Weekend Wrap Up

Well, I suppose it's Monday again. Honestly, I love my job so I don't mind Mondays. I bought a bunch of new clothes recently, most of which were for work, and I'm having a fun time getting dressed up! In the fall when I was pregnant it seems like I wore leggings....like every day. So it's nice to have a bunch of new dress pants to wear. 

So this weekend was pretty low key for the most part, with the exception of Friday night. We had a Farm Bureau Young Farmer and Rancher social for our county. Patrick is the chair of the committee, so he planned a dinner in a town called Wibaux (wee-bow). Most of us had the rib steak, potatoes and salad bar. After dinner we headed across the street to a brewery called Beaver Creek Brewery. Their motto is "our beaver tastes better." Yep.

Since we were gonna be home late, Hunter had his first sleepover with his grandparents. We went and picked him up in the morning and he did great! I did good too :)

Saturday we all just hung out and Patrick went to some political campaign dinner while Hunter and I hung out and caught up on the DVR. I also hooked up my new washer and dryer-woohoo!

Sunday I did some meal prepping for the week, and made enchiladas for tomorrow, banana bread, and put a roast in for dinner.

Also on Sunday it was 60 degrees! Considering it was -20 last week, we were all pretty excited. I got to take Hunter out in his first walk, which is the most time he has spent outside yet.

Then we spent the afternoon hanging out watching TV. Hunter an his dad had on their Carhartts and boots :)

Hope everyone else had a great weekend! I have a blog post for tomorrow on a health fad that has been going around lately...stay tuned!

Photos from my phone

I know I'm not the only one who randomly will go through all of the photos  in their camera roll on their phone and reminisce about all the good times had over the past year. 

I was scrolling through these last night and was just laughing out loud at some of them, and thought it would be fun to share them with you all. I'm sure you've probably seen most of these at some point or another on my blog, but hey if I didn't remember the pictures, surely you guys won't remember some of them too. That's my hope anyways...

Calving shed from last March...love all the icicles!

Helping my hubby load grain. That was probably the first and last day I'll go with him for the entire day...he said I asked too many questions :)

A weekend trip to Billings for an FFA state officer 10 year reunion and the PBR rodeo. In the grand scheme of things, Baby Hackley was about 3 weeks old at the time :)

My handsome boys after their annual spring haircut!

My backyard fire pit...my favorite place to spend time in the summer...

Branding...

Ohhhh and the dancing cows!! How could we forget that?! I literally crack up laughing every time I see these pictures!

Miranda Lambert concert...only my 3rd time seeing her :)

My MIL's birthday present...patriotic pallet flag that I made!

My friend Chay and I at the Wolf Point Stampede rodeo.

Good friends wedding....don't mind the giant goblet of booze my friend Emily is holding...it's a sorority tradition :)

My garden!!

Back when I had a teeny tiny baby bump, and looked more bloated than pregnant. Pretty sure that shirt would fit about halfway down my stomach right now, ha ha.

So I just realized there are way too many pictures to share with you for one blog post! This is the first half of the year, so I'll save the second half for another day!

Happy Wednesday friends! I'm working from the comfort of my living room in sweatpants :) roads were crappy and my boss didn't want me driving on them, oh darn :)

Weekend Rundown

Oh boy friends, it sure is Monday! Woke up this morning and started getting ready. Let the cats in, let the dogs out. Not 10 minutes later, discover one of my cats has peed inside on the rug. Awesome. Clean that up. Finish getting ready, go outside and see that I forgot to put the trash in the bin last night and the neighbors dogs had come over and ripped it all to shreds, and it's now all over my yard. Happy Monday morning! I'm determined to not let my morning decide the rest of my day!

Despite the crappy morning, I had a great weekend! Started it out with Farmers Market. I had a bunch of dead corn stalks in my garden and decided to do something with them and sell them. I went and bought some cute ribbon and put about 10 stalks into a bunch. I sold about 5 of the bundles, with people asking to have them again next week!

The lady who always sells next to me had a bunch of pumpkins and gourds, so we made a little display. 

The rest ofSaturday I spent just hanging out around my in laws and my MIL showing me all of the baby stuff she got while shopping on her last work trip. This kid isn't even here yet, and is spoiled already!

Sunday I enjoyed a lazy morning in bed, which hasn't happened in awhile. The rest of the day was spent cleaning house, picking more beans from my garden and just getting stuff ready for the week. 

I bought more little gourds from the lady at Farmers Market, and decided to do up my dining room table for fall. I think it turned out cute!

I also spent some time in Patricks "office" with him. 

Only about 200 more acres as of today and they'll be done, so probably sometime tomorrow. It's such a good feeling having harvest done!

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend as well!

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!

Our Living Room

I'm pretty sure I posted some pics of our living room way back when, but I've changed a couple small things around, and took more pictures...oh, and cleaned it so it looks nice too :)

Back in 2009 when we moved it, it left something to be desired....this is the only picture I have of the "before"

It had pink carpet, a bluish-tinted paint color on the walls, old windows, and window treatments from the 70's. It's a really long room.

So, we added some paint, new flooring, new windows, window treatments, our own furniture, and after a brief mishap with some shelving on the back wall, a new wall.

And we are left with this:

The color on the walls is called Tea Leaf Green and we just got it from Walmart. The color on the ceiling is an off-white/cream color. This picture is taken from the back right of the room.

Back left of the room

 We have a few DVD's :) And this is my favorite piece of wall art in my whole house: We Don't Dial 911.

The picture below that spells out "Hackley", with each of the pictures being taken from machinery and old stuff from around the farm. The doorway to the right goes into the dining room, and the doorway to the left goes to the bedrooms and bathroom.

