Christmas Traditions

One of my favorite things about the Christmas season are the traditions that my family has. Lucky for you guys, Jen @ It's My Life asked some of her fellow bloggers to share in their family traditions. I'm over at her blog today, so if you want to hear what my family's traditions are, head on over!

And I promise you that you will want to read it...I talk about stocking stuffers like cans of olives, jars of peanut butter and baby food. Oh, and Pizza Hut for Christmas Eve dinner. Yep...you read that right...

Christmas card picture 2010

My Attempt at Being a Fashion Blogger...A Sad Story

Last week, Patrick asked me to follow him down the road to an old shed so we could park our hay baler and older tractor for the winter. Of course I obliged.

And it just so happened that the light was decent, so I decided to make Patrick stop what we were doing and take a picture of me...you know, so I could be a fashion blogger and all. I  mean, look how I flipped my hair to the side! Granted I wasn't staring off into space, laughing at nothing or at my feet (which is what a lot of fashion bloggers do, but that's just not me), but I think I added enough sass to the picture. Oh, and a giant belly.

Patrick had a long 3 days weaning calves from their mommas, so he was ready to be home and sitting in his recliner for the night...so he wasn't too thrilled to be stopping and taking pictures of me at the end of the day. But being the good blogger husband he is, he obliged. I asked him what he thought about it and this is how he replied! HAHAHA, oh what a sense of humor he has. But hey, he stopped long enough for me to take a picture of him, so he couldn't have been too upset ;)

And last but certainly not least...our sweet little Smoke all tuckered out from playing hard all day. This dog will even put himself to bed at night when he's tired. Around 9 pm, he'll go in the bedroom and jump up on the bed and fall asleep! What a sweet little bud.

Happy Hump Day everyone! Only 42 days until Christmas!!

A Little of This, A Little of That

First and foremost, you know this sweet little nugget niece of mine? The cutest Minnie Mouse I've ever seen! She was all sorts of curious on Halloween, and looks too cute for words in her little outfit. Well today is her momma's birthday, so wish my sis Michelle a Happy Birthday! I don't even want to think about how old she is, cause that makes me feel super old :)

I am unbelievably happy that it's Thursday, and almost the weekend...however I'm working this weekend, but not at my regular job. A friend of ours owns a retail store near here, and she's going to a trade show this weekend. Her employee who was supposed to cover the weekend, up and took off somewhere, so she called and asked if I would help cover the store...of course! She always lets us in on the sweet friends and family discount deals, and it's just nice to help out a friend. The store is called Steamboat Dry Goods, and you can see some of their fantastic merchandise on their Facebook Page. Both Patrick and I have a ton of it, and it's really good quality stuff. 

Next...these boys...I mean come on. Their faces??? So precious :) If you look close enough to Harley's bottom jaw, you can see his teeth sticking out..he's got a bit of an under bite. Only a face a mother could love!

There's a white board at my office...and each week my boss has been putting up someone's name, and we all write down the things we enjoy about that person. This was the one from my turn on the board. It's always nice to see the wonderful things that people think about you :)

Lastly, there have been some gorgeous skies around here lately. I mean, this is 

the Big Sky State!

Doesn't get much better than that my friends. Happy almost Friday!

Just Call Me Sunshine

First and foremost, I want you all to wish my handsome hubby a Happy Birthday today! He's the big 2-9! 

 

On to other business for the day...

I got nominated for a Sunshine Award from Jen @ It's My Life a couple weeks ago, and I am just getting around to answering the questions she asked about me! So here goes...

My 11 questions are:
 
1. What is your favorite movie?
     -I have too many to choose from! My favorite is probably Fried Green Tomatoes. I've loved it since I was a kid, and still love it to this day. Other top movies include My Best Friend's Wedding and Grease.

2. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
     -I remember playing "teacher" a lot with my cousins and siblings, so I think probably a teacher.

3. Who would play you in the movie of your life?
     -I would probably choose somebody like Julia Roberts or Catherine Zeta-Jones. 

4. What is your favorite dessert?
    -That chocolate cake from Costco...which we had as our wedding cake (after our cake baker had a family tragedy about a week before the wedding), and I'll be having more of it on Friday for my birthday!

