Family Fun

Happy Birthday to me with homemade carrot cake and candle blowing helpers. 

 A treasure hunt and treasure chest full of presents followed. What more could a mom want?

 

Big sister A is teaching herself to play the recorder with Youtube videos.  They have been playing music class lately too.  It's a little early to start piano lessons, so we are going to try guitar a bit first. Here is Gpa John jamming with them.

 And some reading time with Gma S.

Gma S and Grandpa John are here for a 5 day visit. We have lots of fun plans for the upcoming week!  

Garden Goodness: Work in Progress

I am thinking of the garden this year as a huge improvisation. I just have to plant things. I don't know what the arrangement of my garden plots will be long term, but I am putting things here and there by feel. I need to see how things do in the dappled shade and the semi sunny and the sunniest spots before I can make any drawings or definite plans. I need the plants' and animals' reactions to tell me whether I am on the right track or not.  

The little dogwood island in the backyard is a dappled shade spot.  I have been arranging my herbs there.  Sage, fennel, St Johns Wort, yarrow, lots of lavender, cilantro, oregano, and parsley are all in the ground here. A lot of them are starts gifted from friends' gardens. All the lavender and yarrow I grew from seeds this winter. 

 My garden is directly sown.  I hand turned the rows and mixed in rabbit manure or bags of garden soil. This is the tomato patch.   That chicken tunnel in the background is 12 feet long - so this bed is a lot bigger than it looks.

And the cabbage patch, half eaten by gophers:

I planted 2 blueberry bushes where the pine trees used to stand.  They are loving that acidic soil and the top dressings of rabbit manure.  Looking forward to lots of berries from these and making plans to plant more in this spot.

 The home inspector told us that both the holly bushes in front were way too close to the house. The huge roots extending towards the foundation prove his advice was correct.
 Hubby and Gpa J cut them down for me, but the stumps and roots have been a battle ground.  I have spent about 10-12 hours so far shoveling and hacking away at this monster with the hatchet and it still won't budge. The roots are all interwoven with rocks too. It's really slow going.

Also in the front yard - my new strawberry patch is taking off... The rhubarb did not make it though.

Two hazelnut trees and an apple tree planted to mark the first outlines of what I hope will be our orchard area.

I wish you could smell this picture.  This is the mulch that my new favorite tool made.

Here is our new wood chipper. I love machines that can multi-task.  This one is cleaning up the debris from the logging, making mulch for the garden, and making bedding for all the poultry. Plus it smells lovely.

 Hubby chipped up a lot of the pine branches directly into the wheel barrow. It smelled just like Christmas as I spread it around the duck house, chicken coop, and duck brooder.

Summer Weather

It's been raining every day for most of May.  This week we finally had several warm sunny days.

 We started slow with a shift to sun hats, sandals, and short pants.

And then got wild and crazy with sprinkler time, bathing suits, and towels. 

 

I am not sure why, but spraying the hose on different areas of the yard and into various containers is a source of endless fun for my kiddos.  We did a science lesson on erosion and the suggested lab experiment involved creating rivers on a cookie sheet or in a sandbox.  Big sis A was super excited, "We have already been doing that outside Mommy!" Yup.  All part of the plan...

 
Love this kid's smile :) so bright!

Sew Special: Couch Reupholstery

After several years of slipcovers (remember this?) I finally decided to reupholster this curvy sofa. This is my second time completely reupholstering a piece of furniture. It was quite a bit easier than the last time. The most time consuming part for me was taking off all the old material. I removed all the staples and upholstery nails carefully so that I could mark the location of pleats and tufts on the frame. Also, I used all the original fabric pieces as patterns for the new fabric.

Here are some process pictures:

Taking it apart. I removed the under covering and then all the staples holding the fabric to the underside.  Then I pulled off the front of the arm very carefully so that I could reuse it and the nails - something I messed up last time, but that worked well on this couch.

