our home - fall style

What are some of your favorite fall decorations?

old chickens / new tricks

So remember that time we got chickens, built a coop and added ducks?! Yeah me too. If you don't you can read about it here, here and here.

Well back when we were building our coop (by portioning off part of our shed), we decided to wait on building the nesting box because the girls were still too young to lay. We put it off, and put it off, and thought about it, got some supplies, drew some plans, thought about it, but continued to put it off. And then the girls laid eggs. Lots of them. And then we got messy (but so stinkin' cute) ducks. And they liked to bury the eggs. Not the best kind of egg hunt if you ask me. Finally D got sick of having to dig for the eggs and on Sunday he built the girls a very cozy place to lay.

We placed three eggs (with black sharpie smiley faces so we didn't mix up the old and new) in the box and crossed our fingers that we could teach our very smart, eight month old chickens where to lay their eggs. Day one - no such luck. They did get up in there though because the smiley faced eggs were scattered around, or on the floor of the coop. Day two - four out of the five eggs were in the nesting box! So it is possible.

At least four of our chickens are smart.

 

same scene; different light

 

And here we are again friends. Finally Friday. My day off. Sort of.

This morning I woke up with a subtle beam of sun light coming through my window. Like the world was gently saying, Nicole my beauty, it's time to wake up.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend doing whatever it is that you do on the weekends. I will be teaching dance, celebrating a friend's birthday and hopefully catching up on things around the house.

See you on Monday!

lately

 New favorite candle scent. One of the perks of living five minutes from the Yankee Candle factory.
However -- not so great for my wallet. // Family nap time + my cute babes.


D's parking job - literally we're "on the ball." // The best October camp fire.
Blueberry pancakes just because (Well maybe also because it was the only kind of breakfast food we had in the house). // The only girl in the world that can get away with sleeping all day.

happy thursday.

lately

Can hardly believe the leaves are changing and falling to the ground already. The initial shock of fall - cool weather, dewy morning grass, chilly wind - always gets me feeling down, but I gradually come around and start to enjoy the season. The orange, red and yellow colors, fresh air, warm candles, bulky sweaters and hot drinks win me over every time.

The no-sew pillow cover

Have you seen this pin floating around pinterest? I love the idea. Don't get me wrong I adore my sweet sewing machine and pretty much find any excuse to use it, but the ease of being able to change up my couch decor is very appealing! All you need is a medium - large piece of fabric (depending on the size of your pillow) and some safety pins (my addition to the original "how-to"). If you can wrap a gift, then you can most certainly do this! And the best part?! You can use that piece of fabric again for something else! What the what?! That's awesome!

1. Lay the fabric down on the floor, pretty side down. Place the pillow in the center and fold two sides into the center of the pillow. They should overlap a bit so that you don't see the pillow.

2. Take the remaining sides and fold them into triangles (exactly like you do for the ends of a gift). Bring them to the center and tie them. Now the above tutorial tells you to knot it and then tuck in the ends but my fabric wasn't long enough to double knot, and a single knot wouldn't stay. So I just tied the ends together once and safety pinned the ends to the underneath so it would stay.

You really can't go wrong with this, so do it however works best for you! Enjoy + make sure you share your no-sew pillow covers with me. I'd really love to see how they turn out!

Have an extraordinary day!

first glimpse

It's starting to look a lot like autumn over here. Cool morning air, the kind that you just know you'll need a sweater for by looking out the window. Plants are getting in their last blooms before the frost gets them. Leaves changing color and falling to the ground. It's brisk out, but the sun is still close enough to warm your still sun-kissed skin. The kind of weather that most people would be happy with for the rest of their lives. I know I would. Have a happy Thursday friends + make someone smile.

refresh

Hi everyone. I hope your weekends were lovely. I spent some time in the backyard with these guys. The weather yesterday was just begging me to be out there.

I've started getting into this weekend routine, (not really by choice but just because I've been so busy) of not even opening my laptop once. It's nice to forget about it for a couple days and just do other things. I feel refreshed. A little behind, but refreshed and ready to go by Monday morning. Do you ever take a break from the technology? How do you recharge and prepare for the week ahead? I'd love to know.

Have a great day friends!

the boys

Last weekend the boyfriend and I went to pick up these two big guys. They are as old as the chickens (six months, holy cow!!) and they are about two times the size of the little ladies.

Friends of ours have ducks, chickens, goats, horses and probably other animals that I don't even know about. After discovering that three male ducks were three too many for the females, they encouraged us to take two of their males. They eat the same food, sleep on the floor of the coop and can co-exist just fine with the chickens. So we figured, why not. And so far so good. They love their pool and the compost goodies and like to follow the chickens around. It's kind of precious. They aren't friendly with us like the chickens are. When we walk over they walk the other away and the girls run right to us. I hope they warm up and let us handle them one day soon because if I ever have to pick one up, it is going to result in a crazy game of "you can't catch me! Nan-a-nan-a na-na!"

So far the only downfall is that they smell a lot more than the chickens -- which isn't even that terrible since they're outside most of the time. They are much more sloppy when it comes to eating and drinking, but the neither the chickens or the ducks seem to mind the mess, so I guess it's no big deal. I'm glad we could give these guys a good home. I love my little bird family.

Time-out

Last weekend, our lovely girls decided to do some not so lovely things. They got into our neighbor's garden and destroyed about twenty tomatoes. The neighbors couldn't have been nicer about it and never once mentioned fencing them in. The wife loves when they visit their yard and she picks them up and walks around with them all the time.

However, we felt inclined to put up a fence of some sort and make amends with the neighbors by delivering a dozen eggs. So now the ladies have a spacious area to roam with a complimentary compost heap. On the plus side, we don't have to worry about them making their way towards the road. We plan on letting them loose in our yard when we're home and are able to babysit them. Otherwise, they'll have to enjoy digging up bugs and other treats in the compost instead of the neighbor's tomatoes.