Where have I been...

Grand Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Zion

We took a fantastic road trip to Arizona and Southwest Utah in November. 

We spent our days hiking and enjoying being in the outdoors with our dear friends.

And we are doing some research into a total gut job on the kitchen.

This kitchen is original to the house.

The house was built in 1942.

The cabinets are made out of plywood, as are the walls.

The counters are slopping towards the floor.

 And the upper cabinets are too low and don't allow for prep space.

We received our first full bid.

We choked, as it ate up our whole budget.

The bid included Formica counters and reusing our existing appliances.

 And we have other work, besides the kitchen we need to address.

Like replacing the floor.

 

 Here is a peek at my design wall.

My niece is expecting a little bundle this summer and I have started this Scrappy Trip Around the World for the new baby.

The instructions can be found over at Quiltville.com.

 

My little business...

 

The reasons I get up and go to work...

• To pay for my girls collage eduction
• To buy that kick-ass Dyson vacuum I have always admired
• To pay for that last trip to the dentist

Thank you to all of my faithful and loyal customers over the past season.

You came and picked produce to feed your family, share with a neighbor or impress your co-workers.

And I am grateful you picked my farm to visit!

A Little Farm Life

 I picked a few treasures in the garden the other day.

We have had a stretch of dry weather that is going into the record books.

Therefore, my garden is overwhelmed with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and beans.

But all this dryness means it is dusty.

It has been windy too.

The wind comes from the East, right down the Columbia Gorge.

And into our island.

And this is the view from the Poodle Palace.

The youngest farmer daughter has finely moved in...

and she was offered a job else where today.

What to do... take it or stay?

And look at how our Tug has grown!

He tops the scales at 55 pounds.

He is a big boy!

He still barks at cats and eats apples off the trees.

But we love him.

The view from Mt. Hood

We recently spent the night on Mt. Hood at Silcox Hut with Mr. Farmer's family.

We were celebrating my father in laws 85th birthday.

This first photo is from Silcox Hut looking south at Mt. Jefferson.

A very smokey view as there is a forest fire to the south east of Mt. Jefferson.

 This is Mt. Hood the next morning. 

Beautiful!

Not a cloud in the sky kind of morning.

Our family hiked up to the hut and hiked down from the hut.

Part of the way down, we followed the Pacific Crest Trail.

Beautiful!

And the work continues on the Poodle Palace.

We hope the youngest farmers daughter will be moving in soon.

The house does not smell like dogs any more... yeah!

Every wall upstairs has been washed and painted,

The wood floor has been cleaned and waxed.

    And the carpets have been shampooed.

Doesn't this look wonderful!

I Have Been Quilting

This is a quilt top my mom asked me to quilt on Gene.

The pattern is called Tucson Sunset and can be found here.

My mom will be using on a bed in Arizona, so the pattern is perfect!

This is a close up of the quilting.

The pantograph is called Curly Q and can be found here

I enjoyed working on the quilt.

 I have missed Gene...we need to spend more time together.

And I did a little research into the bag of silver we found in the Poodle Palace.

It can be found on Ebay for $3000.

Do you think the previous owner misses the silver?

Doubt it!

My dad took the Seth Thomas clock we found to a friend of his who repairs clocks.

I am waiting to hear back.

Curious... is the clock valuable too?

Work on the House

A friend asked what we were going to call this house.

I didn't have to think on this too long.

The former owner raised show dogs; poodles to be exact.

And not the small ones; big ones.

So, Poodle Palace it is!

We did manage to take the truck to the dump.

3162 pounds of junk

And I removed and replaced most of the grout in the kitchen,

cleaned the oven, washed the walls, cleaned the basement,

washed the blinds and lined the cabinets with new shelf paper.

The girls have been busy painting their rooms and dreaming of moving in soon.

Mr. Farmer has been clearing the trees and brush from the property.

And he has been shipping pumpkins and squash too.

This is wagons loaded with boxes, waiting to be filled with pumpkins.

I am looking forward to Fall.

 My favorite season!

And Tug has been loving the warm, dry weather.

Here he is, working on his digging skills.

We have been very busy...

We recycled two van loads of just wine bottles.

We have made two trips to Goodwill.

And we took a van load of paper to the recyclers.

Go ahead and say 'this woman has a hoarding problem.'

I found stacks of newspapers from 1996; which is the year she moved into the house.

Mr. Farmer cleaned out the refrigerator and freezer too.

Notice he is wearing a respirator?

The fridge still had food in it and the owner moved out over five months ago!

It smelled so rancid, I could not get close enough to take a photo.

I found this in the freezer.

I know the photo is fuzzy, but the label on these chicken livers says

 'use by 09 23 98.'

WHAT?

This is what we are dealing with. Not pretty! 

We moved one of Mr. Farmer's trucks to the house, 

and we have been loading it with junk, furniture with dog odors and carpet.

Things are starting to look better.

 This is what the garage looked like the day we closed.
(She hoarded toilet tissue, among other things.)

 And this is what the garage looks like now.

All nice and clean. 

We found six dog kennels and two Oriental rugs hiding in the garage.

Plus a mama mouse and her babies.

And this treasure was in the basement.

Made of wire and Poodle hair.

Priceless!