Displaying my photography

I bought these frames the day before the snow day so I could work on getting them painted and then filled and up around the banquette.

They're rustic and simple enough that they do not distract from the photo.  Did I mention they're cheap?

So here we are working on them, having painted them...  just adding the photos

I had about twice as many photos as frames and space on the walls, so I really had to pick my absolute favorites.

Here they are on the wall

the four on the right were already up, these 4 new ones are on either side of the window

You can see the top picture here is one of my favorites of my horse, Yo

I was worried that they would make the area too busy, but they don't and actually they make it look wider, I think.  Someday, should I keep taking pics and wanting to add them here, I may just move them up to the top of the wall and have them all around the room.  But then we also want to add crown molding in this room someday too wrapping it all the way around and over the fronts of the cabinets... someday.  Originally I had wanted to put a tin ceiling in here too, and a wood beam across the space between the kitchen area and the dining area.  So many ideas...

Now, here's what I need an idea for... how do I disguise that heat register up there?  Man I hate those things!  Especially since they presently only blow cold air!!!

Grouchy Marx the Pig

Check out those ears!

Grandmas Diary entries

Tuesday January 12

A little snow on the ground, I took the kids at night.  Rena, Bud, Gramp and Franklyn were here to supper.  We all gave Marna a surprise Birthday party, played cards and had a lovely supper, Rena made the cake.  She got a bowl, diary & scarf.

Wednesday January 13

Warm.  Harry helped Robert, clean up the cows and fix the milk house.  they got a load of sawdust.  I went over in the after noon, I sewed all day on the kids snow suits, got them all done.  Joyce and Jimmy washed the dishes so I could sew.

Another snow day?

Another storm heading our way, so I stocked up on a few things to kill the time...

-a few more frames for the pictures I want to add to the kitchen- these get painted to match the other ones and I love their simple rustic 'vibe'.

these are the ones presently up on the wall:

Here are the pics I have in 8x 10 to add to these:

-fabric for a dog bed in the family room.  Since I put my Beagle Joey to sleep, the new Beagle and the Lab spend more time in the family room, and they're hogging all the room!!  So I've been planning to make them a bed out of fabric that coordinates with the slipcovers I have and the colors I like in there.  Of course, once you start looking for something specific you're certain to not be able to find it.  So yesterday I went looking for a winter coat for my son, and found the fabric for the dog bed!
Of course, I did not find a coat for the kid.  But we did see the doctor and I am so relieved his mark on his head is just a mole and not something worse!!!

Emma Lou

Hailee Bugg

BFFs who share the ottoman

I think that's probably ambitious enough, but of course there are always other little jobs finishing this-n-that to do should I get really ambitious and decide to put my book down [not likely it's quite good!].


Here's Grandma Ceciles entries for yesterday and today

Sunday January 10

The ground is white this morn.  We went up to Aunt Pearls, had a nice times, Jesse's were there.  Little Fred had a soar leg and cried.  It is cold out tonight.  We had pop-corn for supper.  Jean and John were out with their skiis.  Fredricks birthday was to-day.

Monday January 11

Nice day.  I washed we took care of meat I took the kids, barn inspector over to Bob's, their milk is out until the vat is fixed.  We went over home and heard the radio in the evening it was real good.  Cut Aunt Ellas hair [bobed] it looked good.  Sewed on kids jackets.




I was frustrated at not being able to find a winter coat for my kid in the right size for next year... and here my grandmother was, 74 years ago, making the kids their coats!  I will now stop complaining!

One small Mission Accomplished

Thursday we were fairly certain we would have a snow day Friday thanks to a snow storm, so I headed to Lowes thinking we would use the time to complete a couple projects.

One small project that I have kept in the back of my mind to look for materials for is the Mudroom/Laundry room cabinets knobs.  They keep snapping off in our hands leaving us powerless to open the cabinets.

