Spring Cleaning

Our farm is located in a predominately farming community.  When the weather has been good, we have been disking, along with all the other farmers preparing the fields by mowing in between the fruit trees; or rotatilling or making ridges to plant vegetables.  This means that with the wind, we have had loads of dust in the house which has been driving me crazy.  So I have been trying to spring clean to keep up with it.  And we are remodeling our hall bathroom making more messes and dust in the house.

I have started spring cleaning the back bedroom that we call the grand kid's room.  Frank had made these headboards and I covered them with linen fabric last fall.  As I was dusting every item in the room, I noticed that the dust ruffles were uneven.  If you have ever changed dust ruffles, you know what I mean when I say they are such a problem.  Especially the bigger the bed, the heavier it is to lift the mattress up to pull the dust ruffle between the top and bottom mattress.  Well I thought of a way to save me that time.

I purchased the Velcro, sticky back roll, 3/4", both sides tape.  I cut the Velcro into about 4-5 inch strips.  I cut off the center piece of the dust ruffle fabric, the part that goes under the mattress about 2" above the ruffle so you basically end up with just the long ruffle part, no center.  Next time I will sew the raw edge under to make a nice clean edging, but I was in a hurry and wanted it done.

I lifted up the top mattress at the headboard edge so I had access to the top of the box springs, pulled off the backing of the rough edged Velcro piece and placed it on the edge of the mattress.  I put it about 1" inside the top of the mattress so you can not see it with the top mattress is in place.  Then I took the edge of the dust ruffle and on the back side of it put the other Velcro cut piece that matches the one I just put on the mattress and lined it up with it, pushed down and the dust ruffle is in place. Go all around the edge of the mattress until at the other side of the bed.  If you think you need more Velcro when going around the bottom edges, then put more of the pieces down.  I placed the Velcro strips about every 2 feet, make sure you pull the ruffle tight as you go along.

I am now going to take all the dust ruffles off the other beds, cut the centers out; sew up raw edges and have them ready to go for future changing. 

I will soon be outside planting my fields but at least the house will be clean-temporarily!!! 

My last blog talked about collecting and I saw another "collection" on my wall yesterday that I missed.

Also purchased an item I saw talked about on another blogger site as a great purchase price that gives dramatic results.  They were right-Home Depot-I could have hung it up in a number of locations.

Thank you for visiting Windmill Farm and Country Design.  We are living a wonderful life here on the farm, fixing up an old house, growing our own food and fulfilling our dreams. 

Collections

I was pondering the word Collections this week as a friend commented on my McCoy/Bauer collection of vases and I looked around my gardens, house, rooms and even thinking about my friends.  People who love farms and country style love to hunt and gather and end up with collections of similar objects.  I have been planning out my vegetable garden to begin planting for our Community Supportive Agriculture (CSA) membership farm this year.  I am grouping my plants into sections and planning out additional flower beds for my cut flowers into collections of colors, heights and seasons, without originally thinking about it, they have become grouped into collections.

My friends seem to be collections of my interests too. I have gardening friends, farm friends, canning friends, knitting friends, friends that are couples with being friends with Frank and I; friends who are involved in chickens; friends that are involved in my CSA/Farmer's Markets.

Our farm is called Windmill Farm, as you can imagine, I wanted to carry that theme on into other areas of our farm where windmills would be part of the gardens.  I started giving my husband, Frank gifts for his birthday, our anniversary or just a surprise that carried that theme on to his exterior shop wall.  These are the tails of different antique windmills.

Collections of dogs

Need I say more? I guess my life is filled with just plain collecting but so much more interesting than just having one!  I love collecting anything that has to do with country design, farming and gardening.  How about you, do you collect?  Until next time, from my collections (not really clutter) to yours.

