Spring

Cast Iron Pan & Walmart

Over the Weekend I had to question what year we were in… Here’s the story…

Saturday we wound up in Pawhuska, Oklahoma at The Pioneer Woman’s places… (the Merc, her new store, and of course the Lodge where she films her show). You are invited to the Lodge on the days that it is open, you just have to get a ticket at the Merc. We wanted to eat at the Merc, but we had to put our name on the list. It was a 2 1/2-3 hour wait to get in and we arrived at 10:45 a.m. We got our ticket to the Lodge and the guy told us we had plenty of time to go to the Lodge and come back. We were like 68 on the list and at about 15 you needed to head back this way. Cool. (more…)

How to Get Rid of Squash Bugs

Squash bugs are enough to drive you crazy. You walk out and your garden is growing just fine one minute, and the next there is a crapton of some weird bugs that will drive you mad. Squash bugs seem to appear out of nowhere. One minute nothing and the next BAM! I have no clue where they came from or how they found me, but they did. Stupid bugs.

What are Squash Bugs?

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Planting Blackberry Bushes

This poor blackberry bush kind of became a laughing stock at my house. Why? Well… because, here we are in June and I bought it at the end of April. So what? Well… I just planted it yesterday.

I know, I know. It’s been living in the pot that I bought it in. That’s not a good thing really. The root system gets used to that size and then the plant could be stunted. But I wasn’t really sure where to plant it.

Jody came over yesterday and she and I went around planting stuff. We planted Marigolds in the garden as well as a couple of pumpkin plants. And… we planted the infamous Blackberry Bush. FINALLY. 

Some things to keep in mind when planting a Blackberry Bush: (more…)

Garden #2

Yes, you read that title correctly. I started my first garden in March. It sounded like a good thing… but garden number 2. Now I think I’ve seriously lost my mind. So here’s how we got to this point…

When I finally decided to start a garden, I had 2 places chosen. One was where the original garden went in and the second was this spot.

There were pros and cons to each spot that was chosen.

Original garden

  • Pros
    • Closer to the house
    • Closer to water
  • Cons
    • Less potential space
    • Trees in the yard to contend with

This garden area

  • Pros
    • Larger area
    • Very few items to compete with (i.e. trees)
    • Lots of sunlight
  • Cons
    • Harder to get water to 

Because of this… the other area was chosen. Then, I started to have “issues” getting my corn to grow (or so I thought at the time). So yesterday morning I decided I was going to start a garden in the second location

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Memorial Day Weekend – Coronavirus edition

This Memorial Day Weekend we found ourselves back at the lake. Last year we skipped out on the lake and went to KC house shopping, but this year, what is there to do? 

We bought a camper earlier this year and had big plans for it. So far, the best it has done was to house my husband’s office when schools closed.

Finally, it got to move… And guess what, it didn’t crunch the cab of the truck! Yey!

And while we had plans to SCUBA dive this weekend, we had more fun on our boat. What? Yup, we got a boat. It’s not new… in fact, I’d call it vintage or classic… do they refer to boats like that? It’s a 1976 Baja. It was my grandpas. He passed away in 2010… The boat had maintenance done to it just before that. We pulled it out of the barn a few weeks ago, hubby changed the gas and she fired up. She has a few issues. 

In fact, the drive cable broke. Simple fix and really one of the easiest things to go wrong. I wound up towing the boat back to shore on a kayak. (more…)

What Started Out As (Part 2)…

Who would have thought that mowing a lawn would have turned into this?

When we were told to stay indoors and social distance… I felt like I was lucky. I live in the country. I can easily social distance outside… and I’ve done just that. Plus, when you own livestock, you can’t just ignore them! Whew! So I’ve made myself busy this year both by landscaping my house and then moving on to my parent’s house. I did convince my dad to help me. He might not have been as crazy about the idea though. haha.

I really didn’t have much of an idea, but my goal was to clean up my parent’s house and lay mulch like crazy. I love the way the red mulch looks. (more…)

Surprise… We Bought a New Truck…

After our incident on January 1st (where coincidentally enough I asked if this was a sign of what the year would bring…) and buying the camper that caused the problem… We started discussing options to keep from having to replace a back window a second time. My husband’s truck was a short bed and while most campers wouldn’t have an issue like that… This is a toy hauler… so the front is different.

Our plans really weren’t to get a new truck for another year or so… and when I say new, new to us, not brand new.

Anyway, we have some plans to start hauling the camper coming up in the very near future and I’m just about sick thinking about that back window.

Hubby went online, just so happened to find the needle in a haystack truck that we’ve been looking for. He contacted the dealership, deals were made over the phone, and BAM at 2 am yesterday we loaded up in the truck to make an almost 6-hour drive, which took us through 3 states (ours and 2 others). They made plans to have everything ready to go at around 10 am so that we could be back out on the road and hopefully not get home too late. 

My mother-in-law went with us. She gets off work at 2 am, came to our house to shower, we all loaded up in the truck, and we were off to Greenville, Texas. I seriously think some days we need our heads examined.

We went through Paris

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I’ve Been Painting

I painted another purple cat again…

If you didn’t know this about me, I absolutely LOVE red trucks. Old red trucks, but I drove a new red truck (2014) for 2 years (hubby drove it for about 2 before that or so). I used to hate red vehicles, but gosh, not anymore. Especially after driving one. On that note, I still hate black vehicles and I’ve owned 2 of those (plus hubby’s 3 black trucks). Anyway… moving on.

A few years ago it seemed like we saw the old red truck with a Christmas tree in the bed everywhere. I wasn’t sure what the infatuation was, but then I figured it out. First off, it became a thing because it brings back that nostalgic Christmas. That Christmas everyone wants to have in a snowy cabin, hiking out to pick out the perfect tree.. yada yada yada. (more…)

Mother’s Day – Coronavirus Style

If there is one thing this Coronavirus season has brought… it has brought a lot of people staying in and staying away. But… it has brought a lot of people wanting to get out into the great outdoors. Us included. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time outside.

And for some reason, we thought it would be fun to take up hiking. Yup, you read that correctly. Why not? I have been working my butt off here lately outdoors (which when hubby isn’t working his real job, it’s made him work outside too, plus our little. She’s great). So we thought it would be fun to take a break. And you know, go hiking. Something we’ve never really done… but my little has been wanting to do things like that so now is the perfect time.

Happy Mother’s Day to me :). (more…)

We had to Buy a New Bull

When I was a kid, my dad had red cows. I didn’t know anything more than that, but I knew we had red cows.

My dad’s favorite story was about an Aussie (Australian Shepherd) dog we had. Dad would be telling how good of a cowdog Shaw was and people would scoff. Dad would tell Shaw to go over the hill and bring back the black cow. Shaw would trott off and come back and sit at my dad’s feet. People then would laugh at my dad and his “good” cow dog. Then dad would say, walk over that hill and find a black cow. 

Like I said, we had red cows. Later I learned they were Santa Gertrudis. Then, my dad, had a guy pull in, offer him an amount to buy dad’s cows and he sold them. All of them. Except for my mom’s one dairy cow. Her name was Danielle and she was a Jersey.

Next thing I knew, we were out of the Gert business and we had Long Horns. (more…)