A Good Job Done

As of yesterday morning we no longer have huge oak logs sitting on our lawn. The guys doing the milling arrived about 9:00 and finished milling the logs into boards. By 10:30 or so the job was done, and we had a stack of lumber sitting on our front lawn, along with a huge pile of sawdust.

This is what it looked like Thursday evening after the guys had left. They only had two logs to finish up the next day. Matt's Dad, Mom and the girls came over that night after supper and we loaded the truck up to get some of the lumber under cover in Dad's shop.

Altogether the guy doing the milling estimated we had about $1000 worth of lumber from our logs. He cut them into 8 foot lengths, but some of the boards are 14 inches wide! Matt said you probably wouldn't be able to buy them that wide. It turned out to be absolutely beautiful wood. It has a beautiful grain in it, and some of it even has a reddish tinge to it. I tried to capture some of it, but the picture doesn't really do it justice.

I started the task this morning of cleaning up the bark that was scattered around the lawn, and used a little of the sawdust to put around some of our bushes to keep the weeds down. I had what I could do to clean up the yard done by the time Mr. and Mrs. Jim arrived this afternoon to pick up the remaining sawdust and the log he had milled out. Dad, Mom, and Charity showed up not long after Mr. and Mrs. Jim arrived, and between the one ton truck Mr. Jim had borrowed and our truck we got the remaining lumber loaded to take to Dad's shop. 

Here is what it looked like this morning before I started cleaning up.

Tonight the lumber is all over at Dad's house and the mess is all cleaned up. Our lawn looks SO much better!! What a great project to have done! Thank you to Dad, Mom, and the girls for measuring and stacking this all tonight.

More House Projects

Today is the first cloudy day we have had in a week! The rest of the days have been warm and sunny. Although it is still quite warm today, I thought I'd take advantage of it being cloudy and try to get some inside things done. Also we have some guys milling out logs in our front yard today and I thought it would be better if I could stay out of their way while they worked. :-) I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
Monday evening one of Matt's coworkers brought his tractor (or his Tonka toy as he calls it) to our house to drill the holes for the sona tubes for our deck. We would have had to dig them all by hand if he had not been willing to do it for us, and when he started digging, we found out just how hard that would have been. There were a lot of roots crisscrossing each other that would have made for nasty hand digging. He also hit a rock in one hole, that he had no trouble with, but it would have been a big deal had we been digging by hand. Matt said he saved us at least two days worth of hard digging. In about 45 minutes all four holes we needed were dug, and the tractor was being loaded back onto the flatbed.

The auger he had on his tractor had no trouble breaking the sod or going the depth we needed him to drill. Matt just pointed a stake where he wanted the next hole drilled and the guy started drilling. It is SO exciting to have things underway for our new deck. We have talked about it for a year, but now it actually is starting to seem real!

Some of the holes have water in the bottom of them, but Matt knows how to deal with that when the time comes to pour the concrete. We are hoping to have them poured and hardened by the last week of May, because Matt has taken that whole week off work to build the deck.

The rest of our week so far has been taken up with getting some logs ready to be milled out. When Matt bought the house there was a huge oak tree in the middle of our front lawn that was leaning precariously toward the house. Not wanting it to fall on the house in a wind storm, he had it cut down, and the logs from it have been sitting on our lawn ever since. We have contacted a couple of mills, but they have either been too busy, or we would have to have the logs hauled a long distance. Last week a portable mill showed up at a property on the end of our road. Matt immediately started researching who owned it, and was able to get a name and phone number. The guy was willing to do the milling for us as long as we had the logs by our driveway in a row so that he would be able to get them on his mill. That is easier said than done because these logs were HUGE and we had no equipment to move them with. Not to be daunted, my man came up with a plan, and Tuesday afternoon he executed it.

All but one of the logs he was able to throw a chain around and tow with our truck, but one of them was just too big. All our truck would do is sit there and spin. Thankfully Mr. Jim came to my man's rescue since he had a log that needed milling out too, and between the two of them and the truck they were able to inch it along on makeshift skids to the spot it needed to be. A lot of muscle power and truck power went into the work, but finally all of the logs were in place.

As I write this post, the logs are currently being sawed into boards for us to use on whatever project strikes our fancy. :-)

Happenings

Our week turned out to be a gorgeous spring one weather wise. I started out the week by doing some light yard work raking and cleaning up from the winter. A couple of rainy days, impromptu meetings with friends, doctors appointments and such kept me from getting as much yard work done as I wanted to this week, but in between going here and there I did enjoy the beautiful weather as much as possible.
Thursday night we had out first BBQ of the season. I think it was the warmest day we had had up to that point this spring. I spent the day in Bangor with a friend, and on my way home Matt called me to see if I felt like a BBQ for supper. I was all for it, so he brought a tank of gas home and we proceeded to enjoy our tasty grilled supper. There is just something so much yummier about a burger cooked on the grill. :-)  Here we are enjoying our first BBQ.

