Happy New Year Y'all!

Ok, so its been a wild and wonderful holiday season - We've been traveling and wassailing and eating and eating and I've gained a few of those old pounds back from the year of the "diet". They'll come off again in January. We still have a few Christmasses to go yet, so the stockings are still hung by the chimney with care, and the lights are still up on the front of the house, and the trees are still sparkly with ornaments and red glass balls and there are even still a few leftovers we haven't managed to polish off. I've been busy making tiles and sending them all over the world. I'm firing my last kiln load of the year today and will shut down the studio for two weeks. Etsy has been slowing down a lot with the merrymaking and it is a good time for us to go on holiday.

I'll be back in the swing of things soon, and will continue with posting our journey at the Shady B. Larry is working on the shower now and is making a lot of progress. I ordered the glass mosaic tile so I could get started on my part next week. I'm planning on finishing the tile for the kitchen while I am off too.
So stay tuned. There is SO much more to come.

And have a safe and Happy New Year - 2009 promises great and wonderful things - a year of PROSPERITY for all! Love and kisses, Rachel

check out my new shop!

Say it with a SMILE and a handmade TILE
www.tilesmile.artfire.com

The house in town

We had a great little house in town. One of those dreamy little houses in a dreamy little neighborhood. We thought it would sell the first week. It took a year to sell it! Here are a few pictures of our first home together.

RV life

Meanwhile we put an RV in the front yard and left our house in town all fixed up, ready to sell.

It took a year.

We lived in this RV for 18 months. Winters were very cold and summers were very hot. The front yard was our living room. We had a LOT of company! We cooked on the grill alot, even pancakes, and a picnic table served as our dining room. It was perfect. But I was ready to live in a house again. Six gallons of hot water just isn't enough. I guess I'm spoiled.

Demolition

Demolition begins.

This is very satisfying. However, it DID go on for quite a long time.

While we were waiting to sell our house in town so we'd have the cash to get started, we tore this old place up. Threw it away a dumpster load at a time. For two years, we filled our dumpster with this old house. We burned what we could, but there was a lot of stuff that we couldn't burn. The first thing to go was the old roof off the studio. I had to have a place to work so I could close the studio in town, so we began with the worst of the worst and completely rebuilt it. More on that later. First, the demo pictures.

a treasure lost and found

Oh, today is SUCH a great day.
Wonderful weather, cool and crisp this morning, the sun is shining.
And I found a treasure.

While cleaning out the garage, unpacking boxes that have been stored away for the past four years as we've worked on this old place, I found a box of my cookbooks. Amongst them, was a hand typed book, about 40 pages or so, compiled by my late Aunt Margy, of all her favorite recipes.

There are some great recipes in there, ones that I plan to use for sure - and she wrote funny little notes along with them about the people she got them from and how she might have changed them up a bit. But one of them is a recipe that I thought for sure lost and gone forever.

Pickled beets. The recipe was given to her by Aunt Eva, my pawpaw's sister, who is delightful and living still at 90 something in a wonderful old folks home in Denison Texas. When we visit her she asks the same questions over and over again, and tells the same stories too - about things that happened to her when she was a girl. She has the same sparkle in her eye that my pawpaw had in his. I kinda hope that I have it too.

Anyway, I'm sure it has to be the very same beet recipe that my meemaw used to make the most mouth watering sugar beets in the world. I've not had them since she died - I had one old jar of them that I kept in the frig and put canned beets in the juice for about a year after she died, until it just wasn't the same anymore.

Meemaw said that beets made your cheeks rosy, and I believe her.

The Inspection

Lots of wood rot and termite damage here.

More termite evidence.

Mold growing under the house. Such pretty colors.

Yikes!

He fell through the floor here....

I wouldn't want his job,

nosirree.

so bear with me here, ya'll. I'm trying to start at the beginning. We've worked so hard on this place and I'm having a great time going through all the pictures, remembering, and realizing how far we have come in just four years. Stay tuned - it is a truly amazing transformation.

the fireplace first sight

This was the living room - you can sort of see the fireplace there on the left. I think I have another picture of it somewhere - I'll look - but it took up an entire wall. It is gone now! We had a couple of "get your frustrations out" parties and gave everyone a sledge hammer.......

the kitchen first sight

Green green, everywhere green. and well, sort of yellow? The floors were yellow downstairs and green upstairs.....more to come....these cabinets were incredibly well built with a beautiful wood.....then covered with GREEN laminate. Oh my.

the studio first sight

So now, the studio. Probably in the worst shape of all the property. Likely had been a carport and was converted in the seventies to a workshop. One side was his, and the other hers. I think someone fell through that hole in the ceiling.....not good. This was the first hing we demo'd.

These concrete block walls are underground. As a matter of fact, half the house is underground.

The roof was flat and leaked big time. We had to redesign it so it sloped. Wait till you see what we did!

outside first sight

A view of the chicken coop and the barn

And this is the back of the house. Doesn't look so bad from here.....

upstairs first sight

my my my my my my my.

oh my.

This was the upstairs.

A sad day at the Shady B

Today is a very sad day at the Shady B. We lost our precious calf - Juney B - this morning at sunrise. She was just four months old.
The vet said she broke her pelvis. Can't imagine how she did that. But the weather has been cooler lately and everyone is in good spirits and running and jumping and we figure she must have just fallen while she was playing in the pasture.
Everyone is sad. Bessie, the momma cow is bawling, walking up and down the fence looking for her baby. Gracie is crying and nervous. The horses are at the fence watching - they seem to know there is sadness and death. Everyone is grieving for our loss.
We have to realize that this is part of life. That she had a good one while she was here, however short. That we provided a good home for her to live, and that Bessie was a terrific momma. Death comes to all of us at some time or another. Some sooner than others. Animal or human, we all have to die. So we will grieve for our little Juney B. And we'll continue to live too, blessed by all the creatures, great and small, that God gives us to love and care for.

downstairs first sight

So, we went inside. It smelled funny, but hey, it was winter and all closed up and the lady that lived there smoked. alot. But we thought it was a VERY interesting house. It had been built by the very woman that was sitting in the dining room, along with her husband - gone about 10 years before - who was a very ingenious fella, we found out later. I think they had a contemporary side to them which was evident every now and then.....ahem....now and then.....

early 2004 looking for a place in the country

2004. Larry took an early retirement. We started looking for a house in the country. This one was the first one we found.

We looked at a lot of others, but we kept coming back to this one. It had what we wanted.

The right amount of land, fence for horses, a good water well, some outbuildings, trees, a couple of ponds, and it was on a hill. Oh, and it came with a tractor. a blue one. very cool.

So this is a picture of what we saw when we first drove up the driveway, following the realtors car. Looked pretty good from here! Ok, so blue wouldn't be the color I would choosefor a house - a tractor maybe, but still, it looks good. A house on a hill - actually built INTO the hill - the back door upstairs goes out on the ground.
This used to be a little carport - but some years ago they turned it into a workshop - one side was for her and the other for him. I'm thinkin', hey, this could be my studio!
The front door and a nice little covered porch area.