homemaking

do they have large talons?

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

“Do the chickens have large talons?”
“Do they have what?”
“Large talons.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said.”
— Napoleon Dynamite (Paramount Pictures, 2004)

This is not going to become an organic-chicken-raising urban-farming blog, but here are a few more updates for our chicks’ devoted fans.

1) The fuzz is on the way out. This Rhode Island Red is Golda. She is displaying her fancy wings and (let’s be honest here) the cutest tail feathers of all time.

tail feather

2) I can’t tell the Barred Rock chicks apart and we might give some of them away, so two names rotate between all four. This little lady might be Winifred or Simone. She is displaying her talons.
talon

3) You can get another peek at all six in this video – they are still reasonably adorable and like to peck their beaks on the side of their box.

a box of chicks

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After trying to convince me his little project was for our future children, Aaron finally confessed that his “play house” wasn’t for kids, it was for chickens. And he told me if I ever put a child in this coop, whether it was ours or someone else’s, he would probably call Child Protective Services, but that our future chickens would really like it. Since Aaron had a great experience raising hens when he was a kid and we both harbor secret urban homesteading fantasies, we’ve been talking about chickens every spring for four years. They have always been in the long-term plan, and whenever one of us works on anything in our shed Aaron talks about transforming it into a coop. He realized chickens were legal in our city and when he discovered the massive supply of DIY-coop-building plans from other hippy-ish blogs, there was no turning back. We just happened to go to a farm supply store this weekend and… now the rest is history:  We have six little chickens in our laundry room. (This is the year of MAKING IT HAPPEN, after all.)

I do want to say that I didn’t have animals growing up (except a hamster named Pecan, may she rest in peace), so this is pretty new to me. I have firmly indicated that I am not interested in raising any cloven-hoofed animals, but I could probably be convinced to get a horse if resources allowed and we had kids who would manage the riding and caring. I’m pretty sure no one is reading this for my treatise on hobby farming – you just want pictures of the chicks. I will happily oblige.

1) Chicks at the store. We couldn’t leave them there: chicks 12) Transporting them home in a box:
chicks 23) Aaron carefully observing them. He is such an animal-lover that I can’t believe we haven’t had anything serious until now:
chicks 34) The chicks enjoying their temporary box home in the laundry room:
chicks 4…But, wait! There’s more! I TOOK VIDEOS. Indulge yourself as you see fit.

Aren’t they cute!? I’ve heard they might even stay this way for a few days.

The Great Hall Collage (Home Tour)

/ abby hummel / 7 Comments

A small house is a great blessing, and we have been surprised by much joy coming from the limited size of our home. I’m not the only one to think a diminutive space is good, too! The popular blog Apartment Therapy regularly features “Small, Cool Places” that make our little cabin a mansion, comparatively, and even Leonardo Da Vinci said “Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind.” I’ve thought of his quote frequently since living here, and that mental discipline has stretched and improved me many times over during these three years.

In this smallish dwelling, we have just one hallway that twists around from the kitchen, up a few stairs, and leads to the bedroom, linen closet, bathroom and office. This cozy passageway is one of the dearest spots in my home because of the photo project built up on the walls. Inspiration came from a few different sources, but I didn’t really know how to start so I just got some pictures and started nailing them up on the wall.

Collage wall from Pottery Barn, via my pinterest board. I love the different textures on the wall, but I think the clash of black and brown frames is distracting.

source unknown, via my pinterest boards. I love the black frames against white walls with lots of natural wood in the house, just like ours.

When I don’t know how to start something, I either panic and procrastinate forever or jump right in and hope it works out. This hall collage came about because I responded in the second way. Now after three years we have one giant collage that is about 90% done. There are a few empty frames and some empty spots that need frames and artwork. When I look at this, I think I meant to have photos on just one wall, but I had a general idea instead of a specific vision for the project so it ballooned from there. I’m certainly not disappointed with how it turned out.

I left the light buttons on this picture because they are so cool. We turn the lights on and off by pressing round buttons, not flipping switches! This little house has serious quirks, and I love it.

