one mom, lots of good ideas

At some point in our lives we all end up trying to make the best of what could be an inconvenient situation. And when we are the mom we try hard to make it the best we can for our little ones. The situation of our customer was not by any means a bad thing. They are (perhaps by now they have already had) expecting their fourth baby. The delima comes in because the first three were boys and the fourth one has had the good taste to be a girl. So when you only have two rooms for the kids the boys have to go together and the girl gets her own, of course right. So she ordered from us three very cool loft beds. She had some great ideas to make sure that each one has a very cool space all his own even if it is in the same room as his two brothers. She did some things that I can't believe no one else had done yet. First she had a small writing desk put on each one, as far from his brother's as possible. We have done other kinds of desks, several in fact but not a very simple one like this.

Her next awesome idea was to add a clothes rod, closet rod, hanger rod? I don't know what to call it, we all have one in our closet I have never until now called it anything weird. Okay I'm back sorry, I again am amazed that no one else has wanted that, it is a great idea. Freddy made the little support in the middle so I had to take a picture of it.

She bought these cool things for them to put clothes in. The school they go to has uniforms so she is thinking they can have their uniforms in them and they will be handy for climbing out of bed and into school clothes. Smart mom.

Overall I think they turned out great. I can see each of them making the space under their bed their own. She even let each of them choose a color for their wall.

Up next another mom's solution to three girls in one room. The best part of what we do is I get to see every one else's great ideas and then I can make use of them myself. The next mom had a great idea that I just might have to steal.

Babies, babies, babies

First an update on the chicks. They are all doing well, the chicken outside has four little ones fallowing her around, which is adorable. I love to watch a hen with her chicks. And the ones inside are doing well too. They are getting their feathers. And they fill our house with their little peeps. Now moving on to today's babies. This morning my dad came over with a bucket of baby opossums. When he went out to the barn this morning there was a momma opossum with her babies and the dogs went after her. He got to her and took her far away from his dogs with four of her babies still with her. But these four got separated from their momma, and my dad being the big softie that he is had to save them from the dogs and then give them to the kids.

The kids were so excited to find out there was a baby opossum waiting for each of them.

They are kind of cute I have to admit. Most likely we will raise them up until they are big enough to fend for themselves and then let them go. But in the mean time the kids are in heaven. They love the way the little things grab your finger with their tail. It reminds me of when a baby grabs anything that touches it's hand.

My daughter thanked me for letting them stay. She said she was surprised because of my "no rodents for pets" rule. I got off the hook by telling her that they are not rodents, they are marsupials. It is always better when you are the mom if you don't break your own rules.

I do have some bed pictures to put up, but they will have to wait for another day, I was just more in the mood to put these up today.

Big news here

Our chickens had chickens. I can't answer the question for the whole world but in our case the chicken came before the egg. Last year we bought some chicks and raised them up and now our chickens have hatched out chicks. They are much better at it than we are, we tried the incubator thing last year and we were not so good at it. I forget how many eggs we put in, but we got two to hatch out and they both died in a couple days.
The kids are so excited. I think in their minds they are like grandparents because their chickens have chicks. We had three sitting? or is it setting? anyway three of them had eggs, then the first one's nest got raided by something and all those were gone. Also we have a cat that I don't trust, he was a stray that showed up and he is a good mouser but I think he would hunt anything that moved. So we decided when the second one's hatched out to take them and keep them safe till they are a little bigger. It is amazingly difficult to convince a hen that you will be able to take better care of her chicks than she will! As I bent down to pick one up, she jumped on my head it is not like the most painful thing in the world to have a hen jump on your head but it does hurt.

She was so upset that she went and kicked hen number three off her eggs and stole them. We decided we had rocked the boat enough and let them work it out. Now today when we got home she has hatched the second nest out. Now we have to decide if we are going to let her keep these and see how it goes or take them too. I do know one thing, if they are getting taken away it must be Freddy's turn to go get them.

some days

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? I do sometimes it drives me crazy and I just have to go to you tube and listen to the song, that sometimes helps. Others I have to listen to anything else. My husband hates it when I share the song stuck in my head because it seems to be contagious. Although sometimes the songs that get stuck in my head are so random and obscure he has no idea what they are. Today it is "Some Days" by Meridith Brooks. I doubt he would ever get that one stuck in his head. So I will have to suffer alone. Anyway I thought I would fallow the theme in my head and tell you about some of my recent days. My little girl picked me wildflowers the other day, and then took pictures of them. I loved the flowers, of course and I thought the pictures weren't bad so I am sharing.

I did find batteries (read that my husband found batteries) for the camera. So here are some pictures of the bed we delivered last. It is a Jeremy twin loft with a bookshelf. The color is honey pine. It matched the other furniture in the room quite well. They were happy, we were happy, (read relieved it is a little stressful trying to match other finishes)

Our customer noticed the little dark circle of the plugs. That is cool, my hubby knowing how much I love the contrast used oak dowel to make the plugs and they turned out very cool. So cool she noticed and cool she read enough of the blog to know about them.

