Pinned Wednesdays

Have you found it? Has it sucked countless hours of your productivity out of your week? 

Pinterest.com. 

It's amazing but totally addicting and bad for your day planner. But it's OH so fun to pin pretty things! 

And you get so many good ideas from it! 

Check it out if you dare.

Pinned Wednesdays are going to be a staple at Marilla's Manor. 

Here are my most recent favorites:

Oh Spring I can't wait till you get here!

In the meantime, I'll make these cute boot socks!

And eat some Cajun Chicken Jambalaya

And dream about pretty things to add to my wardrobe

Perfect decoration for my mantle. But I want my own flowers.

I am flabbergasted at the sheer awesomeness of this project. No pun intended.

I've got plenty of bottles lying around for this.

ahem...speaking of which I better stop pinning and get to work!

Happy Wednesday!

All images from www.pinterest.com

 

Picking The Wedding Dress

It is amazing how fast events can sneak up on you. Not too far in the future I'll be getting married to the most wonderful man in the world, and I am just now starting to plan out the day! I really had no idea where to start...

So I started with the dress:

Dress: Rosa Clara / Shoes: J Crew / Earrings: Laonato

I really liked this one but it is way out of my price range! I need to go to try some on soon. What do you think of this style?

Back from Hiatus!

I took a little break from blogging, (Ok, maybe it was a big break..) to focus on organizing my life, home, and thoughts. Now that I've got most of that done, I need to start getting things ready for this year's big events! I've got a garden to design, a house to redecorate and most importantly, a wedding to plan!

A couple exciting things happened while I was away! For instance we got our first eggs from our crazy hens!

 Aren't they beautiful?! We have been getting about two a day from our hens, Thelma and Louise. I really do love our chickens. We had some amazing holidays. I had so much fun decorating for Christmas! Not so much fun taking them down though.

I hope everybody had Happy Holidays!

These past couple weeks have been a blur. Work has really kept me from blogging! Some of ya'll know I am a gymnastics coach and you would be amazed at the sheer amount of bad dreams I get in thanks of it. It's been almost every night in which I wake myself up by snapping my fingers and saying "Get in line please!"
 Last night I dreamed I was teaching 3 classes at once and you can imagine the tossing and turning that resulted from that!

Oh well....Our Thanksgiving break is coming up in which I will have the whole week off. I'm already making plans as to what I'm going to cook. Not just for thanksgiving dinner but canned goods for Christmas presents as well.

So far I am planning on making:

Spiced Muscadine Sauce 

(still have a TON of muscadines in the freezer!)

Spiced Muscadine Bread 

(made from the sauce)

Cranberry Marmalade

Apple Sauce 

Apple Butter

It won't be stopping there either. I'll make sure to post pictures. I'm going to fix myself a cup of tea and go to bed...and hopefully....not dream of coaching.

Newly Educated and Disgusted:

I am appalled, Disgusted, overwhelmed, and saddened. My eyes have been truly opened to the evil that is America's food Industry. I may have read a couple things, seen a couple pictures but nothing that had so deeply affected me as the documentary "Food INC" has now done.

If you have seen this movie, you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, I strongly urge that you do so as soon as possible. Before you pick up that frozen pizza at your grocery store. Before you put anything else in your cart, watch that movie!


Patrick and I have long talked about and inched our way towards having our own food sources. We have made efforts in that regard. We have chickens, and rabbits, we are composting and starting to garden. But now, I need to double my efforts for sustainability. It's not a game for me anymore. This is a war between Americans and Industry and I have officially joined the fight.


Here is an afterthought for you. If the food industry is putting THAT into Americans' food, what in the world did I just feed the cat.......



Watch the trailer, watch the movie. Tell me what you think.

Wanderlust..

Saying goodbye to summer....

marleyandme.tumblr.com

Starved Rock State Park, Illinois

And hello to Fall!

icingsofcolor.tumblr.com

notesformyfuturefarm.tumblr.com

Pinterest.com

franklyesoteric.tumblr.com

marthastewart.com

Autumn is my favorite season! The leaves, the pumpkins, and all the festivals that are going on! I look forward to it every year.

 I'm craving a motorcycle ride through the mountains soon!

Pictures from Pinterest.com

Chicken Update

Teddy the Rooster

When we first got the chickens a couple weeks ago, we were thinking they would just be free range, happily pecking around the yard and scratching through all the fallen leaves. The chickens soon discovered the rabbit hutch and while they didn't bother the rabbits at all (they probably gave them some entertainment) the large chicken poops on top of the hutch really made them less appealing as free range. That and the sad part of my update: One of our roosters, named Bear, was not in the coop when I went to lock them up. I discovered several tufts of feathers in the front yard the next morning. Apparently a neighborhood dog had been loose and enjoyed a chicken dinner at poor Bear's expense.

So no more free range chickens. We quickly put up a makeshift fence around our newly fortified chicken coop and made sure the chickens couldn't fly over. (Which the girls did just to be funny. Stupid chickens...)

The chickens are living quite happily now in their new, more confined space.

Do you remember what the coop looked like when we got it? (if not, click here) I can proudly say that it is definitely unrecognizable. We clipped off all the chicken wire that was used for siding and the ceiling. For the sides, we cut inexpensive fencing to size and used it as paneling. We added 2 extra supports to make it more sturdy, redid the floor and nest boxes, added a screen window for their water bottle, and built the king of doors for the front. We still have a couple things to do to it, like make the fence more permanent and add a curtain to the screen window for warmth. I still don't know what kind of chickens they are but I am really looking forward to their first eggs.

Thelma, Louise, and Teddy

The silly birds won't sleep on the roost bar, but instead cuddle up to each other in one of the nesting boxes. They also think its funny to kick all of the hay out of the nesting area right after I fluff it up all pretty for them. I'm guessing I just have weird birds? What do ya'll think?