We Have Ducklings!

 We have 15 little ducklings at our place and they are super cute. Chicks are pretty cute too (and we have 60 plus of them here too) but Ducklings are just a bit more adorable than chicks. Especially with how they will follow the kids around. And their love for playing in puddles.

  We have a Mama duck named Gwendolyn which Megan got last Spring along with another duck but that duck was taken by some wild animal. Gwendolyn is an Indian Runner duck and was a yellow duckling.

 Some friends from church gave the boys a male Khaki Camel duck who they named Sir Francis Drake. He and Gwendolyn have gotten along wonderfully and follow each other around all the time. They do not like to be separated in the world of chickens that they are a part of. The kids love taking them for swims in the river which they seem to enjoy somewhat but quickly head home again after just a little time in the water.

 Daddy Drake is brown and every one of the 15 ducklings seems have taken after him. We are curious though if they will stand tall like their Indian runner Mama or stand more like their dad. So far it looks like they are going to be more like their Dad.

Gwendolyn has proven to be an excellent egg layer and Khaki Camels are supposed to be even better so we have high expectations for these ducklings.

   We are trying to be really careful and wash our hands carefully after handling them as we don't want to get any salmonella this year! (Megan seemed to have had a bought with it last year).
 

Delight Yourself in the Lord

  I didn't manage to get a long post written today but I did want to share one of my favorite verses with you....

  "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4

What an encouragement that is!

A "fairy" circle of Mayflowers that I found at my parents.

Steadily Moving Along at Getting the Siding Up

 I don't think we will win any races at putting siding up but steadily we are getting the job done. We started on the East side of the house and have been working our way around, going as high as we feel comfortable and today we made it around to the North side (having hit the South and West already). Yeah! After we get everything done that we can easily and safely reach with ladders then we hope to rent some scaffolding and do the high areas. I was hoping that maybe we could do that this next weekend when we would have Memorial Day available for working too but we shall see.

   Ken has been diligently working even during rain as we have been having a lot of that lately. I am not complaining about rain though - we needed it and fire danger is much lower now!

 I have been dealing with sickness lately and so haven't been as big of help this weekend as I would have liked but I did get out there for a while today. The sunshine felt wonderful but I did not last so very long once the rain started.

I hope to have both energy and good weather to get the rocks finished soon too. It will come I know. I just need to be patient. We are enjoying seeing the house with siding. Getting that close to done has set us to dreaming about landscaping. There is always something to keep us busy!

  What did you do this weekend? Where you inside or out? What sort of weather have you been having lately?

Being Part of a Drama Production

This past week our lives have been kind of taken over by a play that the kids were a part of at our homeschool co-op.  The production was last night. It went very well and we are so thankful to God for helping us through it. The play kind of took over our homeschool co-op this year but that was okay as we had decided to have a theme this year of fine arts. There was much time spent in rehearsing and then we spent time working on props and decorations and costumes as well.


Mara as the Evil Queen Morinda
The play we did was called " The Tale of Two Kingdoms". It had a medieval setting and spoke of the battle between good and evil. 
 It was a great learning experience for our children. Mara loves drama and tried out for the part of the evil queen and she was able to get that part. She worked very hard at getting her lines memorized and really getting into her character. She also tried to encourage others in their roles. She also altered a dress that she had been loaned to make it work for the play, made herself a crown and sewed herself a cape. She also took it upon herself to write up character bios about each of the actors (she asked them for any ideas they had and then had fun adding to them) which we hung up for the audience to read along with pictures of them that she took at the dress rehearsals. She also made up a program and illustrated it (the pictures of the kingdoms). This play was a great way for Mara to use some of her creativity.






Jonathan requested the role of being the sound man and he took that job very seriously. He enjoyed working together with another young man from our co-op. My brother has been training him to run the sound at church and he really enjoyed doing it for the play as well. He put a lot of effort into making sure everybody could be heard and that everything went smoothly. I was pretty proud of him. He also was a great help in putting the backdrop together for the play.  

Aaron was the least interested in the play of our children but he did sing in the choir and was a knight in training and got to help with various prop work.

Megan had 4 small parts which she very much enjoyed. She sang in the choir, was a town crier, picked flowers and was a messenger. She had 3 outfit changes and though that was pretty fun.

This was a fun opportunity for our children to use some of the gifts that God has 
given to them. It was fun seeing our whole homeschool co-op work together to put on a fairly big production.

Here are some more photos from the play:


 The town criers


 The princes and the maid.


 Getting the castle tour.


 Aaron in his little time of sword fighting.


 The Princes having a meal brought to them by Ida the Matron.


 Greeting the people that came.


 Megan my cute town crier.


Some of the actors and actresses.

"Ethical" a Book Review and Giveaway

 

We are faced with situations all the time where we need to make the decision whether we are going to be ethical or not. Being ethical is not just something we should think about when running a big business and deal with others. Stay-at-home moms, teens working at McDonalds, a retired person volunteering, those in full-time ministry -whoever you are - we face situations that involve ethics.

