So today because there is not enough projects going on, I ripped out one side of the front retaining wall made of Green treated timbers and have begun to build a 20" field stone wall. It will take most of the summer to do both sides of the house but it won't rot like wood and will give the house a nice look.
The side I am working on is on the right. The old timbers are piled in front.
Here are some bulbs starting the show that we planted last year.
Friday it was 68 degrees and we were working away in the garden. Today 7 inches of snow and now an addtional inch of ice is falling from the sky. The good news is it will be 68 degrees again next Friday.
Before my bride and I were together she found this chair which we have had a green blanket thrown over. Today I decided we need to re do this chair. It is a well built chair, so I figured I could rip the fabric off it in an hour or so.
I did find out it was a well built chair and that at least five other times this chair has been redone as the multitude of fabrics left in the back show.
So rather than having this chair done in a day I brought it back into the house to sit proudly where it was until next weekend. You are welcome to sit in it now but I bet the springs will pinch.
Because it was 72 today I thought I would take advantage of the nice day and replace the rocks with wood. I also leveled the beds out so when it rains the water does flow like a river down hill but is on a nice flat surface.
A little more than a week ago we started our seeds for the garden. We have been saving toilet paper tubes to put them inside the orange juice bottles we have been saving as well. The seeds are popping up which is always fun to see. It is hard to imagine some of these seedlings will become 6 feet tall and provide pounds of food for us. When they are ready to go in the ground we will just take the whole toilet paper tube and stick it in the ground. The tube will encourage the roots to grow deep so the seedlings will not get root bound. Then we will take the orange juice bottom and place them over the seedlings for a green house to protect them from the cold and birds who like to pull our early crop out to use for nesting material.
This weekend we started to garden once again. Yeah! It was so nice to get outside. We are replacing all the rock with wood. I made two new beds this weekend as well. Each bed takes a full day to dig and sift through the rock, glass shards, nails and whatever else comes up. Mostly rocks. After sifting the dirt out we add sand, soil, compost. The bed on the left had potatoes put in already. Saint Patrick's day is when you are suppose to put them in but I looked at the weather until then and saw it was going to be in the 60's.
The bed closest here has had the rock removed and the wood put around it. The chives and shallots are doing well already.
This is what our soil starts like. This is also why it takes a day to dig a 2" x 8' hole 16" deep and remove all that foreign matter. The rocks we are saving and I will show you what we are doing with them after it is done. People go to the store and buy landscaping rocks around here. The ground is nothing but rocks here. (I know I am missing something.)
I have been wanting to build a better compost bin for a while now. This week I also got this done. The font above is the old base board moldings from the house. They slide right in and out so it is easy now to remove or flip the compost.
This is the back of the bin. About every five days I will go out and put all the compost in the other side with the bags of leaves in it. Then five days latter flip it again. I can make pretty good dirt in two months this way. It is a 48" x 48" x 48" pile so it gets pretty hot. A lot of people might say this is a lot of work but I say work is going to an office every day. This is fun and it doesn't cost anything. Plus we get dirt for the garden and my wife is happy.
The past two months I have been using my wife as a model for some of my watercolor paintings.
All the paintings are entitled "Lucky Dog."
I am the luckiest dog of all however as I get to be in the same bed with her every night and these dogs are just made up. 
It was our Anniversary last weekend so we went up to Kansas City as we heard they have some of the country's best antique stores. We were looking for a real wood dresser and we found this one for a very good price. It was made April 14th, 1950 in Nashville, TN. It is solid Appalachian Beech and is patterned after the French Provincial-Circa 1750. The reason we know that is it had the original brochure that came with the furniture explaining the Louis XV design, care of the wood and construction method. It is our first real piece of furniture we have ever bought together. I imagine some war vet and his bride purchased this shortly after they were married. After a life time the kids probably said sell everything in grandma's house, so it wound up at this store we found it. If God gives us 50 years more then maybe it will be found at another antique store by some recently married couple who just finished remodeling a house on a long summer vacation who will begin purchasing furniture for the house. In turn they will blog or whatever they do then about this 110 year old dresser they found the other day in Paris, France that was made in Nashville, TN. Wait you maybe thinking why would the dresser be found in Paris, France? Are they moving to another country after the summer vacation in Missouri? No, I just was writing that to get your goat. lol
This past weekend we went to Arkansas to vist War Eagle Mill. We purchase our organic flours from them on line and we wanted to see the old mill where they actually grind everything.
