Butterfly Wings

I saw this guy this morning - pretty much made my day.

Day made. Right?

Plethora of Wildlife

Three-quarters of an acre is quite a bit of space.

And not just for Chad, Milli and I, but for other creatures! Creatures both straight out of Disney movies and from one's nightmares.

I however love them all, so I've been chronically them as I've come across them. Here are some of my favorites (I'll start off nice, but no promises as you keep reading):

Gray Squirrel

Carolina Chickadee

Northern Cardinal

Carolina Anole

Warning... the next images are MY FAVORITE!

Zipper Spider

(aka Black and Yellow Garden Spider or Lady Zipper as we call her)

I love her. Been watching her grow for about 3 months now.

Orchard Orbweaver

(This is a different, LESS awesome zipper spider in the background)

Smiley Face Spider

(aka Gasteracantha cancriformis or crab-like orbweaver spider)

Yes, that's a smiley face on its back!! How can you NOT LOVE HER!

I can spend hours in our back yard, just poking around. I usually have my camera with me, because there is so much here! So many creatures!!! I love it! There will be more, oh, there will be more!

Not sure why they call it canning...

Why is it called canning instead of jarring?? I've never "canned" with a CAN! I've only ever used jars. Only ever seen jars... oh well... one of the mysteries of the universe.

In any case, WOOT! I've been canning!

Chad and I scored at the regional farmers market this past weekend on our visit to Charlotte. We got ourselves a whole bunch of NC grown apples, cucumbers and tomatoes!

This meant I got to spend the last couple days making delicious goodies!

First, I made 3 jars of crushed tomatoes. Then, two jars of roasted garlic spaghetti sauce.

Even used our own home grown herbs in the sauce!

Then this morning, I started in on the cucumbers!

And made three jars of delicious looking dill pickles.

Now, I am peeling apples. They are destine to become apple butter, just like my momma used to make.

Once this is done, gonna take a minute off from canning... that is unless some hatch chilies come my way! *hint hint, wink wink*

Tilling, Soil, Raised Beds and MORE!

We did it!

We finally did it!

We finished our raised bed garden!

It has been a long couple days... between the rain... and the crazy, intense muggy sun... oh goodness... Chad and I almost died trying to get this in.

Its a 4'x6'x1' garden, made with "green" wood... which means, it was both inexpensive to build and should last a really long time due to the fact that green wood isn't supposed to rot. (Only time will tell if the guy at Lowes lied to us...)

We have weird soil here. Its either all sand or all clay... so we had almost no choice but to build up. We also tilled the ground under the garden like crazy! Our bed depth is about 24 inches! Woot!

So far we've planted, 3 green cabbages, 3 red cabbages, 2 kinds of kale, green onions and replanted our 2 tomato plants. The near future holds onions, garlic, a whole slough of lettuces, and maybe broccoli... maybe.

We went a little nuts with our soil mix... I just hope it pans out...

I can't wait till it starts producing!

And, I can't wait till spring! That's when we get to build the second bed and plant a BUNCH of good stuff!

The Master of Closets

So, when watching those home buying shows on TV, a few things always strike me as odd when it comes to what prospective buyers freak out over. One of the biggest is: closet space. "Oh... what a small master closet!" "What no walk-in??" "Where am I going to put all my shoes?!?"

Ew.

Why do people have so much stuff? To each their own, I guess...

I was surprised by our closet when I finally saw the house! Wow! A walk-in?! How are we going to fill that?!

It had only two flaws, the walls were in sad shape and it was filled with cheapy metal shelves. The shelves were just... weird, flimsy and disjointed.

When we decided the metal shelves needed to go, we started ripping them out... what we didn't realize was, every single screw in the wall had an huge anchor behind it! I must've patched 100 holes!

Now that there was almost no natural wall left, we we painted it. Then, we spent the next couple weeks looking for something better... then another couple weeks installing the better... then another week looking for the little extra shelf that I could use as my dresser... and now Chad wants a shoe shelf for under his hanging clothes. We were originally going to put another bar for hanging clothes under his high up bar... but we found we didn't need more space! Yay us!

What we decided to go with was a solid wood closet system by allen+roth from Lowes... and I really, REALLY wouldn't recommend it. There is no data anywhere about how high you should hang things, where you should to start, what order would be most logical to install in... I looked at their website, I looked at Lowes, I tried to find info anywhere on the internet... nothing... Plus, though everything is solid wood, its solid like Balsa wood is solid - crazy lightweight and dents easy... though once all the brackets were in, it seems solid enough. And hey, it looks crazy nice.