  I admit when I requested the book "Ethical" by Dr. Daniel Morris, I wanted to read it because I own a small business and I just thought it would be a good thing to think more about. But as I was reading through it I was reminded that ethics does not just have to do with business dealings but rather it is something that affects our whole life. In the book Dr. Morris defines ethics as: "The principles and regulations based on divine laws related to the practices, manners, and conduct of mankind in their relationships with each other, with reference to what is good and bad, and what affects the rights and well-being of others." 

 The book "Ethical" is very easy to read, only 75 pages long and has a lot of things to think about in it. He talks about the four fundamental principles of ethics: Humility, Responsibility, Respect and Protecting what is Important to God. He also uses many everyday examples to help us think about what the ethical response would have been. He also uses many scriptures to explain why he believes something is ethical or not. He shares some really good thoughts on how we treat things that we don't own, dealing with other Christians, finances, hospitality and proper behavior between people of the opposite sex. I think nearly everyone would find this book helpful in one way or another.

   I know some of the things I became convicted on were making sure that I make it to appointments on time (when we went to the dentist last week we were around 4 minutes late and they were waiting on us- that wasn't right for me to say yes to a 8 am time slot and then not be there on time), to make sure that we are super careful whenever we use something that belongs to somebody else and to make sure we leave any public places (such as a park or a church building) as good or better than we found them.

  I was convicted that I need to teach these things to my children more carefully as well. People are observing our actions each and every day and as an ambassador of Jesus Christ we need to live in a way that is ethical even it the very little things.

   There was only one little thing which I noticed to disagree with a bit and that was the elevation that he seemed to give to Pastors (and his use of the word pastor would be one that I would question as well as he seemed to be speaking of their being one pastor per church when the Bible gives us the example of having pastors/elders in plural) a little more authority than I think maybe the Bible does. I am referring to the time when Dr. Morris suggests that a Pastor would ask permission from the local pastor before visiting people in the congregation. I do agree with his thoughts that out of town people should be careful to encourage the congregation in submitting to their leaders (unless they are truly straying from the truth) rather than listening to and sympathizing with their complaints about a new pastor. But I think asking permission to visit is going a little far - just my thoughts.

  Beyond that one issue - and it is a very small one - I highly recommend this book. I think this subject is one that so many of us could do well to pay attention to. If you would like to buy a copy of this book it is available on Amazon.

 I am excited to be able to offer a giveaway of this book. They sent me a second copy of the book in order for me to give it away to one of you. As I said before this book is short and pretty easy to read and I think you will find it encouraging in your christian walk.

If you would like to try to win.....

• Leave a comment below.
• Be sure to leave an e-mail address so that I can contact you should you be the winner.
• I would love to hear in your comment about your thoughts on ethics. Have you faced any ethical situations lately? Have you considered teaching your children about ethics? Did you ever consider that leaving a mess in a church building bathroom to be an ethical situation before?

This giveaway will end on May 21st at 10:00 pm. At that point a winner will be chosen randomly and notified so that I can get their mailing information to mail them the book.

  

Tour of My Dream Kitchen

 Our kitchen is done, (though I do still have some things I would like to make to decorate it) and I feel super blessed! The kitchen is used very often in our house as we like to make pretty much all our meals from scratch plus we can and bake, make cheese and lots of other sorts of food prep that aren't considered normal anymore. We also make things such as deodorant, laundry soap and various craft projects which we like to do in the kitchen. So basically the kitchen is our main living area.

  I really was very happy in our last house but one thing that I did dream about occasionally was a bigger kitchen. Our kitchen was on the small side and not all that pretty (though it wasn't bad) but we made it work however occasionally I would dream about something nicer. Now I have that something nicer. I have truly been blessed with a dream kitchen.

Here is the tour.....

 The North wall of the kitchen has the fridge, the cupboards with glass doors where we can keep some pretty dishes and a counter top area that we like to use for baking. We choose stainless steel appliances because we think they look nice but I do find that they do get fingerprint on them very easily. Oh well.

view from the dining room

 One of the things that I had dreamed about, stemming from way back when I cleaned house for others when I was a teen, was having a kitchen with two sinks. We are finding this to be very handy and think we will find it even more so when we are bringing in large amounts of harvest to process. The island sink has just one bowl and the other one has two.

  An island was another item on my dream kitchen list. I had an island in one of our past homes and I really liked the way that kitchen worked.  I really love how spacious this is and how a bunch of people can be in it but yet we don't get in each other's way.

  A sink with a drainboard was an item on my dream kitchen list which many people found funny. "You want what?" This is in place of having a dishwasher which a lot of other people don't understand. We have had several dishwashers in the last couple of houses - one of them was a nice stainless steel one that we bought brand new - but none of them have worked very well. I don't want to use normal dishwasher soap because of the bad things in it so that may have led to the problem. But truly most people I know either fully rinse all their dishes ahead of time (which takes basically as much time as washing dishes) or they have issues with their dishwasher - with having to rewash a lot or with cloudy glasses or whatever. I just got tired of dealing with that and have found our new hand washing system to work MUCH better for us anyway.