While at Lowes, to which I have not ventured in a while so I had to look at each aisle, I did find some knobs on sale... and while I did not like the finish, I did like the shape and figured I could use some of the flat black/hammered spray paint I had to make them juuuuuust right.

Here are the knobs in question:

Here are the knobs on the cabinets... before:

One thing I love about spray paint is the ability to buy brass and get hammered black, or silver, or any color I choose... what I hate about painting knobs is having to do it in stages.  Paint the tops, then one side, then the other and then finally the bottoms.  Then invariably spruce up one or many of those from having rotated too early.  I was thinking about this when I thought of a solution, and here's what I did:

I've got a nice supply of cardboard hanging around here from Xmas still, so I just cut a length to hold them all with enough room between, poked the screw through, screwed on the knob, and painted away.  Awesome!  Except the hammered black can was empty... so I had to use the gloss black... and I like it!

Here's how they looked after:

Before

After

And the rest of the room, after:

It's a small thing, certainly.  But it's done!

I did also work on my hutch, but the computer is giving me fits right now, so I'll do that update tomorrow.

Here's Grandmas Diary entry

Saturday January 9

Awfully dark and rainy  Joyce and James are visiting over home to day.  Harry went down town helped Robert buzz wood.  We went to Grange.  I stopped at Delevans, called Olga up.  Wells Cardner funeral Sunday.  Dean can stand up in his pen.  

Dean being a baby at the time, and apparently standing in his play pen.

Delevans are the neighboring dairy that still stands and still is in the same family.  They also make maple syrup and I have a quart in my fridge right now.  Sooo good!  I remember as a kid going down there to their sap house and getting a little dixie cup of the sap as it's almost syrup to taste- sooo good.

My dad also used to collect sap and make syrup, one year collecting the sap in a water trough he threw in the back of his '52?  '54?  VW Bug.  And yes my siblings and I were able to keep that car when dad went into the home this spring, though I have yet to see it.  Such memories...

TWENTY!

Yesterday I was contemplating [while cleaning up puppy pee in the laundry room- thank God for tile floors] no longer blogging.  It seemed like it was taking forever for people to find me, and I was wondering if maybe my blog was just not interesting enough, and does the world really need one more boring blog when there are so many fabulous, insightful, creative ones out there?  What do I really have to add to the Blog-iverse?

And then today... 20!  I dunno' why I made 20 such a milestone, and I'm sure I'll now set a new one [probably 50] cause I'm just Type A like that.  But to #20, and the other 19 of you.... Thank you!
And I so hope you enjoy each aspect of So Long Farm!

To celebrate, here's the blog namesake:

He was 20 here.  What a horse!

I went to visit him on Christmas eve.  This horse was my world from age 24 until.... I guess when I was about 39 just after I had my son.

Here we are in a lesson just after I had my son, 7 years ago

Here he is on Christmas eve, this year

I got him when he was 6, and I was 24.  If you figure horse years at 4 for each year, we were the same age when we met.  I love this horse in a way I just can not describe.

this was his 23rd birthday, early on in his 'illness'.  I would drive an hour every night to monitor his decline and take him for walks and to graze thinking being outside and eating grass might jump start him, and get him over this 'failure to thrive' thing we were dealing with.  It helped, but was not really 'the' answer.

Here he is just before his 23rd birthday, probably one of the last times I worked/rode him, this was while we were trying to figure out what was wrong with him and I was trying to stimulate appetite in him and thought MAYBE work was part of the way to do that.  It wasn't

Again, at 20.

To many the connection I have with this animal and the desire to ride is a childish infatuation I should have shed at 13... to others it's an example of me wanting to be hoity-toity.  One family member likes to tell me only Vanderbilts and Kennedys ride.  Oddly, in over 30 years now in horses I have yet to meet one Vanderbilt, or Kennedy.  I wish, wish, wish it was that simple.  I wish it was a choice.  I have talked horses ever since I was 2.  I have wanted a horse FOREVER.  And this horse,... well he was perfect, a gift, ... he taught me so, so, SO much about horses, riding, and most importantly life.

