Vacation!

The hubs and I were off this past week to celebrate our ten-year wedding anniversary.  We tried and tried to come up with a great trip for our ten year celebration, but nothing seemed to work out, so we decided on a stay-cation this year.  Kind of a nice change of pace, really!  There's something to be said about being on vacation and still being able to sleep in our own bed every night.  It's been a good week.

On one of our days off, we decided to take a drive to a living history settlement about an hour and a half away called Sauder Village.  We'd never been there before, and decided that we would check it out.  It was a nice day, and we enjoyed talking to the workers who staffed some of the buildings.  Here are some photos!

When we entered the village, the first building we saw (after the shops) was the Grime farmstead.  We noticed Mark the horse (yes, that was his real name) hooked up to the carriage, and found out that we could take a carriage ride, so we did!

Mark and his driver gave us a quick ride around the farmstead.  Mark did a great job, and so did his driver.

Then it was time to go into the farmhouse.  The house was built in the 1860s, but then moved in the 1910s, and the house is restored to the 1910 style.

Hubby says I need one of these chair desks for out in our living room.  It's true--I do need one!

Here are a few more images from the farm:

Jars being sterilized by the sunlight on the fence.

An 1830s farm in the distance.

We continued around the village, and saw two work horses and another buggy horse in the pasture.  The buggy horses are actually retired race horses.

A 1908 church that was moved from four miles away to the village this past winter.  The interior and fixtures are original, and were in beautiful shape.

 We continued around the village and found a couple of very sociable geese:

We stopped at a summer kitchen:

And visited this 1840s home, where the couple and ten of their total 15 children were born:

The main room (where the stairs lead), and the entire family would crowd into this room in the evenings.  The loft is accessed by a ladder behind me, to the right, and the kitchen, the lowest level, was only accessible by going outside and down to the lower level entry.

Along with the basement kitchen, the family also used this outdoor bake oven to bake bread and other goodies.

The village was fun to visit for the first time, but not as authentic as I've seen some living history villages.  Still, the workers were knowledgeable about the buildings that they were displaying, and it was quite enjoyable to talk with them and be able to ask questions.  If you've never been here, and are in the northwest Ohio area, give it a try!  Here's their website: Sauder Village, Archbold, Ohio.

We have had a great week, just doing whatever we wanted to do all week.  Sometimes it's just nice to have time off of work.  It's hard to believe we've been married for ten years now.  We've been through a lot in ten years!  The circumstances have not always been great, but for me, they've been happy years anyway.  Here's hoping the Lord grants us many more decades together!

Let's Get Dirty!

"Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building."--1 Cor. 3:8-9

Last weekend my hubby and I worked on our yard.  The weather is so nice right now!  I'm doing all I can to enjoy it and soak it up.  I'm looking forward to the warm summer months ahead, and I'm enjoying all of the green that's been appearing over the past few weeks.

We are planning to have the cap on our front porch re-poured sometime this summer.  As a result, some plants needed to be moved.  We also have a bed of shady plants that becomes overgrown with weeds every summer, regardless of the weed block under the mulch and the weed killer that we spray, so I had an idea to move them to a better location and just cover that bed completely with mulch.  Then, we'll keep up the weed spray, and hopefully keep it looking nice!  It's a north bed that remains in constant shade and stays pretty damp, so it'll be a never-ending battle, but at least we won't have to be careful of the plants now.

We moved those plants to a bare area that used to contain an large round evergreen bush.  Our neighbor was kind enough to cut the bush down last summer, just leaving the stump.  However, the ground was bare underneath from years of growth, so I transplanted four day lilies, four bell flowers (which I split from one large plant), and two little tiger lily bulbs to that space, and lined it with paver brick that we already had.  No cost, just a little elbow grease, and we'll have a gorgeous space with orange and purple flowers this summer!  At least, I hope they bloom this summer.

I also transplanted several hostas and a sedum plant that split in two when I dug it up.  The hostas are now against the house, and the main problem will be to keep them watered, because they are under the eave and that area tends to stay pretty dry.  The sedum doesn't have a home right now, and will just have to hang out in pots, along with the columbines that I had to dig up in front of our porch. 

It was a lot of work, but the day was beautiful, and I always love doing projects around the house with my husband.  We make a great team!