Chickens! Part 1

We have been talking about our chickens for over a year now. Our future chickens that is. About this time in 2012 we decided what our urban farm needs is chickens. Having fresh eggs every morning is certainly the biggest appeal. But as we learned, there are lots of other positive aspects about home chicken raising including feeding them our food scraps and using their manure as compost. Plus they can be great pets.

So we started our research and are trying to learn as much as we can in preparation for our flock. Besides getting some books at the library that meant visiting friends who have chickens! We went to Alameda and learned how children can be very involved with chicken raising. Some Longfellow neighbors let us come ask a bunch of questions about their coops and chicken runs. We also went to visit a friend who lives in the Oakland Hills and built her coop underneath her porch.

 

We took care of the City Slicker Farms' chickens while they were on holiday. So we got first hand experience feeding, watering and collecting. There are over fifteen chickens at the Center Street farm (way more than we'll ever have in our yard) but it was pretty easy. Even though it was winter and egg production is generally slower, we even got close to a dozen eggs each time we visited. 

Family Quilt

Patrick's great grandmother left behind a number of quilts. Over the past year and a half, we have worked to finish one we were given by Great Aunt Hazel. Ours is a scrap quilt made from many small scraps of fabric that was sewn in 1962. Every time I look at it, it seems I find another pattern. The quilt squares were sewn together but it did not have a back or batting nor was it quilted.

That's where the other side of the family comes in. My Aunt Roseann has her own quilting business, Cedar Creek Quilting. She has a ridiculously large long-arm quilting machine that can stitch a million designs on your quilt (well I don't know about a million but a lot!). Patrick and I chose a dogwood design because it fit with the southern roots of his maternal great-grandmother. We told Roseann we wanted the backing fabric to be blue and let her pick the pattern.

After the quilting and backing was finished, my parents picked up the quilt from Washington and drove it home on their summer vacation. Because Roseann knew I liked to sew, we decided Patrick and I would do the hand finishing of the binding. Because the quilt is queen-size, we invited some friends over to help. The Quilt Debate was born! A few friends came over for the Presidential Debate last fall and helped us sew over half the binding. Yay! for crafty friends! Pictured at right is David (not sewing), Katie, Marjorie, Patrick, Elizabeth and Anna.

The last piece of the project was created for us by Patrick's Aunt Debbie. She embroidered a really nice label for the back with all the details about Great-Grandma Florence. Four generations, two families and numerous friends  later we have a wonderful heirloom on our bed. It's beautiful and even more so for all the hard work and time spent on it. Thanks everyone!

 

Bathroom Decorations at 667

Downstairs half bath.

We needed more decorations around the house, but I didn't want to put up all the same art pieces that we've had at other places. So we are taking it slow to find the right items. I decided to make something myself out of the many fabrics in my craft collection.

Close up.

I wove different strips of blue fabrics with a little bit of color to make this for our downstairs bathroom.

Upstairs bathroom

Tina Dillman's Cookie Jar.

David's Between Katie and David; 2012; archival pigment print; 10x10 inches.

I had to stand in the shower to get them both in the photo.

David made me the photo for my birthday last month. The image appears very abstract, but it was based on a little bit of science. The very left edge of the photograph is the exact color of my eyes, the right edge perfectly matches the color of David's eyes and then there's the color spectrum we create between us. A similar Between Abbey and Patrick was made for Abbey. I thought it went well with our earth tone bathroom. Then I saw Tina's work on David's dresser just waiting for a good spot in our house & thought it was perfect. I realized while trying to take these photos that it is really difficult to photograph small bathroom spaces.

Revisiting Summer

Seems like most people are experiencing pretty cold weather these days. It might even freeze tonight in Oakland. So looking through some pictures today, Patrick and I found this squirrel enjoying the fruits of summer. Here's looking forward to that Spring thaw!

Squirrels and insects probably ate more strawberries than we did this year!

Updating the Bathroom at 669

Patrick and I decided a while ago we would like to have a medicine cabinet in our full bathroom. We didn't exactly love the mirror that was in that room and wanted to hide things like our toothbrushes and contact lenses. Not too much to ask!
So Patrick did a little browsing at Urban Ore and after a few tries found a wooden medicine cabinet that was in good shape and just needed a coat of paint or stain. After sanding and sanding to get the varnish off, we decided it would be nice to paint it a bright orangish-red color. The color would brighten our bathroom without having to paint the walls.
Next up was inviting Dad over for a little contracting job to be paid for in lunch and a beer. It was actually not very hard, but deciding to poke a hole in your wall is a bit intimidating. Baby steps before deciding to remodel something bigger, I guess!

I can't find a before photo, so here is a shot of the mirror from the staging before we bought our place. And you'll notice it's actually the mirror image (ha!) of our bathroom because it is from Katie and David's house. The first step of course was removing the mirror. Unfortunately the anchor/screw holes were not covered by the new medicine cabinet, so there will be patching and painting in our future.

We were able to place the cabinet between two studs in the wall.

Patrick checks out the hole with his two advisers.

Eventually it was a perfect fit. A right angle drill would have come in handy here, but Dad and Patrick worked it out and screwed in the cabinet forever!

We added new hinges and were done!

Our Halloween House

10.31.12

We don't get trick-or-treaters because we live on such a busy street and the business district gives out candy, but it was still fun to decorate for Halloween.

 

Sunday Harvest

Just wanted to share what I harvested today! I sauteed the Swiss Chard with onion and garlic (also from the garden). Patrick cooked up the jalapeno with onion and rice to go in our tofu burritos. We also threw in some homegrown tomatoes. We'll have to have the yellow squash tomorrow!

 

Longfellow

We happened to buy our house in the Longfellow Neighborhood. We had never heard of Longfellow, our real estate agent certainly didn't mention it although it does show up on google maps. The second weekend we lived in our duplex, there was a walking tour of the neighborhood and we met Leslie, the president of the Longfellow Neighborhood Association. Perfect timing to meet new neighbors and learn about all the activity around our new home.

One thing I love about the LCA sense of community is the generosity of time and goods. Since getting involved with LCA, we have been offered a piece of drywall to patch our wall, traded lemons, spent time learning about neighbor's chickens and gotten rid of landscaping rocks better used in someone else's yard. Right now I'm borrowing Amanda's food dehydrator. We'd never even met Amanda before, but when I asked the LCA group if I could borrow one, she offered!

I recently learned about how easy it is to dehydrate fruits and vegetables at a City Slicker Farms workshop. So of course I wanted to try it at home. We grew these cherry and sungold tomatoes and now we'll be enjoying them all winter! After dehydrating, you can either store them in a jar packed with olive oil or simply put them in a jar or ziplock in the freezer.

Our friends have great neighbors too--neighbors with an apple tree. I dried about a dozen apples including some dusted with cinnamon. They are tart but tasty. These will definitely not last all winter!

Our '60s Hutch

Awhile ago we decided we wanted a wooden hutch for our kitchen eating area. Since mom is retired, she had plenty of time to peruse Craigslist for us! She found this great Ethan Allen hutch for us. An older lady used to have an antique store, Lucy's Antiques, and is now getting rid of her surplus furniture so we got a great deal.

Since the solid wood hutch is over 50 years old, there are a few panels that have started to pull apart. But we can fix that! You know we love the Oakland Tool Lending Library, so we borrowed some clamps and got to work. Here is the first round of glue.

 

Kitchen Second Round

Patrick and I finally finished painting the kitchen over the weekend. The pictures don't really show the colors best, so you'll have to come visit! But the walls are called Moonlight. I think it goes perfectly with our Lemon Shine and Cayman Blue panels.