Yesterday and today I have been taking care of a sick hubby. I knew he didn't feel good yesterday but I just expected the normal icks. I completely forgot about our oldest staying after school, so when he called I rushed off with the other kids to get him. I was an hour late because of the fact I forgot and they are doing construction on the road and I was stuck. ("some days are better than others....some days whatever") So when we got back hubby was in his chair with a blanket shivering. It was like 80 inside so I took his temp and it was 104. Not good for a grown up. I gave him a dose of fever reducer, waited nothing still 104, gave him more, waited nothing still 104. Then I made him take a cool bath for about 15 mins, he told me he did not like me, which I told him was ok because I know he loves me. Then checked him again, still 104. Then I made him put ice packs on his neck and under his arms, he did not like me again. It came down to 103! Before bed I gave him more fever meds and at about 1:30 he was not hot to the touch anymore. This morning it was only 101, we can live with that. He is in bed. I am pretty sure he has the same thing our youngest had last week. He just can't get a little sick, when he does it he does it all the way.

some house news

We have had so much going on I have neglected blogging. So on the bed front we are still behind and the transmission went out on out truck and that is further complicating things. So bed pictures are going to be a little slow in coming. We are working on beds, I have some pictures of our last delivery on the camera but my kids left the camera on and the batteries are dead so I cant download them. I will get there. We are getting caught up slowly. We are working on three Clair beds and a toddler bed from Etsy. We are really trying to get caught up on those. We are still not advertising for new work just yet.

Our plan is to get our minivan back on the road and use it for deliveries. Which will change the nature of our delivery abilities somewhat. We will not be able to deliver the bigger beds anymore. So we will focus on twin and toddler size beds as well as the kitchens. Hopefully we can stay busy enough with those things. Now on to the house. We are actually close to physically moving onto our own corner of my dad's farm. We have two more walls up. And thanks to my parents we have water up there. Today they are delivering the rest of the concrete we need to pour the rest of our footing for the foundation. That will allow us to get the power hooked up at the least expensive rate possible. So we have been very busy on that project.

But the thing that puts us very close to moving is a camping trailer that my brother bought while he was here last week. It is 30 feet long, a 1985 and it has a working bathroom with a shower and a kitchen. He is letting us use it and that makes it possible for us to move up there. A shower and a kitchen really make a huge difference. We are very grateful for his kindness. So that will help us make the transition more smoothly till we are further along.

I am looking froward to just being there. Lately it has seemed that we have been mentally and physically in two places. And that just gets exhausting, and generally impedes any progress. I am hopping that physically inhabiting only one space will make that more simple and help us to be able to focus on what we need to get done.

Cecelia's Bed

We delivered this Jeremy twin loft to Cecelia on Saturday, and we forgot our camera, again. Her mom was kind enough to take these pictures and email them to us. She had to get in the closet to get some of them, I think that counts as way above and beyond for a customer. A huge thank you for the work and for the pictures. They look great. We did not build the doll house. But I must say it looks good under our bed.

I always love the little people who we deliver beds to. They are so excited and happy to have a new bed, and Cecelia was no exception. I think we may have heard her giggling the whole time we were setting up the bed. If you can't hear an adorable little giggle at your place of employment I suggest looking for a new job, you would be surprised what a difference it makes in the whole day if you can hear giggling for an hour straight

This was the first time we put the stairs and the bookshelf at the same end of the bed. It looks great I think.

These fancy little feet are an option on the Jeremy style twin loft, we do not use them on a full loft. If you want them you need to let us know when you order. They do add something especially on a girls bed. Thank you again for the great pictures!

Spring time

Today we had to drive to get some material, and the world is turning green. I love it. I can never pick a favorite season I always just look forward to the next one. But Spring is always good. One of the cool things about spring is baby stuff. There are new calves at my dad's place. Including a new little Jersey steer who is just about the most adorable little thing I have ever seen. Today my dad showed up with this little guy. He caught him in his pond and wanted to show the kids. They named him Fudge, I have no idea why.

They wanted to keep him as a pet in the worst way. Well at first they were afraid he might be a snapping turtle. It made me laugh they would not put their hand in the bucket until I assured them that it would not bite them.

He really was a cute little thing. But we made them go and put him in the creek. With everything that we have going on right now his chances of survival are much higher in the wild.

This is some of what we are so busy with. On Friday we poured cement. 49 bags of cement, which my husband figured out is almost 4,000 lbs of concrete. He carried it into the hole and then I mixed it with a hoe in the wheelbarrow and then he poured it into the forms. So technically he move all of it twice. If you have been fallowing along you know that we have to finish this in order to meet the requirement of the local power company for a less expensive power hook up. We still have about 24 bags left to pour and a little digging to do. But we don't want to think about it, maybe in a few more days when my husbands body is a little more over it we will think about it.

The building that you see behind it is the part of the house that we are going to finish first. It will be like a small cabin to live in while we build the rest of it. Because we are doing this without a loan it will take some time, and we did not want to do the thing where we live in a mobile home while we build, in our price range they are not very nice. So we decided to go this route. When we are done with the whole house it will look like it was all done at the same time. We figure that nothing will motivate us to keep going on the rest of the house like living in a small cabin with four kids.

Up next some pictures of the bed we delivered on Saturday. We forgot our camera, again. And our customer was kind enough to take some pictures and email them to us. I will share them next time.