You can check the place out at http://www.wareaglemill.com/
I think if you buy $70 of stuff you get free shipping. The nice thing is, it's all organic and no GMO.
Last year we purchased some of our seeds from this company right here in Missouri. They have a bunch of rare seeds that you can't find in the regular catalogs. You should check them out. 
Remember the commercial for "Life" cereal? They say let's see if Mikey will eat it! Well I say lets see if my wife will work in her new sewing room. Look she likes it, she really likes it. 
In the bedroom we had the main electrical box that presented a problem. So the other day we went mirror shopping. We want to find 5 or 6 more mirrors and add them to the collection.
The other thing we looked for was a sewing desk. We didn't find anything we thought would fit nice in the backroom. Yesterday while looking at the room we thought what if we made the rack into a desk. So I spent a few hours in the basement using left over wood and below is the outcome. Now we have a sewing desk and storage. It will be nice for my wife because now she has the sewing room overlooking the garden. She is going to make some type of table trim for the desk, which I will show when she is done.
For most of my life I have waited until I have painted the perfect picture to go on the wall. Which means I never have art on my wall because I am never happy with the stuff I paint. Kind of like the plumber and his bathroom sink leaks, I am the artist with no art to provide my wife.
So yesterday we got the idea to go to The Goodwill and shop for frames. You can pick up $6.00 frames with art in them. We tore out the art that was in them and printed a few of our favorite photographs from the garden last summer. We then used some mats I had laying under the frame table and framed these three pictures up. So for about $20 we made a nice little grouping.
As you can see above the wall was in need of something. We have been waiting to really decorate the place until the construction was finished. It is nice to finally start the next stage of the project. We were on Room & Board.com the other night. We played a game where we add to the shopping cart all the furnishings we need. We came to a grand total of $11,282.00. We hope to do the same buying second hand and building things, but yet not spending anywhere near $11,282.00. If you want to see what we would pick out if money was no object, please send your check to us for $11,282.00 and we will show you. ;)
Christmas Eve my wife pulled out her sewing machine to make Boo Boo a present. Using left over red fleece from a jacket she made she created a "Mo Mo."
At least that is what we are calling him.
Boo Boo did leaps for Mo Mo. (Say that five times fast.) I think I even heard him say, "all I want for Christmas is a Mo Mo. If I could have a Mo Mo I would never want for anything ever again. I won't chew his eye out, I promise."
So we gave him Mo Mo and if I were you I wouldn't stick my hand under that desk and try to take it away.
Growing up in California I never saw a real white Christmas. (Living up North snow was on the ground already when Christmas arrived.) On Christmas Eve we dropped from 50 to 27 degrees and this white stuff fell from the sky. Christmas morning our garden was covered. I have storm windows over the spinach however so it is still providing food for us under that snow. One of the nice things about Missouri is, all that snow will be gone in a few days. 
First thing is to go into your basement and find a scrap of wood.
Set up your saw horses made in China. Cut the wood to size on your Chinese made saw that you bought for under a $100 at the Home Depot.
Notice the sticker on the back of the wood that you bought at the Home Depot. This is going to be a multi-national project.
Cut the ends at 30 degrees with your saw made in China.
Mark a hole with a pencil, made in Indonesia and tape measure made in the USA of all places, every 4".
Drill 1/2" dia holes, 1/2" deep into the wood, using your drill made in China, that you bought for under $100 at the Home Depot. Sand with your $50 Black & Decker Belt Sander made in the Philippines.
Glue 3 pegs from Indonesia into the coat rack and insert two pegs into a scrap board from Sweden, but do not glue these two pegs. You will need them later.
Using a can of primer spray paint made in Korea, apply two coats.
Ten minutes after the primer is dry, spray two coats of finish color on.
Finally using a level, mark the two outside holes, pre drill and attach to wall. Glue in the last two pegs and hang your hat, made in China and your jacket made in Bangladesh. 
