Our First and Last Garage Sale in Princeton

I realize I have been missing for the last couple days.  I have been working.  Yes, working at my own garage sale.  I have never enjoyed having garage sales.  My mother used to have gigantic ones.  She would merchandise by putting tables with lamps and knick knacks on them.  She would set up dining tables with place settings.  She would stay up into the wee hours refinishing furniture to sell.  My dad would rewire lamps.  All I can say is UGG!  That's not for me.  I don't mind the actual sales days, but preparing is a ton of work.  It's hard to decided what to sell and then decide what to charge.  If you ask too much, then it doesn't sell.  If you sell it right away, then you think you could have gotten more.  It's a guessing game. Then there is the problem of putting up signs.  My husband made fantastic sandwich board signs with our address painted in big letters, but we weren't sure where to put them.  We didn't know if it was legal to put them in certain places.  The police never came so I guess we chose wisely.  Here is our sale just before we opened up.

7:00 AM, first day of the garage sale.

Even though the preparation was awful, the sale was fun.  The weather was perfect with nice temperatures, a light breeze and no rain.  As you know, we live kind of hidden away in the woods.  Therefore, the number of people who found us was down quite a bit.  Almost everyone who came bought something, and we sold the big stuff we wanted to sell.  We sold our built in oven and cook top that we took out during our kitchen remodel.  That was a big relief.   Our daughter Heather came over this morning with our grandson Dylan.  He had some of his stuff in the sale and his mother told him if he wanted the money, he had to work for it.  He had to make change without the benefit of a cash register.  He did a great job.  Some of the clerks we encounter in stores couldn't make change without the machine.  Some of them have trouble with a cash register.

One of the highlights of the sale was when a man showed up and told us that he had built our house 35 years ago.  He told us things we didn't know about the house.  He told us that he had happy times in the house but after he sold it, his wife got breast cancer at age 37 and struggled for thirteen years before she died.  He told us that the pond we have has a name on the county plat.  It is called Lake Lourrina, named after his wife.  I will have to go to the courthouse to see exactly how to spell it.  He brought a photo taken from the deck back then and gave it to us.  Things haven't changed that much, just that the trees have gotten larger.  Now I can say we have lake property instead of swamp property.

Photo taken with a 35mm camera over 30 years ago.

 

Photo taken today, July 13, 2013.

All in all, I am glad we had the sale.  I am glad we got rid of several things that we didn't need, but I doubt if I will ever do it again in my life. 

More Than A Storage Chest, It's a Family Heirloom

We have been going through our garages looking for things to put in our garage sale.  We found some scraps of wood and pieces from some projects that haven't been finished.  In fact, we moved them to Princeton, stashed them in the workshop and forgot about them.  Finding some of these things, reminded me of another woodworking project that did get finished.  Many years ago, when my youngest daughter started college, she asked her dad to make her a chest to store all of her important belongings.  He really hadn't made anything like that before, but thought that he could give it a try.  He looked through magazines and finally designed a simple chest.  She loved it and over the years has moved it to wherever she lived.  This last weekend she moved it into her son's room.  It still looks great, in fact the patina of the wood is getting even better.  I have blogged about many things that my talented husband has made, and this is another treasure.

Storage chest made by Mike almost 20 years ago.

Front view of cabinet

Freezing Browned Ground Beef or Meatballs

It is recipe Tuesday, but I haven't been cooking a lot lately and so I have no new recipes to share.  I do have a small helpful tip.  Whenever we see a good buy on ground beef, we buy a big family pack.  When we get home or the next day, we fry out the whole package with some onion.  After it has drained and is cooled, we package the fried hamburger in containers.  Then when we need a meal in a hurry, we can make barbeque or anything that requires browned hamburger.  How many times have you wanted to make a hamburger dish but all you have is a frozen chunk of ground beef.  I even make vegetable beef soup with browned ground beef.  Sometimes instead of frying it all,  we make a batch of meatballs or meat loaves.  Everyone has their favorite meatball or meat loaf recipe, so I won't include that.  I make the meatballs and put them on a baking sheet.  I use a broiler pan with the insert.  I put them into the oven at 350 degrees and bake them for about 20 minutes.  The fat from the hamburger drains into the bottom pan.  When they have cooled on a rack, I put them into a ziplock bag and freeze.  When you need a meal, you can take out as many as you need.  There is no need to thaw,  just put into a pan or microwave.  Sometimes I put Cream of Chicken soup on them or spaghetti sauce.

Sorry, but that's all I have for today.  It's blueberry season so I did make a bowl of blueberries and fresh peaches.  Hopefully I will have something better next Tuesday.

Operation Migration Class of 2013

The other day we were traveling home from Berlin, WI on the back roads.  We noticed that Operation Migration was beginning to set up their base camp for the class of 2013.  I wrote a blog about last years cranes Operation Migration.  This year they have eight young ones that they are going to raise in the White River Marsh.  Last week I thought I saw a big white bird fly over our marsh.  I don't think it was a whooping crane, but it could have been from this report I got today.   Apparently two of the people out setting up the pens for the young ones went into our town for lunch.  When they returned they noticed two big white birds.  They stopped immediately and took photos.  It turned out that they were two of the birds who were raised there last year.  They had migrated back from Florida and found their way back to this area.  Here is the journal entry describing what the men saw.  If anyone wants to follow Operation Migration and like their facebook page, it is fascinating. 

http://operationmigration.org/InTheField/2013/07/08/whooping-cranes-4-12-5-12-stop-by/ 

I think this is an Egret, I don't see any black tips on the wings.

