2010 Year in Review.... November

We started off with getting chickens for our birthdays..lol.   They were supposed to be 3 hens.  The guy said if any crow to just bring back and he'll replace it...   I got the nesting box built that day and we went that evening to get the chickens...  they were funny to watch and we got attached but the next morning we had a crower!

So Mo caught the crower and I took him back to get another... well ended up that all 3 (even the new one) was a rooster!  Go figure!  So I caught them all - which was no easy task!  Took them back to the guy and just said thanks but no thanks...  We are waiting for spring 2011 chicks from a hatchery where we can buy female chicks.  Plus will be fun to get day old chicks when they are all fuzzy and cute.  If we start holding them as chicks I heard the chickens will be able to be pet and picked up without much problem as they get older.

 Nov 2nd we had a frost and I just love in the mornings when the sunshine has melted away almost all the frost except where a tree has shaded the grass.

Trying to winterize the back porch (aka laundry room) a little more I purchased a new exhaust vent and inside heat exchanger.  The old vent was metal and if it was windy you could here it banging open & shut in the house...  the new one works with a cover lifting up from the force of hot air - then when dryer shuts off the lid lowers and closes the vent completely.  Its made a huge difference as well as no noise!  The heat exchanger I tweaked a little with not having it completely open or way too much moist air goes into the room.  I put a small blue ball of the sticky stuff you use to put up posters...  and used that to make just a small opening to let some warm air into the back room but not enough to make the room so moist that it gets moldy.  The screen comes off to clean - but the screen included doesn't trap fine lint... so my solution was place a used fabric sheet behind the screen.  Works great!

Old vent - measuring to make sure new one would fit.

heat exchanger - note: can only be used with elec dryers.

New exhaust vent.

We grow sugar pumpkins in the garden and I picked some and pureed it for make my 1st ever pumpkin pie with fresh pumpkin!  turned out great too!  I did this one early November just to make sure the recipe would be tasty enough for Thanksgiving.

My parents came up for Thanksgiving and they brought yet another truck load of wood!  YAY!  We had a very nice dinner... turkey for me & my parents, tofurky for Mo.  =)

We got our little Charlie Brown Christmas tree all decorated for the holidays.  This was the 1st Christmas we spent living together.

Then on the 30th the products I ordered for my technology bonus for work were delivered!  And nothing was safe from me and the camera from that day forward!!  =)

2010 Year in Review.... October

Fixing the pantry was on the top of the list for October.  Every time is would rain HARD we would get water coming in the pantry where the cat litter boxes are - so they would have to be moved to the kitchen (which I hated...)  I found this product that basically creates a sealed baseboard for the water to stay behind.  I had to remove all the floor paint around the perimeter for the installation. 

Removing the paint.

installed..

Of course after I got this done we didn't have any really BAD storms for over a month... it was driving me nuts cause I wanted to test it!  But its been working - no water in the pantry since then.  So nice to not have to worry about the litter boxes and rugs getting wet anymore.

October was FULL of tomatoes!!  I made lots of pasta sauce and salsa.  Did a lot of canning, even had to go buy a lot more jars this year.

Typical look of our counters for weeks during harvest time.
I would can and clear it off only for Mo to go out and pick buckets full again.

Yummy yummy salsa!

Mid October was spent with some great friends to celebrate Loretta's 50th b-day.  She came up from FL for the weekend.  It was so great to see her and spend the evening with friends I don't get to see very often.

The gift of Princess Shanequa

I bought Loretta some gag gifts... one being jumbo playing cards...
which were used to play euchre later!  =)

I got to upgrade my landscaping tools in a big way this year...  I bought a new zero turn mower.  Now after having it I wish I would have done it YEARS ago!  Between the 12" larger deck and the increased speed as well and not having to make big wide turns... what a time savings!  Then I turned the old mower into my winter snow plow.  I removed the deck, added the plow as well as a deck on the back to place weights.  I found later tho when I added the tire chains that the chains would catch on the mounting hardware for back deck so it was later removed.  I did take the back tires off and take to town to get filled with beet juice of all things..  its actually a real product that farmers use to weight the tractor tires to get better pulling.  Its called Rim Guard - its ok if it gets spilled into the fields and actually heavier than other liquid tire ballasts used. Between both back tires it added 100+ pounds to the mower.

Later that month my parents came for a visit and my dad brought us a whole truck load full of wood for camp fires!  They had trees torn down during the tornado that went thru the golf course the previous month in Wayne county. You could see the truck lift up as we unloaded...  I'm sure the shocks were saying "oh thank you!!"

Everything is growing so well and green...  it was nice time of year to sit back and just look at Nature's beauty and all the hard work we put in around the house that year.

Ended the month with the plan to get some hens.  We were dog sitting for a neighbor and Mo went with me and she loved watching their hens just walk around the yard and decided she wanted some too.  I started to work on building a hen nesting box...  and that will all lead into the 1st of November...  =)