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!

Farm Pics

First of all, thanks for all of the well-wishes and love yesterday about our big news! All of your kind words mean a lot to both of us :)

One of my favorite things to take pictures of around the farm and land we lease is old buildings. To me, they have such a history to them. A family lived there decades ago, kids did homework there, people slept there, and made it their home. They tell such a story if you just look at them and listen to them.

I went out last weekend and took pictures of a building that I've been wanting to take for awhile now. And a couple other beauties for you guys to enjoy :) And as always, please don't steal my pictures. If you'd like to use them for something, please just ask and I'll be happy to share!

This one is probably my favorite of this house.

Hubby's pickup.

I am a sucker for these flowers :)

Cows are in the deep grass to try and keep away from the bugs. After I took this picture, I looked right to take a picture of the rest of the cows and realized some of them had escaped and were out of the pasture! They were just a couple of calves and they eventually made their way back in to their mommas.

Happy Tuesday friends!

Weekend for the Books

I can't even begin to tell you what an amazing time I had the past 3 days! It all started Thursday night with one of my best friends coming into town. Friday morning we got up, drove to Dickinson, North Dakota, did a little shopping, and came back and just hung out in my backyard in the beautiful weather.

That night we got ready and headed to the Wild Horse Stampede for the annual rodeo. Part of this rodeo is what's called a Wild Horse Race, which I have posted a video of before.

Is it just me, or do other people get choked up when soldiers come out holding a flag and the national anthem plays? Maybe it was just me in this case...but all of these soldiers carrying the flag this year weren't able to come to the rodeo last year, because they were all deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I promise, you do NOT want to miss this video! Basically, they round up 6 wild horses and there are 6 teams of 3 people. The object is to get a saddle on the horse, and have a team member ride the horse to a designated spot in the arena. All three nights this took place, the horses won each night. Also, no people or horses were injured. It gets pretty crazy, but the horses were totally fine afterwards.



Saturday morning I got up bright and early to make the drive to Billings for a wedding of one of my sorority sisters. I got to town early afternoon, did some furniture shopping and headed to the venue.

 The happy couple!

Who needs wedding cake these days when you can have a giant tower of cupcakes! By the way, the wedding food was fantastic, which I think we can all agree makes a wedding THAT much better!

Let me explain the giant goblet the bride is holding in this crazy picture...at our sorority weddings, it's tradition for the girls to get the bride a goblet and decorate it. Usually we use puff paint and ribbon in our sorority's colors. We just put our letters and the couple's name and wedding date on it. I still have mine 5 years later!

Me, Kim, Emily and Emily. Both Emily's and I were roommates in the sorority house.

Waiting to give her the goblet

Kim and Emily enjoying the cupcakes...and right after this pic the top of the cupcake fell off onto the sidewalk :( Party foul!

Me and my Emily :)

Sunday morning we all had brunch together and then I hit the road home. As soon as I got home at 4, I took a 2 hour nap, and then went to bed at 10 and go another 8 hours of sleep! Needless to say I was pretty exhausted after 3 long days of fun!

Hope you guys all had a great weekend as well!

Weekend Update!

God Bless America, because I had a GREAT long weekend!!!

Since everyone seemed to be doing their nails with a 4th of July theme, I thought I'd play along too-these are my real nails and I did them myself! And I included my ring in the picture because let's face it-we're all nosy and want to see pictures of other rings!

Thursday morning we headed out to Fort Peck lake to spend the day on a boat with a couple of friends. Here is Patrick consulting with Captain Wyatt.

Doing "the Titanic"

It was so relaxing to be out on the water, hanging out and just having a good time. 

I give the day a two thumbs up!

The day after that, my MIL and I went to Bismarck, North Dakota (about 270 miles away) to do some serious shopping. I'll just tell you that I am one lucky girl! I'm lucky Patrick is an only child and his mom likes to spoil her children :) It was a great two days shopping, then back home to clean house and spend some time with my hubby before the work week begins.

Oh, and don't worry, it's another short week for me, as I'm headed to Billings this weekend for a sorority sister's wedding. Woop woop!

How was your holiday weekend?

Sunset Pictures of the Fields

The other night we went to our annual Farm Bureau family picnic, and as I was driving home the sun was setting and it gave me some perfect light to go out and take some pictures of our fields. I didn't have my "good" camera with me-which is just a good ol' point and click camera. All I had was my iphone, but I still think I did alright.

Enjoy!

Also, please just enjoy looking at my pictures, don't steal them :) Or just ask my permission to share and I'd love to share them with you. Thanks!

We're off to the big lake tomorrow with friends for the 4th, and I'm off on a shopping trip with my mother in law the rest of the weekend so I won't be back until next week! But I'm sure most of you have fun plans for your long weekends (which hopefully it is for most of you!), so you won't miss me a bit.

Happy America Day!!

Little White Church

As I talked about last week, the little white church on top of the hill by my house turned 100 years old this year. It was actually chartered on July 27, 1913. My father in law is the treasurer for the Church's Cemetery Association, and he had the ORIGINAL ledger that they started bookkeeping in out on the table one day because someone was buying burial plots in the cemetery. I got to looking through the old book, and realize it was turning 100 years old. 

