barn quilt

I guess it's time to post some pictures of the "barn art" I painted on the shed.

I painted a barn quilt... something  I've always wanted to paint on the barn, but because of the height of our barn haven't been able to. Unlike fabric quilts, which consist of many quilt blocks connected into a pattern, barn quilts are usually just a single quilt block pattern painted onto a barn (or other building), or painted onto a wooden base that is mounted on the barn. In some parts of the country there are many barns with quilts, but not so much here in Colorado. I did find a quilt "trail" in Morgan County that the kids and I might have to drive up to see one day soon. You can read more about barn quilts here.

But back to our barn quilt...

I found a quilt block pattern I liked (just a regular one for fabric)... one that didn't have too much fine detail, and I thought would look good in solids (no way I was going to try and paint a pattern!). I drew it out on graph paper and played around with colors, eventually cutting up paint chips to make the pattern so I could see the actual colors I would be using next to each other.

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Then I decided how big I was going to make it (mine is 7' square), and from there it was simple work to enlarge the pattern and draw it out on the back (road side) of the shed. You can see the design I picked is basically just nine squares with varying amounts of detailing... so I just divided my 7' square into thirds each direction and used a straight edge to draw the detailing.

And then it was just a matter of painting it on. :)

The painting took about four hours total, spread over a couple of days (and I still need to get back out there and do some touch up). I didn't tape off my lines, I thought it would be way more trouble that it was worth... I can paint a pretty straight line, so I just free-handed it.

I painted one color at a time, finishing up both coats (three coats of the yellow) before moving on to the next color.

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(The masking tape around the edge of the quilt didn't serve any purpose while I was painting, it was leftover from when I was planning the size of the quilt... it gave me a visual of how big it would be.)



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Ta-da! All finished...



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Some detail... my lines aren't perfect by any stretch, but from a distance you don't see the mistakes. ;)



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The only thing I might some day change are the green areas of the square... they seem to get "lost" in the other colors... I'm wondering if they might look better either white or black.

But that's another day...



So there is my second bit of "barn art".  :) I like this picture because you can see my first barn art in the background... "Mr Barn" (so named by a very young neighbor) still happily smiling out at the world. (You can read more about "Mr Barn" here.)

Catchin' up

I haven't had much time to blog lately...  I've been working outside every spare moment, trying to get a bunch of outside work done before the weather changes. We hired a "handyman" last weekend to do the work that's too high or too heavy for me, and he and I worked on the house virtually all weekend. Mostly we're painting.... the main part of the house is stucco which doesn't need paint, but the trim on both house and barn badly needed paint this year.

So.... I've been painting (and painting, and PAINTING...) and letting most everything else go.

The end is in sight though, the barn trim is almost done and I've only got four house windows left.  I wish I could find someone to repaint the exterior of the barn... It needs to be sprayed and I just haven't been able to find anyone to do it. :(

I still want to decorate the north side of our barn with a bit of "barn art"... I wish I had a taller ladder. Designing and painting the "art" would be fun... if I had some way to get up high enough to paint it. (This barn isn't ours of course, but I love it's barn art. I wouldn't put quite that much on my barn... I'm thinking just eyes and a smile, and smaller in proportion to the side of our little barn...)



Sigh... that might have to wait for another year.

Anyway... all is well here... just very busy... be back soon. :)

a miniature barn quilt

If you've been reading my blog for long, you know I love barn art...

I added a little personality to my barn back in 2011:



And last year I painted a barn quilt on our shed:



So, of course, there was no way I wasn't going to add a little art to the chicken coop.

That almost square little door was like a blank canvas... calling to me that it needed a tiny barn quilt.



So, I'm giving it what it needs.

I found a nice design last week... (a full sized barn quilt that's for sale... wouldn't it look nice on your barn?)




And yesterday I started by measuring the door, getting the math figured out, and making a quick half-size pattern to follow.






I love the symmetry and order in quilt blocks, and this turned out to be an especially easy pattern to draw. I basically just marked out an 8x8 grid (each section 2.5") on the door and added the few angled lines and it was done.



