The Chickens are Home to Roost!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Barbara and Gertrude:

We call them Babs and Gert. Though sometimes I like to call Gertrude "Trudy". They're super friendly, they eat lots of bugs, and they lay eggs. It's a total win situation for us! On top of that, they're effing adorable and totally hilarious. They are show chicken flunkies, so they are obviously the perfect chickens for us.

Like all women, they love the hubs more than they love me. It's possible I traumatized them a smidge; they had to ride in my car (including a trip to get some coffee in a drive-thru and a few stares at the chickens in my back seat from our friendly baristas).  I took my sister home and wanted to show them off to my family,  then when I tried to walk them into the house sitting in the rubbermaid bin they came in, first Gertrude flew out, and when I was catching her, I lost Barbara! They are fast, man! Luckily my brother was willing to help his sister out, brought out some fishing twine in an effort to net her, but she took off into some underbrush. Meanwhile, my sister Mary was trying to show Gertrude off to my dad, but the dog barked and she flew off again! My uncle lured her out with a slice of bread, so they were able to catch Gertrude, but Barbara was still on the lamb. Turns out her weakness is also white bread, and after my entire family came out to help, I was finally able to pick her up and get her back in the car. It was quite the adventure, and naturally include multiple members of my family. It does, however, explain a little bit why they don't want to be around me so much.

Currently their "coop" used to be Bandit's doghouse. He never actually used it, because he prefers my couch and despises being outside without me, so we added a second story and put their house up on blocks. It's how we roll. Other than purchasing the chicken wire (who knows why hubs only bought it 3' tall), the rest of their current coop was built with stuff we had lying around, I think they did a pretty good job:

We'll upgrade eventually, especially if we get more chickens. We'll see how we do with this dynamic duo first.

Bathroom Improvement

I'm going to let you in a dirty little secret. This was my bathroom:

Hubs lovingly built that shelf so that I could have some more storage, but it always ended up being a big mess. We used those things daily, but there just wasn't a way to neatly put everything together.

And then I remembered I had this:

I had been meaning to paint it white and find a home for it. It was once my nightstand when I was a single girl, but since I put it together myself it was starting to get a bit wobbly and hubs just didn't like it anymore. He had the idea of putting a support piece on the back of it so it would be more stable, and about a billion coats of white paint later, it makes my bathroom MUCH happier!

I still have some things out, but the majority of my daily use items are now in the top drawer. I even have extra space in the drawers!! And I LOOOOVE that the towels now have a space in the bathroom. Our bathroom isn't *small*, but it's not super big either. It's kind of an odd shape too, so it's tough to put in extra storage. So far, this is doing very nicely. If I were better at photographing small spaces, you could see how everything (including the two-tone walls and shower curtain) go together. And yes, that's a bobble-head monkey sitting on a banana holding the water cup. This is what happens when you leave a man alone to register for bathroom items.

Anchors Away!

As a fabulous start to my weekend, I scored this sweet anchor lamp at a thrift store.

It's all wood, even the lampshade!! And yes, I also got the bookshelf it's sitting on in the parking lot there, I was so excited I had to send the hubs a picture before I even put it in the car. His response? "Cooooool."  Since it was via text message, I have yet to discern whether that was sarcasm or not.  I have plans to brighten it up a bit, but we'll see what happens. I also loaded up on spray paint at a discount store, but I've been very disappointed by discount spray paint before.

I hope you're all having a great start to the weekend too!

It's a Bird! It's a ... Rabbit? A Fish?

I picked up this little guy at a yard sale to benefit the local hospital. It caught my eye on a shelf of other metal artsy stuff, and I thought, "What's that long bunny thing?" And then I realized it had a tail - that doubles as a spreader! So upon further review I decided it was actually a fish, but with a weird face/ears/gills.

When I got home and proudly showed it to Mr. Fabulous, he said, "Is it a bird? I think it's a bird. A bird could have a tail like this." I think not, dear reader. But why don't you decide for yourself. Also, what do you think should be served in this lovely dish?

This dish(?) is also ridiculously heavy, but I love it, and I'm just trying to find the perfect place to display in our home! Maybe filled with something, we'll see.

New Dryer!

We have a shiny new dryer!! It was quite the process getting this dryer. We went to every store, looked at all the different functions and styles, reviewed rankings and reports, weighed stackable vs not stackable, and finally I gave up and said, "Honey, just get a dryer." He picked out a Kenmore (honestly, not sure which one) because it was ranked pretty high regarding both value and function, and at the time it was on sale. However, I had to work all weekend and without me around to nag him, Mr. Fabulous didn't get the motivation to go get it til Monday, and it wasn't on sale anymore. *sigh* He's an even worse procrastinator than I am.

The decision to get a new dryer came after the hubs had been gone fishing for a month, I had been doing very little laundry with it being just me home, and our electric bill went down considerably. Our dryer was a hand-me-down from his parents that was probably as old as us, and definitely not the most efficient appliance in our house. We got the new dryer a week ago, and since then it sat in our living room and taunted me with all of its newness covered up by a cardboard box. I decided a good way to get the new dryer installed faster was to boycott doing laundry until I could use it. Like the majority of my household labor boycotts, this did not work. What happened was all the laundry built up in the laundry room and blocked the way for getting dryers in and out. And then I ran out of clean underwear. Well, at least the pairs I prefer to wear.

Last night I finally buckled under the pressure and decided to just do some laundry, and that action somehow prompted hubs to take the new dryer out of its box and put it in! Yay! So far I love it, though we have yet to see if its "fisherman approved". We tend to wash a lot of sweatshirts and jeans in this house, so even when I choose the "bulky" setting, my dryer seems to underestimate how long it will take to dry his stuff. Or maybe now I need a new washing machine with a more powerful spin cycle so my clothes aren't as wet when they go in the dryer (I have no idea if that's a new thing with washing machines, but I will totally use that as my argument for why I need one).

Turns out the real answer was I needed to read the manual and "bulky" is for things like jackets an pillows, and "heavy duty" is for, well, "heavy" items.

Instead of annoyingly beeping when it's done, it plays a happy little song! Yay! The laundry is done! How exciting! It almost makes me hate folding so much. Almost.

Here she is! Pardon my crappy cell phone picture.

I'm really excited to use the sanitize function, and the sweater rack! I'll let you know how it goes :)

Truths

I think my husband often wishes there were more secrets amongst my family members. But, alas, we tell each other pretty much everything. My dad and sister are probably the worst culprits. Their brains don't process that something is a secret - everything told to them is simply information that can then be re-told. They're not malicious or gossipy, they just... don't believe in secrets. Which is why I laughed so hard the other day when I saw an article about controlling anger. The test to see if you needed help controlling your anger posed a scenario, and then gave you a few options to choose from on how you would handle this situation. Given how you would react, you could possibly use anger management. The scenario went something like this:

You and your husband have a disagreement that quickly escalates into a full blown fight. After a heated argument, you call your sister and tearfully pour your heart to her. You swear her to secrecy. The next week at family dinner your brother leans over and asks if you and your husband have made up yet. Knowing that the only person you told was your sister and realizing that she betrayed your confidence you:
A) Immediately yell at her.
B) Pull her into the kitchen and tell her how hurt you are.
C) Another option. [yeah, ok, I don't remember the options. Or what website the quiz was on. *sigh*]

But there was no option for "Laugh, because it was pretty much a given that after telling your sister, the rest of the family knows." In fact, I'm pretty sure this EXACT situation has happened before.

The extra funny part was that I read this article the day after my sister admitted that she is incapable of keeping a secret.  At least she knows. And theoretically speaking, I should know better than to share these things.