Beautiful Euphona

She's home! Thanks to a couple big strong guys, Nick and Levi (and a piano dolley. A MUST) ...this beautiful piano is now a part of our home and family.

After nearly four hours of extracting the piano from the previous owner's home, driving 40 miles and hefting it onto the porch and into the house.....

The piano has found it's new home. The spot we chose for it looks like this is what it was missing all along. It fits just perfect between the porch side door and pocket door leading to the living room.

Isn't she beautiful? I could stare at this piano all day. The stories it could tell.

I can't stop touching the keys....thinking of all the talented fingers that have played this piano for a hundred years. This piano just exudes history.

I'm even in love with the typography of the labels.

And oh how I wish the "player" worked.....we're checking into that. Thanks Michael!

I tried to get a photo of a name that is written inside the piano in pencil....it has a date of Januay 3, 1926...possibly the date of a tuning? We'll probably never know. But it adds to the story of this piano's life.

A few photos for Michael, of The Antique Piano Shop.

We're very curious about the potential for our old beauty.

The number of levers and knobs and little doors on this piano are fascinating.

More levers and knobs on the underside.

And there she is....our beautiful Euphona. Maureen (the 85 year old former owner) told Levi this was her mother's piano and that it had been imported from Germany in 1916. I'm curious about that, as it was manufactured in Chicago (in 1914 we're told). Could it have been exported and then re-imported? Hmm....

I also found out from the guys that as they were loading the piano into the truck, Maureen got teary. I am going to send her a photo of the piano in it's new home and ask her to write down it's history....as I am it's new caretaker. I'll take good care of her Maureen.

We Just Keep Bloomin'

I love summer. I love being warm. I love all the beautiful perennials in our yard. I'm a "pretend" gardener. I like to take credit for the beauty all around our home, but I don't do ANYTHING to my flowers, etc. I don't water them. I don't fertilize them. Nada. Thank you Mother Nature! We're talking pure natural selection here folks. Well I do pull a weed or two and I DID plant them...so forget that first part....I'll just take credit. ;-)

These are called Lollipop lilies, in case you're interested. Aren't they gorgeous. They showed up in a little cardboard box in the mail looking like shriveled up weeds. It's been something like four years since I planted these.....first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap! Fourth year.....GO CRAZY!

And....my little kitchen garden is coming along lovely. I snuck a tiny spinach leaf...YUMMY!

What's a House Without a Piano?

Guess who is coming to live at our house? ;-)

I don't want to jinx it till she's safe and sound in our den....

but guess what it's got me thinking of......

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I know, you can say it, I'm a sicko.....THE holiday is still six months away...

BUT a girl's got to plan ahead.
I'm going to insist the first song my little guy learns is Silent Night. ;-)

Swim...Bike....Run....Crazy

And here it is....the entire reason we drove all the way to Kansas. How cute is this Hansel and Gretel house? Okay, I kid.....this wasn't the ONLY reason we drove to Kansas. ;-)

My husband, athlete extraordinaire, competed in the Ironman Kansas 70.3 Triathlon. For those of you unfamiliar with the insane elite sport of ultraendurance triathlons, this is what is called a "half" Ironman. A "full" Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim in open water, followed IMMEDIATELY by a 112 mile bike, followed IMMEDIATELY by a marathon...yep, 26.2 miles...running. (Actually it says in the rule book they're allowed to crawl. CRAWL?)

So, you guessed it, a "half" is half that. Still, a completely menacing amount of working out in one day. Levi did his first "full" Ironman nearly two years ago. It was a bucket list kinda thing.

He signed up, trained, did it. I was in awe.

Then he got hooked.

So here we were last weekend....in the dark, in Kansas, up at 3am to get to the race.

The water looked cold to me. Apparently it was warm.
By insane triathlete standards.

Yep, look at that chicken skin on me...I was freezing.

Levi, on the otherhand, was cool hand Luke. He was ready.


He was in race mode. It's a gaze....a far off gaze....apparently he's had it since high school....then through college track....and now.
Don't bug him when he's in race mode. You won't get a response.




There he is! Do you see him? (Me neither). But he's one of those bobbing white heads. This was one of about 20 waves of athletes. There were over 2200 competing that day.



He finished the swim....and now he's off on the bike. Go crazy Levi, go!



And the run....it was hot by then. By everyone's standards.

He's finished!! In the short amount of time of 5 hours, 48 minutes.

Now the real preparations begin......the next full Ironman is in September. He'll be ready.

Can you tell I'm a little proud?

And So It Begins

It has begun!! My garden is producing!! The snowpeas are arriving daily now....and those little guys demand ATTENTION. If I turn my back for five minutes there are more ready to be picked. Literally, they grow overnight. YAY!

Guess what this means? Time to haul out the Ball Blue Book of Preserving....and start preserving!

First, they need to be washed and destemed. Then blanch for 2 minutes.


Let them take a cool dip in ice water to stop the cooking process.

Lay them on a clean dry towel to absorb some moisture, then bag!

Two bags ready for the freezer. More tomorrow I'm sure.

Here it is....the list. The list has now commenced. It's always fun to keep track of my preservation efforts...so gratifying to look back at, once the garden is finished. By the end of August I usually feel like I want to hide from my garden and it's bounty....but I always have the words of my dad in my head saying "when you're sick of preserving, keep preserving...you'll thank yourself in December."

Oh, and my dad's voice is also in my head when I drive (he taught me to drive), when I back up (he taught me how to back a truck), when I use a hammer (he taught me how to properly swing a hammer)....and on and on.....aren't dads great. And moms......moms are the icing on the cake.

I know mine is.

Bedside Roses

Bless you summer. And the roses you put by my bedside.

Kitchen Garden

I have now accomplished something I never thought possible....I have planted EVERY seed and EVERY plant I acquired this spring. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. For many of you this may sound silly, but when balancing a trillion things all at once, a few seed packets tend to slip by the wayside...or rather, you're so exhausted they just sit in the seed box until July and you give up on them.

BUT, not this year my friends. NO SIR EEEE. My "kitchen" garden is now planted and looking darn cute if I do say so. This completes EVERY seed I ordered.

Basil, spinach and coriander in here. I started by putting a few pieces of rip rap in the bottom of the washbasin, covered it with burlap, then soil.

Do you recognize the washbasin?

I talked about it WAAAY back last fall. And it looked awfully pretty then.

Then I planted the "legless" washbasin with dill and parsley. Same deal, riprap, burlap, soil. And we can't forget the garden markers I can't stop making.....I just need my family to drink more juice!

This is the former life of that washbasin.......burrrrrrrrr. (It's hiding right there beside the sled and frozen greenery.) Pretty too......but oh how I am enjoying the WARMTH!