The only complicating factor was the 2.5" piece of extra wood on the hinge side of the door (probably there to give the door a little extra strength), but it ended up being almost exactly 2.5" wide, so it wasn't hard to incorporate into the pattern.

Since it's such a small area, I decided to try taping the sections off (usually I just paint freehand)... but that ended up being a bad idea. I did get some nice straight lines but the tape messed up some of the original red paint, so I have a little more touch up on the red than I was anticipating.



So I'm free handing the rest, and the spaces are small but not too bad.  I am having to use an artist's brush for the whole thing, it's just too small for a regular paintbrush!

It works best for me to outline the space first, then fill in the middle. You can see my lines aren't perfectly straight... but that's ok... barn art is meant to be enjoyed from a distance, and none of the little wiggly spots in the lines show up from even a foot or two away.



I got about 3/4 of the first coat done yesterday, I'll go back out today and finish up the white (2-3 coats) and touch up the red tomorrow and it will be done.



A sweet little barn quilt for a sweet little coop.

I'll post some pictures when it's done...

When the going gets tough...

-the tough get painting.

-or the painting gets tough.

-or the tough paint compulsively.

...or something like that.

We are hanging in there... M's gut is still checked out to who-knows-where, but he felt a bit better yesterday which was good. We had a stomach/bowel x-ray done on Tuesday and there doesn't seem to be an impaction... his gut is just sleeping. It's stopped moving (mostly) as though there is a blockage, but there isn't one. So, thankfully, he's not in the hospital... we're managing things at home and hoping his gut stops being so lazy very soon and starts working again!

But back to painting :)

My "barn art" is finished and wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.  I had my design sketched out on a (roughly) scale drawing of the barn I did on graph paper. That gave me a good idea of size, spacing, etc. I took my drawing, the tape measure, and some chalk out to the barn and since it was a simple design it was easy to draw up on the barn doors.  I did the painting freehand, except for the little pupils in the eyes... I made a stencil for those. The painting didn't take long at all, despite it needing three coats of white to cover the red.

Honestly the hardest parts were the first brush stroke of white on those huge, still pristine, red barn doors... and keeping the secret from Joe until it was done. (Luckily Joe isn't very observant and apparently looks at the barn only rarely... so he had no clue what I was doing until he saw the finished product.)

Here's how it turned out...

I may go back out and make the eye pupils a little bigger, but overall I'm happy with my work. It cost nothing but time, and it was wonderful to be working outside... feeling the sun and the soft breeze against my skin, smelling the good barn smells of hay, animals and manure, watching the hawks circle lazily above the pasture... after spending so much time lately taking care of M. I don't mind all the care he needs... keeping a schedule for pain meds, hooking him up to the CPM and then unhooking him, keeping the little ice pack machine filled with ice and on his hip, helping with bathing, getting things for him, helping him work on moving around safely on crutches... I really don't mind any of that. But it was a lovely refreshing change to get outside and have the focus of my thoughts switch from caregiving to the simplicity of cutting a sharp line with the paintbrush, and making sure the eyes I'm painting are roughly symmetrical.

I'm a bit sad my little barn painting is done now... but maybe I'll start planning a bit of barn art for the other side of the barn. :)

Thrifting Thursday (shed construction #5)

Well, our summer shed construction project is finally starting to wind down towards completion...

It's been a busy couple of weeks... Joe added the plexiglass-type stuff on the gable ends of the shed (for light and to break up all that beadboard) and I've been trimming and painting (and painting and trimming and painting...)

Here's how it looked after I trimmed out the corners with 1x4's, matching the trim I'd put around the door a few weeks earlier. Just that made such a big difference... the corners had been pretty torn up and looked unfinished... the trim hid all the rough spots and made the corners looks nice and tidy.  (And yes, I do like tidy...;)



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Then I painted the doors with some leftover "liquid vinyl" paint E gave me (leftovers from her house). I'm still going to finish the outside of the doors for a barn wood look, but thought the basic wood underneath should be sealed before putting the "barn wood" on. I painted the foundation boards around the bottom with the same paint, and caulked and primed everything else.