A beautiful thank-you note; The cover of a cult book on prayer; Pictures from Aaron’s homecoming; Take-out cookie fortune: “Your path is arduous but will be amply rewarding”; 1st verse of For the Beauty of the Earth.

artsy cabbage; lots of Van Gogh; pictures from the beach; friends; family; virtus tentamine gaudet; embroidery from my friend J; Mattise goldfish poster; anniversary card; baby ducks; letterpress christmas cards;  honeymoon photography; psalm 51:8; Psalm 91; flowers from the Hillsdale campus.

Wedding pictures; grapes on a card from my friend A; quaking aspens; easter hymn; CS Lewis quote from “The Four Loves” on vulnerability; heartbeat; fake leaf above the door to our bedroom; antique postcards my friend E sent from Paris; college diplomas.

I have learned much about pictures and decorating and arranging in the last few years, so I am really inspired about where this could go in the future. We have a nice mix of art, pictures, quotes and other memorabilia here, and I’m daydreaming about doing this timeline style in another house someday, so the quotes and other art would somehow correspond with what was going on in our life at the same point of the pictures we’re in. I think it would be a really neat testament to God’s faithfulness in our lives, and a tangible illustration that our lives really are God’s artwork always in process.

PS: I will also admit that this post bugs me because it doesn’t feel “real.” I’ve done a fair amount of tweaking since taking these pictures, so I’ll update sometime when it’s “100% done.” Just in time to list the house for sale and remove them all for Realtor staging, you know.

PPS: Did you notice how many photos and cards we have from friends and family here? Those are some of my favorite pieces in our hall, so if you send us something neat it might become a special part of our collage. I’m not begging or anything, just throwing the idea out there for your consideration.

Bathroom (Home Tour)

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After getting a look at the decor heights of our lovely bedroom, I thought I’d show you the disaster that is our bathroom. I will admit…. we chose that blue. I was 22 and inexperienced, and I have learned a lot since then. But anyway, some natural aging on the house means I get to make over  our awkward first paint and decor choices! There are tiles peeling off over the tub, so an overhaul on this bathroom is on the must-do list. I’m quite sure it will be easier and much cheaper than the never-ending kitchen project!

Walking in from the hall.

The grodiest shower in the developed world. I can’t even show you a picture of the inside. More grout comes out every time I scrub the tiles, so I’m never sure how hard I should work to get it clean. 

Someone brilliantly put wood trim around the shower door, so we have to be very careful about wiping it off after showers.

The sink is… very special. Also, the vanity is humongous and takes up half the bathroom. They had to make a cut-out so the door would swing open. 

This bathtub is also special. The shower extension doesn’t go high enough for a shower. And those fake brown tiles are peeling off!

I don’t really know when this will happen, but plans for the bathroom include: retiling the bathtub surround and putting in a shower head; turning the yucky shower stall into a linen closet; replacing the toilet; replacing the vanity with something skinnier; and repainting the walls gray.

I think deep-down, I would be more adventurous with color for the rest of the house, but Aaron likes to keep things very neutral since we will need to sell the house in a few years. I’ve heard that restrictions on creativity can actually be a freeing thing, and I think it’s true for how we’re putting the house together. By working to find things we both like, I think our house has a pretty clearly defined aesthetic that neither one of us would have found on our own. (Aaron actually cares about this quite a bit, which surprised me, but I bet if he was on his own it wouldn’t be a high priority.) This co-decorating sense makes it a little easier to pull together new projects, like our bathroom.  I like this first inspiration bathroom better because it feels a little more “grounded” with those black shelves. But no matter how it works out, I keep coming back to the gray-with-rustic-wood combo whenever I look for ideas, so I’m pretty sure we’re going for something like this!

My favorite inspiration bathroom! From Focal Point on my Pinterest boards.

More natural wood with gray! From a YHL Reader Re-design, on my Pinterest boards.

Our Room (Home Tour)

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I have some house pictures here. I truly meant to do these posts quite a while ago. I’ve been bugged to share house pictures by several friends and family members who can’t make it out to inspect in person. So here we go!

We’ll start off with the one room of our house that feels “done” to me. This is the only place we have bold color on the walls. Right after moving in, I tried a few greens that did not work. Finally, after wasting $70 on ugly paint, Aaron, who is partially colorblind, picked the color we have now. We love it. I don’t know what I will do when we move. I would absolutely think about using the same color again. My aunt visited last month and told me the green worked because we can see so many leaves in our windows. I think she’s right! It feels like an extension of the outdoors, which is just right for us.