I'm looking forward to seeing the progress of the new Whooping Crane Class of 2013, and maybe the one year olds will show up at my house some time this summer.  Stay tuned.

Flowers in our Yard

I don't have time or energy to write much today.  Getting ready for a garage sale in this heat and humidity is NOT fun.  We need more room with all the stuff we have to sell.  Today I am just posting some of the flowers that are blooming in the yard.

Michigan Lily

Coreopsis

Yellow Lily

Stella d'oro

Columbine

Hosta

Icelandic Poppy

Composting Used Coffee Filters

Today I debated if I should even write a blog on this.  I know many of you will think that I have gone off the deep end and need serious help.  As you know I compost almost everything.  I have several compost piles outside in different stages of readiness, and I have a worm farm which uses some scraps and paper.  Worm Farming, An Unusual Type of Farmer   Even though they say tea bags and coffee filters are able to be composted, I was finding that they don't break down very quickly.  I developed a method to solve this.  When I take the coffee grounds and filter out of the coffee pot, I scrape off the used grounds either in the compost container or keep them separate to use on the hydrangea and other acid loving plants.  Then I put the used filter on a plate and microwave it for two minutes.  The smell of coffee fills the room and it dries the filter. 

Coffee grounds and dried coffee filters

 
I then shred the filter in the paper shredder.  It take almost no time and everything is broken down to a more manageable size ready to compost.

Shredded Coffee Filters

So if this is my last post, you know they have taken me away in a straight jacket, if not for the subject matter then for taking photos of used coffee grounds and shredded paper.

Feeding the Ducks

Our daughter lives on the Fox River also.  She lives several miles down river and in town.  They have daily visitors coming to see them.  They are the area ducks.  The word is out that whenever anyone comes out of the back door, it is time for a snack.  When we were visiting last weekend, we went down on the pier to see how high the river was.  It is still pretty high, but it has gone down a little. 

My daughter and I checking out the river.

What a life, just standing on a log watching the river flow past.

Then it started to rain but the ducks didn't care.

We headed up to the house and so did the ducks.

It was a short shower and the rain stopped.

Ewan showed us the corn they were going to feed to the ducks.

 

He began throwing the corn out there.

A little more corn and here they come.

 

 Soon the ducks finished all the corn and returned to the river until next time.

Dylan borrowed my camera and took a few photos of his mom's roses.  He did a good job.  They are so pretty.  It was a good day and proves that you don't have to live in the country to enjoy what nature has to offer.  It's everywhere, you just have to look.

Staining our log home

Owning a log home does require some upkeep.  The house has to be stained every few years to keep the logs from drying out.  We usually do it ourselves, but it takes a long time to power wash the house and then brush on the stain.   This year we decided to hire someone to do the work.  We hired a person and his son.  They are familiar with log houses.  He has built several and was the person who built on our dining room.  Putting a New Addition on a Log House

The first thing they did was power wash the whole house.

All that spray is making the windows look really bad.  They will need washing for sure.

After they power washed the house and knocked down all the beehives and bird nests, they left and let it dry for a couple days.

When they came back, they covered all my plants and the windows with plastic.  I was so worried that they would damage the flowers.  We did have some stain sprayed or dripped on the leaves, but I hope it won't do a lot of harm. 

They tried to cover the plants with plastic.

I know they tried, but some of the plants got dripped on and are suffering some damage.  I think we should have waited until fall, so the plants would be dying off anyway.

The leaves of this hosta look oily.

You can see stain dripping off the leaves.  Oh dear!

Two of the buds are dead and falling off already.

After putting plastic over all the windows, they were ready to stain.  They used a power sprayer, and they were finished before we knew it.  What would have taken us all summer, took these two workers less than seven hours each.

Dining Room area all sprayed and drying.

Everything back to normal.

Making bowls and pens

As I was looking through my photos trying to think of something to blog about today, I came across these photos.  My son in law is a master of many things from scuba diving to mountain climbing.  He always likes a new challenge.  This past winter when we stopped over to see them, he was out in the garage working on something.  He had purchased a lot of different types of wood, but we had no idea what he was going to do with them.  This is what he was doing.  He was turning the wood on a lathe and making wooden bowls and beautiful pens.

 Bowl of apples they have on their dining room table.

He gave me a couple small bowls to put on my mantle.

Here are several pens that he and Dylan have made.

My grandson Dylan thought it was pretty cool to see how a plain piece of wood or acrylic could be made into these useful items.  So he learned how to do it also.

These small pieces of wood can become a beautiful pen.

Dylan concentrating, trying to get it just right.

He made several pens for Christmas gifts last year.

Pens don't have to be made of wood.  Acrylic blocks can be purchased and turned on the lathe also.  Then the pen parts can be purchased at Woodcraft or other stores of that type.  I have no idea how to do it myself so it is more than amazing to see the process and the final product.  I am hoping that some of the unusual types of wood that we have on our property can be turned into a pen or bowl someday.

Here is one of the pens Dylan made.  He turned it, sanded it and polished it all by himself.