Our dog Kodi

We lost a very good friend last week.

How to comment on blogs

Okay, so you’ve found a couple of blogs you like to read, and you figured out how to follow them. Great job!

You know blogging isn’t a one-way street, right? We want to hear from you! Most bloggers have a way for you to leave them comments. If you’re not used to commenting, it can feel a little intimidating to start, but we won’t bite. I promise.

Most blog posts will have a spot for you to comment at the end of the post. If you’re reading a blog post in your email (or in an RSS reader), you’ll need to go to the website to leave a comment. All you have to do is click on the title of the post in your email (not the subject line of the email) and you’ll go right to the website. Scroll down to the bottom of the post, and see what you find.

Here is the comment section on my blog. When you first get there, you’ll see this shadow guy with a text box that says “Leave a message…” 

Crockpot rosemary apple chicken

This is going to be a new favorite fall dish! Who doesn’t love a fall dinner in the crockpot?

Basement, part 2

Big huge thanks to my mother-in-law who has agreed to host Thanksgiving this year! Wahoo, we got a reprieve on Project Eat-Off-The-Basement-Floor!

It’s a temporary reprieve… we are still holding our office Christmas party down here next month. So we are still working our butts off to get this thing finished.

Since there were a few parts of the floor that had never been painted, and we were never going to get all the dirt off the floor, we decided to paint the whole dang thing. We moved the freezers away from the wall, scrubbed the entire thing (with a major floor scrubber!), painted where the freezers were supposed to go, and then moved them back.

How to follow blogs

I know I’ve got a few friends out there who aren’t bloggers, but know people who are bloggers. (You know who you are…) You may not want to dive into the world of blogging, but you want to keep up with what a few of your friends are doing. Surely there’s got to be an easier way than remembering to go to their websites every day to see if there’s something new!

Good news – there is a much easier way! As bloggers, we’re writing for you – and we want you to read it! So we do our best to make it easy for you to keep up with what is going on in our little corner of the internet.

A day on the farm

Just another fall day on the farm. The dogs are lounging outside in the sun.

Cleaning the basement

This is not your run-of-the-mill “we need to sweep the floors and knock down the cobwebs once a year” sort of basement cleaning. This is serious basement cleaning.

One of the drawbacks of doing some of the work for our home remodel ourselves is that, well, the construction guys didn’t do everything. Including the post-construction clean up. And, frankly, we haven’t gotten to the basement yet.

But it is time. (Okay, it’s well past time.)

There are sort of three parts to our basement now. The part under the new house (we’ll deal with that later…), the main part under the old house, and the smaller part under the old house (we put up a wall to separate these two sections).

We’ve been dealing with the smallest part of the basement so far. Here’s half of it… with a bunch of junk.

Filling in water line trenches

Last we saw, our yard was criss-crossed with 4-foot deep trenches. Everywhere.
But, not to fear! Farmer Doc has been working overtime to get the trenches filled up (with water lines) and filled in (with dirt). The trench across the driveway was the first part of the project. Look how pretty and smooth!

Upside-down pizza casserole

Okay, I know that when you think “casserole” you don’t automatically think of something yummy. But hear me out here… I’m a huge fan of a dish that I can prep, toss in the oven, and then forget about for a little bit. (You know, wash the dishes, clean up, do a load of laundry, read a book, put my feet up with a cocktail… well, one of those anyway…)

And, come on, how yummy does this look?!

Trenching for water lines

Yes, we are still remodeling. Only now we’ve moved from the house to the yard… And what an adventure it is!


This is a trencher. It’s a scary piece of equipment, and Farmer Doc rented it. For exactly one day. Which meant there was a lot of trenching…


Which looked like this. (The barking dog helps the trencher work right. Everyone should have one.)

(If you’re reading this in a reader or your email and can’t see the video below, click through to the website and you can watch it there.)