This was about 2 years ago, so he's 24 here, just after he retired and we got him healthy again [but ugh, look at those hind fetlocks!]

His aging has been really, really hard on me.  When I stopped riding him and retired him, well that was hard enough.  That is a partnership I don't think I will ever experience again.  When you can sit on an animal like that and turn him with just a shift of your seat bones, get him to walk from a trot, or halt from a walk with just your seat... well, nothing comes close to it.  When you have felt him dance to a Rod Stewart song ['Young Hearts' apparently is one of his favorite songs]...

But those changes in him, and in our relationship have morphed in the last 2 years to my not even wanting to visit him.  When I saw him on Christmas eve it had been a couple months since I had visited him, Big Mistake!   I have ALWAYS seen him on Christmas, ALWAYS- well this year I just sobbed.
In my head he's perpetually 8, or 10 or 12... and when I see him and reality smacks me in the face and he looks 26 [though truly, he looks FABULOUS for his age], it just hurts.  The loss starts all over again.
I dunno' if, to those of you who've never had a horse, it makes any sense... I just can not find a way to put it that really encompasses it all.  In many ways it indeed parallels the slow, long goodbye of a parent with dementia who is so different to you before you actually lose them that the grief just seems endless and you wish it would end, and then hate yourself for thinking that way and  dread it ending all in the same instant.

Really though, the mistake is in not seeing him often enough.  In 2011 I really need to make an effort to go visit once a week, or every couple of weeks... to enjoy him, give him treats, and savor this time, otherwise I will be sorry when he's gone and I've squandered this time.
I hope you'll push me to do that, remind me that I need to do it, will you?


Here's Grandma Ceciles diary entry for today, in 1937

Friday January 8
Buzzed wood, Momma, Dad and Robert here to dinner.  It was warm as spring out.  I took the kids, Joyce's foot is some better.  
Baker's came down, we all went over home and played cards.


I was so excited when, after my husband noted a football player with the same last name in the paper, I searched Facebook and found a page for my family, filled with members who I never knew existed until yesterday.  I don't know what this desire to have more family is... as I've gotten older, had my son, got married and not found a connection to husbands family I had hoped for, taken care of my biological dad whom I never really thought of as 'dad'. and looked back at my life I realize how fractured my 'family' has been.  I spent very little time visiting my dad and his family after a time... and my step-dads family simply disappeared, as if they were never really my family, when my mom divorced my step-dad.  I do not remember, at the time, being too troubled by it, but in retrospect it's so very sad.  To spend every holiday with a family; cousins, aunts, uncles and extended family that I really cared for, and then one day never see them again... that is so sad.  It is certainly not their fault, since the circumstances were what they were, but still... did I stop being their niece/granddaughter/cousin?  In my mind, they never stopped being my aunt/uncle/cousin.

So here's a whole new 'family', my family.  Blood family, though some 'seconds' and 'thirds'.
And here's to animal family, chosen family- horses and dogs and cats who love you just the way you are.
That they may be 'removed' or not human... why does that matter so much?

Ah, the silence of a snowstorm!

As the snow falls softly here in NY...

Thursday January 7
Raining this morning and very slippery, rained all day nearly.  Harry took Eva and I to the Home Bureau meeting, there wasn't any.  Ha Ha [Next Week].  Joyce hurt her foot quite bad at school to-day.  Got Joyce's dress nearly finished, the cloth she got for Christmas.

I can just imagine what my son would do/say if I gave him cloth for Christmas and told him I was making him a shirt!

No shirt or snow suit making here, but several projects to finish up, on this lovely day.  Hopefully, later some skating on the pond- there is nothing like skating in a storm like this, as the falling snow quiets all sounds and cocoons you.