We got a couple people together that was the unofficial planning committee, and spread the word far and wide to all of the families that we could reach that either attended the church, their families attended, or anyone who had relatives buried in the cemetery.

While the church services stopped about 30 years ago due to lack of attendance, the church still holds a special place in people's hearts. During the service, we sang several songs along with the very out-of-tune piano, people shared stories of their memories or the memories of their families, and the last preacher who taught at the church did the prayers. One of the other preachers came back to do the sermon as well.

 People piling out of the church after the service. All in all, I think there were about 60-70 people that attended. Some of them drove over 1,000 miles to come to this, and said they would not have missed it for the world.

 We also held a potluck afterwards for everyone. We served sloppy joes, and had everyone else bring side salads or a dessert. I think we had about 20 different salads or sides to choose from. And yes, we used kiddie pools filled with ice to keep the salads cold! 

You best redneckognize!

 

I'm not quite sure we had enough desserts.... One other thing I will mention that I think is absolutely awesome, is that of these 30-some side dishes and desserts that came, NONE of them were bought from a store or deli. Every single one of them was homemade. I think one person brought a couple bags of chips, but that was it.

And while we were up at the church, I took a picture of the view looking down to our home and yard. I love love love this view.

Come back tomorrow for some GREAT pictures I took last week! They won't disappoint!

Mid-Week Update

This is going to be more of a weekend/week so far update...

Last weekend the annual Frontier Days rodeo took place in our little town of Culbertson. They have a rodeo and street dance on Friday night, then a rodeo and barn dance on Saturday night. We decided to go to the rodeo on Friday, and it was a beautiful night!

One thing that is unique about our rodeo grounds, is that it has bleachers around the outsides of the arena, but they have a terrace on one side of the arena, which is where everyone backs their pickup in and watches the rodeo. Friggin' redneck party if I ever saw one!

Saturday, my sweet husband decided to take me on a date night! Living on the farm, there are a lot of late nights working and busy weekends, and it's been too long since our last date night. I couldn't even tell you when we went on a date last...sad :( But we had a great time!

We drove to Williston, North Dakota and ate at a Chinese Habachi grill, which is one of our favorite places there. Afterwards we drove through the car wash (sounds lame, but the good ones are few and far between around here!), and then headed to the teeny tiny movie theater to see Fast and Furious 6. It was AMAZING! CRAZY twist at the end! After that we got milkshakes and drove through the car lots and tractor lots. Don't ask me why, but that's something we always do on our date nights. It's just kind of "our thing" I guess!

Sunday we went to church and hung out with Patrick's family for Father's Day.

This week has been good so far...we got to have another "date night" in the form of us sitting together in the swather while cutting hay for a little while the other night.

I also scored a sweet find! I was dropping stuff off at our local salvation army. They weren't open so I was putting stuff in the drop box. Well, I stumbled upon something that I thought was pretty awesome, so I took it!

It was a card box with about 30 greeting cards in it! That's worth quite a bit of money in cards! I decided that it should be mine, so I took it :)

How has your week been so far! Happy Hump Day!

Saw It. Pinned It. Did It.

THIS PROJECT!!! I am SO excited about it! 

Ok, first things first. I am linking up with Steph and Katie for the weekly Saw It. Pinned It. Did It. There are always so many things I see on Pinterest that I want to do, and this is a great excuse to show them off!

One of my goals this year was to decorate my home with some of my photography from around the farm. Once I saw this original pin, I knew what I wanted to do:

First, I had to find an old window...which, was actually not that hard to do when you live on a farm that's been around for years and years, with lots of old buildings. I actually found one on accident, while getting something out of the old garage at my in-laws' house. I was looking for something and happened to glance in the very back behind some old wood. I found this old window frame from their house. I have no idea how old it is, but didn't care! It was perfect!

Some of the paint was chipped off, it was dirty and covered in dead bugs and cobwebs, so I cleaned it up a little bit. But not too much, because I think it adds to the charm :)

Next, I printed a bunch of my pictures that I've taken over the past couple of years, and laid them out how I wanted them in the frame. I used a mixture of fields, sunsets and machinery.

 

This step was very important: I took a picture, so I knew what order I wanted them to go in when I flipped the thing over, since I was going to apply the pictures behind the glass.

After I made sure all of the pictures matched up where I wanted them, I started in with the Mod Podge. I want to stress to put a VERY SMALL amount on there, or else the pictures will dry with funny bubbles in the front of them. This happened on several of my pictures. I would also recommend firmly pressing down evenly on the back of the picture from top to bottom-with the grain of the mod podge-so there are no air bubbles and everything is going the same direction. This will ensure you get all of the air bubbles out. (You could probably also just mod podge around the edge of the pictures and in the blank space, but I wanted the weathered effect in front of my pictures, so I put mod podge on the whole thing and then put my pictures down).

Let it dry, and then I sprayed a clear coat of spray paint on the back to seal everything really well.

And this is my final product! (Sorry for the glare behind it-it was a sunny day!)

It looks kind of funny in the pictures, but it looks a lot better in person, I promise! And I think with things like these, I don't want perfection-I want something a little more rustic looking! Overall I'm happy with it, and can't wait to hang it in our master bedroom!