The view coming in from the hallway. I got the blinds on a freak Lowe’s clearance for 70% off and my mom helped me make the curtains.

stepping in

Aaron’s side. I refinished the dresser as a surprise for him a few years ago; also, I spray painted the nasty old fan to look metallic black. The flower painting was a wedding present.

My side. Lots of books and baskets! Also, I made that bedskirt because our bed is too tall for regular ones, which is handy when you have lots of junk to hide. Which we do.

my book basket.

I bought this old record stereo on craigslist from one of our pastors. Painted the bottom, refinished the top, covered the speakers with old canvas. It’s great for storing linens!

My dresser. Antique from Aaron’s family. I refinished it.

Fake flowers from Walmart clearance; calligraphy from my sister; mail holder from goodwill; books; jewelry box; cool dish from goodwill.

There’s a great psychological effect to starting and ending each day in a space you love. I’m grateful to have such a cozy room… but I will confess that it usually has piles of laundry all over the place, which is less than relaxing.

a (small) fruited plain (garden 2012)

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As in past years, any area of our yard that gets full sun is cultivated for vegetable gardening in the summer. Aaron is a gardening master. And while most people would say that I’m the stereotypical woman with all sorts of nurturing instincts and he’s more of the brute hunter-gatherer, when it comes to plants we are totally opposite. All the gardening successes are his, and we have already enjoyed 2 fresh tomatoes. The first one is pictured here, and Aaron chose not to smile because he wanted everyone to know he takes his agricultural projects very seriously. 

Then over here, I will confess my own gardening disaster. This is the third year in a row that I’ve entirely destroyed a bunch of plants. This isn’t supposed to be that  hard, and I’m determined to get the hang of this before I turn 30.  I started a bunch of pansies and something else from seed in the kitchen this spring, then transplanted them into pots, along with ferns, hostas, and sedum from the back yard. I painted almost all the planters to match each other and selected some stumps to use as plant stands. I give myself an A for artistic vision, a B on decor follow through, and a D on plant-nurturing. I won’t say an F since some of them are still alive. They started off well, which you can see in the big picture, but the two side pictures illustrate what it all looks like now.
 I should also mention that, since I wanted to make salsa this summer, Aaron ordered some onion plants and I carefully followed his directions for planting them in the big garden. They were also a total bust – they barely grew! We pulled them out to give more room for the tomatoes, so I chopped up what I could and threw them in the freezer. This way I can still say at least two of the salsa ingredients came from the garden.

Inventions

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This morning brought about discussion that reminded me of the need for at least 3 new things in the first-world marketplace:

1) The Baby Pianist High Chair. (And no, I don’t mean we need it for us right now.) It would be something like a usual tableside clip-on baby seats, only set up just right for attaching Baby to a piano. This would be a great way to get kids experimenting on the keyboard as soon as they can sit up and I think it would make eventual piano practicing seem more natural.  2) A gravel-inhaling landscape vacuum. Basically, the opposite of a leaf blower. We definitely need this. I mean, have you seen our yard?

3) A Coffee thermos technologically marrying the beauty of a French Press Coffee Maker  with the portability and ease of a Camelbak water backpack, so we wouldn’t have to choose between the simple pleasures of drinking good coffee in the morning AND biking at the same time.  I would call it  the “Cafe Chameau,” which is a butchered French translation of the words Camel and Coffee.
Do you have the solution to any other world problems with your creative inventions?

Curb Appeal (Home Tour)

/ abby hummel

Most of the time I feel pretty discouraged about how much work there is left to do on our house, so in celebration of our 3rd year here, I’ve taken a bunch of pictures to record what we’ve done so far! And first on the agenda? The great outdoors. I’ve gotta say, we must have a great eye for living potential because these before shots from three years ago are really bad.
Here’s what we started with for “curb appeal.” Note the leaning trees, huge bushes, random rocks and lack of grass.

Realtor shot from the street.

We took out those ginormo bushes by the driveway and felled a few trees before my college BFF Esther dubbed this area the “stake-burning piles.”
 After those were out, we had a great feeling of progress, but still no grass to speak of. The trees didn’t get enough sunlight, the garage color was awful, and also, the apple tree was out of control.