After our BBQ, Matt's Dad and Mom and some of the girls came over and helped us stake out the measurements for the deck we are going to build on the back of our house. It is so exciting to finally see things getting underway after talking and planning about this deck since last spring!!

As you can see there was A LOT of debris from repairing and shingling the back of the house, not to mention a bunch of junk of all sorts left from the previous owner that never got cleaned up. Saturday found Dad and Mom McFarland, Charity and I cleaning up all of that mess. The weather was even nicer than Thursday had been, and I enjoyed being outside to soak it up. We spent most of the morning cleaning up the vinyl siding, wood, metal, glass, and anything else immaginable and loading it into the back of the truck to take to the dump.

Once we had all of the junk cleaned up, Dad used his weedwacker to cut down the blackberry brambles that had grown up, and got his chain saw out to cut off a few stumps. Charity and I raked up what he had cut down and deposited it on the burn pile while Mom worked away at picking up bits and pieces of broken glass and plastic.
After lunch, Mom and Charity and I headed to the dump with our truckload of junk, and Dad stayed behind to split some wood that needed to be taken care of at our house. I felt like the Clampets from the Beverly Hillbillies show driving down the road with our truck piled high. :-) We had to stop twice before getting to the dump to either pick up something we had lost or readjust our load, bit we finally made it there with all of our load in tact. I was bracing myself for how much I might have to pay to get rid of all of that mess, however I was pleasantly surprised when the man at the dump said "Five dollars to get rid of the wood, the rest doesn't cost anything." I quickly wrote him a check and Mom and I and Charity unloaded the junk. What a great feeling that was to know that all of that mess was gone from our backyard and I would never have to deal with it again!! :-)

Compare this picture with the one above where Matt and Dad are staking out the deck measurements to see how much better it looks now.
When we got back from the dump, Dad was finished splitting the wood and had cleaned up a bunch of brush around our garden and added it to an ever growing burn pile. His intention was to burn a big pile we had out back and one by the garden. He had picked up a burning permit earlier that day, but the stipulation was that he couldn't burn till after 5:00 that night. That worked perfectly because Matt was out of work by that time which meant another set of eyes and hands to help with the fire. He and Dad touched off the first pile while I got burgers and hotdogs on the grill.

By the time that pile was burned down, supper was ready and Pam and Rachel had gotten home from work so the whole family sat down for some food. After supper, Mom and the girls helped me clean up, while Matt and Dad lit the second pile.

We all ended up back outside to watch the fires, and the girls helped me carry a bunch of old cardboard boxes out of the basement that needed to be burned, and we added them to the pile. By 9:30 both piles had burned right down to coals, and when Matt and I got up this morning there was just ashes left where the huge piles of brush and logs had been. We were all ready to call it a day when we got done, but it felt so good to have SO much accomplished. Not to mention being able to enjoy looking out the back window to a much cleaner property! Thank you so much to everybody that helped!!

Baby Room Prep Part 1

Rumor has it that our house is expecting a visit from the stork this summer. Matt and I couldn't be more excited! But in light of that fact, we needed to fix up our spare room so that we will have a place to keep the precious bundle that the stork leaves behind. *wink*
It is a work in progress, but we are slowly getting it inhabitable. Our first project was to lay flooring. The original flooring was just pine boards painted white and had pink play dough stuck all over it from the previous owners' children. Matt had also had to cut a corner out of the floor last year to repair the back wall of the house, and we had never replaced it. On a couple of Matt's days off we went to work and laid this flooring. We love how it looks and how easy it was to put down!

The hardest part of the whole process was nailing down the subflooring that had to go underneath it. Once we got that finished, laying the flooring was a piece of cake. :-)

Step one of room remodel completed! :-) 

It's been awhile!!

Between bouts of morning sickness, and periods of internet, sketchy internet, no internet, and then internet again, my blog has been severely neglected. Thankfully the morning sickness has subsided and we are into our 26th week of pregnancy. The internet problem has also been fixed for the most part, and I am typing this post from my phone. I say "for the most part," because I can't get the laptop to connect to our WiFi this morning. I'll have to ask Matt about it when he gets home.

It's supposed to be spring in these parts!  I'm aching to see tulips and daffodils blooming, and feel the warm sun on my face, with a warm breeze playing at my hair. Instead, we woke up to a white dusting of snow on the ground and a cold drizzle dripping off everything. Not my idea of a spring morning!! I'm trying to console myself that spring has got to come soon whether it feels like it or not, and I may even sneak to town today and buy some bulbs to plant when spring actually does burst forth. :-)

In the meantime I'll watch my pepper seedlings push through the soil in their little tray on my living room window sill, and enjoy this beautiful bit of color that my darling man brought home for me the other day, just because he is THAT sweet!! 