5. Do you like to read? If yes, what?
    -I like to read trashy romance novels, mystery books, thriller books, and memoirs (as long as they're not super boring). Anything but fantasy or science fiction.

6. What is your dream vacation?
    -I have LOTS of dream vacations! I would love to spend a week at a resort somewhere tropical. I'd love to tour around Ireland, and love to take a Mediterranean Cruise.

7. What is your favorite restaurant?
    -Probably the Sandpiper in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We used to live there, and would go there about once a month. To this day, I could tell you exactly what Patrick and I would both order. He would have the fried calamari, baseball sirloin cooked medium well with a caesar salad and loaded baked potato, with a Coors Light draft beer. I would have the spinach artichoke dip, baseball sirloin cooked medium with caesar salad and loaded baked potato, with a glass of Pinot. And for dessert we would share the strawberry cheesecake. Yeah, we went there a couple times :)

8. What are your hobbies?
    -It seems I have more hobbies in the summer time-gardening, my flowers, baking, taking pictures. In the winter my hobbies include...um, TV watching? Does that count?

9. Do you use social media? If so, what platforms?
   -Facebook, blogger (duh), Instagram, Pinterest...tried to get into twitter but there's so much random crap on there and I hate when people re-tweet something from someone else. I don't care what someone else wrote, I want to read what YOU wrote. That's why I followed you. It just took up too much time. 

10. What cheers you up when you're feeling down?
     -My dogs, always. I mean, look at those faces :)

11. What have you never done but would like to?
    -Be a mom, which will happen here shortly :) What else...vacation at a resort for a whole week with just my husband (which will hopefully be happening next June!!!),  run in any sort of race (let's just go with a 5K...that's really all I want to do to say I did it), get a NICE camera and take some professional looking photos (getting one early next year-hellooooo tax return!). These are all goals of mine, which should hopefully happen within the next year or so...well, about that race. We'll see about that one :)

Tomorrow I'm going to the doctor for my 32 week ultrasound! I'm super excited! I'll hopefully have a pregnancy post and update for you shortly after that :)

Finally, My Garden!

I know a lot of people have been waiting awhile to see pictures from my garden. Last year I didn't post any, because well, it was a weed garden basically. See, when we dumped a truckload of cow manure 2 falls ago, no one mentioned to me that the cow poo is full of weed seeds, and it would be like planting a bunch of weeds in my garden. Well, that it did. So last year I spent SO many hours weeding, to no avail. When you looked into my backyard, all you saw was weeds. You could only see the produce if you dared to venture through the weeds and start digging. It produced a lot of food, but looked terrible.

Fortunately, this year we were on top of things a little bit better. We put down some weed killer pellets, then rototilled. Then rototilled again. Then planted, and I've been weeding about 3-4 nights a week. Last weekend my FIL was kind enough to take some weed killing spray that we spray on the crop ground and kill off what weeds were left, then we rototilled the empty spots again. It looked great enough to finally take some pictures to show you guys, so be prepared for garden overload!

This year I have planted peas, green beans, corn, carrots, red onions, beets, green leaf lettuce, squash, cucumber, pumpkins and strawberries. I planted zucchini, but for some reason they didn't grow at all. Which is super weird, because usually they grow like a weed. So here we go!

Here's a picture of the whole thing. Yes, it is gigantic.

The corn. I still have some weeding to do here. This section alone took me 8 hours to weed.

 Peas! And a Harley photobomb

You can see some of the pea pods in this picture. The peas flower once and produce the pod. Once the pod is picked, the plant dies and you're left with a bunch of dead plants. These will be ready to pick in about 2-3 weeks.

 Green beans!! And Harley photobombs again. This is A LOT of green beans. I'll get probably 50 lbs or more of green beans off of all these plants. Unlike the peas, these continue to flower and produce. The first picking will produce the most, but I'll still get beans off of these for the entire summer until the frost hits.

Little baby beans are growing! These will be ready in about 2 weeks.

The lettuce...ooohhhh, the lettuce! This stuff can be picked any day!

Poor picture quality, but these are the carrots in front, and beets in the back. The beets didn't do very well either. I might have about 15 of them growing. Sad :( These were one of my best sellers at the Farmer's Market.

