Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Alllmmmoooossstttttt.......



More progress on the bathroom. The radiant heat mat and all of the tiles have been installed. Next is a little more grouting, then we are on the walls, putting up chairrail and picking paint colors. We also need to decide it we are putting the old sink back in or if we are going to replace it. The old sink/vaniety is kinda cheesey looking but more importantly it is kinda big for our space. We may have a DIY vaniety in the works. I have also been researching making our own concrete counter top if we choose to go this route. If it happens, i think we would end up putting a countertop vessel sink in as well. We shall see though because we have nothing along the lines of extra income.


What Doin'

Today I made laundry soap. I found the recipe here and if I remember correctly this stuff works out costing around 3 cents per wash load. Plus it doesn't contain any extra chemicals, perfumes, or dyes. It consists of washing soda, borax, soap, and water.











First you cut off shavings from the soap.
















Then melt them into some water.
















Then add this soapy water to more water, washing soda, and borax. The solution starts out watery.
















But after it begins to cool, it sets up into a gooey, chunky, gel.


Haven't done a load of laundry with it yet, so we will have to wait and see just how well it really works.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Mama Doobie

Well, my eye back to normal for the most part. My doctor gave me some antibiotic/steriod eye drops that cleared up the infection pretty quickly.

Little Mama Doobie (Nora) came home the other night looking like this.
Her chin in all cut up as you can see in the picture but her upper lip was also cut up and swollen. I cleaned her up the best I could (before I took these pictures). I didn't feel it was worthy of a trip to the vet ( and we don't have the money to go to the vet) so we just kept a close eye on her. She was preety lethargic for the first day but after I can her some leftover painkillers that we had (from one of her previous issues I'm sure) as well as some antibiotics (yup had those too) she seems to be feeling much better. We don't know if she got in a fight with another cat or if it is from something else. Whatever it was she isn't very eager to go back outside just yet and when she does she sticks right nearby.




Here are all 3 of our girl kitties. The babies are getting so big, in fact I think they are bigger than their little mama is.

Nora is the grey one on the top right, to her left is biggie, and then monkey is in the front.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Eye-yei-yei


Just a quick post... I have lots of updating to do on here, but have not been feeling well for the last week or so and now I am having some eye issues. My lower right eye lid has become swollen and super super sore. I am taking my first sick day tomorrow and would have liked to have had all of today off as well but I am in the middle of Positive Behavior Systems training. I will update soon regarding bunnies, vegetables, shiny things, work stuff,second jobs, and whatever else I can remember to post when I am feeling better. I have a doctors appt tomorrow.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Fair

The Fryeburg Fair is going on this week. Our class took a field trip there on Woodsman Day this past Monday. It felt like we didn't see a thing though and the kids were not at all into it. They just wanted their Fried Dough and Cotton Candy.
Tony and I went back on Thursday. We mostly go to check out the livestock and the fiber barn, and I tend to avoid the steer, oxen and hogs. Especially the hogs. The noises that the piglets make there are so satanic and deafening; it creeps me out. Our usual stops are the goats, sheep, llamas, and alpacas. The nigerians and pygmies were too cute. We have been clearing some of the woods here to eventually make a goat pasture. I would love a mix of nigerians, pymies, pygoras, and angoras. We go back and forth about wanting some milking does (we could milk the nigerians and pygmies), I have heard it is ALOT of work, so I'm not so sure.

This guy was so cute, but also looked kind of sad.


And then some day, my dream, is to have a breeding stock of Alpacas. At $10,000-$20,000 a piece, i think this will always be just a dream. We also make our way through the poultry barn and the bunny barn and finish up in the fiber barn.


Last year we had talked of possibly entering our rooster, Buffy in the fair. Unfortunately Mr. Fox had other plans. After seeing some of the Angora rabbits they had there, I am more confidant that my 2 are good looking bunnies. Some of the rabbits there were just heinous looking, Buck toothed and scrawny. I bet Hagrid could win best in class if I entered him.


Our last stop was the fiber barn. Oh, how I wish I had money and a spinning wheel. I did get a small bag of wool, angora, llama roving. Got all ready to spin it up last night, and my hand spindle was no where to be found. I think I looked for almost 2 hours. How frustrating. Soooo, I made my own. Certainly wasn't great, but it worked.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Fungus Among Us


We get so many neat mushrooms on our land. I need to learn how to Id them. One of my old aquarium customers goes out and collects edible mushrooms. While I find that so cool, I don't think I could trust myself not to accidenlty pick one that would kill me. I'm pretty sure my mother has told me stories about having to watch me when i was a little kid because I always put stuff in my mouth and would go around the yard pointing out mushrooms. Maybe this is why i have such a fear of eating poisonous mushrooms. I have looked at places online in the past where you can by mushroom kits (edible, not the 'shrooms' that you trip on!)and grow your own off of old rotting logs. I would love to try it some day. One of my former roomates when I was in college used to go out and looking the the hallucinogenic shrooms that you find on cow shit. Hello, if it grows on cow shit, why eat it????? That whole thing never appealed to me (and seriously, can you blame me?).

Caio!

My mother and sister left for a 3 week trip to Italy on Wednesday with a whole group from my father's side of the family. Dad is left behind eating Bologna sandwiches and making a mound of dirty laundry for me to wash when I come visit him next weekend. I have been forwarned by my mother that every cabinet door will be left open, all toilet seats will be left up, and that there will be crumbs in the drawers. While I am good at cleaning when the time is right, I would have to say I share a lot of similarities with my father.






Meatballs and pasta is as close to Italy as I am getting right now.





I will probably be making the trip to CT solo this time; leaving Tony behind to work on the bathroom floor. I have made him put it off a couple weekends in a row because we have to take the toilet up to do it. We only have one toilet. And I have a nervous stomach so the thought of not having a toilet would just set me off. We need to get it done soon though. We have no heat in our bathroom so we are installing a radiant heat mat under the slate tiles. Cold weather is fast approaching in Maine. It is so funny to me to be talking about redo our bathroom in slate and radiant heat and yada yada yada when we are so broke right now. We were pretty pleased with ourselves at how little we spent on the materials on the bathroom. About half of it was paid for by a gift my Gram gave all of her kids and grandkids (all 13!) when she sold her house. I think we are going on the 3 month mark of working on this little bathroom so it's time to git er done.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Troublemakers!


Nora and Monkey were nothing but trouble outside today. They are both little squirrels, always climbing things. Here is Monkey on the roof of the garage.








Nora scaled the chicken run.
















Licking her chops looking at my little chicks.






Monkey on the roof of the coop looking in at the chickens. Little brat.