Second Chances

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amplifier/51933/golden-voiced-homeless-man-captivates-internet/

Addiction, and the low self esteem that goes hand in hand, is such a hurdle.
I hope this man sees that the interest in his story and support he is being offered speaks to his worth, and that he has the support of a good AA/NA program to help him navigate this difficult road called Recovery.



Grandma Ceciles Diary entries

Tuesday January 5
Nice day, sun shining, lovely this morning.
Washed and ironed to-day.  Joyce got a doll from Arlie, it is a big one.  James got his cap too. I went after the school children.  Harry got out wood.  Sent after the cloth to make the kids\s snow suits.  Joyce named her doll 'Mary Jo'.


Can you imagine, hand sewing your kids snow suit?


Wednesday January 6
Very nice day.  Went in the woods with Harry after load of wood.  Russel stayed down, so the kids walked home from school.  Cleaned up stairs and down and washed windows on inside.  Went to the show and had to wait untill the second show.  No got the 100, dollars.

What you might need to know

Some background

My mom noted she did not like the name of the blog.  Of course she has misunderstood where the name came from [my horses name is Yousolong] and that it speaks to my not getting my first house until I was over 40... it took SO LONG.  Oh and our builder flaked, in more ways than one, so it took SO LONG to build, and it will take SO LONG to finish.  The name has nothing to do with saying goodbye or loss, it's just a play on words/names, a way to memorialize my horse.

I meant to write a New Years blog nearer to the actual New Years eve/day.... but the 'Outlaw', as I call her, was here and between feeling like a bad hostess for working on my hutch much of the time she was here and not really being prepared for guests [they never did tell me when they were coming, who was staying here or how long they were staying until the day they came, so I adopted the 'Poor planning on your part will not constitute an emergency on mine' motto and just let D handle most of it- which meant ordering out pizza and beds not being made and did the things I intended to do, wanted to do]...  Anyway I felt badly enough with all that that I never did sit down and write my New Years blog that I had started in my head.

What you might need to know
Basically my intention this year for SoLongFarm Blog [SLF] is for SLF to be more about 'the farm' and to include my actual life, thoughts, etc.

In that vein I also want the blog to be more 'authentic' which has become such a cliche word to use, but I can not think of another, so there it is.  That is not to say it has not been honest, but there are times I screw up things with my Late Bloomers Furniture [LBF] and bite my tongue about it.  I think now though that my mistakes and blog are better used in their entirety- that is to say we can all learn from my mistakes.  Why would I withhold that from you all?

Yes, in many ways I feel that revealing that I am not the paint whiz some are or not the decorating diva others are could hurt my desire for SLF to help LBF to gain interest and thus sales... but in the end I am what I am as Popeye says and feel out of touch with the 'Martha Stewart, I can do it all while dying of the flu' types.  I hope no one takes that the wrong way, cause it certainly is not meant as a 'slam', other than maybe at myself.  The thing is I envy those people, I would love to be like them, but the reality is I am not, and it is not in me to pretend either.

So hang with me because it might get messy, it might not always be pretty and I may have days I blog about how incredibly hard it is to be the mother of 1, wife, animal welfare advocate, entrepreneur, owner of a retired older horse,  and daughter/advocate for a man who has prostate cancer that is most likely progressing or spreading [or both], and dementia and who is my father... but kinda' isn't.  Did I mention that in addition to some days being messy, it might get downright confusing?  Hey, I've lived it and some days I forget who's on first!

To get back to the SLF being about more 'reality', the final 'What you need to know' tidbit:

We [sister, brother, and I] put our 80 year old father in a home last spring.  In cleaning out his barn I found a treasure I was sure had gone up in flames 38 years ago, my grandmothers diary.  It is from 1937, Grandma Cecile Azuba was 34, living on a dairy farm in upstate NY with Grandfather Harry John, my father Harry James, and Aunt Joyce Evron.  She cooked, well into 1970's, on a wood fired stove and was a multi-tasker before the phrase was born.