Thankfully, it’s looking a little better now, because we took out more trees, Aaron has put forth massive effort on the grass with multiple reseedings and custom grass blends for our shady yard, we overhauled the “retaining wall,” and I stained the peachy colored bricks. We still need to decide if we’re going to put one more layer of stones on the hill or trim the weed barrier so it isn’t visible. The rest of the grass should fill in soon, too.

We’re still in the “Progress” stage, but everything out front is coming together so far! We have some big projects for the other side of the driveway… there is a steep path by the garden (we call it “the incline of death”) that needs some attention, so hopefully we’ll get that solved this summer!

Decluttering: What to do with bad books?

/ abby hummel / 6 Comments

During recent months of working towards the elusive goal of having less stuff, I’ve given away more than half our books. As educated and literate people with mild pack-rat tendencies, we have accumulated more books than necessary and I was excited to pare down our collection. I was surprised how easy this was, maybe because we have access to multiple libraries, online bookstores and our Kindle.

For the most part, the book-sorting process was very straightforward. Since I can donate to the library for a tax deduction I decided against gambling with used book sales online, and most of the books easily sorted between “keep” and “donate.”

Any book I questioned was put in an “undecided” sack. But then I came back and started thumbing through them and realized they promoted some disturbing themes. I’m not trying to go all Farenheit 411 bookburning here, I have no reason to keep them and I’m not comfortable donating if someone else might take these ideas seriously. So the lonely books sit on my closet floor and I haven’t decided what to do about it.

Out of this wacky collection, the most ludicrous volume is Music and Morals: Dispelling the Myth that Music is Amoral, by Kimberly Smith. I used this as part of a broad research base for my senior thesis in college and I distinctly remember sharing some great laughs with my advisor at the ridiculous material we found here.

The basic premise of this book is that hymns and western classical music written before 1820 inherently honor God while other styles do not. This hits close to home for me because I love the music she favors, but the author makes outrageous and illogical arguments to support her false belief. Arguing that Christians should only sing and listen to her “God-honoring” music, she claims newer music causes people to move sensually (a term she uses interchangeably with “immorally”), says jazz is the musical equivalent of a one-night-stand, and blames contemporary music for teenagers developing romantic intentions towards their peers at youth group. Most disturbingly, this book subtly promotes racist values by excluding the rich musical traditions of Asia, Africa, South America and any other cultures from her rigid definition of “moral” music. (I’m pretty sure if God made people all over the world, He’s glorified in music that comes from all over the world, too.)

I suppose my fear is not so much that one would take this book seriously, but that they might think Christians like me take this book seriously. It makes my whole religion look bad. I have a handful of books I won’t read again but don’t want to promote – so what do you think is the best solution here? Trash, burn, donate,  “accidentally” leave in garage so they are susceptible to water damage?

I might end up keeping this one around after all, just for laughs. After reading this next blurb, I must wonder what she would say about how often I sing Old McDonald with kids in music class:

Popular Music/Animal Music (1900+) Directed to the Undisciplined and Unrestrained Passions of Man

“…Some of the music and dances of this time had animal names, and America learned such dances as the Jitterbug, the Fox-trot, the Monkey, and the Funky Chicken. This parallels the theory that evolutionists believe humans to be nothing more than educated animals.”

Literary Decor

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I took a little time this fall to re-read Perelandra, a special favorite of mine from C.S. Lewis’  Space Trilogy. In many ways, a good book can become much like a dear friend, and I loved contemplating the themes of perfection and un-Fallen paradise in this Utopian story.

As I curled up on the couch with a mug of steamy tea and devoured this beautiful tale, I was also stuck feeling like the fireplace was looking a little sad. I’m not ready to get out the Christmas stuff yet, and I found some great inspiration here:

fall mantel from "sweet something design"

So I whipped out a few things I had around the house and used a key phrase from Perelandra to put on a bunting banner, so now our mantel is looking great for fall. I think I can make this banner work for the Christmas season, too!

my mantel!

“I know now what they say in your world about justice. And perhaps they say well, for in that world all things always fall below justice. But [God] always goes above it. All is gift. …The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own.”
(Perelandra, C.S. Lewis.)

all is gift

[Linking up to The Pinterest Challenge – see other projects here: Sherry, Katie, Erin and Ana.]