Vintage Home and Farm

It’s been a few years since this article was published, but we thought we’d bring it back out of the archives and share it again, for our followers who asked to see photos of knotty pine in some of our rooms!  ~~~~~ Our master bedroom features vintage knotty pine walls, which is a bit uncommon and can be a challenge when trying to figure out how to decorate the space. If you also have knotty pine walls in your master bedroom, you know all about this challenge first-hand.  It can help to see examples of how others have decorated their knotty pine master bedroom.  So, I thought I would share a few photos of our bedroom with you. In going about decorating the room, one of the most important issues I learned was that there needs to be a balance of light to offset the darkness of the wood walls.  This can be accomplished easily with a light-colored bedspread and white sheets. You may be tempted to buy new furnishings and bedding, but I found that I didn't need to.  I went ahead a

About a year ago I came across a Master Gardener's "what to do" month-by-month garden calendar for our local area. It's been so helpful because it suggests what month to plant each crop, when to prune, ideal times to add soil amendments, what pests to watch out for at certain times of the year (and how to control them organically), and so on.  I printed off a complete set of their instructions for the year and kept them on my kitchen counter, and then as the year went on I checked off each garden-related task that I had completed.  Then I put that month's page to the back of the stack and continued on.  Now, the year is starting over, and I still have the handy pages for using again this year.  Maybe your area has a Master Gardener calendar as well? Here are links to the calendars for our local area and also what I was able to find for some of our family and friends who live outside our area: Clallam County, WA Clark County, WA Washington County, OR   Thurston Cou

The first green egg of the New Year was laid today by our rogue hen, Little White Bird.  She is an Ameraucana hen and the green eggs are also called Easter Eggs.   As you may recall from an earlier blog article, Little White Bird prefers to escape the chicken pen to lay her eggs.  She then finds somewhere secret and goes there every time that she lays eggs until her nest is full of her prized Easter Eggs.   Today, I was mucking out the chicken coop when Little White Bird flew out of the pen and landed on the roof of the coop.  I didn't have my phone with me, unfortunately, or I would have taken a photo of her.  "What are you doing way up there, Little White Bird?" I called to her.  She seemed perplexed as she paced back and forth across the roof of the coop.  Then she flew back down into the pen. Next, she managed to squeeze out at the gate where the fence wire had come loose.  I put her back inside the pen and fixed the fence. Her antics clued me in that she wanted to la