impromptu wedding

When, I got an email inviting me to an elopement at 2:00 from Kimberly yesterday, to say I was shocked would be an understatement. I can only imagine how she felt when she heard the news herself. You see, I had "known" Kimberly through our online message board at Studio Calico. She was living in Atlanta at the time we first "met" and later found out her husband's job was moving them to Bowling Green. She moved here about 2 weeks ago and came to pick up her kit at the office on Monday. We were so excited to meet since we had talked online for quite some time. Plus, anyone who loves my cows is good in my book...and that she does :)

The only part omitted from her original email was that the wedding was at 2:00 on Thursday. Since it was an elopement, I naturally thought it was on Wednesday, the day I had gotten the email. So, at 2:00 Scarlet and I headed up to Fountain Square to take photos, but it was pouring down rain so we just sat in the car and waited and waited and waited....no Kimberly. About 2:20 we decided to head back to the office. The next morning we checked the message board and saw that Kimberly had posted about the wedding being Thursday.

So, on a much prettier day, Chelsea and Zack said their vows. The ceremony took all of 2 minutes, but they were a happy 2 minutes indeed!

This was my first time taking photos at a wedding (and probably my last unless another elopement comes my way), so don't critique them too harshly. Oh, and I was dealing with 2:00 sun in the middle of July.


The bracelet on Chelsea's wrist is her "something old"

Exchanging their rings.
I love the look on her face here. In a two-minute ceremony, there wasn't much time to capture all the possible expressions, but I just think this look is so genuine and I love it.

Isn't she beautiful?
And, the same photo in color, because I liked it so much :)

Kimberly's daughter, Brianna was the flower girl. She did a wonderful job and is going to be a great sister-in-law, I can already tell!







And the proof is on paper!

Chelsea and Zack, I wish you a long life of happiness together. Marriage takes a lot of hard work and commitment but if you're up for the challenge, it's the most rewarding relationship there is on earth.

Oh, and if I spelled anyone's name wrong, I apologize :)

this is my baby

A few of you surmised that those might be my kids in the last post. Ah....they are cute aren't they? But, they're not mine.

If anyone has gotten a kit packed with love, it might have been by Cara and those are her babies.

Greg sent me this photo of our newest baby taken with his iPhone. He was thrilled to get some solar flare on it :)


It's a girl!!!!!

And, in the cow world, that's like hitting the jackpot! Sorry guys, but girls are more valuable.

ava, carter, & sneaks

I had the privilege of taking photos of Ava, Cara's new baby the other day. She was born on June 17 and weighed in at 5lbs 12oz. Such a small little thing, but healthy and happy.




And, her big brother Carter hopped in on the photo shoot as well :)


Finally, I have some sneaks of the August kits and add-ons to show you.


I'm so in love with this kit. I think it's the bright, cheerful colors. They just work so well for scrapping summer photos and black&white photos.

Hope you love them as much as I do!

beating the storm

Just thought I'd post a few photos I took earlier this week. I'm doing this mainly so my aunt and uncle and grandmother in Texas can see them. So, if your name is Steve, Kathy, or Ann, this post is for you :)

This is the field on the east side of our property. It's the whole reason I'm adding more windows to the kitchen, just so we can watch the sun come up over this field. It's just a theory right now because I've never been out there that early, but I'm imagining that it would be beautiful to watch a sunrise.

My man on his stallion (the 4-wheeler of course).

Miss Pretty-Crazy with a bite hanging out of her mouth.

He looks like an actual farmer here :)


Going underneath the fly-rub. I think Greg pours diesel on that and it rubs on their backs and keeps the flies away. I told you we had a fly prevention program and I wasn't kidding!

Spraying all the cows with something to keep the flies away. Just a side note, Scarlet thought preventing flies would make the cows not organic, but that's not true, it just keeps them from going blind from pink eye. Their meat tastes the same and there's no chemicals that go into the meat. But, except for the calves, these cows are for calf-production, not eating, anyway.

Well, that's it.

"she's pretty but she's crazy"

Funny how there's so many similarities between cows and women. I mean seriously, the title of this post could just as easily apply to a psycho-woman as it does to this beautiful, yet crazy bovine.

"She's pretty but she's crazy."

That's how Greg describes Cow #1 and I whole-heartedly agree. Just look at her. Perfect hair. Perfect eyes. Perfect ears (but with mis-matchy earrings). A pretty shape to her face.

But, man is she ever C-R-A-Z-Y.

As soon as G pulls up on the 4-wheeler, she immediately heads toward it and starts mooing incessantly. The other cows come, too, but she's just much more obsessed. Look at them in the photo below, they're off minding their business and she's trying to eat out of the bucket attached to the 4-wheeler. Crazy, I tell you.

She even kept trying to take a bite while Greg was spraying her with fly-prevention.

I guess those 5 words just sum it up best.

healthy eating

In general, I'm a pretty healthy eater. I love vegetables....as in, when I was a child, I ate raw okra. I also ate raw potatoes with salt. I can eat any vegetable raw, even without ranch sauce to dip it in. mmmmm....

But, put a cantaloupe on my plate and I won't touch it. Matter-of-fact, I probably wouldn't let it get close enough to my plate to even smell the stuff. ewwwww....

Anyway, a few days ago, I was craving healthiness so I fixed this salad at 10:00 in the morning (I would have fixed it at 9:00, but that would just be strange). It consisted of 3 roma tomatoes, slices of red onion, and a huge hunk of fresh spinach. Since we're living in the apartment and trying to pare down on food supplies, I didn't have any ready-made Balsamic vinaigrette, so I made my own.

