Week in Instagram v5

First off thanks so much for all your sweet comments on yesterdays post, they really meant a lot, so thank you. I'm feeling a lot better about the whole thing, I think sometimes you just really need to have a good cry to help make things feel a little better. Will's parents are actually coming up this coming week to help us make another big push on the house, so I'm pretty darn excited about that. Hopefully we can get the other cistern done, as well as some pluming and wiring. Fingers crossed!

This week's Week in Instagram is a pretty small one mainly because both Will and I were working like mad men trying to get a big project done for some clients. Yesterday we worked almost 20 hours straight to get it done, which needless to say was not the funnest thing in the world. 

1. Our internet went out one day so I couldn't do any of the work I needed to. Instead I went ahead and painted my nails. I hardly ever paint them mainly because house building and nail polish don't really mix, but since I was just working on the computer last week I went and did them.
2. Oh spicy and delicious Cholula how I love you. This bottle literally sits next to my desk and I pretty much put it on everything I eat. It reminds me of Arizona. 
3. That is 2:54 this morning when I was finally done editing videos for our client. Man I don't think I have pulled an all nighter since college, making me incredibly tired today. In fact I'm unsure how I am even awake enough to write this post, especially because I woke up at 7 to make sure we didn't miss any important emails.
4. Editing some pictures for a blog post last week. 

I told you not much really happened this week, but we are head out to the Baltimore area to hang out with our friend this week so hopefully I will have some more pictures next week. What are your plans for the weekend? 

x's and o's

Little Thoughts

The road at the top of the mountain.

Yesterday turned out to be one of those days that starts out pretty nice but then turns into a whole crying meltdown in the car on the way back from the grocery store. I am usually pretty darn upbeat when it comes to house building even though it has taken so much longer than we had initially thought, but with the wedding looming over us I just kind of lost it. We are kind of at the point where we really need to just make a couple big pushes to make the house done enough for us to move in before the wedding and I'm very afraid that won't happen. And the idea of getting ready for the wedding and taking a shower in our outdoor sun-shower made me just lose it. It's so stupid and silly, but I feel like I don't ask for very much, I just want the house to be bare bones done enough for the wedding. All I'm talking about is just drywall and nothing else, but to get there we will have a lot to do, put on the metal roof, wire, plum, and insulate the place. Ugh it just seems like too much to do in such a short time. 

After my little breakdown I felt a little better and then the day got better. we heard back from some big clients that they really love the work we did for them so that felt really nice. Then we did some blackberry picking (I thought I would incorporate some pretty pictures from then within the post to make it slightly more cheery). But then there was a disastrous BBQ incident that left some of plastic siding on the house slight scorched, and on top of that I got a slew of spamy looking text messages late last night that wanted me to download something. That was super annoying, especially when all I wanted to do was sleep.

We found quite a few, but I think if we wait another week almost all of them will be ready to eat.

Yesterday was all over the place so I'm pretty happy that it's a new day, and we are another day closer to the weekend! We are going to hangout with our friend Shaye, which I am super excited about and of course there will be plenty yummy food and drinks for sure!

And just for good measure a goofy picture of me miming putting all the blackberries in my mouth. This picture makes me laugh at just how silly I can be. 

Hope everyone is having a great Thursday.

x's and o's

Tiny Flowers!

I'm pretty darn excited because the wildflowers in our flower bed have finally started blooming! Well one of the plants has started blooming, but whatever I'm happy! I'm planning on using some of these for the wedding, so it's been nice to see just how long they take to grow, and I can figure out when I need to plant some more to have them ready in October. There should also be a ton of other wildflowers that naturally grow up here to mix in with them.

Such pretty little white flowers. Any one have any idea what kind they actually are?  

Our flower bed is starting to look super nice.

I think this is the next little guy to start blooming. Eee I'm excited!

This is the first time I've ever really had flowers growing in a bed outside our little home, and I'm pretty much in love. I think I'm going to make sure every spring/summer I have a bunch of flowers growing. They are just so pretty and it's really fun to watch them grow. 

