Sud Shack the before

So, this is a combination laundry and bathroom. it was, in the beginning, our only bathroom. yes, it is outdoors and disconnected from our home. there were the occasional nights when it was cold and people probably thought we were crazy but we loved...well, we made it work haha. 

now, it mainly serves as our laundry only since we built our larger home...larger in comparison, but still small. anyway, it was ugly and i hate laundry anyway so i was unmotivated. these pictures are semi-before

i say semi before because i had already put up a chandelier and a support frame for the shower curtain.

obviously, we don't normally have the tools laying on the floor but otherwise everything is as it normally was, a complete mess.

junk everywhere, no organization

the black in that photo is part of the after.

ok, now it is that pipe and all the others that really motivated me to finally tackle the laundry room a.k.a. our Sud Shack.

after pics and story coming soon, as in i just finished it and need to load photos....so, we will just see how quickly i get to that

DIY deck storage benches

we built our deck awhile back and we are finally getting the benches built.well, thats the plan anyway.
we will be starting them, of that i am certain.
so here is the half of the deck we are working on today.

so, there is the before. im just gonna go ahead and post this now so it doesnt stay a draft for the next month. 

hope to bring the results in the next few days

we got a mini

I cant recall if i mentioned that our goats had to be re homed.  it was a sad day when our female, Bella, went to live on a farm with a cousin of mine. We decided that it was best for her to be with "family" so we could still visit. i put family in parenthesis because while we are distantly related we are not close. turns out we haven't been allowed to visit her and it still breaks our hearts. short story with our male. once he didn't have a female he tried to mate with everything. i mean everything and if you know goats then you know the spraying and the smell was just too much.

 let me introduce y'all to Marron.

i will be posting more about Marron soon. plus, the pallet paddock and how we built it. 

till next time, keep it Green, clean, and classy. 

medicine cabinet makeover - ideas

so, that is the before and after of the medicine cabinet makeover

that is the medicine cabinet i found at thrift and i ended up covering it with a vintage map that i had laying around.

i also covered the frame with the map and since then i have kept looking at it thinking "is that too much map?"      i think that the answer might be yes and i have an idea on how to change it without undoing the work i already put into it.
more on that later..
more makeover ideas...

mirrors are just glass with a treatment done to them, you could remove the mirror treatment so that it was just glass again and store your small office supplies in it in cute containers or labeled glass jars.

concrete LadyBug part 2

there it is!!! its finally finished...well the statue is and now i need to landscrape around it, haha.

so, y'all know that this project started with dirt, lots of dirt. 

my brother came by on day two and helped me shape the mold. i had done some shaping on it day one but then the chickens came by and investigated my work and ended up chicken scratching it to a shapeless blob.....thanks chicas

 finally it was shaped and right away we started adding concrete to it. i first put a crocheted shawl on it so the concrete would have something to grip to. ..... I'm giving instructions of what i did, not what you should do. i have zero sculptor/concrete/statue making skills but what i did, did work.

oh yeah, to apply this concrete my brother and i just used our hands which i highly suggest you NOT TO DO. The concrete will chemically burn your hands. 

after, we had it covered half way...we ran out of concrete, my brother stood guard because the chickens kept coming over and trying to get on it and leaving chicken foot prints all over. ugh, sometimes farm life is a pain.

day 3 my brother and i got up early and headed to lowes for even more concrete, this time i got even more than we thought we would need. we got the ladybug covered!!!!! 

day 4 i covered the ladybug with the second coating of concrete and for this i wanted a smooth finish so it wouldn't be all bumpy and scratchy on my baby Z.

now, for this one i didnt use my hands...ok, well i did but that was not making it smooth enough and i had a brilliant idea to use a stick on tile because they are flexible and very smooth

the white heart is where Z put her hand prints in the wet concert. i knew i couldn't make it look realistic so i went with cartoon and added the black border at the bottom to blend it in. i will be putting a circular border around it and filling with mulch

a GREAT visit

so, over the last weekend my mom and me took off on a roadtrip to take baby Z to meet her great grandma. the visit went smooth and we took Z to a park that i had found on line. it was so beautiful and they had so many statues that kids could play on even a ladybug which is Zs favorite. she fell in love with this ladybug and an ant (i love it mommy its nice and wont bite me) haha.
the love was so profound that everyday she reminds me of the ladybug and says "bring ladybug here so daddy can visit and i wont miss it" too cute
so, as a conclusion to this story...im now experimenting with statue making. it needs to be big enough and strong enough for her to sit on plus smooth for her perfect skin.
brainstorming with my family and we all came up with this....

a pile of dirt....

haha, part two coming soon

old medicine cabinet repurposed

y'all know I've mentioned before that my house is small so storage is key. i picked up this old metal medicine cabinet for $10 and knew right away i liked that it was metal,  the storage it could provide for all of our small junk, and that it opened three ways. what i didn't love was that it was a mirror. i have one open wall in my living room that it would fit perfectly on but i wanted the wall to have art not a mirror.

in comes decoupage. i did a d.i.y. modge podge with some generic school glue only 57 cents to adhere an old world map that i had laying around, so free.
 there it is. done didn't take but maybe 20 minutes and total cost was $10.57

the map i used is actually big enough that i could wrap the frame with it as well. you can see i did it already on the bottom middle section, to see if i like it and i do.

ill post the cabinet frame wrapped when i get it done.