Onto the other side of my garden. One thing about the cow manure, it did add these wild sunflowers into the garden! When Patrick rototilled, I made him keep these that were growing along the edge. I think they're gorgeous!

Behind the sunflowers I have the squash, cucumber and pumpkins. Each of the stakes has 1-4 plants growing on a mound. There is so much room around these plants because they have vines that grow like crazy.

Especially pumpkin vines! Those suckers can grow up to a foot per day. They've started to vine out, so any day they'll start taking over everything. And I mean everything.

 Looking up to the house at the cucumber mounds. And Harley, again.

And last but not least, my strawberries! I planted just three little plants in each tub, and they are doing amazingly well! Next year I'd like to get some boxes built so they can grow and expand even more. I've only gotten 3 strawberries off of them, but the first year they don't produce much anyways.

So that's it! I definitely have my hands full taking care of all of this, but I wouldn't have it any other way! In just a couple weeks I'll be able to start taking pictures of all my delicious veggies that I harvest, so I'll be sure to share those too.

Thanks for hanging in there through all of the pictures!

Fun Flower Pot Project

Good Tuesday morning friends! If anyone had a rough Monday, or is having a rough go of things, just remember that you are loved, and there are so many people in your life that appreciate you. Sometimes we don't hear that enough. So if you need a long distance hug from someone, you've got a hug from me today :)

Now onto my fun project!

We feed our cows SmartLic tubs to get their vitamins and minerals. It's like a salt block, but in a giant tub. The tubs themselves cost $9, but filled with the mineral, about $275. When the tubs are empty, you can take them back to the grain elevator to have them refilled, or return them to get your $9 deposit back.

This spring, when I was trying to figure out which flower pots and planters I wanted to use, I had the brilliant idea of using some of these tubs to plant my flowers! Tubs of this size at the store or greenhouse go for about $75, and I'd feel much better about paying $9 for one than $75.

So instead of returning them, we are repurposing a lot of them! One we spray painted silver and it holds a bunch of chains and binders for the back of Patrick's pickup. The other I used for planting strawberries, and the last I used to plant my flower pots.

And yes, in the picture below, Harley is peeing on the tubs. Awesome picture moment Nicole. Way to go. But hey, I'm just trying to keep it real around here.

 After I power-washed all of the tubs and ended up looking like hot, dirty mess, I started the spray paint. I wanted fun, springy pastel colors, so I chose yellow and blue. I used the rustoleum spray paint, because some of the tubs already had rust on them and the paint was peeling off.

 After they were done drying, I-meaning Patrick-drilled holes in the bottom for drainage. We (meaning Patrick) then filled it with regular old dirt, and then covered the top 4 inches with Miracle Grow potting soil. I found a bunch of random and bright flowers and planted them in the three tubs and voila! Success!

What's awesome, is that the flowers planted in these tubs are doing a lot better than any of the flowers I planted in my regular tubs. Maybe there were some leftover minerals in there? I have no clue. Either way, I love how they turned out!

Some Pretties from My Time Off

First of all, Happy Friday!! Even though I it was a short week, and I was off last week, I'm taking off work a little early today because we're branding this weekend and my MIL and I are doing all of the cooking! We'll be feeding anywhere from 16-25 people, so it's quite a chore.

On the menu:
-Tangy Pulled Pork Sandwiches
-My super famous potato salad
-Cucumber salad
-Fruit salad
-Angel food cake with strawberries and whip cream
-Brownies
-Rice Krispies
-Cookies
-Drinks

I'll have pics of this yearly event for you next week sometime!

In my time off, I was able to capture a couple of nice pictures, all taken with my iphone. When I was considering making the change from Droid to iphone, I was worried because the iphone 4 didn't have as good of a camera...or so the specs said. But I can say that I'm pretty happy with how they turned out!

Enjoy!

My heart :)

The sprayer sitting in the field waiting for the wind to calm down.

Summertime backyard fire pit time...an evening well spent. 

The first wheat field of the year planted a couple weeks ago...already has wheat growing!