(It did look very ugly primer white...  but it didn't stay that color long!)



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I should have kept on painting then, but instead I decided to
waste an afternoonupgrade from the board/cement block we'd been using the keep the doors shut in the wind to a real latch, and installed an extra stall latch I found out in the barn. It might be switched out for something a little nicer later on (Joe has an old cast iron latch he wants to use)  but this is working for now... (Pretend you don't see how crooked the latch is hung... it was a BEAR to hang... despite careful measuring and two trips to the barn to see just  how the ones on the stalls are hung, it still took me three tries to get it even close to right!)





Then Joe put up this plexiglass type stuff that neither of us can remember the name of... It's supposed to be stronger than plexiglass which Joe thought would be good considering all the wind we get out here. (He later added extra bracing through the center of each gable to protect the window in case of a heavy snow load...)

Doesn't it look nice??

(You can see the two tone paint as I had already started painting the finish coat on the shed when this picture was taken.)



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Next, I painted the bottom of the shed the same color as the stucco on the house, and used our house trim color to paint the  gable ends and trim pieces.

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The last step was adding a piece of 1x2" trim between the top and bottom of the shed (to hide the seam) and more caulking and more painting... until finally, as of yesterday, all the basic painting is done. (I'm still planning on adding a bit of barn art to the back (road) side... :)

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Still left for me to do is adding wood to the doors, making some kind of a stone "foundation" to close off the area underneath the shed (to keep creatures, like skunks, from moving in when it gets cold) and painting a bit of barn art. Joe still needs to add some shelves inside, and build a ramp for the snow plow to get in and out.

It sounds like kind of a lot left to do, but considering where we started, I'm super happy... the end is in sight!!

Shed construction #1

Shed construction #2

Shed construction #3

Shed construction #4

coop quilt... finished!

I finished my little barn coop quilt over the weekend, and I think it's my favorite barn art so far...



I've always loved that barn red paint (the name of the paint is "barn" and it's a Sherwin Williams color) and especially love how it looks paired with white.



It ended up taking three coats of white to cover, so I spent a fair amount of time sitting out by the coop painting... (and almost as long touching up the red!)



It was worth it though... I love looking out the back window and seeing the happy little coop sitting out there...



I'm almost done fixing it up... I put trim pieces around the opening from the coop into the run, and yesterday had some fun building a little roof over it out of some scrap piece of wood and galvanized metal I had laying around.



Yes, it's totally unnecessary... it was a just-for-fun little project.



I still need to add a door into the coop (right now it's just some wire on a frame held up with carabiners), I'll probably work on that today. I found some wood for it yesterday (Thank you E!) and cut it to size, today I'll finish painting it and hopefully get it hung.



Look... even the hens are enjoying their little bit of barn art!

What now?

It's been one week since M's surgery.  (And it's been one week since I had more than a couple hours of sleep in a row, so please excuse any whininess on my part...)

I'm worried about his recovery...

His GI system is NOT right... it's not even close. It seems that his belly can hold about 48 hours worth of food before deciding it's time to violently get rid of it. The lower part of his GI system seems to have checked out completely... working only when I load M up with super sized amounts of GI meds. (And even then not working much...)

M was very sick again last night, so as soon as offices start to open, I'll need to start calling docs... probably starting with the pediatrician. I'm hoping we can go in for an x-ray (to check for blockages in his bowel) and then come back home again. I really REALLY don't want him readmitted.

Poor R... this is totally feeding into all the fears she had before the surgery. She has phobias connected to both vomit and hospitals... She was so afraid that this surgery would turn out like last time... with in and out hospitalizations, and M vomiting for months. It's about 45 degress outside right now, but R is sitting out on the back porch to eat her breakfast... that's how stressed she is about being in the house after M was so sick last night and this morning.

And poor M! He too was worried about this surgery... he's the one who lost 20 lbs after the last surgery and suffered through months of stomach pain, medication induced diarrhea, and the indignity of (seemingly) the whole world talking about his bowel habits.

He fell last night on the tile floor... his newly repaired hip was VERY unhappy about the fall and has been terribly sore since. Even just getting an x-ray done is going to be so hard on him... painful.

