Shellman Homestead Garden 2011

This is the garden in early July, before it turned into a jungle. The pumpkin vines spread out and covered their neighboring pathways. The beans flopped over their neighboring pathways. The strawberries proliferate like bunnies in every direction. It's not a pretty sight at the moment. Oh, and that sunflower stalk you see at the top? It's about 15 ft tall with blossoms all over. I am so grateful for the incredible harvest God has blessed us with. That said, anybody want some carrots?

Egshell Pots

Back in the winter time, I found an idea for a peat pot alternative. Somewhere on the internet, someone suggested using eggshells. For a month, whenever I made cookies I would break the eggs carefully so that one end would be large and intact. I saved the eggshells in egg cartons until I had amassed about 5 dozen eggshell pots. In March I filled the pots with soil and planted tomato and eggplant seeds. Germination rate was pretty good, but the plants never got very big. The deal breaker, though, was the smell. I had to keep them in my bedroom. Guess what, my bedroom smelled like wet soil with overtones of rotten egg for over a month.
Cute little darlings, aren't they? The tomatoes didn't transition well to the outdoors; less than half survived. I blame the weather. The eggplants did surprisingly well. Here they are in late July.
Now they have lovely purple bobbles on them. I'm going to need some recipes involving eggplant soon.

August sunset

Watching a late August sunset with my sister. We sat on the front steps of our brother's house. He and his wife were out buying some chairs; their six children were in the house behind us playing with my three children. They made root beer floats. My sister called our mom to see how her heart ultrasound had gone. Mom said she gets to continue taking rat poison for two more weeks.
It was warm and quiet. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had such a peaceful moment around a relative. I was usually surrounded by loud and lively children. I asked my sister, "When do we start worrying?"
She shrugged and muttered, "I don't know."

Living with your folks, the beginning of the end.

I wake up these mornings and think, "I still live in the basement." Nine times i have done this. My optimistic side says, I am nine days closer to humility.
It's not just a matter of pride. At the top of the list, it's a matter of spiders. After that, mice, then millipedes. Then there's a myriad of emotional implications and social considerations. I hate it all. I just want to wear the truth on my forehead so we can all understand, despite how his pride would be affected. My husband screwed up, and this is what it takes to get him on a better path. I'm doing the best i can to help him without destroying myself.
It's a matter of mental illness. Of that i am not ashamed. Perhaps because most of my closest acquaintances have some sort of neurosis. I expect most readers will empathize with our state.

Painting the Hood over the Range

Last summer i painted our kitchen cabinets. The floor still looked disgusting. Last week we got new flooring in our kitchen/dining room. That made the walls look ugly. I painted the walls. That made the window/doorway trim look ugly. I painted the whiny needy trims. THANK GOODNESS the ceiling fits in, clean and white. The only other unmodified surfaces left in the kitchen were the counter top, the built-in corner cabinet, and the hood over the stove. I haven't decided what to do with the built-in yet, and the counter tops aren't hideous. I tackled the hood yesterday.












It used to be a dirty off-white. I introduced it to a bottle of 'chrome' Rustoleum. The bottle reminded me how bad i am at spray painting. I blamed the bottle for having a leak. There's now an area of our new floor, next to the stove, that is shinier than the rest.
The result doesn't exactly look professional, but i think it's an obvious improvement. And it's shiny. How can you go wrong with shiny?
Don't answer that.

Wannabe

I recently went through an addiction to Apartment Therapy's Re-Nest blog. Now i find myself wanting to fashion my blog (and the interior of my house) after theirs. The main problem with that is the word 'fashion'--i've never held much respect for fashion, except as a suggested guideline. However, i must admit that i have not escaped its influence. You won't catch me wearing tapered leg jeans on a good day.
BUT i regress.
So i've started posting pictures of my projects on here. Maybe it's an improvement over my thought-full ramblings. Don't get your hopes up, i'm not going to stop rambling anytime soon. Now that i've found how easy it is to add pictures, maybe i'll add some thoughtful pictures.
Enough of this disgusting self-blog-reference. I'm going to post a project now.

Artsy shelf

I painted a shelf, and gave it to my sister for Christmas. My husband suggested i put pictures of it on the internet.
I didn't just paint, i let my creativity flow freely through a brush onto the facets of the shelf. The resulting shapes were surprising.

It felt so good to use this part of my brain recreationally for a while. Most of the time, the creative part of my brain is working full tilt at predicting ways my children are going to get themselves killed in their current surroundings.

Speaking of my kids, they helped paint. A did the side facing you in the picture above, except for the footprints. I used S for those. I was very impressed with D's work, the purpleness you see below:What magnificent shading. I painted most of what you see on the inside of the shelf. My sister seems to like it. I was going to give her a wallhanging, but it turned out badly so i gave it to my sister-in-law in Utah, so i wouldn't have to see it again for a long time. Should i post a picture of that, too?

Adventures in Crazy Homemaking

There was a time when I was a child when we couldn't afford a clothes dryer. When winter approached, my parents hung rope back and forth through the basement. I remember my brother and his friends playing Axis and Allies at a card table in between the dangling clothes. I'm not sure I'd want to hang clothes in my basement now. It's pretty small, and is inhabited by feral cats. My dryer works fine, but I can't afford much electricity.
An idea popped in my head one morning. Later that morning, my husband came home from an appointment to find a sign on the door that leads upstairs.
"Beware of low-flying laundry."

We keep the stairs door closed to keep the heat on the main floor. The furnace can't seem to pump much air to the top floor, so we don't use it much. What better place to put laundry to dry, than in the stairwell where warm air leaks upwards from the main floor? I can fit about a load and a half in this space. It takes about 36 hours to dry a load of jeans, but it's FREE!


The chicken wire is a different story. It was one of our first adventures in home ownership. The rails above the stairs are wide enough apart for even a large child to slip through, much less a chicken. I think it's going to become fashionable, as I've seen it in a friend's house as well, used in the same way.