Backyard Bed Headboard

I do love it when I see great treasures on the side of the road, especially when they have a clear "FREE" sign stuck to them so I know they can come home with me. The latest was a set of 4 custom doors that I knew I couldn't get home in/on my car with the boys with me so I quickly called my husband and begged him to grab them in between seeing patients (he's a home health care RN). He showed up at our house about 30 minutes later with a car full of doors and I was positively giddy. A few days later, I knew just what to do with them and we got to work.

I can finally say the backyard bed feels more complete.

How about a closer shot?

How cool are those doors? Someone painstakingly put copper pipes across then wove some sort of flexible wood strips through them. They've obviously been outside for awhile too so they're nicely weathered with peeling paint and all.

The space has more privacy now and is so relaxing!

Ahhhhhh .... so nice

That relaxing thing lasted about 2 minutes for him.

Thank you for reading,
Julie

Stick Garden Gate

Just days before the Snickerdoodle's 5th birthday party, I realized we really didn't want a bunch of kids running through the garden so I needed a garden gate STAT! We had talked about lots of different ideas but none had been inspiring enough to follow through with just yet. Then it hit me, we had a pile of sticks from removing a couple of trees in the back yard and I have a nail gun so it seemed like the project was a no brainer.

I measured out how big I wanted the gate and drew a rectangle on our back patio using some of the kids' sidewalk chalk. Then I started laying out sticks and using the nail gun to tack them together. I did a bunch then flipped the whole thing over and added some more. Are you eager to see the end result? Well, I'm thrilled with it:

The biggest challenge was definitely how to hinge it since the side wasn't perfectly straight but my dad is a wiz at stuff like this so I took advantage of his mad skills while he was in town visiting for the big birthday bash. He tinkered with it for a good long time but I've gotta say, it works beautifully and looks great. Here's a close-up of his handy work in case you need some inspiration for a stick gate of your own:

He used a system of these clamps that could go around the sticks and then screwed into the gate hinge you see there. He was able to get the lower hinge attached at two points. I found that after about a month of use, the top needed to be a little more secure so I did add a screw through the hole you see in the hinge hardware and into a stick I added in (not pictured here).

Finally, here's the gate from the garden side. I'm totally loving the rustic feel and will spray it with some satin poly topcoat when things dry out around here. I don't think it'll last for more than a few years but I change my mind about decor enough that I'm pretty sure I'll be ready for something else by then anyway.

Thank you for reading,
Julie

Paint Storage

If you follow me on Facebook, you may recall that I hit a great sale online at Home Depot awhile back and bought a boat load of paint samples. It was buy one get one free on their 8oz indoor/outdoor paint samples. I just flipped through and ordered a couple shades of each color in the rainbow. The only problem was finding somewhere to store them where I'd be able to see all my options when it came time to use them.

I had a few ideas but they all got washed away when I found a wood box by the side of the road with a "free" sign on it. I tossed it in the back of my car (thankfully it was only a mile away on residential streets so I could drive home with the trunk open) and within a few days, I had screwed it to the inside of the door of the wood shed.

And honestly, that's how it sat for almost 2 months.

I finally stole a couple of hours one morning to bust out the saw, the nail gun and a bunch of scrap wood. In the end, here's what I came up with:

It works great and I can see the color dot on top of each of the sample tubs. Here's a close up to show you how I made sure the tubs won't fall out and yet they're easy to get out.

Each of the small shelves seen here has one flat shelf and then a front facing of 1/8 inch plywood cut in a 1 inch wide strip. I nailed that to the edge of the 3/4 inch plywood shelf so that just a little bit of it would stick up to hold in the tubs.

This has changed the way the door moves a bit but since I bought heavy duty hinges to start with, I think the added weight will be just fine. If you do something like this, ensure your hinges are very strong as this adds a significant amount of weight to the door.

It looks like I can pick up a few more oops samples from the paint department ... those are only $.50. :)

Thank you for reading,
Julie

Colorful Bucket Hose Storage

Last summer I picked up a few soaker hoses and a regular garden hose off of Freecycle. I was trying to figure out where to store them (besides tossed under our rhododendron trees) when I got the idea to hang them on buckets on the wall of one of the sheds. The next time I went to Hobby Lobby, there happened to be a sale on their spring stuff so I picked up four brightly colored metal buckets for around $3 each and I screwed two of them into the wall of the shed. I'm loving how this turned out and as an added bonus, I can toss the hose nozzles with rubbery handles in the buckets and they don't slide out.