Also in the barn I found a cache of photos, like these:

See the girl wrapped in the blanket with the young man?  That is my Aunt Joyce and her soon to be husband Ralph.

This is my Great Grandfather Devolson, and 2 horses dad identified, but I have lost the copy with their names on it... one I think was Jip.

I am going to add her diary entries to the blog for you all to enjoy, and for my family to easily access.  Hitting several birds with one stone, you see?  So without further ado, playing catch up, here are Grandma Ceciles entries from Jan 1-4th, 1937:

On the Personal Memoranda page it states:
Cecile A Cardner
born Nov., 13th 1903
weight 100
height 5'2"
shoe size 4 1/2
[Grandma was tiny like me.... or I am tiny like her]


Friday January 1
Nice day no snow at all.  Harry found twin calves in the barn both died.  Rena, Bertina, Ethel, Jimmy, Joyce, and I went skating over on the pond.  Bertina is staying all night with us.  Ethel went home with Rena to stay all night.  Harry plowed today.  Percy's were over to Roberts.


Saturday January 2
Harry and Marcellus went to Ithaca and Binghamton.  It stormed quite hard the ground was white.  Rena, Bertina, Franklyn, Joyce, James, Ethel, and I went skating, fell down a few times.  We all went over to Roberts in the after noon.


Sunday January 3
The snow is nearly gone this morning.  Went over to Roberts in after noon. Aunt Ella feeling better.  Aunt Pearl, Frederick, and Beverly came after Ethel in evening they stayed a little while.


Monday January 4
Eva, Momma, and I went to Cortland.  Eva and I attended the clothing meeting at the Home Bureau office and made pressing pads.  Did some shopping and so on.  Momma visited Aunt Etta Jones.  I changed my slippers.  Bertie Bean is better so he is home.  It was real cold.  School began this morning after Christmas vacation.


What you might need to know
My Grandmother was a real farmers wife who did all her own needle work, including sewing, needlepoint, hand hooked rugs, knitting and crocheting and apparently teaching these skills at the Grange and Home Bureau.  She kept her own house, helped in the barn, and was very involved with her family and town happenings.  Robert is her brother who lived just down the road past her mothers house, also just down the road and hill.  Rena was her cousin and shared her interest in sewing.  Cortland is about 30+ miles away, as the crow flies, from the farm [which still stands to this day] and Ithaca is further.  The travel they did, in 1937, and the dead of winter is just incredible to me.  To think I have central air, set at above 60*, and a modern car, and tend to not venture out in this weather instead huddling with my hands wrapped around a steaming mug.... I'm ashamed.

Skating is something my father taught my sister and I, taking us both on his snowmobile onto the same pond my Grandmother writes about them skating on in 1937.  My first memory of skating is probably from when I was 4, so I have now been skating 40 years and am enjoying teaching my son on the pond in the woods near our house.

Finally, moving back to Late Bloomers business... here is the hutch I worked on over the Christmas week:

Before and during

Now

It is painted in what I thought was Beluga, that I painted the chairs with, that turns out to be called 'Deep Space'.   My new favorite dark color.

Left to do:

- Finish out the upper doors, minus that lovely [COUGH] yellow glass... I am considering using that radiator metal I've wanted to use on something for so long.... or maybe a stenciled panel... not sure

- I plan to wallpaper the bottom like I did the China Cabinet, then add back on those doors, minus the center one.  I think I'll try leaving the center one off and using baskets or something else there.

- I am making a small 'lift' for the hutch top, not because the coffee maker does not fit under there [IT DOES!!!!], but because I need to be able to pass those power cords [plural because the toaster is moving here too] through the back.  Moving these two appliances here will move traffic out of my kitchen, AND free up some counter space I grudgingly allowed them to occupy for now.  I am so excited to get that done!

So, belatedly,....  Happy New Years my friends!