Monday, April 30, 2012

Two Colts and a Mare


  Sorry it's taken so long to get another post up, it was a CRAZY weekend! 

I took Friday off hoping that it would help to catch up before the big BBQ.  I don't think we would've gotten the guest bathroom done if we wouldn't have.

I don't have any pictures yet, that's how busy we were this weekend, but I will take some and post them on here!


I just wanted to share a little with everyone that friday we got our 3 new "kids"!  
(Josh likes to call our pets our children,  I think it's cute hehe.)    
We brought home a 2 year old colt (boy), a 1 year old colt and a 2 year old mare (girl).

Twist is the oldest colt, Athena is the mare and Frankie is the baby.

Twist and Frankie came from a VERY good home: Palisades Equestrian Center

Athena was rescued by Palisades Equestrian Center after found wandering around in a field with a really bad wound.  At first it was so bad they couldn't tell what had caused it but after weeks of treatment and care they figured out it was cause by a bullet.  So, the conclusion (from what information we could gather) is that she was treated pretty poorly (lots of scaring all over her body) and the person didn't like something about her and decided to "put her out to pasture permanently."  The good news is she was found by this wonderful place and now has a loving home with us!

I will say I have never had taken care of any animal with a gun shot wound and I have had a LOT of animals growing up, so I wasn't too sure what all to use.  Palisades Equestrian Center, was kind enough to send us home with what they had already been using for her (which was WAY awesome!). 
Athena is a little timid, even more around men, so applying 3 different treatments to the wound 2 times a day was a little difficult for us only because of time, I love working with her and could spend all the time in the world but I gotta work to pay for her feed, so we did a little research and found this AWESOME stuff!

Vetericyn

It's not only good for farm animals,  but cats, dogs, and other animals too!  It's non-toxic (YAY!) and pet friendly, and you only need to spray it on and your done!  
Just click the picture and find out more about it.
We haven't any gotten yet, but I think we will definitely be ordering some!


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Under Construction

Sorry the pages are such a mess.  I really didn't like the way things looked on here.  It was too... "Newb".  Also, it didn't really fit with the flow.  It wasn't enough... Iowa!

Do you like the way it looks now?  Or did you prefer it before?  Do you think there are some tweeks that need to be done?  OR do you want to share a project or anything that your currently working on or have done?

SHARE IT! 
We love to share ideas and thoughts.  Just leave a comment or shoot us an email!



Just adding an edit to note this website that has helped and I appreciate
 (They don't tag every code they offer to help make your page more personalized!)


Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Oh Craigslist how I love thee!

I have been on a super crazy Craigslist kick lately!  I find a lot of good stuff on there for pretty good prices!


Like this AWESOME table!  For only 40$!!!  I'll take a picture to show you how it fold out in the middle.  This thing gets up to 10 feet long!  Oh do I have plans for you beautiful table!  
You'll have to check back to find out!



 I got this awesome hutch for 90$, it was a little more than I wanted to spend but it was so pretty and it's hard to find a good priced hutch.  I looked all over the place!  I absolutely LOVE how it goes with the dark brown!


I also accomplished a few other things besides Craigslist surfing....






I cleaned the house!!

We're moving our things in very soon and I wanted it to be ready.
(We already moved in but I don't have pictures yet so I'll post them soon!)

We're also having a Housewarming / BBQ this coming Saturday and I'm suuuuper nervous!
We're still working on the guest bathroom right now.  Which I must say Josh has done an AMAZING job!
(Update:  Pictures of the Guest Bathroom are Here!  Check them out!)

I'll take some pictures and post them tonight.   
(We're officially caught up to where we are in the process of the house too so now you have to keep an eye out to see what happens next!)

(P.S. Yes, I did start making the pictures bigger.  I didn't like the smaller ones,  Leave a comment if you liked it before, now or would like them bigger! I say the more and bigger the pictures the better.  Let me know what you think!)

Kitchen? Check!

Okay, so I know it seems weird.. you're probably sitting there scratching your head saying... "Hey, wait a minute!  You just started this two days ago!" am I right?