Also we did our very first little harvest from the greenhouse, and I must say it was pretty delightful, small but delightful! We got a couple of peas and one bean, hehe. There are a lot more that are almost ready, like two yellow squash, we just have to wait I think another week or so. I'm really excited for the yellow squash, I found a really wonderful sounding squash ravioli. It might be a little more than our little make shift kitchen can handle currently but I'm going to give it a go! I think I've mentioned it before but we only have a toster oven and just a hot plate so it kind of isn't the most convenient for cooking, but we make do. 

Our little harvest. 

Hope everyone is have a wonderful Wednesday, I can hardly wait for it to be the weekend, only a couple more days!

x's and o's

Whistle While You Work

So as I mentioned the other day we were doing another push on the house this past week, as well as trying to get a pretty big job done. Of course it always seems like we only get half as much stuff done as we originally plan, but I guess such is life.

Anyways we were mainly trying to get the cisterns all built. We are unable to drill a well because there is no water up on the mountain, so we are planning/hoping to get all of our water from rain draining off of our (soon to be) metal roof. There will also probably be a couple months out of the year that we just don't get enough rain and we will have to have it delivered, but it doesn't seem like that would be too frequent. 

As you can see this guy is pretty darn big and we built two of them! Between both of them they will hold about 5500 gallons! That's seriously seems like a ridiculous amount of water, and it's going to be very interesting once we get them all hooked up to see how long they actually last. I don't think I've ever really put too much thought in how much water I used in the course of a day when I had a seemingly endless supply of water.

Not only do I think this photos is pretty darn adorable of Will but it also helps to give you an idea of just how big the cisterns are. He is 6'3" and his head just barely peaks over, if I stood in it I wouldn't even be able to see over the wall at all haha. I will take some pictures of the final product in the next coule of days once we get all the forms off.

Happy Monday to you all.

x's and o's

Sunday Snapshot #20

1991

Boy are you guys for a treat, one of my many rather embarrassing stories from my youth, haha. So this photo is another one from one of our many trips to visit family in Illinois. Now the embarrassing part comes from a couple of weeks prior to our trip. I was at home playing with one of those round brushes and I got it stuck in my hair and completely panicked. Looking back I have no clue why I was so worried, but at that moment in time getting that brush out of my hair was a matter of life and death. So I did what any smart seven year old would do and cut it out. That's right I cut a huge chunk of hair off the side of my head, making my already sweet bangs continue well past my ear, haha! 

I wish I had better photographic proof of this hair, I know my dad must so next time I am visiting I'm going to have to do a little searching. If I remember there are some pretty amazing school photos with this hair. I seriously have no idea why my mom thought this haircut would be better than just cutting my hair super short in a bob or something. I guess it will just forever be a very goofy mystery, because I am sure my dad has no idea why this happened, or even really remember it for that matter haha. 

I hope you have enjoyed this immensely embarrassing moment from my childhood. Feel free to share any embarrassingly fun story of your own, I would love to know I wasn't the only goofy kid out there.

Happy Sunday.

x's and o's

Black Raspberry Cobbler

If you follow me on instagram or twitter then you have probably already seen and heard about some amazing black raspberry cobbler I made the other day. So I thought it would be fun to share the recipe with you all, it's pretty darn simple which is definitely a plus! 

Ingredients

2-3 cups black raspberries (or blackberries) 

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup of sugar (I really like tarter cobbler so you might want to add more to taste)
2 tbs baking powder

First mix the sugar with the berries and let them set for about twenty minutes, or until they form a kind of syrup. Melt the butter, and mix all the dry ingredients while the butter is melting. Add milk and mix well, then add the butter. Pour 3/4  of the batter into a lightly greased 9" pie pan, then pour your berries on top. Put remaining batter on top of berries.

Bake for 35-45 minutes at 375, or until golden brown.

Serve nice and hot and if you have it add a dolup of ice cream!

And for good measure, a seriously way to close shot of my face that Will got of me trying to sneak a taste of the berry filling. You can see the shame in my face when I got caught, haha! I just couldn't help myself it was just too tasty looking! 