Chad's side

My side, the shelf below is from World Market

At this point, I stood back, and had myself an "awwwww" moment. So, this is why people freak out about closets. They are a pain in the butt if they aren't perfect at move-in. This closet was expensive, a pain in the ass to install and now, its still just a room that we see maybe 6 minutes a day... Don't get me wrong its WAY better now... but... would I do it over again.... the jury is still out.

Maybe Chad's little shoe holder will be what makes it perfect and 100% worth it. Maybe.

Time Flies...

I can't believe its been so long.

My life has been so wonderful. Too wonderful to have my face stuck in front of a computer. So, I am only sort of sorry for not having written more recently... 

The annoying though... SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED! So many things I've wanted to share and post! Arg!! 

But, I will put my awesome house stories on hold to let you know how the last two weeks have been. In a word: AMAZING!

While Chad was shipped off to 29 Palms, my dad and I took our, almost-gets-to-be-considered, yearly trip to Alaska! I am not going to do this trip justice with this blog. I am, in fact, only going to dedicate this one post to it... so forgive the lack of details... but hellooooo this blog isn't called "Tara Goes North!"

We took this Alaska salmon plane as a good omen!

Alaska is amazing. It is especially amazing at the end of August, when the tourists have mostly fled and the salmon are abundant! The excuse we use to go at that time, is so my dad can take a shooting class and I... well, I get to go along and make sure the rental car and hotel rooms aren't wasted during the day. After the class is done, we find a cool place to spend a couple days, then grudgingly return to reality.

Let me just start by telling you how amazing the Kenai River is. There is no way I couldn't spend a whole trip here... between the beautiful blue water, the amazing people, the local wildlife, and the running salmon... really... I have a hard time imagining a better place.

Eagle Rock, my favorite fishing spot.

Centennial Park, suggested by 2 different people

In the four days I spent on Kenai's shores I caught a whopping 1 fish and that was on the last day... and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't woken my dad up early in the morning, to take her fishing on the shore, where my friend saw us, and came and picked us up in his awesome boat! The other 3 days I just had a wonderful time fishing. Casting fun little bright yellow and orange lures. Reeling them in. Casting again. Having random conversations with others on the beach. Taking pictures. Basically, just completely enjoying myself.

Very soon after catching my fish we headed off to Homer! The Halibut Fishing Capital of the World! Where - you guessed it! We fished some more!! We did a good job helping to control (or destroy...) the halibut population! We caught 4 halibut, 4 king salmon, a silver salmon and a pink salmon. It was a ROUGH day at sea... with occasional 5 foot swells.... which made me most sad becasue it made wildlife viewing impossible... which is half the reason I like going on these fishing trips... oh well. WE GOT FISH! Soul soothed.

No, we didn't catch ALL of these, but we did catch about half of them!

We spent the next couple days recovering from our fishing expedition. We recovered with one of my favorite activities: HIKING! Lots of hiking. Oh and coffee. Lots and lots and lots of coffee.

Short hike from our hotel

Glacier!

No moose....

I also decided to become an expert on the local berry population (yes... yes... I had a bit of help, Chad texted me some pictures of my berry book that I left at home. He's so wonderful.)

 Watermelon berries and high-bush cranberries

Without knowing it, we ended up saving one of the best activities for last: we went to the Alaska State Fair. Holy crap. WOW! What a GREAT fair! There were 3 best parts. First, a whole hall filled with reptiles and not just boring ones, super crazy fun ones too.

 Look at this grumpy gus!

Second, there was a lumberjack contest show! Ha! And let me just say... lumberjacks are kinda hot.

Third, HUGE CABBAGES!!! Like wheelbarrow filling cabbages! Like 100 fricken pounds of single cabbages! There was other big stuff too... but the CABBAGES! Hahhahahhah!

If you haven't been to Alaska yet, you really should. You, really, really should. I will be back next year. And the year after that.... and the year after that.... and... and.... yeah. Its that good.

Oh! And did I mention the Northern Lights?! OOOOHHHHH YEAH!!! I went searching for them one night at midnight and there they were! Life bucket list item: CHECK!