Morning dew

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Floating flower

What a beautiful day today was!!


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The stare down before the chase

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The rule of deer

We have set some guidelines when it comes to Shilo and deer. She can chase the deer all she wants on our property, but she is not allowed to run into other yards to chase them. It seems pretty fair, since we have almost a half an acre, but it seems as if the deer have figured it out. Now they hang out just on the edge of the property "line", as if to taunt her.......


Too bad for Shilo!!!


She just had to check to see if we were paying attention!! :)

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Shilo and the beaver dam

We had to take a "house work break" today and get some hiking in. Ashley and james had talked about a beaver dam behind Grammie's house, so we thought we would check it out.

We hiked to the top of the road, and found a clear cut with a beautiful view.


And new little trees planted all around.











And there was the beaver pond.


And there was quite a bit of activity going on. (left behind the skunk cabbage)


Beaver dam


Shilo loved the beaver pond and went for a swim after sniffing around a bit.


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Sun....anyone??

We used some of the leftover bark nuggets to lay in the walkway of the greenhouse. The poor greenhouse is ready to house some great veggies, but the sun hasn't been out enough to grow my starts yet. So until then, the greenhouse, along with the cute little trellises that Jered built will have to wait for the plants to grow.


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Raised bed project

We decided to plant rhododendron shrubs in our raised beds. We cleaned it up last year in hopes to get some veggies to grow inside, but quickly realized the deer would eat almost anything we put there. So we let the grass grow back, pretty messy and unappealing..... But no more!!


We drove down to the rhododendron nursery by waldport and bought 7 (apparently you are supposed to plant odd numbers??) different kinds of rhodies. We spaced them a few feet apart, and it looked pretty good.


We laid down weed barrier; I have hope this project will be low maintenance in the future, but we'll see.


Then we cut holes in the weed barrier and stuck them in the ground.


A few days later we brought home a load of bark nuggets to put around the shrubs, and cover the weed barrier.

It looks great, and a few of the shrubs are actually blooming. It will take years for these slow growing plants to cover the rock wall, but we are in no hurry, I actually really like the look of the smaller plants.


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Halo, the rooster?

My grandma has a cockatoo, and yes, it will crow like a rooster. :)

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Shilo loves the ball!

Shilo hopes if she stays close to the chuck-it, I won't forget to play with her. I didn't think she would get up on the table for it though!!


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Go beavers!!

We are at a Beaver baseball game today, what a great way to spend the afternoon. It is so much more fun than watching it on tv, even though they are not winning right now :(


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King of the neighborhood

This cat lives down the hill from us, but we see him in our yard all the time.

What a bad ass cat!!


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Happy birthday grammie!!

My grandma turned 90 today, which just seems crazy! We had a lovely dinner at georgies, and ended up closing the restaurant down! Even my uncle came all the way from New York City to enjoy the occasion. Great night!!



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Laundry, laundry

We have been experimenting with serious couponing since January and have enjoyed it very much. We have more food in our house than ever, and we have noticed a drop in our monthly grocery bill (although our gasoline bill continues to climb, but that isn't just us).

Anyway, we have gotten some great deals on stuff, but we haven't found any great deals on laundry detergent. We looked online a little bit, and found hundreds of different make-your-own laundry detergent recipes.

We thought we would try it out; this is the recipe we used.

Hot water
1/2 cup Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax
1/3 bar Soap (grated) (we used fels naptha)
12 drops of orange essential oil.

It made about 2 gallons of laundry detergent. We spent under $10 for enough ingredients to make over 20 gallons of laundry detergent!! Amazing, and it smells so good!!
It looks kinda chunky, but it has been over a week, and our clothes are clean, so I don't really care what it looks like.



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Meet Shilo!!

My sister Ashley and her boyfriend James left Newport on Sunday, flew down to the California border (Mexico/California that is) to begin their hike on the pacific crest trail. Luckily, (for us:), California doesn't allow/encourage dogs on the trail, so Jered and I get to watch SHILO for the next few (4-6) months!!

She is such a sweet pup! She loves to chase balls, and get up on furniture. So we may have a few things to work on, but it is going to be so fun!! :)


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Clouds in the water

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Happy birthday mom!!!

Happy birthday mom! We had a great birthday party out at grammie's. There were so many iPhones, iPads, iPods an computers, it is amazing that we even spoke to each other! :)


It was great fun though. Once the cake came out, the electronics had to take a break!


Even for the birthday girl.....

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Ducks and a rainbow

The great part of the random downpour was a fabulous rainbow. The neighborhood ducks thought the same thing.








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Railroad walk

We had a great view of some bufflehead ducks from under the railroad bridge.


The ponds looked extra creamy this evening. Smelled pretty strong too :)


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New hedges

We have had some "trouble" with some people backing down our driveway, so we decided to try and do something about it.
We bought ten Emerald Arborvitae to plant on the steepest spots.


I was amazed I could fit ten in the Honda element!


The first three went great! We used some of our fresh, black gold from the compost pile in hopes of stimulating their growth.


The rest went in just as well. Hopefully, next time someone tries to back down the driveway, they will see the trees before going off the edge! :)

We will see.......

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AWESOME birthday cake

The twins had a super cool skateboard birthday cake to celebrate turning three.





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Kayaking with my iPhone

We got this super cool waterproof case that fits my iPhone perfect! It works so good, we took it out kayaking. We only saw one beaver on this trip, but it was great to get back in the water.


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Deer family stroll

We have four deer right now that we see on a regular basis. The one below we have named Blondie, because of its big batches of blond on him/her.








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Shilo's new hiking boots

Shilo got little booties for her little paws, but she didn't quite know how to handle them at first.

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Spring is here

The daffodils are blooming in the yard, and the deer haven't eaten them yet! I know they are supposed to be deer resistant, but I didn't see any yellow last year....


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