Island Mama

“A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”

Inspired by Soulemama, who’s been doing this for years, I’m going to start trying to do this every week.

“A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”

Finally, three and a half years after beginning it, I finished the quilt this summer, just in time to enter it in the County Fair.

My goal when I started designing it was to get it hung from the ceiling instead of folded and draped in the quilt nook, and look — I achieved it!!

 

I got a blue ribbon, which I was happy about, too. And the judge’s comments were nice.

Considering this is the third quilt I’ve ever made, I’m pretty darn happy with it! And it looks great on our bed.

 

In the last few weeks we’ve had three new skylights added to the kitchen, and all new carpet put in in the living and dining rooms and hallway.

And the carpet… sorry, I didn’t take before photos. But it was a grotty 12 year old concrete-gray Berber that I couldn’t get clean. This is softer, warmer color, and easier to clean.

With all of that and a bit of painting, it’s beginning to feel like a different house.

They’re getting big! And they look like real chickens now. Harder to get pictures of lately.

On Memorial Day, we moved their new house. It was formerly the home of a giant tortoise belonging to some friends, but he was moving on and they were getting rid of the house, so we rented a trailer and moved it to our backyard.

All we had to do was take out all the insulation and one wall panel, add hardware cloth and some perches for roosting. Soon we’ll have to add nesting boxes, too, but since they’re not laying yet, it’s not an issue.

We’re still working on the run. Posts are cemented in, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll be adding the fencing. They’ve been in a small temporary run up til now, or a makeshift chicken tractor in the garden where we wanted some weeding done.

This time, kittens.

We’ve had them for a week now. They’re about 9 weeks old, both girls. I hardly have any pictures, though, because most of the time they’re either under the couch or moving too fast! We haven’t agreed on names yet; the kids have their ideas and we have ours and, um, they’re not the same. Dougal, our 12 year old Maine Coon, is not happy. Mostly he avoids them, but if they get too close, he still hisses. I’m sure he’ll get used to them eventually.

We got them on Wednesday, when they were 2 days old. We have 10 altogether, 2 each of 5 breeds. Now we need to build them a coop and run before they get too big!

We don’t have good trees for easy treehouse building — they’re all pines and firs, straight and tall. But last year, we had some trees taken down and we had the stumps left at about 4 feet tall. For no reason at the time, except that we might want them.

Two of them were conveniently close together and close to the kids’ sandpit and the trees where we’re going to hang swings once we get a crossbar up. After looking at them for a few months, and finding one good solid pallet left over from building the woodshed, I had a plan. The first time Eric got out his chainsaw this year, I had him level them off.

And then I built a treehouse. Except, because it’s not on an actual tree, but on stumps, it has now become known as The StumpHouse. Because my children are literalists.

The posts supporting the other corners are from a fence that used to surround the front patio, and which my parents tore out last fall during a visit.

The siding is made of the outside edges of milled trees which we got free from a friend who had had a bunch of trees cleared and milled on her property about a year ago.

The ladder is made from more parts of that fence from the front patio.

It’s not huge, and it’s not quite finished, but I think the boys will have fun with it for a while. It’s probably big enough for 3 or 4 kids.

So now it just needs a roof! Having made the entire thing from stuff we had on hand (the only thing I bought was more screws), I don’t want to pay for roofing. We’ll be on the lookout for scraps of something that we can recycle.