What we've been up to...

My posts certainly have become few and far between! I thought I'd break the recent silence by posting a bunch of pictures showing what we have accomplished at home recently. Yay pictures!

First, some changes to the interior:

I made a sunburst mirror!

I solved our bathroom towel hanging problem. Our one and only bathroom is definitely a small bathroom which is fine except it isn't set up well to hang up towels.  Especially when we have a bigger family someday...  My solution to this was to take the door off of the little closet, paint the inside white, and organize the shelves.  While you can't see all of the space in the picture, we can now hang towels on hooks below the bottom shelf.  The door simply had to come off so that the towels will dry!  Problem solved!

I don't know what it is about canopies over beds, but I have always
admired them (but not the cost of a canopy bed...).  I used curtains that
were covering the close in one of the "kids rooms" and used long
thumbtacks (found randomly in a tree while landscaping at OSU) to
attach it to the ceiling.  Voila!  Free canopy! I like how it makes
our ridiculously giant bedroom look a little bit smaller, too. :)

Moving on to the outdoors... Outdoor pictures just aren't complete without chicken pictures!

Light from heaven streaming onto the lovely chickens.

Awww.  Who doesn't want to find Willow on their kitchen stoop?

Three happy, fuzzy chicken butts.

We took out a large swath of sod in the front yard to prepare  to put
in some raised beds.  We're getting ready to build them now!

Here's what used to be half of our driveway!  We rented a jackhammer,
and then we used the chunks to build these raised beds and put in
stepping stones.  All that's left is filling in between the stepping stones
with pea gravel, filling the beds with good garden soil, and setting up an
irrigation system!

Not a great picture, but we also added a contained compost pile in the
chicken run.  You can find the picture that inspired me here.  It'll show
what it looks like much better.  However, this picture is proof that
the chickens go in, each what they want, poop in the pile, and scratch
it all up.  It's a good system for us, I think!

That's it for now! I can just see in my mind all of out garden spaces lush and green in the summer with all sorts of deliciousness sprouting up everywhere. SO EXCITED!