Finishing Touches

We finished a couple more projects in our camper this weekend in preparation for our big trip.  Here Matthew is constructing the face of the cabinet in the "nose" of the goose.

 

The finished cabinet complete with sliding doors and two shelves.  We plan to store all of our clothing in this area.

 

We also installed horseshoe drawer pulls on all of the cabinets.





















 

 

And added a mirror on one of the cabinet doors.

 In the horse area, we added a "stud wall" to hold the hay away from Mow, insulated the ceiling, and I thoroughly cleaned all of the mats.

 

After all our work was done and the trailer was packed, we headed out for a fun night of swing dancing at the Mighty Eighth Airforce Museum!

Dancing, Dancing, Dancing!

We've had a some exciting nights of dancing over the last few weeks.  First, we attended a ball with the Penguin Club at a local hotel.

 

A fun photo of us on the floor with Jamie and Edward.

 

Last week we received a last minute invite to dance as movie extras for a film that is currently shooting in Savannah.  The movie was set in the 1930s so we had to visit wardrobe, hair, and makeup before the filming.  This was Matthew's first time on a set and my third.  We had a lot of fun but were a little tired after staying up until 4 in the morning.  As long as they keep the shot we were in, we should feature prominently in the dancing scene!

 

And, lastly, we went to a birthday party on Tybee Island on Saturday and went for a walk on the beach.  We met one of our dancing friends on the beach who happened to be dancing, so we joined in!  Dancing on the sand was actually a lot easier than either one of us would have thought too.

Garden and Horses

The garden is off to a great start so far this year!  We have been eating lettuce, spinach, snap peas, and asparagus for a while now and the broccoli and potatoes are just coming in.  The tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, raspberries, onions, okra, corn, and herbs are growing fast and, hopefully, won't be ready before we return from our trip.

 

We only installed one new raised bed this year, but it is already full of plants.  I also added some mulching around my kiwi plants and new grape vine.

 

There are more than just veggies growing in my garden too.  Here are the five baby blue birds residing in a box on one of my trellises.

 

 

A week ago I took Mow to his second dressage horse show.  He started out a little nervous but we ended up having a great ride.  Here he is sporting his new bridle that I picked up at a tack sale a few weeks ago.

 

And, I've been working on my Horse Selfies! ;)

 

Finished Projects

Over the last two weeks we finished up a couple of big projects around the house.  Here Matthew is putting the finishing touches on installing the face of our corner cabinet in the horse trailer.  Good thing we didn't make the cabinet any smaller!

 

After installation, I stained the face and then we added the drawer fronts and cabinet doors.  Luckily, Lowes messed up our replacement drawer front and door a few times on our other cabinets so we had enough extras to match.  We are both very proud of our handy work!

 

Next up: horse fencing.  Over Christmas my dad dug and set about 50 wooden posts around our horse pasture.  Thanks Dad!  We finally got around to installing the wire part of the fencing the weekend before last.  Matthew had an extra day off for Good Friday and we used that time to learn how to install fence.  Our neighbor graciously showed us a few tricks of the trade so that it almost looks professional!  Here we are rolling out the wire.

 

Bucket showing Matthew how to set up the fence stretcher.

 

After we stretched the fencing tight (using a "fence stretcher", a come-along, some chains, and a tree), each strand had to be stapled and wrapped around the post.

 

We ended up installing about 450 feet of fencing, which is a little more than half of the perimeter of the back field.

 

Finished!  Here is a view from the back of the "dry lot" horse pasture (the one we've had for a while that contains the barn).  We installed fencing along the left side and all along the back.

 

Another view from the dry lot.  This shows how we split the back field into two pastures so that I can rotate the horses between them. The pasture on the left is finished while the one on the right only has permanent fencing along the back.  We are saving the right side and front of this pasture for another day! (or year) But now the horses can graze the left pasture at night because of the safer and more permanent fencing.

 

A view from the back right corner of the field, showing the line of fence along the back.  The pastures are finally looking good! Installing the fence wasn't as hard as I thought but we'll be happy to take a break for a while.

Corner Cabinet

Last weekend we continued working on the horse trailer, particular the corner cabinet.  This is probably the hardest/most complicated project but we made some great progress over the past few days.

 

I even managed to get a photo of myself helping with the construction.  The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I'm covered head to toe with sawdust!

 

 

In order to install the drawers, we had to do some creative carpentry to get the angles correct.  Good thing Matthew is skinny because the cabinet space kept getting smaller and smaller!

 

Installing the runners.

 

It might not look like much, but these three drawers really add a lot of storage.  Next up: cut out the shelf and build the cabinet face.

 

Matthew also did some painting on the underside of the trailer (no photos) and I installed our US map that Emily and Miran gave us for Christmas.  We were going to put the map in a frame inside the trailer but decided that we liked it better on the outside. I did not add Hawaii or Alaska since it is unlikely we will ever make it to either of those.

The criteria for each state is that we sleep in the camper there for one night.  So far, we only have three states but that will soon change!

Trailer To-Dos and More

While my parents were visiting over Christmas and then again last week, we spent a lot of time planning our Out West trip for this spring.  Now that we have our reservations and dates set, it is time to start preparing!  We have a long list of improvements for our horse trailer in order to make it comfortable for the month-long trip so we started on that last weekend.

 

First up was to start building the corner cabinet next to the fridge.  Matthew had to cut the counter top in a curve so that there is room for cabinet doors and drawers.

 

We also put up the side of the custom cabinet and a few supports.  Next up will be the drawers and shelf.

 

During our ski trip we picked up the beautiful steps that Richard made for us.   We brought them home and I stained them to match the cabinets then Matthew secured them to the wall.  I think that they turned out perfectly!

 

Finally, Matthew installed the plumbing under the sink so that we can have running water!  We mounted the small trash can a few weeks ago and have been using a bucket to catch the "gray" water from the sink (since we are not going to add any holding tanks to the trailer).

 

 

In other news, I am still active with the cat rescue group and continue to attend adoption fairs most weekends.  Our last two fosters were adopted last weekend so we are currently foster-free.  On Monday I went with another volunteer to pick up 1800 pounds of low cost kitty food from a food bank.  That should last a while!

 

I've also been working more and more on our vegetable garden with the beautiful weather.  It has been such a mild spring that I've been able to plant things early.  Right now I have carrots, lettuce, snap peas, onions, spinach, and potatoes in the garden with broccoli, peppers, eggplant, herbs, tomatoes, and okra growing inside.  Today I pulled one of the carrots I planted in the fall and it was huge!  I guess all of that rabbit manure and fertilizer has really been helping.  I'm looking forward to a produce-filled year!

NC Weekend

Matthew and I drove up to Boone, NC last weekend for our annual ski trip.  Our friends Ben and Renee met us there and we stayed in an airbnb cabin.  On Saturday we visited a cave and then toured a local brewery.  The cave wasn't very big but did have some neat formations including this green flowstone.

 

The brewery was around the corner from our cabin and we ended up staying for dinner.

 

We spent Saturday night playing games in the cabin.  On Sunday morning Renee and I went for a hike to see a waterfall.  We hiked to the top of the falls and then to several overlooks.  If you look closely you can see a couple of people in the middle, top third of this photo.  These we pretty impressive falls!

 

The view downriver.

 

While we were hiking, the guys were skiing.  They had a great time but did call it quits a little early due to the heavy rain.