Memorial Weekend Hodge-podge

It is Monday evening and I am wishing I didn't have to go to work tomorrow. These long weekends are always too short! We didn't do anything spectacular. Just hung out and did our usual gig.....clean, garden, shop, etc. We did meet our friends Mark and Meagan for dinner and a movie on Saturday night. We hadn't been to the movies in a while so it was great to get back to the theater. The price went up to 10.00!! Good grief! (Saw the new Indiana Jones flick...it was good but not awesome). Gabe was a good husband and accompanied me on a clothes shopping excursion for my upcoming business trip for which I needed to buy a suit. Mission accomplished and it only took 1.5 hours, so it wasn't quite torture for Gabe :) Sunday we stayed home and cleaned the house and worked on the yard in preparation for a small BBQ soiree we had today.

During the weekend, we had a few kodak moments that we thought would be great to share on the blog with you all. So here is a random glimpse...

Here is Angel with her new 'Summer Look'
Had a large turtle cross the yard Friday. Cookie didn't know what to think. You can barely see the turtle, but he was a big as a dinner plate.
Gabe put up these bird feeders a few weeks ago, and since then we have been amazed at all different species of local birds that have dropped by for a bite to eat. Here is a great pic that Gabe took of a cardinal.Brody loves the bird feeder too :)

An early b-day present from my Mommy. A hand-made Afgani carpet she lugged back from Saudi. Go mom! :)
Another view....It matches perfectly.This was taken today. Barbie, Chris and their two sons came out, as well as Mark and Meagan. It rained most of the day, but the sun came out and gave us just enough time for Zachary to take a ride on our tractor. Great pic of father and son gittin' 'er done! Some cute video of Zach's big ride...

Graduation week

Finally, a blog post about something OTHER than animals and flowers!
We had a busy weekend with family. Our nephew, Josh Schnelle, graduated from Richmond High School. So we spent the weekend celebrating his big event. Gabe's parents, Bonnie and Rick, and his aunt Phyllis came up and stayed with us. We always have a great time whenever the fam is together.

Saturday: BBQ Party with a Schnelle family portrait. I obviously had a smear on the lense. Right over Josh's face. Bummer.


Amanda and Hannah
Gabe and Randy in their usual political debate.

Sunday: Graduation. Myself, Gabe, Josh, Bonnie and Phyllis

New pup in town and a geese update

Well we have yet another addition to the neighborhood canine club. A chocolate lab named Cooper. I think he is only 3-4 months old. He lives right next door, just across the pond. He is old enough now that his parents let him out to play. And boy, does he play! They played like this all day Sunday. Cookie was exhausted at the end of the day. Cookie's other young friend, Bandit, comes and joins in on the action. Angel smartly stays at a distance but voices her opinion. :)

Ok, so now for the geese update. As some of you know we inherited a male and female goose with the house. The female disappeared and Gabe and I bought three more females for our lonely male. Sadly, 2 of the females were ambushed by coyotes so we were back to just the male and one female. The female laid eggs last fall and did what she could, but without the proper shelter, the eggs were quickly eaten. Not long after that, they decided to move to our neighbors pond (I can't say that I blame them!) and have been there ever since. They have a pretty nice set-up at their new home and are well cared for. The pond is nice and protected, and they were allowed to bunk with the chickens in the chicken coop at night. A few weeks ago, we got a call from the neighbor who said they finally had babies. So Monday night we went over to see them. Unfortunately, they are no longer babies. But I took some pics nonetheless. :)

Here they are following mom and dad. 5 babies - although they look like adults. Mom and dad are in the front. Mom has the orange beak and dad has the white neck.

Its quite amazing they are all still alive and have not met their fate with the local predators. We are told mom and dad are very good parents.

We are about to enter our busy season, with lots of activities. So the dry spell on the blog should be breaking soon. Hope you are all doing well. Stay tuned for more antics on the Schnelle farm!

Flowers, more flowers and hair

Sorry for the delayed posting. Our life has been pretty uneventful lately. But, in the interest of keeping to my blogging comittment, I am posting this fairly unexciting recap of our activities of late.
It all comes down to house work. With the lack of semi-nice weekends without rain, any nice day you will find us outside working on the property. The story of my life lately is planting, weeding, planting and more weeding. Oh and I work in cleaning here and there too. Gabe's life is mowing and caring for the newly planted vegetable garden.