Let me know if you give the recipe a try I would love to hear how you liked it! 

Happy Saturday everyone. 

x's and o's

Week in Instagram v.4

1. Ok so this picture is a couple of weeks old, it's from our Portland trip, but since I haven't done a Week in Instagram since the trip I thought it would be ok to still share hehe. That and I had to share this kind of terrifying mural. I mean look how unbelievably creepy that girl is, seriously nightmare worthy if you ask me!
2. The tall wheat like grass I've already posted about. I just can't get over how wonderful it is. 
3. My new journal that I found at the Goodwill Bins. It's all kinds of amazing and still has some writing from the previous owner about who should be in their band and what their name should be. One possible name was Battle Maggot! 
4. Whale of a Wash Laundromat down in town. It's not too shabby of a place, but I will be seriously happy when I don't have to spend an hour driving up and down the mountain just to wash our clothes. 
5. Murder She Wrote! Just maybe the greatest television show of all time. And all twelve seasons are on Netflix Instant View so I am one happy camper! 
6. Black raspberry cobbler. I'm planning on doing a little recipe post for this guy pretty soon because it came out amazing!

If you want to join along on my Instagram adventures you can find me @littleladylittlecity

Hope everyone is having great Friday!

x's and o's

How Does Your Garden Grow

Oh little greenhouse, how happy you make me! I'm excited to share with you all some of our wonderful veggies our little greenhouse has produced so far. I swear we were out there looking at everything just a coupe of days ago and things were just starting to grow and now some are almost ready to pick. Eee, it's so exciting!

I'm going to have to find some yummy squash recipes because there is a whole lot more than just this guy! 

Will's 40 extra pea plants are doing pretty darn well. 

Will got himself a new chainsaw, and is pretty darn excited about it. As soon as he got it out of the box he tried it out on some of our apple trees in need of prunning.

The only sad news is that out watering system has stopped working. We think some dirt has clogged up some of the mister heads, so we have to try and find a way to fix before our next trip. Hopefully we can figure something out, or Mr. Google knows what to do. 

House building is going pretty well. Unfortunately we are splitting it with some commercial work we recently got, but we are making do. I should have some pictures of the cisterns we are currently working on up soon. They should be done by Friday, which is exciting! I was also planning on making a little video of the house to share with my family and I think I might just put it up here too, to give you all a better idea of what the house is looking like. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely day.

x's and o's

Also we have another feral mountain kitty friend! He came around last night, but it didn't look like he stuck around too long, hopefully he keeps coming back. We think these guys must have been born up here or something because we can't imagine they would have walked up the mountain on their own. Either way I'm excited!

Lovely Mountain

Even though it is starting to get hot and humid up here on the mountain I think this is one of my favorite times of the year, mainly because of the tall wheat like grass. I absolutely love to go and lay in it and just listen to the wind sweep through them. There is nothing as lovely as the sound of wind rushing across a field. 

As long as you don't mow the grass it pretty much stays up till winter, turning this wonderful light brown color. Since we are having our wedding up here on the mountain, I had the idea of keeping the grass all around and just mowing out a large opening where we will be having the reception and pathways to apple trees and different areas. I think not only will it be a great way to get people to the best trees for apple picking, but it will look really beautiful as well. 

I think the only thing I really have to worry about are bugs, but hopefully there won't be too many around come October. Anyone ever try any of those Off Candles or any other non spray bug repellent? I'm curious if they work all that well. 

We are trying to make a bit of a push on the house this week, so please forgive me if I am absent for a couple of days. I think I should still be able to post fairly consistency but just incase not I wanted to make sure you knew where I'd disappeared off to. 

How's your Tuesday going? 

x's and o's 

Sunday Snapshot #19

1988 or so.
In honor of Father's Day I thought I would share one of my favorite photos of my dad from when I was little.  I have  maybe one memory of this time (well I think it was from this time): it was my dad sharing an ice cream bar with me. He would pretend like he at it all only to surprise me with it was still completely intact. It was so silly but I was absolutely amazed by it, I pretty much thought my dad was a wizard or something, haha. My dad can still be as goofy as he was back than and I love it. Happy Father's dad Papa, I couldn't have asked for a better dad. 

