FALL

Plenty of work.

Bountiful Harvest.

God is Good...

We are blessed!

September and October 2013 fall pictures taken around our yard.

Summer Kitchen

September 7th, 2013 my great great great grandma's cook stove came into my summer kitchen!

I am overjoyed! The piping isn't hooked up yet and the stove top needs a good scrubbing to make it useable. By Sept 20th all of it will be finished. Most of my great aunties are coming over for tea that day. I am so excited. They told me they remember their grandma pulling out fresh buns out of this stove. I hope to be able to learn to use it well.

All ready for the tea.

The day of the tea my sister and I dressed in our great great great grandma's clothes.

Hi!

It's been a while!
We have been busy, busy, busy...
A total of  9 weddings this year. 5 my Aunt Elma and I decorated for. Her and I are wedding and event decorators as a side job. Decorating is my passion. Our most favorite part is working with unique styles and making a brides dream come true!
Here are some pictures:

rustic style wedding

elegant/fun wedding

rustic hunting theme wedding

the setup

shotgun shell table number

and the cake

Almost done the backdrop for this simple, classy, elegant

wedding.

love the way the light plays on the layers 

check out the side ruching...

all white and textured with lace

lace runners and the table setting

chair covers make all the difference

A Big Mess

Actually, not too bad
September 2nd and 3rd 2013, a whole bunch of digging took place. Some of my flowerbed had to be removed because of it. But there is a silver lining in every cloud :), and as a result we have water to all the places we need it and hydro to all the places we need it.

The start of the dig...

trenched approximately 1/2 way. Apparently clay soil is good for backhoe work, it doesn't cave.

Hydrant #1 completed! Yay!

Hydrant #2 completed September 3rd for the garden and flowerbeds...

As well as hydrant #3 for the water trough by the barn.

Thanks to Remple Backhoe Services for coming to dig. Two 10 hour days and the job is done. 

Barn Raising

We have started another project, it's big! We are building a barn! This is about the most exciting project for me as I love my animals. :) Thanks to Ed Dyck Construction for pouring the concrete. Here are my dreams for this barn. All images via pintrest.

A 32x42 barn with a 16 foot lean to has happened.

Loft open to the rafters with a railing, figured you never use the whole loft for feed anyway

With clear ridgecap running through the center for natural lighting

and these stalls, which will be removable so we could host a wedding? 

And this color, I will paint all the walls white, rafters, railing, stalls, and hopefully the end walls will be wood. 

A Mother is so Much More: To Duchess Kate

Dear Kate,

I've always liked you.

From the moment you stepped onto Canada's turf and laughed with your whole face and held the hearts of our people, I've liked you.

But never more than this past week when you emerged from the hospital with a brand-new son in your arms. You radiated love and life and I thought you'd never looked more beautiful.

I thought nothing of your mommy-tummy because goodness, girl, you'd just had a baby and anyone who's given birth knows that tummy doesn't disappear overnight, nor should it.Your body's been stretched nine-months long to hold an eight-pound highness, and it's been pushed and prodded and bruised over hours of labor and there you stood shining in a blue dress, patting your son and cherishing him with new-mother eyes.

And the world exploded with tweets and posts about your postpartum body and I cried for you. I cried for our ignorance and for the pressure you are facing. And I fear for you. The years ahead and the toll of being in the public eye. I fear you might stop wearing blue dresses that celebrate your womanhood. I fear you might begin to grip your crown too tight. I fear you might become a disordered eater as Princess Diana was, for all of the pressure of a society that condemns a new mother for her mummy-tummy.

“The media’s neuroticism over Kate’s post-pregnant looks is brainwashing women into thinking that they will constantly be judged and criticized unless they meet the new standard – unattainable perfection,” human behavior expert Patrick Wanis PhD, told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “The obsession with the perfect female body is spiraling out of control.”

Kate, I wrote Mom in the Mirror for you. I wrote it for all of us mothers--Kim Kardashian included--who bear life under the watch of an unforgiving culture.