   A sink with a drainboard was not such a simple item to find. In fact it was pretty hard. I talked to our plumber about it and he didn't even know what I was talking about so he had me talk to his wholesaler who he said could find anything. She acted like she hadn't heard of sinks with drainboards either but then did finally find one but it was super expensive (like $2000) and was really industrial looking. If we hadn't wanted an undermount sink it would have been easier but we did want an undermount. I finally found this sink on Amazon. It was more industrial than I had originally wanted but it would work. It still cost a bit at around $500 but much better than the other price we were quoted.

  A kitchen definitely is the most expensive room in the home with the cabinets, sinks, counters, appliances and such. Thankfully we will use it a lot and hopefully use it to help us save money.

 When I was looking at home pictures on Pinterest and various other sites I found myself drawn over and over again to rooms with lanterns. I decided I would like a lantern light fixture over the island. I found that when I went to shop for them that they weren't so very easy to find. Then I started looking at outdoor lighting and there were more lanterns there but still not a lot of hanging ones. Also the ones that I liked tended to be several hundred dollars. I did finally find this one for less than a hundred and though it wasn't what I had first envisioned I liked it. We were able to get a matching light fixture for over the sink. They have little metal leaves on them that I think are pretty.

 One of the things I wanted for my dream kitchen was cabinets that went all the way to the ceiling. I think it is kind of senseless to waste all the good storage space by having just open space above the cabinets. You can of course use that space for decorating but I have found that things can get really dusty and gross pretty fast and I don't like cleaning up there all the much so high cabinets made more sense to me. I do have to use a step stool for the top shelves but I just put things that I don't use all that often up there. It works fine.

View from the entry from the garage.

 We choose Maple cabinets with a Brandywine finish. I liked the really simple style of doors (and found out that simple cabinet doors tend to cost more that the ones cut with all sorts of groves and such). We choose to have all solid wood cabinets (No pressed board that can put out bad fumes and fall apart in a few years) that did cost more but I think it was worth it for how much better it will last. Our cabinets have soft close doors which I think it pretty standard now (and pretty nice) but we didn't get many other bells or whistles. We did get a tray divider in one cupboard and a drawer divider for one drawer.

 I had seen a picture in a magazine (back when we were designing our house) of a kitchen with a long counter-top with three windows like these above them. I showed it to Ken and he really liked it. We did find out that the round windows end up (when you count in trim and all) quite a lot more but Ken thought it was worth it. In the picture above Ken was working outside getting the siding on around those windows.

 Because the windows are in a bump-out we have an extra big window ledge. I bought a piece of knotty alder ( to match the window trim - we had a hard time decided whether we should have put counter top there, maple to match the cabinets, oak to match the floor or knotty alder to match the window frames) and Ken installed it and I varnished it with a bunch of coats of Spar varnish. I love the way it looks and love being able to have a bunch of plants in my kitchen.

We did decide to have a pull out trash area in one of the cabinets. I do like having the trash and a recycling bin very handy but yet out of sight.

We have two appliance garages and I am quite fond of them. I don't care for the looks of the little appliances very much but like it that they can be easily accessible but stay out of sight in the appliance garages.

 This is our silverware tray divider. I debated on spending extra for this but am glad we did. I like they way I can fit so much more in this than I could using the plastic trays.

 I do love the view that I can enjoy while I wash dishes. It is especially beautiful now that everything is greening up.

  I have always thought it would be fun to have a kitchen decorated with cobalt blue and white. I love those colors. In the kitchens I have had so far that color scheme didn't work so well (the last two houses have had green counters) so I am pretty excited to be able to use it here.

We have a couple of these bowls that were wedding gifts. We did get a few things in this color scheme for our wedding but most have broken (a cake pan and a couple more bowls like this) or worn out (hot pads and towels) but we are still enjoying these bowls.

 The little planted on the window sill was a gift from many years ago from my friend Becky. The box was made by one of the kids and painted by me.

 I recently got some blue checked fabric from a friend and had fun adding some little touches of blue and white with that.

 Our last cod liver oil came in a lovely blue bottle. A Juneberry blossom is looking lovely in it. The little doily I made a long time ago.

  These bowls are a fairly recent find at an antique store. We actually needed some more bowls and I was so delighted to find these. I think they are so pretty (I love the color!) and they also have fun patriotic pictures on them. The one is of George Washington at Mt Vernon and the other is Betsy Ross and the flag.

 Last summer the kids and I had fun make some pottery and I painted several pieces blue. My friend Emily gave my the pretty white bowl with blue flowers on it - something she had picked up in India. On the lower shelf the little blue bowl was one we bought while in the Florida Keys at a potter's place. The big bowl was made locally. The next pot I picked up second hand. I really like hand made pottery.

  The little blue and white handle-less tea cup in the picture below was a gift from Aaron - he purchased it when visiting the Como zoo a while back.

 I think it would be fun to make a blue and white rag rug to stand on by the sink. I would also like to trim some of my towels in blue and white and fix up some of my hotpads to go with the blue and white theme. I think I want to write out some verses to hang on the walls with blue flowers drawn around them as well but for the most part my kitchen is done and I do feel super blessed.