Paula Carli-Windmill Farm and Country Design

Loosing Yourself In Pinterest and Blogs

I normally am a very organized and regimented person.  Daily lists are part of my life which drives my wonderful husband Frank crazy.  After being married so many years, he now starts out his day saying "what is on our agenda or list for today".  Good boy!!!  I rise early, so I do the items on my list that I can multi-task, like start a load of wash/fold the laundry; put the dishes away from dishwasher; make coffee; write down on my list things I forgot the day before; and do a lot of my computer business early in morning just like most women do.  Hence, I have found myself in between those takes spending much too much time reading blogs and pasting fabulous decorating/farming/animal/remodeling/you name it pictures into my pinterest account.  Love, love, love it.  I used to cut pictures out of magazines, now I paste into cyber-space.  Thank you Celli, our daughter, for opening my eyes to it.

Blogs are another avenue to learn and dream.  There are some really talented and fabulous people out there writing on their blogs, which I now follow.  From one blog, that person may talk about another item or person or farming subject or decorating DIY and then you want to follow over to that new person's blog.  Which takes time and I am worried I have become, should I dare say it, addicted to it???  A couple of days ago, I found a pinterest account that Joe Ruggiero posts on and has a blog AND he is on Facebook.  For those people who do not know, Mr. Ruggiero is the first Interior Designer who started the whole craze for ultimately HGTV/DIY programming on television. (Prior to even satellite TV).  He had a wonderful afternoon show where he and a co-star would show decorating/gardening/DIY projects and have an occasional guest.  Mr. Ruggiero was the original designer on the TV show This Old House and other programs.  He now designs Subrella fabrics, furniture, just an amazing and talented Interior Designer.  Making a long story short, I saw a photo he had on pinterest of another wonderful and talented designer that I have followed for over 35 years (prior to Martha Stewart was even known),  Mary Emmerling.  Joe and Mary were together at an antique or design show in Arizona recently and he posted a photo on his blog and pinterest.  I re-pined the photo to my pinterest and made a comment that Mary Emmerling is my all time favorite designer.  Well, Mr. Ruggiero wrote back to me that she was his too!!!  So now, I am thrilled, I have that one moment, that one second, of a contact with a world well known designer.  Because of blogging and posting on pinterest.  I guess it isn't a really, really terrible addiction.  Do you think?

Back to remodeling our hall bath.  Celli and I talked about doing the room recently with a large, damask print wallpaper.  After looking on PINTEREST, and google searching, we found a few patterns we liked and headed towards wallpaper stores.  The first one we got to had great patterns, but for just one wall, it would cost $200.  That ended the wallpaper idea, when I remembered I had a huge damask stencil I had left over from one of my own customer design jobs.  So we purchased some paint, painted the bathroom and we stenciled until about 1:00am and it turned out better than purchasing wallpaper. The shower floor has 1" x 3" marble subway tiles; the bathroom floor has marble herringbone or basket weave pattern tiles.  I will post more photos later.  I have since painted the old vanity black.

Windmill Farm has been working with a committee to get a community garden built in downtown Gridley.  It has taken almost 2 years, but this past weekend our committee joined forces with the Boy Scouts and our boxes were built.  So now we have a fenced in garden area; water; gravel; a load of good compost; and the raised beds are ready to be filled.  Hopefully in a month or so we can start signing up people and organizations;schools anyone who wishes to grow vegetables this summer. We are also going to use it as a learning garden, teach classes later.

Our Raising Backyard Chicken class is this Saturday.  My friend who owns Happy Chick Farm and I worked on the booklet we will be providing and our topic lists that we will be talking about.  She will be bringing some chicks for the people who have signed up to see and learn about their care.  At the conclusion of the class, we will all go out to my chicken coop and they will be able to see my free ranging chickens and coop.  I can't believe the huge response we have had for people to sign up.  A real sign that more and more people are interested in having their own chickens and knowing where their food comes from that they eat. 

Thank you for visiting my blog, happy blogging and pinteresting!!1  A whole new world is out there, just make sure YOU don't become addicted-

Windmill Farm Life and County Design