Wedding Inspiration

Today I thought it would be fun to talk about jewelry, more specifically necklaces. I absolutely love necklaces but unfortunately I don't have much use for them when working on the house. That doesn't stop me from looking up lovely pieces online and occasionally buying them especially, if it's on sale, hehe. Here are some of my most recent favorites that I think would be lovely for a wedding.

(source)
This necklace is so wonderful, I really love the design. I almost get a Disney Princess vibe from it. Which is not something I would normally go for, but there is just something so interesting about it.

(source)
I'm a big fan of jewelry inspired by nature. I also really love how this necklace hangs, if you check out the source you will see what I mean.

(source)
I am seriously in love with the color right now, and I also really love all the fringe. 

(source)
These colors are heavenly. It's so fun and playful and would totally add a nice splash of color to a wedding dress. I'm pretty sure this going to be my next necklace purchase :)

(source)
I think the reason I love this necklace so much is that it reminds me of the types of necklaces my mom used to wear.  Does that ever happen to you? You see something that reminds you of something your mom used to wear, and you love it.  

I asked my dad to take pictures of all my mom's jewelry and send them my way because I wanted to incorporate something that was hers in my outfit for the wedding. I have to say my mom has some really beautiful necklaces, and I cannot wait to try them on with my dress. 

But as you can see I'm a fan of  bigger necklaces/colorful necklaces, there is just something so fun about them I can't help it. What's your favorite type of jewelry/necklace?

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Saturday!

x's and o's

PS The kitty came back again last night! I think the can of tuna I left out for him had something to do with it, haha. But I got a better picture of him, so I'm a happy camper.

Oh Goodness

Ok so I'm going to share this video with you that is kind of embarrassing, but I also love it so much. First a little bit of a back story. Oh and if you are not a cat fan then this probably isn't the post for you. Forget that you are going to love it!

I have always loved all animals since I was little, I was the type of kid that would run up to anything furry and four legged and just wrap my arms around it and tell it how much I loved it. We were a dog family and always had at least two dogs with us at any given time, and as much as I loved my dogs I always wanted a cat. So much so that every year I would ask Santa for a big fat one. Will and I recently found a tape of me at the age of four franticly waiting my turn to sit on Santa's lap and ask him for my big fat cat. I don't think I even laughed so hard in my life watching this tape. I mean I was full on hysterically laugh crying haha! 

So I have always wanted a cat, but just never could get one due to one reason or another. Family members were allergic, roommates already had one, that kind of stuff. So I tend to get overly excited when it comes to cats, and this is where this video comes into play. About a month ago we found out we have one or two feral cats living up on the mountain with us. We drove past one on the road once and I literally shouted 'STOP KITTY!' to Will, who was driving, and jumped out of the car to go see him. He took off before I could get too close, though. Then last night we spotted him again, and this time he was hanging out right next to our cabin! Of course I was forced to spend the next hour or two watching him through binoculars, and that's when Will grabbed the camera. 

Kitty from Amanda on Vimeo.
It's kind of hard to see him in the video but he is that dark shape to the left of the wood pile.

I put out two cans of tuna for him and we set up a security camera to see if we could capture him eating the tuna. Unfortunately he is all black so this was the only image we caught. 

I will put out some more tuna tonight and hopefully he will come back. Well I hope you enjoyed watching me go from adult to four year old child in a matter of seconds, hopefully I didn't come off as too nutty, haha. 

Happy Friday! 

x's and o's

Yum!

We have a couple patches of wild blackberries up on the mountain and they are starting to grow! I'm pretty thrilled about this because I love them so much, especially tart ones. I've already started eating them even though they still have a ways to grow, haha. Hopefully I can keep my hands off them long enough so I can freeze a batch to make some blackberry cobbler for the wedding. 

What's your favorite berry?