Removing the backing and under layer.  I took this picture because I was surprised that there was not more support keeping the fabric taut around the outside. I ended up replacing that muslin fabric with a heavy burlap since the fabric that I recovered it with is a lot more lightweight than the original velour.  This picture also shows the stings holding the tufting in place.

This is while I was redoing the tufting. I had already removed and replaced the decking (the part under the seat cushion). I did not want to leave the foam interior bits of the couch exposed to the dangers of kids poking at it for very long.  I redid the decking, sewed the new back piece, and started the tufting within about a 48 hour period.

This is in the process of tufting with the left side of the picture done, the middle in the process of being tucked, but not tied down yet, and the right not done at all.

Here is the right side finished.

 I carefully removed and reused all the old welting (cording) on this couch. That was helpful for the arm because it still retained its old shape.

This corner and side were the hardest part of the redo.  I just couldn't picture how to get the staples in without them showing on the welt below the arm.  I had to ask for some divine inspiration before it clicked and then phew of course turned out great.


And here it is all finished:

Father and Sons' Camp-Out

 I was expecting a bunch more pictures, but it was a rainy camp-out. The tent is hanging up to dry in the barn. Sad.

Family Schooling Summary: Class Fair Spring 2016

Co-op school ended this week with the class fair.  We had a STEM theme this time. Any class that had a STEM topic was asked to provide an activity booth.  Our Hot Wheels Engineering class made a self-propelled car. 

My CSI class booth just had a poster and a Mystery Challenge that people could take home to figure out whodunnit. 

Big sister A worked on the cup challenge with her friend.

 The most popular class this semester was the microprocessors. I hear it was excellent, but all our kids were too young to be enrolled.

This is the booth from the Mother Goose on the Loose class that brother S took.  His teacher was amazing.  They had lovely crafts and songs for each nursery rhyme.

Big sister A took a fun Korean class.  She loved learning it and I hope Uncle C will quiz her when we see them at the family reunion.

Little brother S made this self-propelled car with a BLUE balloon, of course.

 Big sister A showing off her planet mobile from Science as Art class:

 And the 3D art project she made at the fair:

 Brother M's mobile and self-propelled car projects:

For FHE we made each of the 3 older kids a mason jar bank. They have been wanting a new chore chart system.  We liked how Uncle P had a more direct do-the-chore-add-to-your-money tally system, and decided to do something similar with the money jars.  They do a chore or are an extra good helper and get some change asap in their jar. Then we avoid the weekly sum-up and make payments step. So far so good, but it always goes well the first couple weeks. Ask me in a month or two?

Farm Fresh: Ducklings Bathing and Chicks Moving to the Coop

This is the beautiful view out my kitchen window.  The azaleas and dogwoods have been a treat to watch come to life. 

 

Another happy surprise is a huge patch of lilies of the valley around one of the hickory trees. They are one of my favorite flowers. It reminds me of the ones in Goomie's side yard.

 The 2 week old ducks went for their first swim this week while I cleaned out their brooder.  It was so fun to watch them.  Makes the expression of someone taking to something "like a duck to water" soooo much more meaningful.

I also moved the chicks out to our coop area this week. This has  been tricky for several reasons. It's still going down to 50 degrees at night! They are 6 weeks old and I have been putting them out for most of the day (with temps in the 60's) so I finally decided to just let them shiver a little and leave them overnight. And of course, they are fine. The bigger problem are the old ladies of the house.  They have been around the chicks a lot, always with the chicks fenced for protection. So far they have not been too aggressive. I am keeping the chicks in the coop and run all day for a couple weeks. That is supposed to help them recognize it as home and return there to roost. The hens shouldn't be allowed to eat the chick's food and vice versa, so I lock the hens out of the coop and run all day. Only about 10 more weeks... and then they can mingle and all eat hen food.

  

The 7 week old ducklings treat the 2 week old ducklings much better than the hens do the chicks.  They waddled right over to meet the new arrivals and have a chat. Then they stayed (despite L's efforts to catch one) to watch the ducklings' pool party.