Fence Gate

As I said before, our renters have requested a gate on the house in Lincoln because they have kids. We have clay soil so it's really hard to dig holes. Previously when we built the rest of the fence one of Adams friends was living with us and he brought home an auger type motorized post hole digger to help speed the process. So when we made a trip to Mead on Wednesday we borrowed it again. Of course, it broke :) When we got home we had just enough daylight left to get the holes dug so that we could take it back to them on our trip to Mead on Thursday. I went to pull the rope to start it and it didn't catch. I tried again.....and the rope came all the way out. Oops. We took it apart, stuck the rope back in where its supposed to go, tied a knot and tried to put it back together. Something was just a tiny bit off and it wouldn't retract. Adam spent hours trying to put it back together right. He worked that night and the next morning and finally got it to retract just enough that we could get it started. We finally have a gate:

Before:


Cementing in the posts:


The gate!

Craft Room

I had to take pics of the craft room I have been working on lately. I didn't have anything out in the house because it was staged but after so long of that I decided it wasn't like it was going to matter because it's not like it was selling w/o that stuff out - BUT, if I was going to have it out I better have it organized. So here is what I barely got to enjoy before having to tear it apart again :(







Stuff waiting to be scrapbooked:


Stamps:




Paper Storage and my Sizzix!


Ribbon Storage and Letter Storage:


Scraps, Adhesives, Sizzix Dies, Crop-A-Dile and Cutting Tools:


Buttons, Pearls and Extra Ribbon Pieces:


Brads, Eyelets, Flowers and other small storage:


Misc Small Storage:


My work area with laptop and my nice large self healing cutting mat:


Sewing area:



And then 1/2 hour later...... :(

Moving, Moving, Moving

We've made a couple trips to move stuff the last couple of nights but we will be moving everything else on Saturday. We should be spending Saturday night in Mead and then probably cleaning the house in Lincoln on Sunday.

We got the house!

We got the house! It's official - we'll be Meadites from now on! There were 8 offers on the house so we are really happy that we did get it! Crazy!

Off to make a list of everything we need to do in the next couple of days....

Watch out Mead -

here we come! Yep, we're moving to Mead. We're going to move into Adam's dads apartments. That means this week will be spent packing. Most of what we have at the house now is essentials but there is stuff that can still go into storage. We'll probably move the rest of the stuff on Friday night/Saturday then.

Adam also has to finish the privacy fence this week. We left it open in between our house and the one beside us and the renters have little kids so she'd prefer it finished. Not a big deal - we could have just as easily finished it when we put it up in the first place but we didn't have anything to keep in and I like being able to walk back and forth w/o having to open a gate each time.

We're gonna be a little busy for the next couple of days!

Alot can happen in 24 hours

We're moving! Finally! :)

Since our house hasn't sold in, oh, 5 months, last weekend we started considering renting our house. Adams brother rents houses out to college students so he put up a couple ads to see if there was interest. He didn't get any all week so on Sunday night Adam posted the house as a regular rental on Craigslist. By the time we got up in the morning we already had 3 emails! AND, we already have renters! So, we need to be out of our house by........... Sunday.

Also within the 24 hours since we posted our house - we put in an offer on another house! What? you say? Are we crazy? We've just had a hard time selling the house we already own to build a new one. Why would you buy another one? Well, it's a foreclosure house that we can live in for less than paying rent until we get our new house built. (Which now may not be for a little while...spring? fall? who knows at this point) Anyway, so we put in an offer last night and since it's a foreclosure, we can't really know when we'll hear back from the bank and what they will do with the offers. We have a couple options as to where to go until we hear back about the house but haven't totally decided yet. We think we'll move into one of Adam's dads apartment until we know. Otherwise if we don't get the house, we'll just rent an apartment until we get our new house built - which would then hopefully be sooner rather than later. If we get it, it'll be a fun project for us until we start our new one and hopefully a smart financial move. There is a bunch we already want to do to it but I'm trying not to get too excited yet. We know there were other offers on it. Here are a couple pics:













That's all for now. I'm sure I'll have more news soon.

Birthdays

Sunday we had my moms side of the family over to our house for all the spring/summer birthdays in the family. I had it at my house so that everyone could see our house before we move. It was a fun day with lots of food! We had 4 little kids birthday's which are always the best to watch open presents. I have pictures to post later!

Update:
Here's the pics!

I made a watermelon bowl...Yummmm


Frosting - That's all they wanted :)


They like each other....


Lincoln Logs!!!!!


And Tinker Toys!!!!


What a great picture. Closed eyes and fake smile. Doesn't get any better than that.

Wasp Sting

I got stung by a wasp on Tuesday. My arm is red and swollen :(





It's kind of hard to see in the pics but it hurts and itches!

I googled it and the first thing I read was "More people die each year from bee stings than from snake and spider bites combined" Yikes!

I called the Dr. I'm supposed to use benadryl cream and if it isn't better by morning I need to go in.

Corn

Adams dad picked me some sweet corn this weekend so I went ahead and canned/froze it - it's so much better than store boughten canned corn!

Here is the process:

Shuck the corn

Make sure you get all the silks off!



Wash it. Once again, making sure you get as many silks off as you can.


Cut it off the cob.


Add ingredients


Boil for 5 minutes. Make sure it's a good boil for that whole time.


Give it a water bath to cool it down. Stir frequently and you may want to rerun the cold water a couple of times.


Put into bags and stick in the freezer!


3 grocery bags of corn = 2.5 recipes = 24 cups of corn before boiling = 14, 1 cup full bags


Freezer Corn:
16 Cups Corn
1 T Salt
3 Cups Water
1/4 Cup Butter
1/3 Cup Sugar

Hydrangea

My hydrangea bush that I got as a baby a couple years ago is starting to get big! It's got quite a few flowers on it this summer but they don't quite look like the big clumps of flowers that it will some day.

Beautiful Walnut

Sunday was spent in Mead. We drove to Mead on Sat night and just stayed there. Sunday morning we had a bridal shower for one of Adam's cousins fiance. Adam went to work with the Walnut some more while I was there and then we had his grandma's bday party that evening in Omaha so he got to spend most of the day working with the walnut.

Takes a lot of time for what you actually get done but it sure is pretty!

All about cake!

This past week was a week full of cake! I made the big cake for a friends wedding and I started way back on last Saturday. Combine that with my cake class and here is how the week went:

Saturday: Made Fondant Frosting - takes longer than you'd think.
Sunday: Went to church, spent the day at the lake and then visited a friend to watch Big Brother 10 with them! A break from cake.
Monday: Made fondant balls to line each layer.
Tuesday: Made buttercream frosting for wedding cake, class and made the cake for class.
Wednesday: Class
Thursday: Made the cakes and a few more fondant balls.
Friday: Made a couple more cakes and cut out and colored the flowers.
Saturday: Frosted cakes. I took the cake to the reception in pieces


and assembled it at the reception and put the flowers on. It was super hot so we didn't assemble it until the very last minute and even then it started to get sticky. Here is the finished product!









The middle layer was chocolate and the top and bottom layers were white.

On the way to the reception we only had two potential disasters - the first corner we turned, something that wasn't totally secured fell on the biggest layer. Thankfully it was fixable. Second, I looked back and saw a huge bubble on the top of the cake. I don't know what was going on but that was easily fixable with a toothpick :)

Waiting...

Here is our belongings waiting for us to start our new house. While we were at the quonset checking out the wood, I figured I better take some pics of this! We cleaned it out to "stage" the house to sell. As Adam said - it's going to be like Christmas when we get to unpack it all again!