Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Sun, Slow Cooking & Mini-ing

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Just got around to answering comments this morning. I was going on 4 hours of sleep yesterday and I didn’t have the energy to tackle them! I got a good night’s sleep so I’m much better today.

Yes. We bought a crockpot – the 4 quart size, which will be just fine for us. We don’t eat meat, remember. Besides, we had no room for a 6 quart! I spent the morning clearing out the shelves that are behind solid doors at the bottom of our white china cabinet. As often happens, it was a job I should have tackled a while ago. A lot of the spray bottles and cleaners were out of date. I grabbed a trash bag and started dumping. The result is a much more organized cabinet and room for a slow cooker.

Don made Crockpot Quinoa and Vegetables from the Moms with Crockpots website and boy, was it good! We added some garbanzo beans for protein, as well. And we have leftovers! It’s just nice to change things up a bit. Added bonus: the house certainly smelled yummy!

We had a very cold but sunny day yesterday and we have one again today. After months of rain – much more than normal – and gray skies, I’ll take cold weather if it gives me sun. My mood immediately elevates. I’ve said this before, but I seem to be much more prone to blue moods when the skies are gray than I was when I was younger. Today? The sun is streaming in the house and it’s beautiful.

This is where I left off with the mini tree. Ornaments had started falling. Flowers from the green vase started falling. Claudia started screaming.

I didn’t work on it yesterday because I was so exhausted and I knew it would end up being an exercise in frustration. Today, however, I will. It’s going to be pretty when I finish!

And I’m going to finish attaching all these egg cups with the Tacky Wax I use for the dollhouses. I’m nearly 3/4 of the way through. Then I can safely move the cabinet to get to my Christmas decorations.

Okay. Onward and upward!

Happy Wednesday.

Gravel and Slow Cookers

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Our work with Item 4 yesterday took longer than we thought it would, but isn’t that always the way? Don rented a pickup truck, drove to the place that carries the gravel, had it dumped in the truck, drove home and then proceeded to shovel it out into a small wheelbarrow that we have (which is now ruined for garden work, of course). Then I dumped the gravel, while Don shoveled some more. My job was to spread it and carve out some sort of path from the driveway to the kitchen. We have some left over, which is being stored in said wheelbarrow under a tarp. If we need more to fill in here and there, we know we have some on hand.

Anyway. It took a long time. I was tuckered out. Don, who had to take the truck to a car wash and power wash it before he returned it, was even more tired. I’m glad we did it, though.

So no updates on the green mini tree.

This morning we spent an hour researching slow cookers – Don has been wanting to get one. Now, this is the thing about our kitchen: it may look spacious, but we have very little cupboard space. Hardly any. So, while Don was gung ho on a larger cooker, I, being the practical one (and often the downer because of that) kept insisting that we had to make sure we had a place to store it. And that meant we had to have the dimensions of the cooker. I balked at storing it on top of the refrigerator. I don’t like seeing too many small appliances out on the counters. In our case, we have to have the microwave and the stand mixer on the counter. But more? Nope. I drew a line in the sand. Since our kitchen and living room are essentially one big room, I’m very careful about it not looking too kitchen-y, something we could get away with if it was a separate room.

Would it fit in our dishwasher that we use for storage? No. And all the other cupboards were at capacity.

Finally, I thought of the china cabinet that we have in the kitchen. It will take some rearranging but we can do it – ONLY if we buy the 4 quart version and not the 6 quart. Besides, we don’t have kids, it’s just the two of us, so we don’t really need a big old 6 quart slow cooker.

Cleaning out the cabinet will involve getting rid of the juicer, another one of Don’s big passions that hasn’t been used for years. In fact, he forgot we still had it. I hope we’re more successful with the slow cooker. Don does most of the cooking and he wants to vary our menus a bit more and I’m all for that.

Riveting, right?

Maybe, maybe, after I’m done rearranging that cabinet, I’ll get to work on my mini Christmas tree.

Wish me luck!

Happy Tuesday.

 

Mini Modern

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Don is off renting a pickup truck to bring a wee bit more Item 4 (gravel) to our house. In all the work on the driveway, we didn’t realized how wet the area that leads from the drive to the kitchen door would get. And that spells trouble when it gets icy. Since we enter the house through that door and our oil and propane guys use that path as well, we figured it would be a good idea to take care of that ASAP.

It’s warmer and sunnier today so it’s a good day to tackle it – but it’s very windy. It seems as if we can’t have a sunny day lately without it being windy.

Yesterday, though sleep deprived, I worked on the modern mini tree and the green tree, as well. I was going to try to add ornaments to the green tree without gluing them but, after bringing it downstairs in the late afternoon and trying to position it in the dollhouse, my frustration grew as ornaments kept falling off. At that point, I was running on fumes, so I stopped for the day.

I’m gluing them on today. The princess pine, which is a moss, isn’t at all stiff, so it won’t support the ornaments without some help. I’ve had the tree for several years now, so why not glue them in? It would make next year a lot easier!

Some photos of the modern tree in the modern dollhouse. Remember, I’ve done next to nothing with this dollhouse because I haven’t been motivated (though I’m getting there) and wasn’t at all sure what direction I wanted to take. But here it is:

I just threw that rug in there for some color on the floor.

I managed to cut the thick wire that formed the trunk with my wire cutters and then I inserted it back in the base, added some glue, and it’s done.

I have some things to add to the room and I’ll do that soon and take some more photos. The dollhouse is in the hallway upstairs and that area can be dark. And dollhouses are just plain difficult to photograph anyway. You’re basically aiming the lens at a dark hole.

After we deal with the gravel, I’ll work on the other tree and decorate Hummingbird Cottage.

Happy Monday.

 

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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