Fall at the Farm

This past Saturday we had a get together at our house. It was kind of the first official "event" at our house. One thing Margo and I really want to do is have lots of opportunities for people to come out here and hang out and be on the farm and get a taste of the "simple life". So, we had a fall party out here. It was real basic, we just hung out, talked, fished in the pond, played some cornhole, and sat around the bonfire and cooked some hotdogs and smores. It was fun times. The most interesting thing about the event was that all my worlds kind of collided. We had our regular friends, our church friends, family, and even some neighbors showed up. It went pretty well, I hope everyone had a good time.

Smoking

I have decided to start smoking. I know this might be a shock to some of you. It is just something I have always wanted to try but just never have for one reason or the other. I figured since we have this new place and I am doing new things, that this is as good of time as any. I figure you only have one life so I might as well try it so I won't spend my whole life wondering what it is like to smoke. Margo is ok with it, the biggest problem she had with it is that the money spent could be used for better things or saved, but the cool wife she is, she said it was ok for me to try it out instead of living my life wondering what it would be like and never getting to try it. I started last week, and so far it has not been to bad, but it hasn't been anything spectacular either. I don't think I am addicted to it yet but with more time I might be. I am not sure how long this will last or when (if ever) I will quit, but I will try to keep all of you updated. It was hard to decide what brand to use so I finally decided on this one.

I'm like Jesus

Before Margo and I moved to the farm we sold our bedroom dressers and planned on buying some nicer ones. Well, since we have been here our dressers have been cardboard boxes, which I don't mind so much but Margo hates. We went shopping for dressers a couple times but did not find anything that would work. Our problem was I built our bed frame last year. It is made of wild cheery wood off of my dad's old farm and is styled after a bed in pottery barn that Margo likes. Here is a pic.



As you can imagine it is hard to find dressers to match it. I thought about building dressers but drawers are very hard to make. My brother offered me some dressers (dresser, chest of drawers, and bedside table) he had that he was going to get rid of. They were kind of ugly (no offense Zack and Joanna) but I thought I would see if I could redo them to make them work in our bedroom and match the bed. So. I went to my dad's to get some cherry wood that he still had from his old farm to make new tops and trim out of and I also decided to build a TV stand and another bedside table. I spent the better part of a day cutting and planing the wood at dad's house and have been working on building them this past week. So here are some before and after pics.

Here is the dresser ( I have not completed the mirror yet)


Here is the chest of drawers


Here is the matching bedside table, the other bedside table I made, and the TV stand



Well, there you go. I want to give a shout out to my dad for giving me the wood, letting me use his tools, and helping me plane the boards. Also a shout out to Zack and Joanna for the furniture and to John for helping me carry it upstairs. Anyway, Margo is happy now, which is the important thing. Speaking of that here is a song for all you married guys out there, click here, it starts playing automatically.

Fire

Another thing that we have at our new house that we are really happy about is we have a wood stove. This will be our primary source of heat. It is a nice stove and has glass on the front so you can see the fire burning. Just let me tell you that one of the best things in life is sitting in front of a warm fire and watching it. It could be the most relaxing thing in the world, besides tranquilizers.

Halloween

For this post, I will step away from my usual talking about the farm to talk on other issues. Halloween is fast approaching. I have always had issues with this holiday. No I am not the person that says it is the devil's holiday and denounce it. My issues are that so many "Christians" don't know what to do with this holiday. Some of our friends refuse to even acknowledge this day and won't even hand out candy to the little kids and then some of our friends go all out in celebrating it and decorate and take their kids trick or treating. Growing up I don't remember ever being allowed to go trick or treating but we always went to those church "Harvest Festivals". These days I do celebrate Halloween because I see it as just an American Holiday and I am not a fan of so called Harvest Festivals because I think they are just the churches excuse to celebrate Halloween while trying to look Holy. If my church ever celebrates with a Harvest Festival where you can come dressed as a Bible character, rest assured my kid will come dressed as Satan. Anyway, I know everyone will not agree with my ideas on Halloween: that we as Christians should not sit idly by but be a part of it and change what bad parts there are for the good. Anyway, my main point of writing this is that it seems like this holiday divides Christians more than any other. I stumbled across a blog entry by a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle (which seems like a really awesome church) about his views on Halloween and this is the single best thing I have read to date about Halloween, its history, and how it pertains to us as Christians, so please take a few minutes to read it. click here for the blog entry

Pear and Fudge

No, this is not my new favorite flavor of ice cream. These are the names of two chickens. When my niece and nephew Patrick and Isabelle where here in August my parents bought them each a baby chick to have while they were staying with them. I think the reasoning behind this was to keep them busy and I think it worked pretty well, so any of you mom's and dad's out there that have little kids and get tired of entertaining them all the time buy them a baby chick. Well, when Patrick and Isabelle left, my parents gave the two baby chicks to us and we have been raising them. They have been in a cage on my front porch. I thought I would take some pictures and post them so Patrick and Isabelle could see how big they are getting. Don't forget to buy your kids baby chicks to entertain them and then give them to us.

A tale of two kitties

We lost one of our kitties a few weeks ago. We lost Fanta (the orange one), she just disappeared one day and we had no idea where she went. About a week or so after we lost her, one of Margo's friends (Melissa) got a new cat at her house. She showed Margo pictures and it looked a lot like our Fanta, but she had got this cat from a friend who found it close to Wedington Avenue in Fayetteville. Anyway, Margo went over to her house and was amazed at how much the two cats resembled one another, so she held the cat up to a picture of Fanta on our blog. Well, it was Fanta. The best we can guess, Fanta got up underneath my truck and rode to work with me and fell out from underneath when I stopped at a stoplight or something. Pretty Amazing!!!! I wanted to take Fanta back, but they had already become attached and would probably cry if I took it away which used to would not have bothered me but I have softened in my old age.
Anyway, it has just been Spot on the farm for the past few weeks until yesterday. We went and got another kitty from the same place we got Fanta and Spot. We like him so far, he is younger than Spot. Spot does not like him so far but Macy seems to like him. Anyway, I will post a picture and if anyone has a name suggestion feel free to comment.



On a side note, I need some help. This mostly involves the people who live around Fayetteville. I am making a duck house so I can get some ducks. I am going to make the duck house so that it floats in the middle of the pond. I am going to use 2 liter bottles to float it. So, any of you who have been wanting to help on the farm, this is your chance. Save your 2 liter bottles and give them to me.