A culture that has lost the scope and art of beauty. The curve of beauty. The shape of beauty found in the rounded tummy, found in the soft cushion of an arm, found in the maternal hug.We've forgotten the beauty that can be found in a nurturing figure, in a real-life person, in the struggle and surrender of a body to nature. 

We are hard on you, Kate, because we hate ourselves. But enough. We need to stop. Because we are hurting you and ourselves. We are hurting our daughters and our sisters for all of our self-loathing. And perfection isn't attainable, no matter one's size.

Kate, forget the six-page spread in UK's OK Magazine detailing your weight-loss plan. Forget trying to get back to your pre-pregnancy physique because you have a new body now, one that has worn and born a child and one that will feed a child and it will never be the same, but change is good. You have a new name now, and that name is mother, and it has a shape all its own. 

Most of us can admit to loving things about ourselves, but do we love our selves? The parts that make us, us?

“A woman’s happiness is in throwing everything away to live for love,” says Ai Yazawa inParadise Kiss, Volume 5. But this living for love does not mean throwing away our dreams and desires.

No, it means fully entering oneself, while ridding of any pre-conceived notions about beauty and value and worth. It means embracing our crooked noses, snorting laughter, the stretch marks, saggy boobs, tea-bag eyes and warty feet. It means accepting our humanness, but more than that. It means approaching ourselves like author Anne Lamott does: with kindness and laughter.

“Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life,” she writes. “It has given me me.It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit into me now.” 

             We each have a shape. It may not be perfect, but it’s ours. A unique space in history to fill.     (Chapter 1, Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy)

I applaud you, dear Duchess, and I beg of you to hold your head high in that blue dress and to eat well and to sleep long and to keep George close because the world is envious of what you have. It wants to steal your joy.

So stand strong. You not only model what it is to be royalty; you model what it is to be a woman in the 21st century, and we need you to be real, Kate. We beg you to be real. Always.

On behalf of women everywhere, your friend and sister,

Emily.

Taken from http://www.emilywierenga.com

hi ya'll

I've been mowing, weeding, watering...

Cleaning, sprucing, tidying...

Sometimes I wonder if we are slaves to our place.

However, I came to the conclusion that we have no clue what we'd do if we weren't working on our place. We don't really sit around and do nothing. Except in the wintertime. Then we are couch potatoes, it's a seasonal thing. I imagine it all balances out because we certainly make up for lost time when the sun is shining.

The weather has been beautiful! Literately sunshine and flowers. 

An amazing thunderstorm rolled through. We sat in the protection of the tractor and watched the show.

Constant rolling of thunder, colorful lightning, pouring rain and wind. It was awesome! Loved it. 

Luckily the hay was cut after the storm and baled before the next one.

happy spring!

Earlier this spring (May 11th, 2013) Stuart and I dug out evergreens out of the #34 highway ditches. We made two trips to be able to haul them all home. On the second trip we stopped for soft ice cream at Horseshoe Cafe which ended up being our supper. We planted the evergreens along the fence line. Our soil is pure clay so it took a bit to dig a hole big enough.

Last one and a 5 gallon pail of water. The garden hose didn't reach so we had to haul for the last couple. Stuart came up with a wonderful watering idea. We heard that a soaker hose just plugged up with dirt so we bought more garden hose and drilled holes into it where the tree was and it waters perfectly! All we have to do is give the tap half a crank. That part's easy :) We keep the alfalfa down by tilling.

The row completed! All 25 of them 15 feet apart. Now to grow big! So often I want to wish time away because I want them big now. I have to remind myself to enjoy the moment I'm in. Same goes with everything else that's been planted. June 17th, 2013 a Goodland apple tree and a Battleford apple tree were planted (bought from Jefferies Nurseries). The same day I finished a perennial flower bed of silver mound, sentimental blue balloon flower, and white clips in the front. Day lilies, allium, lavender, irises, gamma grass, chives, green spice coral bells, and false indigo in the middle with delphiniums in the back. Thanks to my Grandmas and aunts for letting me dig perennials out of their flower beds. Hardly can wait till there is no longer any soil showing. Everything seems so small now. This was the inspiration for the flower bed that was made:

image via pintrest