Here's a closer shot:

This was a quick and easy solution that has really worked for us over the past couple of months.


Thank you for reading,
Julie

No Tip Chicken Feeder

If you've ever had chickens, you know they're pretty determined to tip over their feeder or at least dump as much expensive organic layer pellet feed as they can. I decided that I am indeed smarter than a chicken so I devised this hanging feeder that they can't tip over. I'll let the pictures mostly just speak for themselves.

So, what you can see quickly is that there's a wooden disk hanging with four chains hooked to screw-in eyes. Here are the details of this contraption:

There's a long bolt that sticks through the hanging disk. This bolt does not screw in to the wood, it merely sticks through a drilled hole. This screw is what keeps the feeder from tipping over.

Loading it into place is as easy as lining up the bolt with the hole in the wood and setting the feeder into place.

Here's what the base of the feeder looks like all by itself:

I pre drilled the appropriate size hole right in the center of the base of the feeder. I threaded the bolt through that hole with a washer to ensure it wouldn't pull through. I then threaded a nut up from the bottom and tightened it in place underneath.

Here's the hanging wood disk:

And here it is all put together again:

This has been in place for several days now and I'm seeing a lot fewer wasted pellets and I'm not constantly annoyed by all the hay they kick onto their feeder (it hangs several inches off the floor of the coop now). As an added bonus, it isn't as accessible to the rat that tried to get to the feeder through the chicken wire. We ran him out and made sure all feed and bedding was safely locked in bins but even if he comes back, he can't get to the feeder.

Thank you for reading,
Julie

Chicken Treat Door

Now that we've gotten to know the chickens a little better and they've definitely grown to expect treats from us every time we walk out the door, they've gotten a little bolder and tend to rush the chicken yard door when we try to step in to deliver those treats. We have let them wander the back yard a few times but I'm not quite ready to let them out every time we visit them so I added a little door inside the door so we can easily toss treats into their yard for them.

It is hinged at the bottom and then I put a little clasp at the top so the door won't drop open unexpectedly. I'm hoping that small animals won't figure out how to open it too although it is pretty close to our house so I don't think there's much of a danger during the day and the girls get locked in their coop at night. We also don't toss them more treats than they can eat within about 5 minutes so there isn't old food to attract rodents into their yard.

I would have liked to put chicken wire inside the little window but I didn't keep any scraps that small and I gave the larger pieces to a friend for a gardening project. The hardware cloth will do the job just fine.

Thank you for reading,
Julie

Homemade Peanut Butter

Since we got our Vitamix blender, I've had all sorts of fun experimenting with what kinds of things I can make from scratch (even more than I used to). The latest is fresh peanut butter. The first version I made was just ground up peanuts with a little honey but it wasn't spreadable. The toddler enjoyed the peanut butter balls I fed him for lunch one day but that was about all that peanut butter was good for. After talking to a friend who told me she adds peanut oil to her homemade peanut butter, I got the idea to add some coconut oil because I'm definitely all over the coconut oil trend right now. The brand I use is from Costco (a huge tub) and it definitely has a flavor to it. I'm sure the peanut butter would still be wonderfully spreadable if you use another brand but I can say without a doubt that the stuff with a little flavor to it made the peanut butter amazingly tasty too.

I dumped about 4 cups of roasted peanuts (from the bulk bins at the grocery store) into my blender then added a healthy squirt of honey (probably close to 1/4 of a cup) and a mound of coconut oil (probably around 1/3 to 1/2 of a cup). I blended it until it was creamy and loaded it onto some bread with some of the blackberry jam I made from berries the family picked late last summer.

I kept the remainder in a jar in the fridge and a week later, this is what we had:

The amount of coconut oil you use will depend on how creamy you want your peanut butter. I like it very spreadable although I do tend to have to microwave the PB for a few seconds when I first take it out of the fridge just to soften it up a bit. The coconut has a very low melting temperature though so it doesn't take long.

What kind of oil do you use when you make homemade nut butters? I'd love to hear your recipes if you've found something that works well for your family.

Thank you for reading,
Julie