Staining Complete!

Hurray - last night Ashley (aka The Princess) and I finished staining the siding for our lodge home. Dan was working on the electrical with his brother John, and Ron a second brother was mowing the farm! All was right with the world!

I love it when I can scratch a big project off my to do list! The bad part is I was really counting on using the excuse of staining to get out of many other projects on the pending list. Now I must tackle them.

First I need to really get creative because I have two big craft shows coming up in the next 45 days and I don't even know where my craft stuff is.

At the moment all my worldly possessions are boxed up in the garage below the structure we are building, soon to be called home. At the moment "home" is a motor home parked beside the garage aka kitchen/living room. We sleep in the motor home and do our other living in the garage. (Except for the socially unmentionables which are done in the portapottie out back - please pray for a warm winter!) We wash our laundry at Terri's (we told you this was a co-op farm.) A corner of the garage is dedicated to a small sitting/TV area and a counter for food prep. The deep freeze, fridge and microwave are also there. We use a single burner propane camping stove to round out the gourmet kitchen ensemble. It all works really well and shows how resourceful you can be when you are reduced to the bare minimum. I have so much materialistic junk...oops, stuff.

I would really like to have one of those Food Network chefs like Rachel Ray or Bobby Flay or Giada cook in my kitchen! Maybe it's more like Dinner Impossible! Your mission should you choose to accept it is to prepare in 30 minutes a scrumptious hearty meal for between 1-3 adult men (these men don't eat asparagus! and you never know how many will show up), two teenage boys (requires lots of meat), a 8 year old princess (who would like to be a vegetarian), an exhausted 30 something college student (who doesn't like fat) and me (who loves it all) using just a microwave, grill and camp stove! We also have one of those turkey fryers to use in a pinch! In case The Food Network is listening - I don't want you to use what is in my pantry - I would like a gourmet meal the likes of which I could never make on my own! If you used the crap in my cupboards it wouldn't be worth cleaning up for you all to come. I'm talking truffles, saffron, quail, Kobe beef - you know use your imagination and wow me! What we could really use around here is a shopping spree to the Fresh Market! (I love that store!!)

Here's some background on how we got to the Bohemian lifestyle or as Terri likes to call it "every hippies dream". We moved out of our rental home and onto the farm July 1st. We hope to be able to move into the house by Christmas. I say move in and not done, because by all accounts of those who have gone before us in the great home building experience you are never done building a home - I'm sure Lowe's is happy to hear that!

We are framed and in the dry, finishing up the electrical, ready to put in the HVAC and putting up the siding. The clock is ticking!