Laughing Stock Farm

Civil War

Our sons are going off to join the Civil War - only as reenactors, of course.  We attended a small encampment last Saturday which included a Confederate cannon group, and the boys are hooked.  Chase and Eric are sixteen and fifteen respectively, and I suppose blowing off cannons comes as a natural interest to boys this age; but the part that thrills me is that they are actually far more interested in the facts and details of the Civil War now.

I've been incredibly more interested in history since the birth of my first child when I began researching our family's history.  Finding that we had at least two ancestors who served in the Civil War naturally drew me in.  I'm so glad now that all our children seem to share my interest.  They didn't really have my enthusiasm for it until visiting this reenactment.

What a wonderful service these volunteer reenactors do us as a nation.

Our thanks go out to the Levisa Artillery Confederate cannon group from Kentucky and the Levisa Artillery Batter E group of the Kanawha Battery.  Many thanks for sparking our boys' interest in history!

Welcome Home

Here's our welcoming committee as we arrived back at our wonderful WV, cottage home - Lord willing, to stay forever.  This Mountain Laurel (up north we always called them Rhododendrons!) is so incredibly beautiful every year.  It just takes my breath away.  It's about 10' tall or so, and it sits just up the hill from our house, so I can see it from my kitchen.  (That's our root cellar just behind the bush.)

It's good to be home, though there's a lot of work to be done.  The young man who was supposed to be buying the place did a little deconstruction while we were gone.  My beautiful white picket fence was completely removed from our front yard.  I was so disappointed, but we'll live.

He also made it possible for us to completely redo the kitchen.  We had to tear it all out down to the studs...well, actually after 8 layers of wallpaper and a layer of drywall, we left the studs covered with planking there.

Sorry that's a little fuzzy, but my camera won't cooperate indoors lately.  Anyway, you get the point - that it sure wasn't pretty in there.  My dear mother thinks I'm crazy for living without a kitchen ever since we moved in a couple weeks ago....but then again, she probably thinks I'm just generally crazy anyway. G

Steve built new walls just inside the old, thereby straightening and squaring up my new kitchen.  He added a bunch of plug outlets for me and wired for a new light over the sink area - thanks, sweetie.  The drywall is up, and we're getting ready to "mud" it.

I've decided that since we have to do this anyway, I'm going to take full advantage of it and design my dream kitchen.  Now, my dream kitchen most likely isn't anything like your idea of a dream kitchen...but hey, that's just me.

I'm going for a rustic, cottage look.  We're going to build the bare bones of a cabinet to hold the sink up, maybe add a little beadboard trim and run a fabric curtain across the whole thing.  I just love that look. 

Then there'll be a small, custom built cabinet next to it - but here's the surprise!  We won't store anything in that cabinet because in the back of that cabinet is a hole (finished off nicely, of course) that leads into the boys' bedroom.  Right now their only way of exiting their room is through the one bathroom in the house.  The hole going through the back of the cabinet and into their room will be a "secret" entrance/exit.  We just can't wait for someone to come over and have the kids POP out of the cabinet.  We laugh ourselves silly just thinking about it.  I'll post pics when it's finished.

Anyway, my other plans for the "dream" kitchen include nearly everything out in the open except for our food.  I'm going to put beadboard, painted white, up the wall near the stove to hang pots.  I'll put shelves on another wall for most, if not all, of our dishes.  We'll have a island work table that I picked up last year at a garage sale.  It's a beautiful old oak table that works perfectly in our kitchen.

I can hardly wait to get this all put back together.  Our dear daughter is tiring, I fear, of washing dishes in the bathtub.  Poor child, she'll defintely have interesting stories to tell about her childhood some day.

Well, back to work....

Have a blessed day!

Collage Plate Photo

You just can't stop a crafter from creating.  Here's a photo of a collage plate I've been thinking about for a while and completed in the midst of moving.  I just couldn't help myself.  I was packing to move, and all I could think about was making this plate.

I used an old primary school reader, some Modge Podge (?) and a glass plate.  I love the way it turned out.  Hope you do too!  Now, back to moving.  We're leaving on our 300-mile trek to WV later this afternoon.  I must be crazy.

Blessings to you all - Tracie