Here's the recipe (and it's a delicious one) courtesy of Emeril. The only liberty I took was to not add oil and to add a bit more pepper.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar, optional*
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• Mesclun salad mix or favorite greens, for accompaniment
• Assortment of salad ingredients, such as cherry tomatoes, chopped carrots, sliced red onion, chopped celery, diced cucumbers, walnuts
• Blue cheese, for garnish

Directions

Beat the vinegar in a bowl with the optional sugar, garlic, salt and pepper until sugar and salt dissolves. Then beat in the oil by droplets, whisking constantly. (Or place all the ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine.) Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Toss a few tablespoons of the dressing with the salad mix and desired salad ingredients, top with blue cheese and serve immediately.

If not using dressing right away, cover and refrigerate, whisking or shaking again before use.

*If using a good quality balsamic vinegar you should not need the sugar, but if using a lesser quality you might want the sugar to round out the dressing. (I did add the sugar because my vinegar needed to be rounded....whatever that means)

frisbee-obsessed

This is the stance that I see every time Addy wants to play frisbee. I can't tell you the number of frisbees that we've gone through over the past 7 years. They've been covered in mud, sopping wet, chewed through, you-name-it, but she doesn't like to be outside without it.

Given the choice between a treat or her frisbee, she'd pick the frisbee every time.

Jett, on the other hand would chose the treat, then he'd chase Addy chasing the frisbee.

ewwwwww

Sometimes moms like to think their children are immune from gross-ness. No one wants to admit theirs is the kid that doesn't clean behind his ears or picks gum from underneath a desk and chews it or (ahem) eats their own boogers.

So, I might as well deny my children do the same.

demolition

The demolition at our farmhouse is fully under-way. Greg hired some workers to help take off molding, rip up carpet, and take out the cabinets. Originally, we were going to donate the fixtures to Re-Store (a Habitat for Humanity organization), but since so many of the workers wanted them, we decided to let them have it, after all, they probably needed it more than someone who could buy it at Re-Store. I think we'll still have a stove, oven and dishwasher (circa 1992) to donate, but my guess is no one will want it.

Okay, now for the photos of the destruction process. I'll have a few more to post later this week. The framer's are there now and have knocked out some walls and it's looking a lot more open, which I love! Until now, I haven't been that excited about the whole process, but now that progress is being made, it's definitely getting more fun.

These are of our two upstairs baths. We're keeping the tubs and toilets. According to my dad, "They just don't make toilets like they used to."

You never know what you're gonna find when you start ripping things out.


This is the master bath. It was arranged rather strangely. Where you see the black marks on the wall, that was where the vanity and sinks sat. And, there was carpet beneath that area....make-up and toothpaste-stained carpet. Then, by the window, was the toilet. Yes, you could actually sit on the pot and look out the front of the house at the same time. Yikes!

Needless to say, we're rearranging this area.

Remember me saying that we were going to rip out that wall to the left of the fireplace and expose the brick? Doesn't it look better and more open already? I'm so excited.....well, I was excited until I learned that the drywall on the back of the chimney was stuck directly on, and because of the drywall held in the moisture, we have mold. It's easy to fix since it's located only on the chimney, and I'm so thankful we decided to rip that up.
Here's the laundry-room. We took these shelves down and they're going to work perfectly in the barn for Greg's shop area.
Still in the laundry-room, this door is being taken out and the room expanded to the corner of the house (you can see it through the glass). Then, the washer/dryer will sit next to the little closet that houses the water heater.
I don't think I mentioned the staircase earlier, but the railings are about 8-9 inches apart, meaning small dogs and children can easily slip right through. We're going to have to take out the railing and replace it to pass inspection.
Here's the kitchen sans cabinets. We're adding lots of windows in here along this wall.
And, the stove will sit in this area (below). This is the area that backs up to the fireplace.
And, here's the half-bath without the cabinet. I like it better already.
And, my favorite discovery. Once the house was removed from this upstairs bedroom, the room seems so much larger. Love that!

fly prevention program

Sure, I know it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post. No, I didn't fall off the planet, I've just been extremely busy with Studio Calico plus some other personal business to attend to. I'm alive, doing well, and there should be no cause for worry. Another reason I haven't posted is because I've only taken about 3 photos in the last 2 weeks and I can't stand to post without photos, but here goes.

A couple of weeks ago, Greg informed me that we needed a fly prevention program at our farm. When I first heard this, I about laughed myself silly.

FLY PREVENTION PROGRAM?????? You've got to be kidding me. I really thought he had made it up.

Turns out, most of our cows have pink-eye and the cause for pink-eye in cows is due to the flies on the cow-poop landing on the cows' eyes. Yes, it's a wonderful thought, I know.

So, off Dad and Greg went to Southern States (another farm supply company here) to get a thingy for the cows to walk under that scrapes along their back with some sort of repellent on it, some spray-repellent, and some L8400 (I think those are the right letters and numbers), which is an injectible antibiotic.

The first order of business was to herd the cows and calves into the corral to spray them down and inject them. The first time they did this, it took all day....literally. All. Day.

Still, they couldn't get one of the female calves sprayed, and after the second and third day trying to pen her in to treat her, we were getting worried she might go blind. And, if she had gone blind, we wouldn't want to sell her, we'd just sweet-feed her, make her fat, then butcher her.

Luckily, with all the practice of corralling the cows every 3 or 4 days, they've gotten the hang of it. Greg now has a cow call which consists of beating a bucket on the feeding trough and yelling "Here Cow" in an announcer's voice. Funny, but effective.

I'm proud to say, they've treated all the cows multiple times and our fly prevention program has a high success rate. Yes, we still have flies. There's no way to get rid of them all, but there's much less, and the pink-eye is under control.

Also, I'm proud to report another birth on our farm. Our fourth live birth occurred on Thursday. We have one more to go this year, so wish us luck.

I'll be back later this week with photos of our partially-demolished farmhouse.