Happy Thursday! 

x's and o's 

You Again

Thanks for all your helpful tips on the best foods to get our mouse (or family of mice) into the trap. We were all set with our trap full or peanut butter and bread when we noticed something on top of our makeshift kitchen door. And when I say we noticed, I mean I walked through the door about 10 times before Will noticed haha. Our friendly not so little snake was back, and this time in our house on top of our door! 

To say we were startled would be an understatement. I have a feeling this is the same guy we saw a couple of month ago and maybe the same fella that scared me half to death in the bathroom last year, haha. I think he just wants to be our friend but just isn't very good at not sneaking up on us. 

This is my favorite picture of him, it's as if he is just saying 'Oh Hello' haha! 

From the research we have done in the past we believe this guy is a non poisonous Black Ratsnake. He seems to be pretty darn docile. He had no problem with us taking his picture, and he just sat there kind of checking us out too. From what we could tell he looked to be over three feet long! 

We weren't able to move him because we had so much construction stuff in the way, so we left the door open for him in the hopes he will find himself out.  In hindsight this morning we probably should have moved everything and helped him outside, because we couldn't find him this morning, but I guess if he still is in the house we shouldn't have anymore problems with mice. I'm sure if we do come across him again, I will be letting you know, haha.

Happy Tuesday!

x's and o's

Greenhouse

Have you ever had one of those moments when you realize you are kind of a dummy or just really silly? I had one of those the other day about our greenhouse. I'm actually a little embarrassed to even share this with everyone, haha. So the other day someone asked how our greenhouse is doing, and then they asked how we were pollinating our veggies. To which I pretty much said what do you mean, and as soon as I send that it hit me like a ton of bricks. Our greenhouse doesn't allow any bugs in to pollinate them, and I felt just absolutely silly. I guess I should cut myself a little slack seeing how I've never grown anything before much less in a greenhouse, so maybe it's ok I didn't think of it before, right? 

Anyways I promptly did some research in how to pollinate our plants and I think our self pollinating program was a success, I should know for sure in the up coming weeks. 

Our peas plants shooting for the stars, hehe.

Hopefully a successfully pollinated zucchini 

Our plants in our planter on our tiny cabin. I cannot wait for the flowers to come in! 

It's kind of ridicules how excited I still am about all our plants, but I have a feeling Will might be even more excited than me. Yesterday I walked out into the greenhouse to see will planting 45 new pea plants, haha! We are going to have to figure out a new configuration for our greenhouse to accommodate all of them, I will be sure to share some pictures with you all. 

Now onto a little problem we have been having that hopefully someone can help us with. So now that we have made the house all tight (all the doors and windows are in) we need to relocate one clever little mouse out of our kitchen area. We bought a no kill trap and put some peanut butter in there for him (I once heard mice love peanut butter) and nothing, so we thought we would spice up the deal with some cheese on top and still nada. So anyone know a type of food a mouse just can't resist?  I would really just like to get this little guy out of the house. Seriously any help would be wonderful. 

Hope everyone is having a great Monday! 

x's and o's

House Guests

Ok well I guess these guys aren't really your typical house guests and technically they would be more like outside guests. A couple weeks ago we were working on the side of the house and we noticed a little bird has made her nest on the side of our house. It was kind of funny because for the longest time we couldn't really figure out why this silly bird kept dive bombing our heads, but then we saw her nest. 

Aren't they just so pretty.

I did some reasearch to try and figure out what type of bird eggs these guys are only to realize that this type of egg coloring seems to be  very common. So I'm making an educated guess and saying that these eggs belong to a Black-capped Chickadee, which is kind of the most amazing name!

(source)

We know the bird trying to get use to leave the nest area was pretty tiny, and these guys do live in our neck of the woods, so I think it's a pretty logical conclusion. I think the little babies should be all hatched pretty soon, so hopefully we will be able to take a little look at them without making the mama too unhappy. Maybe if we leave some bird seed up there for her all will be forgiven. 

