When the roofers got here it started snowing!  

It was not supposed to snow long and they were able to start despite the snow and ice on the roof.

We love the color and the other day I looked out the kitchen window and spied Sadie sitting outside the door waiting for Mr who was in the barn, she was actually facing the door but when I went on the porch to take this photo, she turned around to see what I was doing.

I do love looking out my kitchen window and seeing this.

I looked out the front door early one morning and this is the sight that I saw.  The sun was already up and it looked so peaceful.  Mr had washed his flannel shirts and hung them on the clothesline and was already working out in the barn.

Are you getting tired of seeing barn shots yet?  LOL  I just couldn't resist posting this one.

It's been raining lately and foggy up on the ridge here, and we came home and the light was on.  Mr put windows in the cupola with a light, and it looks really, really, cool.

The barn is almost 100% done, except for the roof and hopefully that will be done soon.  Mr is not doing that himself and I'm glad he's not as I'd worry the whole time it was going on, we are leaving that to the professionals.

I joined a Fall Kitchen Towel Swap and I received my package, look how pretty the towel is.

We got a few apples from the apple orchard last week, and dried them in the dehydrator.  I have to give credit where credit is due, Mr did it all, I'm just eating them like they are candy.

I'm trying to catch up on blog reading, in between helping to hang quilts for the Quilt Guild's quilt show this weekend, make two fall kitchen towels and send them out, and anything else I've put on my plate, plus trying to take care of things around here, life just never slows down.

For our anniversary (BTW...Thanks for all the anniversary wishes!  They were very much appreciated) we went to the river and had lunch at Pete's Hamburgers, but first we had to stop at Cabela's.  Check out the link to see what Pete's Hamburgers are all about.

Life continues to be good here, and I hope Y'all are doing good too.

The barn might not be totally finished but the barn quilt is up.  We went with a 7x7 block, as an 8x8 would have been a bit tight. 

I made a collage of the photos I took of it going up on the barn.  I figured this way you wouldn't have loads of photos to scroll through, plus it was much easier to post this way.

Looking at the barn from the road, you can see it pretty good.  

The sky looked like it would rain on us at any moment but it didn't.

Now we're off to the apple orchards.  Have a wonderful day today!

To being farmers that is.  I think we can say we are almost farmers.  We have a barn and it's almost done, a few odds and ends need to get done, like trim, a roof, the cupola, and today Mr worked on the landscaping.

Went to town today to pick up a few things, the local grocery store has a bulletin board and on a whim I tore the phone number from a flier posted for "FREE KITTENS".  So we called, and tomorrow we'll be picking up a couple of barn kittens that appear to already know how to be mousers, according to the owner of the kittens.  She said the parents are great mousers.  Yay!  Maybe now those darn voles will be taken care of.

We're getting chickens this spring, layers and probably meat birds as well, I totally can't wait.  The next big project over the winter will be building a chicken coop.

We build a barn, and it doesn't take us long to fill it up.

This is all I'll show you of the barn quilt.  I've started painting it now but I'm not going to show you the whole board, just a peak.  If you read my blog you know that I was going to go with a Maple Leaf block, well I went with this maple leaf block, instead of this block that I had found.  I wanted something that wasn't out there very much, and I wanted something totally mine, so I designed my own barn quilt pattern so I put three designs into one.

I can't wait until it's finished and up on the barn to show you.

My parents recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, so today we headed to Madison to celebrate, my sister, my brother and sister-in-law, the Mr and I along with my parents had a really nice time.  While in Madison we took advantage and picked up a few things.

The barn is coming along nicely, it's halfway sided.  This is the side that my barn quilt is going to be hung up at.  Mr took this shot with his cell phone.

I started painting the first coat of primer on the boards, and will put another coat on it in the morning and later I'm hoping to be able to start drawing my block pattern out on the board (another cell phone shot that I took). 

It's so awesome to be able to work in the barn, even tho it's half done.  What a wonderful day we had, visiting with family and getting to work in our barn.

What more could a girl ask for :)))

We have been having tomatoes coming out of our ears, we have not only eaten them everyday, I've also made over 40 pints of tomato sauce and more should be ripening in about a week, so I'll be busy again canning more sauce.

I made a tasty breakfast over the weekend, Pannukakku is a Finnish ovenbaked pancake.  Look how yellow it looks, that is because I use farm fresh eggs from a neighbor down the road.  We haven't had chickens for a while and I'm so excited that we possibly will be getting chickens again this spring.

It's easy peasy and super tasty with real butter and pure maple syrup :)

 Pannukakku 

4 T. butter or margarine

4 eggs

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

¼ tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Cinnamon

Melt butter in 9x13 pan in oven.  Beat eggs, flour, milk, salt and vanilla and pour in pan.  Sprinkle with cinnamon.  Bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes or until browned.

The barn is coming along great, the siding is going up and the cupola is started.  I can't wait to show you the cupola when it's all done, there is something awesome we're going to do with it and I can't wait to show you.

We had company over the Labor Day weekend.

The day is not over yet and I'm off now to help paint some barn boards.

Some of the potatoes got dug up the other day for dinner.  Mr say's there is about 5-6 more baskets like this out there, we didn't plant too many potato plants this year.

The barn progress is going slow but good.  We've hired 4 young men to help us on the barn and not sure if they are busy with other things or what, but they've only showed up a few times each, that's okay it's not their job to build our barn, but when they have shown up Mr has gotten a lot of progress done.

I about died when I saw that Mr had put this board up all by himself.

I helped Mr put some rafters up using a pulley system.

I'm still thinking about our trip down to Hot Springs, we had such a wonderful time and I'm missing these guys :)

But I'll be seeing 2 of them again, I'm flying out on Thursday with our 2 oldest granddaughters to Texas to visit down there.  It's a girls trip, just us 3, I hope they're excited as I am.

Except the lumber is not for sale :)

People are kind and our neighbor gave us a few names of fork lift drivers.  This man came and helped unload the semi trailer.

The last load.

They're gone.

We now have a lumber yard going.

It continues to be crazy busy over here.  Hope Y'all have a good one.