I just thought it would be better if I were to put our progress in the order that it has happened, then it would make a little more sense as you go through reading :)  See what I'm doing now?

So.. back to the task at hand.


We got the kitchen FINISHED!!
 (FINISH HIM!)  
Mortal Kombat gotta love it!


Here is after the first coat of the darker paint.


 Then we added the lighter paint to the other walls.  ^Gotta have tunes!


Josh getting his paint on.  He looks very concentrated.  Gettin' 'er done? :)



Here is the dark and the light walls together. (Sorry it's a little fuzzy.)
 


 Here are the cupboards with the light color and the contrast against the dark brown in the living room.
We didn't go all the way down because that's where the fridge is going.



After we moved the fridge back.  Looking good!



Here is another shot of the dark and the light together.  I can't wait to show you what I'm going to do to the dark wall!!

You'll have to keep watch to find out!

New Addition!

 I knew Josh loved the Blue Heeler dog he had growing up and I really wanted a puppy so I decided to look.

So I was cruising through the ads on Craiglist, while I was looking I noticed an ad for a Blue Heeler/Australian Sheppard mix liter.  I didn't notice where they were located because I was too excited.

After sending them an email, they let me know there was only one left and it was a girl and she was the nicest one of the bunch!  Pretty lucky, right?

  They told me they would be meeting everyone at Menards not too far from where we live, which was perfect because I needed to pick up some things for the house so I had an excuse!

Josh had no idea what I was up to,  I told him I was going to go shopping with a friend and drove out to the store and picked up some things for the dog and waited for the people to arrive.  They came all the way up from Missouri to bring the dogs!


 While I was driving home I tried to put the collar I bought her on.  Well... she was a LOT smaller than what I thought she was going to be and it fell right off her.


When I came back home Josh was working on the kitchen getting it ready to get painted, I told him to close his eyes and hold his hands out.  He didn't know why I was home, he had NO idea what was going on!



I put Belle in his hands and he had this look on his face like 'What in the world!?'.  I managed to snap this picture right after.  I love the look on his face. Hehe.  The first thing he said was, "Awww!  It's so little!" 

I let Josh name her, since she was going to be his puppy.  He named her Belle (after Beauty and the Beast, get it?)  I thought it was cute. :D



 Even Sassy came to check things out.  So she gave the puppy a welcome home kiss!



 But all that hard work of being so darn cute wore her out...

...she rolled all over the place trying to find a comfy spot, this is how I found her.


Welcome home Belle!

Living Room is DONE!!

 I'M SO EXCITED!!

We've finally got the living room finished!



 Isn't it PRETTY!?!?!



At first we were thinking just to do the hallway in all the light color because it would make it brighter.  Then once we started we change it to 3 walls light and 1 wall dark.  I wasn't too sure about it.  Then Josh thought it would look nice with 2 and 2.  I think it turned out quite be-a-uuutifully!  What do you think? 

Now to get to cleaning!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Flowers!

 Spring is FINALLY here!!!

I had gotten Josh this cute sign from Knob Creek Metal Arts on Etsy (love this site!)  for his birthday last year.  I wanted him to have hope that someday he would have his own garage to work in.  Plus, I love the work this guy does and it's really well made!  We decided now that we have a garage it's time to hang it up!



 We decided to take a break from the house, went into town and there is a HUGE green house (or should I say 22!! green houses!)  We were walking around looking at what we wanted to do for a little landscaping around the house.  I found these and thought they were SO pretty!
 (I took these pictures with my phone too!)






We decided to wait on the flowers for a little bit until it gets warmer.  It's been really nice all winter, hardly any snow and now that it's raining we're getting a cold snap.  


 We did get these though!  This is only a little bit of what we're going to be planting.  Since Buck (our lazy horse who just keeps the pasture short) is the only horse that we have currently we decided to turn the breeding coral into our new garden.  Plenty of fertilizer! (Hehe I laughed about that one for a bit)  There was a small area where there were some tomatoes but it was long and awkward and just wasn't going to work for what we wanted to do.


Here's a picture of Buck. I love his winter coat, it's a cream color with white spotting.