We inherited a sizeable perinneal garden with this house. And I have been reluctantly thrown into gardening. So far, its more like weeding. It can get pretty overwhelming given the amount we have. I am learning as I go thanks to a lot of help from my stepmom Linda and mother-in-law Bonnie and Cindy. Slowly, I am starting to get a little more confident with the garden. The last two weekends have been spent cleaning up the flower beds.

This past weekend, Gabe's parents, Bonnie and Rick came up to stay with us. Saturday, we went to our nephew Lucas' baseball game and stumbled upon a terrific greenhouse. I had never seen anything like it! It was HUGE! We were there for 2 hours and we didn't get through it all. They had every flower, plant and vegetable imaginable. And the quality of the plants are awesome. You pay for it too. We came home with a few perinneals. So this weekend was spent planting. I really hope they make it.


A couple of mum plants and a new cala lilly. The rock was an anniversary gift from Cindy. In this picture, it looks a little like a tombstone! HA!

The latest completed section of the flower bed. I have no idea what this bush is. I really want to get rid of it. Maybe next year. We probably use about 10 bags of mulch. I love this mulch because the color doesn't fade over the year. Scott's Naturescape Mulch
I thought this was a neat and unique ground cover. Dancing Clover
I just can't stop with the Columbines. These were too pretty to pass up.
Cindy and I spent time cleaning out the dead hens and chicks a couple weeks ago and since then they have been going crazy! I love these because they are so low maintenance and look so pretty! Like little artichokes.
This is the next big project. With the exception of the day lilly plants, this is all weeds. Its one big mess. We will have to dig all of it out and start over. The weeds are even taking over the grass! EEK!

Ok, now to the hair. I finally got sick enough of my hair and built up the courage to chop it off! I was pretty nervous about it. This is the shortest I have ever had it. But I really love it. I finally have a hair style and its very easy. This is what they call a stacked bob. And before you ask, yes, I have a shot of the front, but it won't ever be posted here since I hate pictures of myself. At least here you can't see my face. You will just have to see it in person :)

Happy Earth Day!

Since today is Earth Day, I couldn't help but reflect on what Gabe and I are doing to be more "green". I realized we have made a few changes this last year to jump on the "green" bandwagon.

1) Re-usable grocery bags. These are the BOMB! I don't know about you, but our mountain of plastic bags became so big that we couldn't deal anymore. We got so sick of stores putting one or two items per bag. When we made the switch to these, we were very happy to see that the baggers pack as much as they can into one bag. The nice thing about these is the wide bottom so that you can hold much more in them. Most stores have made these bags available, including Target and Walmart. Some stores will give a .5 cent rebate each time you use them so they pay for themselves. Now Whole Foods announced they are getting rid of plastic bags completely.






2) Recycle - we have been doing this for years, but until this year we only recycled glass. So we bought these new recycle bins from Improvements (LOVE this catalog)so we can include paper and plastic.





3) Carpool - This was really just an attempt at saving gas money, but its side-effect is better for the environment :)


4) Cleaning Products - As much as I love the Swiffer dusters, I realized that is was causing unnecessary waste. So I went to Walmart and bought a pack of microfiber towels and a pack of bar-mop washcloths. The microfiber picks up the dust almost as good as the swiffers and the bar-mop rags replace paper towels for clean-up. When I am done I just toss them into the washer and viola! I have not been able to give up my Swiffer mop yet though. I still need to find a good alternative. I also switched from my chemically toxic cleaners to the new Clorox Green Works cleaners. So far I am happy with them. They work as well as the others and the smell is MUCH nicer! I wish I could give up my Magic Erasers, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Baby steps! :)

5) Energy effiencient washer and dryer - Housewarming gift from my dad and stepmom.


Here are a couple of items that still need work:
1) Light bulbs - we are slowly replacing these. We have some, but not many. One problem is the energy efficient bulbs put out the most awful light. Almost a fluorescent light and I hate that! So we still need to work on this.

2) Composting - Living out in the country, this is a common thing. A lot of people compost since they can't put kitchen scraps into the septic tank. There was an established compost pile out by our barn when we bought the house, but, we have not been the best at it. For one thing we have been quite lazy about taking the scraps out to the pile since its not in a convienent place. And we have not been good about making sure we are layering right and turning it often...etc. We are hoping to be better about it.

3) Kitty Litter - Probably the worst offender in our house is the kitty litter we use. Its clay based and horrible for the environment. I am on the hunt for a more environmentally friendly litter, but one that can handle two cats and cut the odor as well as the clay stuff does.

4) Garden - Gabe is starting the garden this year. we hope to be able to start consuming our own organic product soon.

These are small steps, but we feel pretty good knowing that even our small efforts can help to make a big difference.