chicken coop on WHEELS

i have been meaning to post this one for a long time, over a year. we were tired of the chicken coop clean up and wanted a new design that would mean less cleaning time. around the same time my brother, works in construction and remodel, had a job with a tongue and grove demo. he asked if i wanted the wood...free lumber that's a big YES PLEASE!!!!

my brother is the greatest y'all. he delivered the lumber and stayed to help me build it.  we live in Texas where it is 100 degrees 90% of the time...i may be slightly exaggerating  but keeping the chickens cool and not warm was the main objective. so, that is why the walls are mostly just chicken wire and not solid. i wanted whatever breeze we had to be able to blow in. we do add a heat lamp for the few cold nights that we get. 

we ended up using sheet metal, for a roof, as the walls on the upper part to keep chickens safe from predators. even in a coop a  raccoon can reach in and hurt or kill one or several chickens. chickens like to perch up high so they are never on the lower beams. we put them in just as a step to the higher beams. 

the inside view. we only put in perching beams and no boxes. we have their boxes built somewhere else and its so great! if the boxes are part of the coop the eggs get so much poop on them, its way better this way

so the above picture is what the bottom looks like from the inside....dirty. this is real life, chickens poop like 24/7 haha. the coop is on wheels and every few days we roll it around and usually i spray the inside down before movoing it but i havent kept up with it due to a crzy cold front in texas. we got snow!!!! that never happens and it was before freezing for days. my husband even had to take a snow day at work haha. 

i do have pictures illustrating the build step by step so comment if yall want more pics or instructions. till next time.

DIY Sring art

So, my brothers girlfriend asked if i could make some string art (specifically this one  and i knew i could but i hadn't in forever so here is a little refresher course for everyone.

  i started with drawing out an outline of the shape i wanted, or shapes....print them to save yourself more time. for this my shapes were the outlines of the good ole USA and Brazil. my brother is currently in a super long distance relationship, she lives in Brazil. which is why she asked me to make this for him instead of making it herself. its their love from one country to another, how cute right?

 back to the instructions.... get ready for some time to pass as you slowly nail in the nails along the outline. when you are done just rip the paper out

then, weave your string between the nails. i chose to go vertically but it doesn't mater

its a neat project with a cool finished look. 

trying to get back

well, i have a lot of projects going on and have already completed so many projects while i was m.i.a. im going to try to catch yall up. unfortunately im having difficulties getting photos to load. i will keep plugging away at it. i have consider switching up from blogspot and moving to a new host but we will just see how it goes first.

Checking in

I haven't kept the blog up to date. I have meant to and I definitely have enough projects going on but with a toddler and a broken pp I just haven't kept y'all in the loop. 

I do miss sharing our homestead but because my whole world now revolves around my child it's difficult to share. I don't want to expose my daughter to the world and the Internet is an open door way to the world. 

Well. Enough babbling. The next project I have coming up is a big one. We are building a front porch that will run out to the studio/our tiny house/baby Z's school and the. We will be adding a deck hallway to the sud shack so no more taking shoes on and off to go do loading!!! It's the little things in life. 

Plain ottoman to toy storage

Half Dozen chicken coop

So, this is the start of our newest chicken coop. We had a devastating loss of all of our chickens and ducks. Long story short, even with a fenced in yard a pack of wild dogs broke in and killed them. For a long time we didn't get more; we had our daughter and a million homestead projects plus we were sad. 

I got us more chickens so we were ready to get the coops built. My brother works in construction and remodel so he often has access to scrap wood. He was working on a tongue and groove ceiling and the clients were going to just throw this wood out!!! Obviously, he took it for me. Thanks Theo. 

Not only did he snag the wood for me but he built this coop too! He started with the side walls. 

The pictures kind of explain the process. This coop will house six chickens and the nesting boxes we have are for our backyard so my brother built in three boxes. Mr and I originally thought that each chicken needed it's own nesting box but they don't so this coop got three perfectly sized boxes and that'll be good enough. 

Till next time, y'all know the drill keep it green, clean, and classy

Shalimar and Z

Trash to Treasure

This is literally trash to treasure transformation today, because i repurposed a trash bin!  I removed the bottom flap and filler. Drilled a hole through the bin into the base. Added my light kit and a LED bulb and presto chango; I've got my over the kitchen light. I love it. When it's on it shines a neat pattern on the ceiling. Till next time keep it green, clean, and classy
Shalimar and Z

Farmily Members

We got new chickens! And ducks! We had a wild neighborhood dog jump our fence and kill our chickens, so for awhile we were without any. Having a million projects and a baby kept us from getting more straight away, but we have more now!!!
I'll be posting a new chicken coop build, once we build a new chicken coop haha. Till then,
Shalimar and Z

$2 Trunk before

I got this trunk for, you guessed it, $2. I needed the storage but it obviously needs a makeover. Which will come in a different post because im not done but thought talking about it would help motivate me to finish!
Till next time

Throw together - chili-ish soup

This was a throw together that won big with the mr and the babe. I threw everything in the picture in a pot and called it dinner. The freezer bag is a pack of previously cooked hamburger meat. I usually will buy 3-5 pounds and cook it all with my staple seasoning and then divide and freeze it.
This made enough that i froze half. With a little one running around controlling pretty much everything, its nice to have something healthy to just grab and throw in the microwave.
Stay green, clean, and classy
Shalimar and Z