I know (I believe) the surgery had to be done. Knowing that the surgeon found the labrum still intact and in good shape reinforces for me that getting the hip fixed (before there was damage done) was a good thing.

But I wish we didn't have to go through the same misery we had last time with M's GI system. It's hard for me to think about finding the energy again for the kind of long drawn out recovery M had after his last hip surgery.

I'll do what I have to do though... and count this as a learning experience... apparently M's gut can't manage any surgery... it must not have been the narcotic pain killers, or the complete lack of activity after the last surgery that triggered those problems... since neither of those were issues this time.

When I'm tired my mind travels a path I usually carefully avoid... wondering about M's future. People with schizophrenia typically don't live as long as people without sz... and FASD has it's own set of life shortening problems. M has both... and a bunch of other medical/physical problems. And he, apparently, can't tolerate any surgery without severe consequences.

I can't think about his future right now... I need to think about today. Which doctor to call first... should we have him readmitted, or try to handle things at home? (with lots of physician support, of course...)

And my younger two daughters each have birthdays during the next few weeks... (K will be 24, R will be 15!) and I'll need to get some shopping done, and plan the celebrations! (Hmm... celebrations that might be tricky if M still can't eat... :( )

But in my spare time, because painting is one of my favorite therapies (and I've already painted everything inside the house that needs painting and I can reach!), I've started working on a long-thought-about project...

..decorating my barn with a little "barn art". Yesterday, I got about half the face drawn on the barn with chalk... hopefully I'll finish the chalk part today and start painting.

It took me awhile to figure out how to take care of M and work out in the pasture on a ladder, but necessity is the mother of invention you know... and finally I just loaded M into the minivan and drove him out into the pasture to the barn. He was able to sit or recline on the lovely soft leather seats, while I worked up on the ladder just a few feet away.

Tucker was the only one who thought this was a terrible idea... I wish I had a picture of the shock on his face as I drove the minivan through the gate and into the pasture. He looked absolutely incredulous that I would do such a thing! At first he took a defiant stand just inside the pasture gate... sure I would never move that huge red thing past him and into his territory. But as the minivan kept moving towards him he rethought the wisdom of taking a stand against the intruder, and settled for snorting out a warning and tossing his head around as he ran away.

Ah Tucker... you make me smile... you are such a brave little donkey.

So, between phone calls to doctors today, I'll be out at the barn on the ladder... and maybe part of the good that will come from where we are right now is a funny little bit of barn art smiling over my pasture!

speaking of barns....

..notice anything different about mine?

My header picture was taken a couple of years ago, and here's my barn now:



(Please ignore the piles of manure... they have since been "relocated"  to the manure pile out behind the barn!)

Here's a little closer shot... now can you see what's different?



How about a little more barn art?



The vintage tin Coke sign came from my SIL...




... and the vintage Coors beer sign came from our neighbors.



It hung on the side of their barn for years... and I could see it from our house and always liked it. When those neighbors moved, knowing how much I liked that old tin sign, they pulled it off their barn and gave it to me. It's been hung up inside my barn for years... but there wasn't room for the Coke sign inside the barn too, so I hung them both up outside.





My old barn is stylin' now!




Happy first day of fall!!

Thrifting Thursday (vintage fisher-price)

Finally!

I've been looking for a vintage Fisher Price little people dollhouse for awhile now and I finally found one at Goodwill... for $3.99.



I've had the vintage little people barn and some of the animals for awhile now...



They came into the thrift store M works at and I snapped them up immediately. I think the barn kind of looks like ours...






Complete with barn art and bird's nests!






But I couldn't find a house to go with it.

Until now...



Of course, this is the second time I've purchased both these items... Our "big kids" had the house, barn, garage, and village little people sets (also purchased from thrift stores) back when they were tiny. As they outgrew them, and I wanted the space all those toys took up for other things, I got rid of them. (a definite lack of foresight)

I always liked those old little people sets though... I love the cool little furniture, and various expressions on the people's faces, and the neat way everything fit together to store away.



