A Little Bit of Fall and A Lot of Laughter

Pumpkin Feast for the Beasts

Every year we like to pick up after season pumpkins for the beasts. If we can get there before the first freeze we can store them and use them longer, but if not (like this year), the animals all get a giant feast. Bonus, pumpkins worm them naturally. Last year I did it by myself while keeping track of the kids (Chad was out of town). It sucked. I did it though. This year, Chad and Grampa both helped and the kids are magically old enough to help too! WIN! Thank you to our local pumpkin farm for this lovely outing.

Bathroom Redo on an Actual Dime

 My budget for this project is 10$.

Yes. I said 10$. For ten smackaroos I can buy two gallons of paint from the backroom at my local paint store. High quality paint that usually goes for 50$ a gallon.

I want this room to look like one of those high end fashion magazine bathrooms. My last bathrooms looked like this.......see? That is why I am hopeful. If I could do that, I can make this one cool too, right?

Only this time I have a different agenda. Last time we had this idea of a bed and breakfast and no children. Now, we have a farmhouse, pigs, laundry up to my ears, and three children. Cue the no budget music. Sigh.

So, dear readers, here is what I would like from you. Help me pick the paint colours. Help me find ideas. I'm going to use the Miss Effie method and shop my own house too.

So here are the before shots. The bathroom was a teal green with a sea shell border when we moved in. So I 5$ painted it brown. It is too dark and I hate it. I hate it less than the icky green with sea shells though. Ha!

 I have a set of shelves between the window and the bathtub. I'd like to do something with those too.

I HATE the vanity. Too bad for me. It stays. Ugh. Unless I can find some fabulous thing for free. (sobs)

I can't figure out what to put on the walls for art either. I have a HUGE supply of frames and photographs. It is just that a bathroom is a bit trickier to pick for, you know?

I have a set of 9 cream coloured canvas roman shades to work with. I have a set of pink butterfly knobs and hooks I could paint and use as hardware. I don't hate the floor, but even if I did it stays and it is off white and light greenish blue solid one piece linoleum.

I am also willing to paint the tub and the "chicken feet".

One last thing- the woodwork and trim are off limits. The vanity is crap wood and so is the closet shelf thing, but the door trim and base boards and doors are original and in excellent condition. They are not to be touched. 

So- here is my pinterest profile- please, I beg you, send me ideas. Tell me what you think here.

Danelle Stamps at Pinterest

Thank you, in advance!

Farmhouse Lunch

For every butchering group of pigs, we reserve back 1/2 a pig for our own family. From that we can taste the quality of the meat, the cures, and in general quality control. Today we broke out the best bacon our farm has produced.

The best? Honestly, it tasted much like our other best bacon, from the sows....but this bacon was different in a really important way. These pigs had no corn or soy input the last 6 weeks of their life. They had very little before that too. We were able to get enough real food inputs, with enough variety that they didn't have to eat the grain ration. That was awesome.Our worry was that the bacon  and the pork might not taste as good?

A couple observations right off: the fat that was bagged up for me to render into lard was very bright in colour, a lovely pink/peach. It will render white, but the colour is indicative of vitamin and nutrient content. I am excited about that.

The bacon fried up slow and had a good sound to it while sizzling. That is something I started noticing once we started paying attention to quality. The end product was the perfect crisp/chew ration.

So, for lunch I served up local apples, white cheddar, and bacon. My little foodies were all very attentive and gave good feedback too. Lily said the fat was very bright in taste, Holly thought it was just salty enough. Isaac liked to eat it with the apples.



Me? I liked how well it went with my maple cream coffee. It was that kind of day, y'all.