On another note, my great grandmother will be celebrating her 100th birthday this weekend! The family is having a big party down in California. Wish I could go, but it's just a hard time of year for us. 100 years?!?! Can you believe that?! Sure hope my husband loves me A LOT, because longevity runs in my family. My great great grandma lived to be 105, granny is 100, and my great grandpa lived to be 97. Happy Birthday Granny!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Life Lately in Pictures

My handsome boys got their hair cut last week. They love it! We usually just get it done once

a year. Harley gets hot really easily, so he looooves having his short hair.

The garden got tilled.....

It got warm! FINALLY!!! And of course I was blasting the air conditioning because I'm not

used to the warm weather yet.

I got a shoulder holster for my gun for Christmas from my parents. I mainly wanted it so

I could bring my gun with my when I run by myself down our county road. It normally hooks

onto a belt that you wear with jeans, but since I had on jogging pants I just wore a normal belt

around my waist. It worked just fine! I only had to scare off 1 person on my run that day :) Kidding :)

By the way, fun fact: Montana is an open carry state. So to wear my firearm like this, exposed, 

I would not need a concealed weapon permit. Now if I wore a sweatshirt over this, that 

would be considered concealed.

My sleepy little Harley after a long couple of days on the farm.

Ahhhh, this never gets old :)

It's Ok Thursday!

Linking up with Amber again for It's Ok Thursday!

It's OK...


...to unbutton your jeans if you've eaten too much

...to keep a secret!

...to turn your bathroom into a barber shop

 Patrick giving our brother Dillon a haircut before Dill 

goes to National Guard drill weekend.

...to apologize quickly to your spouse when you've been crabby. Sorry honey!

...to just keep eating the food you already have in your cupboards instead of going to the store

...to pay off debt!

...to pick your nose when that stubborn booger just won't come out. Hey, we've all done it.

...to STILL be wearing cool weather clothes.

...to throw your cats outside at night when it's only 20 degrees, because they're driving you NUTS when they're running up and down the halls playing in the middle of the night.

...to have an impromptu howling session with your dog

...to be in love with where I live

Picture was taken on my way home last week...there were no cars on the highway in front of me, and none behind me. I was literally the only person for miles.

Long Weekend Reading

Since Easter is this weekend, I'll be spending most of the time cleaning house and preparing food. I took today and Monday off of work to do exactly that, since Easter is the holiday that Patrick and I host at our house.

Although we don't have kids, we have been known to get Easter baskets for our puppies...

And since some of you might have some extra time on your hands to do some reading, I thought I'd share the latest trilogy I read with you, and my thoughts:

                                     In Flight                                       

                                                                         Mile High

                                                                        Grounded

When reserved flight attendant Bianca gets one look at billionaire hotel owner James Cavendish, she loses all of her hard-won composure. For a girl who can easily juggle a tray of champagne flutes at 35,000 feet in three inch heels, she finds herself shockingly weak-kneed from their first encounter. The normally unruffled Bianca can't seem to look away from his electrifying turquoise gaze. They hold a challenge, and a promise, that she finds impossible to resist, and she is a girl who is used to saying no and meaning it.

Bianca is accustomed to dealing with supermodels and movie stars in her job as a first class flight attendant, but James Cavendish puts them all to shame in the looks department. If only it were just his looks that she found so irresistible about the intimidating man, Bianca could have ignored his attentions. But what tempts her like never before is the dominant pull he seems to have over her from the moment they meet, and the promise of pleasure, and pain, that she reads in his eyes. 
Lezbehonest (Pitch Perfect reference!)...if you're like me, most of you probably didn't just read that book description. So I'll get to my review:
 
First of all, if you loved or even liked 50 Shades, this is the next best thing! Except James isn't as much of a jerk as Christian Grey. However, a lot of the story line is similar. Rich guy with issues, humble girl that had a terrible upbringing. Although in this book, I really enjoyed the characters that were developed. 

The first book was scorching hot! It was pretty erotic in some spots, so if you don't like that sort of stuff, might as well skip this series. But if you like that sort of stuff, this is right up your alley. I liked how the story developed through all three of the books. Although in the end, like 50 Shades, it just seemed impossible for 2 people to have sex so much. 

If you want a much more in-depth book review, read this book blog's!

Overall I enjoyed it, and gave it 4 out of 5 stars!

Any other good books I should be reading soon???
Have a great weekend everyone, and happy Easter!