I love finding bird eggs particularly if I can watch the little babies grow up. When I was little there used to always be a hummingbird nest right next to our front door, and I used to sit staring at it for hours especially after the egg hatched. I was kind of a weird kid, I also loved just staring up into trees for hours too. I actually ended up getting my corneas scratched by bark three separate times during these long examinations of the trees. I think by the third hospital visit my mom had enough of my tree fascination, haha! 

Hope everyone is having a great Sunday. I'm enjoying a lazy one full of Netflix. 

x's and o's

Wedding Inspiration

This Saturdays Wedding Inspiration is extra special. I'm sharing a couple photos of my wedding dress in progress! While we were in Portland Lex and her family took me around town to look at wedding dresses. The first place we went to was this absolutely adorable vintage bridal boutique that had some of the most beautiful dresses I have ever seen. But as you probably already know when it comes to vintage boutiques, if you aren't a size four then you are usually out of luck. And well I'm no size four. They really only had two dresses in my size and one of the dresses was very lovely but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So it was kind of a bust. 

The next couple of places we checked out didn't end up having much either, and we were feeling pretty discouraged. Everything about this wedding had seemingly just fallen into place, except for the dress. But we had one more place to check out, so we had our fingers crossed. This store already had a much larger selection which was a good sign. I grabbed a couple of dresses to try on, and right before I went into the dressing room Lex grab this one dress that looked a little frumpy on the hanger. I was a little unsure, but she talked me into it. It was the first dress I tried on, and while it wasn't the most unique dress in the world it fit almost perfectly, just slightly too big (woo!). Then the gears in Lex's wonderful designer brain started turning and she began to list all the things we could do to dress it up and make it more me. I was sold and bought it.

Oh and one of the best parts about the dress it was only $50! I really didn't want to spend much on a dress that would pretty much only be worn once so the idea of a $2000 dress was a little crazy to me. Not that I didn't try on a couple like that and fall in love with them, but I just couldn't justify spending that type of money on anything really, much less a dress. Lex told me after we got back home that before we walked in she asked my mom to help us out, and I think she most certainly did.

We brought it back to Lex's mother's (Suzie) house and she went to town. Suzie is just an absolutely amazing seamstress and was kind enough to work on the dress for me. 

There is still a little more work to be done on the dress, but I am so excited about it! I think it has become something just so special and is going to look absolutely lovely on the big day. 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Any big plans? 

Oh and Prometheus was kind of amazing, I highly recommend it!

x's and o's

Portland Part 3

I think one of the things I love most about Portland are all the wonderfully interesting shops that they have. We went to this one (I wish I could remember the name) that was a massive warehouse full of really interesting knick-knacks and furniture. I think I could have spent all day just walking around all the little hallways. Oh I wish I had tons of money and could buy all the goodies that I fell in love with and mailed them back to our tiny mountain home, sigh maybe one day. Until then I have these pictures to lust over, hehe. 

Look at all those lanterns! How pretty would those be in a backyard or something. 

Will found these bizzarre paper masks, they actually creeped me out slightly. 

On the night before our last day in Portland we went and had dinner that the amazing venue Lex and Eric are having their wedding at next year. Get this, it's an old elementary school turned hotel, restaurant and bar! Eeee! It's kind of the coolest thing ever! I believe it's run by a family who buys up these old buildings that were most likely just going to be torn down and then they convert them into restaurants and hotels, kind of awesome right?! If you couldn't already tell I'm kind of in love with the place! I think we are going to get a room the night of the wedding and then stay with friends the rest of the time we are out there to save money, but at least we get to stay once at this place! I'm sure when the wedding comes around there will be plenty of pictures. 

Anyways after dinner of course it was another great opportunity for couple photos.  

How adorable are these two, seriously they are the cutest! 

My new favorite dress, which you can't actually see very well in this photo haha. 

We had an amazing time, and I can't wait to go back I already miss getting to hang out with Lex everyday like crazy. There is just going to be one more Portland like post come this Saturday which I'm sure excited about! 

Until then hope you all are having a wonderful weekend, tomorrow is Friday, yay! Anyone else rushing out to the theaters to see Prometheus tomorrow? Will and I can hardly wait! 

x's and o's