Remodel Mondays – Outside ambiance

So I’m not quite ready to post before and after photos, but I will, I promise. We’ve had a few people over to see the new house, and they don’t recognize it at all!

Moving in has been a bit crazy… There are still a few odds and ends of things that need to get finished, and we’re living in the middle of it.

One of the things I really didn’t like about the old house is that there was no good outdoor space to hang out. We live on the top of a hill, and we have great views, but we had nowhere to sit and enjoy them. One of the major changes with this remodel were two giant porches.

Our front porch used to just be a concrete stoop. Now it’s a bit more elaborate.

Mini birthday cakes

My birthday was last week. And unless I want a cake from WalMart or an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen (which sometimes I do), I need to bake my own cakes.

(Don’t tell Hubby Doc, but I really don’t mind all that much. I do love to complain about it though.)

And, I will freely admit, I am a bake-it-from-a-box-mix kind of girl. I want to be a bake-it-from-scratch kind of girl, but I’m just not. And that’s the way it is.



I did want to try something a little different this year, though. I’ve done the round 2-layer cakes, which are fine. I’ve done 9x13 cakes, which are kind of boring. I’ve done cupcakes, and I just make a giant mess.

Remodel Monday – Living in Chaos

Our goal was to sleep in the new house on Wednesday night, April 18. Things weren’t quite as far along as we wanted, so we waited a few days. We did sleep here Friday night, April 20!



Things are still pretty disheveled, and the construction isn’t quite finished yet. But I moved my coffee pot here from the office, which means we are officially living back at home!

One of the walls in the bedroom still needs a little repair and another coat of paint, but we’re sleeping in there!

Remodel Mondays – Finishing Touches

We are getting so close… Most of the major work is done and we are working on the finishing touches for our new house now!



The kitchen is pretty well put together. The (giant) refrigerator is in place and hooked up. I love getting ice water right out of the door! They still need to finish installing the gas stove, but everything else is ready to go!

Little boys all grown up

During calving season last spring, we had to do a C-section on one of our cows. The surgery was successful, and Charlie the bull calf was born.

In November 2011, we loaded up our bull calves and sent them to Purdue’s Indiana Beef Evaluation Program in Bedford, IN. We had to pay to send the bulls there, but they took great care of our boys and also collected a lot of data about rate of weight gain and growth.

At the end of the program (about 5 months) they host a sale of all the bulls. They have criteria for which bulls make the sale, and unfortunately Charlie didn’t quite fit the bill. I think he didn’t grow quite fast enough, but to be honest I’m not sure of the details.

Since Charlie didn’t make the sale, we had to find our own buyer for him. We did that, without much trouble, but Charlie had to leave the test farm before his new home was going to be ready. So he got to come home to visit for a few days!