I was cleaning when we got home from the Market and Josh went outside to work on his truck and came back in with verrrry dirty hands and this for me :) Isn't he sweet?
It was the first flower off of one of our MANY lilac bushes.  I love how lilacs smell and how pretty they are so I guess I got pretty lucky when our who yard is literally lined with them!

More Living Room Please!

We're still working on the living room!  It's taking some progress but we're getting there.  
I can't wait to be done! 





Me working on the final wall.  I looooved this dark brown.  I looked like chocolate, had the consistency of chocolate and weirdly (maybe it was the paint fumes) it smelled like chocolate!




 We haven't gotten to the hallway yet but we're almost there!!  You can tell we put the primer on this time.  We even moved a few boxes from the apartment!



This is actually the colored primer on the walls, you almost can't tell except it's flat instead of the eggshell.  I almost thought about leaving it like that but it was a little lighter that was I was wanting.


See it almost looks white in this picture.  The hallway is white, but the wall on the right side of the picture has the two coats of paint and the primer on top, waiting to be painted with the final coat.

We're slowly getting there!

Living Room's Progress..

Okay so we've been busting our patootie's the last few weeks and here's what we've gotten so far:

  I searched the internet to see if I could find a way to paint over wallpaper.  There is just sooo much of it in the house and I was worried that it would ruin the drywall if we took it all down.  I did find some pretty good references: 

Both are 'How to paint over Wallpaper' tutorials.




 Don't mind the mess! (comes with the price of repainting, fun!). We pulled the stripping off all of the walls and tapped all the rooms.  We put a heavy mud on and sanded it down in the living room (have yet to do any of the other rooms) and put a light mud on top of that and feathered it out to give it a better seam.  I would have to say we did a pretty good job! (More for me because I had only ever watched my dad do it to patch something!) After we put light mud on we sanded it down smooth and then headed to the store to buy a wopping 425$ (!!!!!) worth of paint for the whole upstairs.  Paint is not cheap, not if you want it to look good anyway.  We decided it would be better to go with the good stuff because we don't plan on changing the paint for awhile and it would pay itself off in the end with it's timeless beauty ;D (and helping me keep sanity). 



 This is the first coat of paint that we put on.. we noticed on the first coat that you could still see the color and texture of the wallpaper underneath! We had gotten the paint with the Paint + Primer.  Well... we probably should have just bought a separate primer :(




Here is another shot of the walls. Most of the pictures are going to be after dark because we work during the day and then work on the house when we get home so don't mind the quality of the pictures!



 Not sure how well you can see it but this was after TWO coats of paint!!! I was NOT happy!  You can still see the color of the paper! 

You can also see the texture of the wallpaper and feel it too.


So we went back to the store and picked up a Oil Base Primer, we found one for 55$ that was on sale. We also got a small can of the Latex Based Primer (to not strip off what we had already put on the walls) and had them color it for us for free and they gave us another free can of paint because it didn't do what it said it would.  They colored the primer so it would be easier to cover up with only one coat of paint on top instead of having to put another 2 coats of paint on.  Thank fully we only did three walls so it was a pretty easy fix.

New Beginings


Hi There!

  My name is Emilee.  I own a farm in a small town in Iowa.  We just bought our place and together we working to make it a functional and beautiful place to live. We have a LOT of work ahead of us!!





We previously lived in the city in a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment.  Definitely NOT enough space! Finally we decided to find a new place.  :)





  We currently are on a 9 acre lot with 2 barns, 2 lean-to's, a chicken coop, random shed's, a fat cat, a rambunctious puppy and a lazy horse.  Here is what we started with...

Lean-to (Buck's House), Chicken Coop
Living Room ( Awful wallpaper! )

Kitchen (More AWFUL wallpaper)
Our Bedroom
Guest Bedroom
Office/Study/ "Us Room"
Guest Bathroom
 Master Bath

Down the stairs just off the kitchen
Downstairs Kitchen





























































Basement (boyfriend snuck in the picture)


 We haven't gotten too far since we just bought it a few months ago, but I will be updating with posts to show the progress of the house (and decorating!). 

Wish us Luck!!