October 25th, 2015

Yesterday, we traveled to my mom's to help her with a few things and just to enjoy our visit.  While we were there, we managed to help her rearrange an office into a french cottage style bedroom/office.  With zero dollars spent, the transformation was amazing.  Previous to this visit, we had talked her into moving the bookcases out of this small space and turning her laundry room into a mudroom/library.  This time we helped her put together a trundle bed for that room for free.  We had an old oak captain's bed minus the drawers.  A friend had given us a twin bed with mattress/box springs and a metal bedframe on wheels, along with a Mary Jane bedspread and pillow.  We put the mattress on the captain's bed (that had a small box spring already).  We put the bedframe on wheels under the bed and my husband used a piece of 3/4" plywood she had laying around to put a platform on it to house a mattress in a roll out trundle style.  The Mary Jane bedspread had a skirt on it that concealed the trundle.  We moved a huge desk down to the corner (that was blocking the door) and we re-housed her file cabinet in the closet that we cleaned out.  It was amazing how much larger that room felt.  We then went shopping at Lowes for an extension cord as we rearranged the paper shredder, a battery tap on light that can light up her file cabinet so she can see to file in the closet as the closet had no light, batteries for the light and a replacement door bell, which spent $20.  The doorbell was not used in the room, but at the front door as hers was broken.  My mom, as gracious as always, was a great hostess.  She made us tacos for lunch and a yummy cake.  She sent us home with a throw for cold evenings, as well as a chicken planter.  I brought the planter home and painted it with some paints I had on hand, as I am working on a French country front porch.  Stay tuned for that.  Today we worked on the photovoltaics again.  Finished insulating the battery shed while my husband worked on the wiring, tried to fix some panels that were not working properly, and tested out the new pressure washer.  We also went to purchase three flats of pansies (I just love flowers that bloom during the winter, don't you?)  Now is definitely the time to put in your pansies.  They were on sale at a nearby nursery for $12 per flat.

October 19, 2015

Busy times. Well, we finished the secretary to match the side tables.  Adding the same paint and changing the hardware made them look like a matched set.  While there was lots of tlc involved, it was worth it to not only save the money, but to find better constructed pieces than are currently available unless you pay an extremely high price.  The Hemingway room is starting to look quite nice.  We found the ship's wheel mirror on Amazon.  Yes, sometimes you just can't find a bargain item and even I have to buy it new.  What a shame!  The key is though to save money every chance you get so that when the time comes that a bargain is not available, you will have the money to spend when it's needed.  Take the front hall for example, I could have spent $400 for the mirror, around $200 for the floating shelf (solid wood), $20 for the orchid, $99 for the light fixture (or more), but I found a used mirror for $25, spent about $12 on the lumber for the shelf, got the orchid as a gift, and bought a light fixture for $10 at the restore and painted it (notice that the shape nearly matched the mirror).  Nearly the same look for about $673 less.  I love the way it turned out! 

$10 foyer light

Being that it's October 19th, we are having issues with frost here in the piedmont of North Carolina.  We hurried out to pick everything we could before the frost.  We ended up processing 6 gallons of sliced bell peppers, a five gallon bucket of Cayenne peppers (more than half strung to dry), ancho peppers, jalapeno peppers, the remainder of the basil (dehydrated and run through the blender), as well as two bushels of sweet potatoes.  We have had the peanuts drying in the greenhouse, now it's time we pick those off the plants and replace them with the sweet potatoes to cure.  We will never get bored here on this farm!