This blog is on the move!

After much thought and consideration, I've decided to combine my blogs and everything will now be found at www.NoOrdinaryHomestead.com. There you can keep up with all our garden & home renovation projects, self-sufficiency things, our travels, Ayla, what's happening with the new baby and anything else that comes into our heads.

Hope you enjoy the new site and thanks for all your support! Please remember to update your bookmarks and links...as well as your reader software!

Got plans yet for the weekend??

Well, it's that time of year again. And if you happen to be in the Frankfurt area on Saturday or Sunday, you should make your way to our village where the 57th annual Laternenfest (Lantern Festival for those non-Germans) is going on!

Every Saturday and Sunday evening a parade is held and the entire town attends or is in the parade. It's quite a bit of fun. People just sit around and wait for the procession, which lasts around an hour, and if you're lucky you can score some free drinks from one of the floats.

Last year we had our housewarming party on the same weekend, not knowing that they shut down all through traffic in the city for a few hours before the event starts. This year it will be a much more intimate party, with a few close friends and our grill, but hopefully even more fun! And next year, we'll have the little one tagging along too :)

We'll take photos and probably some video too to share with everyone who can't be here and post it here, along with our official thoughts about this year's events. Hubby is even taking a few days off, which should tell you just how much the people around here party down!

The walls are looking goooood

So the neighbor came over last Saturday at 10 (he overslept and was supposed to be here at 8) and finished up the walls of the guest house. Read about him starting last Thursday here with previous photos.

It's really looking good and now we just need to get out there and paint. Since we should have enough paint left for those walls, we might just get to that in one of the next weekends...but no promises. Stefan will be coming back from the US on Saturday after working there on business all week so no chances of it happening this week but maybe in an upcoming one. As long as the weather will cooperate, we have all the time in the world ;-) The walls by the wine cellar are at least protected so we can even paint them when it's raining...the other wall is another story.

He did the work where we put in the bricks for the new window. Unfortunately we didn't think to take down the bird stuff above or we could have had him do that at the same time...but so it goes. Always something to do, right? And he cleaned up where they installed the vent from the bathroom so that is looking nice and clean now too. It's going to look like new when we get to painting it!

And this is the wall inside which you might remember was just exposed red building bricks before.

What the electrician has been up to...literally

Before Stefan's party, we decided we better have the electrician come out and get some of the lights working around here so we could actually see our guests during the birthday party. Plus all the wiring seems to be about 30 years old and is starting to deteriorate and the last thing

He installed three new lights in the main part of the barn and it is bright as day with those things on now! We wanted to have them on a dimmer but unfortunately they didn't have the materials needed to do that...so we'll have to wait for a bit. But at least now we can definitely see every speck of dust & cobweb in the barn - which may not be such a great things ;-)



He also put up two new lights in the workshop area and this should greatly reduce the risk of Stefan chopping off any limbs while he's back there. It's very bright in there now too which is definitely helpful when you're doing woodworking projects!



The view of the workshop now with the lights on and all the doors closed. Very nice indeed...well the lighting, not the clutter and chaos ;-)


And behind the workbench, Stefan got a new switch for his lamp above the bench as well as 6 plugs behind the bench. No more plug strips in here...plus he has a safety switch to turn all the plugs off at once.