 Looking down the right side of the room. I made the greenery arrangement between the two chairs with stuff from Hobby Lobby.Oh, and all of our furniture is microfiber. Don't love it, but it's nice and soft and comfortable.

Front right corner. Our fake little fireplace. Picture on the right is a wedding pic, and the one on the left is an old Christmas card picture of my Aunt Lisa and fam! How do you like that auntie and Erin? You're in our living room!

Looking from the front of the room towards the back. I love love love the giant clock. That has been the newest addition to the room. We got it at Lowe's! Oh, and two of our blankets in this room were hand-knit/crocheted by my Aunt Lisa too. She's the best! And the blankets are SO warm in the winter time! At first we only had one that we fought over all the time, so I had her make us another one! Also, I didn't want the room to feel so enclosed with the dark green on the walls, so I painted the back wall the same color as the ceiling.

Looking from the back right corner into the dining room and kitchen is to the far right.

Looking at the back right corner. I like having this other small seating area that can seat another 2 people when we have family over. I also made this dry arrangement with stuff from Hobby Lobby, and got the Live Laugh Love sign from there too. Pillows are from my Aunt Mandy, who gave them to me waaaaay back in the day in college! Mirror and bench are from Pier 1. Oh yeah, and can't forget my little basket of adult reading material :)

If I had to do it over again, I would have put carpet in here instead of laminate flooring. I would love to put a huge rug in here, but I'd probably need 2 of them to cover the area I wanted, and those things aren't cheap! We've also been talking about getting a new couch and loveseat, getting rid of the recliner and keeping the 2 overstuffed chairs. We'll see what happens though.

One other thing you might have noticed....there is no overhead light! With the giant picture window and 2 smaller windows, it's usually bright enough during the day. During the evening, I prefer the warm glow of lamps, which is why there are 4 of them in the room. 

Overall, I just love this room. To me, it's so cozy, inviting, and is somewhere I just want to curl up and relax.

What I've Been Up To

So....the question is...what the hell was I doing for two months that I wasn't blogging? The rest of this week will be kind of an update on my life.

Here's one of the answers: Spent time with my sweet, oh-so-precious niece! A whole FOUR weeks I got to spend with her!!

Painting her toes. We only got one foot done before she got bored.

Before surgery on her eyes. Both of them were lazy because the eye muscles didn't develop at the same rate. But never fear, they're all good now!

Queen of the mountain of presents...most of them were for her.

We spent some time sledding (her hat is a skunk!)

And making lots of animal noises. This is the fishy face!

Basically, I pretty much love her to death, and couldn't have loved my time with her any more! I also worked out a lot, read A LOT, and spent some much-needed time catching up with friends and family over the phone and emails. Oh, and I guess Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years were in there too.

Went shooting with my dad and brother. Not gonna lie, this gun is bad ass. And for all you gun haters out there, here is a perfectly good example of someone using an assault rifle responsibly. If you've ever shot one, you'd probably realize how AWESOME it is :)

We got new carpet in some of our bedrooms which you can see here:

So needless to say...I've been busy!

Oh, and before I forget, follow me on Instagram: mtprairieprincess

Master Bedroom

First and foremost, today is my sister Michelle's birthday! Wish her a Happy Birthday with me!

I can't remember if I told you all or not, but I'm working on redoing our master bedroom. Now keep in mind that our house is an old Air Force base house, which means the bedrooms are all pretty small. We're getting new carpet in a couple of weeks, and I decided to do the painting now. I only did the walls and the ceiling, and I'll wait to do the trim when we rip out the old carpet.

P.S. has anyone bought carpet lately??? Holy shiz that stuff is not cheap!

Anyways...here are the before and afters of the paint:

BTW I never make my bed in the mornings. This view is from the doorway, and yes, that is literally all the room we have in our bedroom.

Here is the view from the other side of the room, looking towards the TV and the door.

Aaaaand on the bed looking out into the hallway. Yes, our room really is that small. All four bedrooms in our house are this size.

I first grabbed my handy dandy spackling and covered all of the holes. Please note the TINY closet behind me. Only some of my clothes go in here. All sweatshirts, dresses, skirts and dress pants go in our guest bedroom closet. (P.S. I love that my face looks skinny in this picture. I have been losing weight, and this pic definitely shows it! Yahoooo!)

This is what our other poor bedroom looked like with all of the stuff from our bedroom and closet in it. This room is getting new carpet as well.

With the ceiling painted. The color for the ceiling is a lot darker than I wanted-it was supposed to be a cream color, and it turned out tan. Oh well, I didn't want to wait and just painted it anyway. Also to note in this picture: 1) The chair in the corner? That's a swivel bar stool, which I used for a stepladder to pain the ceiling. Safety first everyone. 2) Our fan only has 4 blades, because one of them flew off the damn thing while it was going last summer. I heard a giant crash in the bedroom, immediately yelled at the dogs and went in to find this. Does anyone know if I can get just a replacement blade for a fan? The rest is fine and I really don't want to replace it if I don't have to. 

And now you can see a glimpse of the wall color, which is only slightly darker than the ceiling. Almost done! BTW, I hate that flipping blue tape.

The finished product! I love love love the way the color turned out! I have lots of plans for the rest of the room, including getting rid of the blue carpet, refinishing the dresser and night stand, new closet door handles, curtains that will include burlap somewhere, new switchplate covers, and lots of Pinterest-inspired crafts for the walls! 

Oh, and you're welcome for making my bed, just for you guys :)

This will be a long process to get the rest of it finished, but don't worry, I'll be sure to share the completely finished product once I'm done!