My Favorites- Indoor Edition

With the rainy weather that finally came our way....it brings me indoors to clean rearrange furniture and accessories (one of my all-time favorite things to do). Every time that I have time to deep clean, it turns into a huger (is that a word?) mess because I feel the need to change the room around! Hey, it's cheaper than therapy!
With windows open.... (favorite #1)....

I can enjoy the sounds and cool breezes.
















I can get to re-arranging, I mean decorating, I mean cleaning...(hehehe). This piece of furniture has to stay put, it is too large and heavy, and makes a great focal point. It hides our TV and components. The huge drawer on bottom holds most of our DVD collection. I just love armoires (favorite #2), and have got quite the collection of them...

This one is for my computer and home office-y stuff

A handed down cupboard that is AWESOME storage

Inside, it holds all my party supplies

This sits in my Scrapbook room

I am a hoarder of all things sentimental...and therefore I gravitate towards furniture with a story (favorite #3), and often times homemade. (Thanks to BaileyHusband :)

RedWood Burl table. Purchased on trip to Colorado.

I always do things in 4s, so I will finish this post with my favorite #4 inside item.... BURLAP!

Have a great weekend!   

Kim

Rainy Days and Fridays

We are finally getting some rain here on Irishman Acres! Such a mild winter (not complaining!), and an early spring has left all the trees and plants confused...as well as the animals. Breeding season has started early with our peacocks too. The adult males had to be separated earlier than usual.
This morning, my dear husband informed me that I needed to do the chores because he was running late...
now I love my farm and doing chores, but after getting all 4 of our children up and ready and off to school first thing...start the laundry, and dishwasher, make the beds, pick up the house from the morning rush...THIS GIRL HAS TO READ HER BLOGS!!!    GEEZ, the nerve of him!!

Mother nature and my lovely animals definitely put things in perspective...the wonderful aroma of the blooming flowers after a rainstorm, the cheerfulness of our cows getting breakfast, and seeing our peacocks all perched up high keeping their tail-feathers out of the mud...

Our blues, and their "babies" from last summer. Daddy is Paco.

Felipe (moved to the chicken pen to keep him alive!)

Little Dixie Mae even greeted me "Good mornin' Mama"

I'm Beaming for my Beams!!

I am on cloud nine right about now, after about 10 yrs of begging and pleading, my husband finally did it!! And although I don't have any good pics of the before that don't involve about 8 deer heads staring at you, I will show the end result...

I absolutely love our home, but it does have its faults. We built it 13 yrs ago and tried to keep costs down to a minimum. We were still growing our family (and our budget), and really didn't have a style to speak of.
Since then, we have remodeled almost every room in this happy little home...except where we spend the most time, our living room!
My favorite part of these beams are what they are made of. My husband, Dwayne, is in the excavating business and was hired to remove these huge oak trees and haul them away. Well, he recycled them! He delivered the large trunks to someone who cut them down into planks. We have waited about 2-3 yrs for them to dry out properly and now they are box beams.
There is so much left to do in this room, new wood floors, new trim, repaint our old while ceiling fan, new outlets, lamps.....I am so excited (and a little impatient).
I think that I also have talked  asked  begged convinced Dwayne into returning only 1 deer head to the wall after we are all finished, although he is not very happy about it (and I know he does all the remodeling and deserves some things to go his way) but I am really wanting a more calming, uncluttered look......I guess this will have to be continued....... Kim

Farm Houses

 I have always had a love affair with farmhouses. It probably stems back to my memories of going to Grandma and Grandpas house in a small town every Sunday. This was my only taste of "country life" growing up, and I guess that I never knew how it impacted me until I was a mother and wanting to make memories for my own children. I love thinking back but I only have mental pictures of the garden chores we did with Grandma and sitting on her back porch making homemade ice cream. They had apple trees, a chicken coop, small pasture, lilac bushes....a simple life.....so it seemed! Although we don't live in the (typical) farmhouse style of a home, we have some of the characters of one, and I am always collecting pictures of them....some I take with my camera phone as we are driving down the road! But most are magazine cutouts or now through my NEW favorite obsession- PINTEREST :) 

     

   

There is something so romantic about a long driveway and front porch! I have passed on this obsession to my children and they like talking and dreaming about their future dream home. I wish more home builders built new homes with this much attention to detail and curb appeal. 

Happy home-dreaming! Kim

This weekend

 We were needing another pen made for our bull to keep him away (and us safe! ) while we train our calves. So my handy husband got to work! I love this old gate, and told him that I don't want it re-painted, I love the patina it has. We took advantage of kind Mother Nature this weekend and got the whole family to work. We cut down flower beds, removed dead trees and landscaping, raked the yard, fertilized the pasture, swept patios, washed down patio furniture....this Mama absolutely lives for this family and farm bonding time. There is so much to do still, and the list is long, but luckily we got a great head start!

Grass is turning green......

                                       

.......Perennials are playing peek-a-boo........

....Sand holes dug to China, thank to 2 lil diggers......

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Project Clean-up has begun at Irishman Acres.....

I am now dreaming of freshly potted flowers, my fountain flowing, and sipping iced tea on the porch....

Hey, a girl can dream!!!    Hope everyone else enjoyed their weekend!   Kim

An EARLY spring!

St. Patricks Day is almost here, but the weather is more like early summer! Not that we are complaining! I love getting an early start on spring clean-up.
Even though this winter was extremely mild, here are some images of one good snow we had. The stillness and beauty always amazes me!

This year we did a lot of work here at Irishman Acres. We turned our hayfield into a large grazing pasture for our little herd. The fence was put up, gates installed, and a little shed for shelter was built with the help of 2 little daddy's helpers :) Also a peacock enclosure and shed was built...I will post about those lovelies later!

Our miniature herefords, Carly and Claire-a-Belle, both gave birth to little heifers this time! The Sister-moms are just alike, both had baby bulls last year!

Here is Carly's "Cassie-Dee" she weighed in at 45 lbs at birth. And was born in our barn on Feb. 27th.

And Claire-a-Belle's "lil Miss Charlie" was born on March 11th in our grain bin! She weighed in at 60 lbs!! And she is so sweet....



Along with these new additions, we also got more involved with 4-H and bought 2 black angus to show. One is a heifer we named "Clover" and the steer is called "Crimson"

I will show pics of them at a later time.

In the meantime, I need to get outside and do some yardwork while the kids are at school! They are on Spring Break next week.....:)

Love- Kim