished and ready to go for the chicks and the plants. So, work on the living room is getting placed on the back burner for now. But before the rain stopped and the temperatures became bearable, I managed to whip up a little something:

A sneak peek of more to come. The curtain that we had before needed to go.

I apologize for not having a better picture. This one just doesn't capture the grimy mess that this sheer curtain is. Our sidelight window wasn't doing us any favors before. The privacy curtain was giving us privacy, but it was always an eyesore. I cringed every time I touched it to peek out the window. The new curtain gives the space a pop of color and still lets in plenty of light. Win!

Making this was super simple. The top and bottom of the window have tension rods attached and are easy to pull out. The curtain was hung using the two tension rods. I measured the height and width of the window and then pulled out the curtain to see how wide the fabric was. The height was 39" and the width 14". The fabric was about 19" so I knew I could have a few extra inches of fabric to bunch up and create some natural pleating. Then I cut the fabric. I added two inches to the ends for hemming for a total of 43" in height and an inch to the sides for a total of 21" in width.

Then it was time to hem. I pinned the sides in half an inch and then ironed it stiff. Then I folded the sides in another half an inch. Iron some more. Then I sewed the sides.

For the top and bottom, I started off with a half an inch hem like the sides. I ironed it stiff and then folded in an inch and a half to create the pockets that the tension rods would go in.  Iron again and then sew.

 Finished!

My new curtain was just long enough to stretch into the window. 

Looking good! It looks so much better to me. I am really happy with this little step. I am pretty excited to get back to curtain making in a couple of weeks so we can get the rest of the curtains up in our living room.

Getting Posty

The fencing project is taking some time. Between rainy days and the limitations of having small cars, we have been making slow progress on our garden area. I am pleased to report that the posts are in! We finally got a beautiful weekend and had the opportunity to work until we couldn't go on anymore.

I let Mike take the reigns on this project and he spent several hours coming up with a design and came up with a list of materials needed and a cost estimate. Building a fence on a budget is not easy. Even chain link fences are several hundred at minimum! If you are following from my initial post about our garden plans, our garden area is about 420 square feet. Not super large. That's slightly larger than our family room. So I wasn't expecting it to cost $500 to fence it in. That was Mike's initial estimate of the lattice-based fence. I eventually made peace with the loss of the money and realized that we needed a fence as an additional barrier for our chickens.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Mike managed to buy the posts and start getting them in the ground. I started helping him around the third post. Most of the posts are measured about eight feet apart.

The first step is to dig a hole. Bonus points for achieving a goofy look on your face like my husband's.

Once dug, quickly measure to ensure that the hole is a foot deep. 

Then fill the bottom with a couple inches of pea gravel for drainage.

Tap down the gravel to make sure the ground is even before the post went in.

Now it is time to finally put in the post. I held up the post while Mike poured in the Quikrete. It was really dusty and we probably should have worn masks. 

Then add water to "mix" the cement. The bag says it takes somewhere around 45 minutes to set, but it really takes a day or two to become really solid.

It took us a couple of weeks to get all of the posts in. I am so happy to say we are finished with this portion of the garden. 14 posts, 9 bags of Quikrete, and 5 bags of pea gravel later, we are ready to assemble the fence.