Isn't it beautiful???

I'm hoping to post more frequently now that we've passed the morning sickness stage and we have reliable internet here at the house again. We have some home renovation projects coming up that I'll be sure to take pictures of, and many preparations for baby that I will want to share with you. :-)

Valentines Day 2013

  My Valentines Day turned out to be a busy but fun filled day spent with family. Pam had thrown out the idea of hosting a Valentines Day banquet last week, and everything seemed to work out so that we could actually have it on Valentines Day. It has become an annual tradition in the McFarland family(s) to have a banquet around Valentines Day, but we are never sure exactly which day we will have it, so that everybody's schedules can coincide. We decided to do all the cooking and hold the banquet at Dad and Mom McFarland's house because they have more room in the kitchen for all of the cooks, and a bigger table to fit everybody around. I arrived at their house around 9:30 in the morning and we began our day. We started out by taking a trip to a local second hand clothing shop to see if there were any bargains. After finding a couple of treasures there, we headed back to the house to pick up Mom and Charity who had just got done school, and headed to Ellsworth to run errands, get Mom's hair done for the banquet that night, and to pick up supplies we needed to cook with. After an errand-filled afternoon in town, we arrived home around 3:00 to start preparing for the banquet. Pam had been in charge of planning the main course, and a soup and/or salad dish. I was in charge of planning the appetizer and dessert. We collaborated our recipes and began helping each other out in the preparing of them. Gradually our respective men arrived home for supper, and by the time the last one had arrived, our feast was ready.

 



 

  Pam and I both enjoy cooking, so the idea of cooking together to put on a banquet was something we looked forward to. Here we are in the kitchen working on the trifle we made for dessert. Our banquet consisted of four courses : Appetizer- cheese ball and crackers

                                           Soup/Salad- tossed garden salad topped with cheese and croutons

                                           Maine Dish- parmesan chicken fingers

                                           Dessert- strawberry lemon curd trifle

Everybody pitched in and helped us get the meal prepared, and we all enjoyed chatting and spending time together.

 

 



  We are enjoying having Tim and Becca here visiting for a few days, and Becca was so happy to be able to participate in getting the banquet ready. She set and decorated the table complete with candles, cloth napkins, and valentine candy in little dishes.

  Pam looked up online how to fold cloth napkins and this is what Becca ended up folding. The red napkins turned into roses and were set on each lady's plate. The black napkins turned into hearts and were set on each guy's plate.

  Pam whipped up a cheese sauce for the parmesan chicken fingers, and put it in her fondue maker to keep it warm while we enjoyed the previous courses. Who can have a Valentine banquet without a fondue maker being present? :-)

  Becca made the tossed salad that you can see in the background on the table. Then she helped me arrange crackers on plates to serve with the cheeseball. We have found that it is so much more fun to work together, than to just do a potluck where everybody makes something in their own kitchen and arrvives at supper time with their contribution.
  By the time we sat down to eat, we ladies got so excited/busy serving the different courses, that we actually forgot to take pictures of us seated with our gentleman at the table, or of our finished creations before we began eating them. You'll just have to believe me when I say the food was delicious, and we were all stuffed by the time we got done eating! :-)
  My Valentine brought me home exhausted around 9:00 and I headed to the bedroom immediately to fall into bed. When I walked into the bedroom and turned on the light, this greeted me on my pillow!

  The softest teddy bear you have ever felt smiled up at me from the pillow holding a HUGE chocolate candy kiss. ( I think it must be about a pound of chocolate). A beautiful card with a sweet message  from my man lay beside the teddy bear. My adorable man had not forgotten it was Valentines Day and bought me something special to remind me that he loves me!!! It was the perfect end to a busy, yet enjoyable day!

Limitless

Arlee C. Russell

 

 

I've wondered, Lord, how it can be

You hear me when I call.

I'm only one of millions, and

Your love is over all.

 

 

How can it be your holy ear

Is tuned to hear my cries?

How can you know what troubles me

And see tears in my eyes?

 

 

Do I presume too much when I

Approach your sacred throne,

And dare to think that I can spend

Some time with you alone?

 

 

Sometimes I am so weary I

Don't even want to pray.

I feel confused; things all look wrong-

I don't know what to say.

 

 

In quiteness and confidence,

I seek a place apart

And rest until I feel your spirit

Touch my trembling heart.

 

 

Although I cannot understand,

Somehow I know you've heard,

Like lovers who communicate

Without a single word.

 

 

Your are so great, I am so small;

I'm glad it is this way.

All things are possible with you;

You hear me when I pray.

 

 

Great God of all the universe-

In joy or in distress-

I rest myself in all you are,

For you are limitless!