My "new" house could use a little more furniture (I'll keep watching thrift stores) but otherwise I'm set... I have no desire to collect them... I'm happy with just the house and the barn.

Despite the fact that my "babies" are now 21 and 17, the house just looks more like a home with a few toys here and there....

first snow

We finally had our first real snow this past weekend. We've had a couple of the fine, light, barely-stick-to-the-ground kinds of snows... but those hardly even count as snow. :)

This weekend's storm was a good one... a snow blowing sideways, drifts (almost) up to your knees, wind howling down the chimney, barn door frozen shut, kind of snow.

It was beautiful.

 During the worst of it, we hibernated inside... only venturing out when we had to... like when Blaze and the donkeys needed food. I gave them extra hay during the storm to help them keep warm, which meant an extra couple of trips to the barn. Blaze was antsy and picking on the donkeys so I made sure he got some exercise by scattering some hay out in the pasture... making him wander around looking for it. That's a trick I learned when we had Stormy, that miserable quarter horse mare we had the year of all the blizzards. Horses seem to need to move around to be happy, but when the weather is bad they'd rather be close to the barn (and miserable) unless you make them move... so I did. (make him move, that is)

When I wasn't slipping and sliding my way to the barn, the kids and I played games (R's decided she loves Yahtzee!) and did some art projects out of a book I got them a few weeks ago just for snowed in kinds of days.

We made egg based tempera paint (and talked about the Middle Ages, when that kind of paint was used because oil paint hadn't been invented yet!) and painted for awhile, then we learned how glass was made, and colored some small "stained glass windows" to hang up in the sun.

M also picked up his knitting again... this time using needles instead of the loom. It's amazing how much better his stitches are this year, compared to last...

Once the worst of the wind was over, the kids grabbed their sleds and headed out to sled down into the gully and the dry lake bed that are on our land.  They sledded for a long time yesterday, but no pictures until today... (yesterday was just too cold and windy to take pictures!)

Here they are this morning, sledding down into the dry lake bed...

 

They sledded for a long time and when they finally came back to the house they were wet, cold, tired and happy...

While they sledded, I shoveled out the trail to the barn.

Here's looking back towards the house at what I'd already shoveled. (Yeah, it doesn't look like much... does it?)

Here's what I had left...

I think one of the things I love most about living out here is that our lives are so connected to nature... to the weather especially. For the most part nature dictates what we are doing each day. If it's warm and dry we garden, or take care of the other outside plants and trees, or work with the animals. If it's very cold and snowy, we stay inside as much as possible, but otherwise on snowy days we are shoveling and/or plowing the snow, breaking ice from the water troughs, and spending extra time with the animals, making sure they are warm and happy.

Out here nature can trump whatever we have planned... if it snows enough, it doesn't matter what's on the calendar, we stay home. If there are vegetables still left in the garden and an early freeze is forecast, it doesn't matter what we had planned... we're working in the garden until everything is gathered in. If an animal gets sick, the calendar is cleared for as long as it takes for that animal to recover.

We experience the seasons through the wildlife that shares our land... In the early summer the does have their fawns, and we watch and listen for the first glimpse of the fragile babies, cautiously following mama through the pasture, wobbling on their skinny stilt legs. In the fall, the bucks go into rut and get stupid, even challenging cars as they drive down the road, seemingly oblivious to danger. In the winter the deer seem to move constantly, never resting, continuously wandering through the pastures and fields in search of enough food to get them through 'til spring. During the winter the weak, sick, and injured deer feed the coyotes, and we hear their chilling yiping and howling as they celebrate a full meal. And in the spring the "little" babies are born... and it's not unusual to find hidden nests of baby bunnies (or mice!) in the barn, in the compost bin, or anywhere else there is shelter for them.

In the city nature didn't seem as "big" as it is here. That probably sounds strange, but there was no wildlife there to speak of, and the buildings all around us moderated the weather somewhat... the winds were blocked, the streets were plowed, the grocery store was only a few block away.  Out here, nature just seems bigger...

I like living around the cycles of nature... I only wish we could have moved out here sooner.