August Happenings!

I haven't written since the dramatic rooster incident!  As much trauma and tears as that caused, it led into a couple of really wonderful weeks!

Within  a few days, the chickens became a tightly
bound social unit again.  What a relief!

Soon after the pecking order was established, Scrambled started
laying eggs.  She seems to be on schedule to lay 5 or 6 eggs
a week!  Good little Scrambledsaurus!

I picked peaches as soon as the u-pick place opened.  YUM!

I canned 20 quarts of peaches this year, and I froze six gallons.
Not to mention all of the smooooothies with fresh peaches!

I turned 25!

Matthew took off a few days this week in observance of my
birthday and our anniversary.  We decided to take on the project
that was our unfinished hearth.

Here's Matthew removing the particle board that was in our way.

 Now we're down to the thinset from the tiles that used to be here when
it was a not-woodstove-fireplace. 

We definitely deliberated about what we'd do to finish the hearth.  To buy the resources needed to tile this, we anticipated that it would cost around $100, especially since this was such a small project with no economy for size.  If you've read much of this blog or if you know me well, you may realize that I take how we spend our money and how we use the earth's resources quite seriously.  I felt really uncomfortable spending that much money on the cosmetics of the hearth, so I encouraged all my creative brain-power to think of a different solution.  I asked myself, "What do people use to keep fire in its place?"  My brain answered, "Rocks and stone."

So that's what we did.

I remembered that we had a bunch of stones in the used-to-be dog run. We gathered some with the prettiest colors and designs, washed them off, and used grout/adhesive to finish our hearth.  Total cost?  Twelve dollars.  It would have been $9, but neither us nor our neighbors had anything to cut out the old torn up particle board, so we headed to the little local tool shop (go small businesses!!), and we bought a wood chisel.  

Here's the final result:

 We like it, and I'm really glad that we decided to rock the system and try to find an alternative to traditional tiling.

Anyway, back to our happenings...

For our anniversary we decided to go camping in our backyard the night beforehand.
We made dinner over the fire, and it was really fun.  The one caveat?
We didn't have any good padding under (or on!) us, so we found our bones
crushed into the ground at night.  I became wide-awake around 2:30am, and
by 3:30am it became apparent to both of us that we were needlessly getting a bad
night's sleep.  We crawled out of the tent and back inside... Oh well!  It was fun, and
we learned!

I made homemade marshmallows (seriously!) and graham crackers for s'mores.

Sooooo good!!!

The next day, on our actual anniversary, we made a bunch
of homemade pizza and watched a movie.  Yum yum yum!
And lots of leftovers to enjoy!

I also sported a skirt and running shoes while loading the dishwasher.

Four years together can make you happy!

Four years together can make you silly!

Yay for our fourth anniversary!!