The Valentine neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri began to be developed as a housing district in 1897. Prior to that, the neighborhood changed like a chameleon to accommodate the whims of a growing population and enlarge the fortune of the man who bought the land, accurately predicting that it would eventually become an integral part [...]
We have been working on finishing our basement.
It has been a very slow moving project.
We had the basement sheet-rocked in the spring by Mike the ‘morel mushroom guy‘.
We believed we would paint the basement ourselves, but for some reason…
We could not seem to get it done.
So a month ago, we hired a painter….
And now we [...]
We awoke to snowfall this morning.
The first snowfall of the season…
You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes while I run around like a ninny and take a few photos.
Believe it or not, I planted two flats of strawberries on Friday afternoon after I got home from work.
The strawberries were scheduled to be thrown [...]
On a recent drive through the Flint Hills, on my way home from my eldest son’s cross country meet, I meandered through some small towns and found a few great old houses to photograph.
This house was not crumbling at all and was clearly well loved by it’s current owners.
But this one was in dire need [...]
Frost greeted me like a long lost friend this morning.
A long lost friend that I have been waiting for…
Because I planted a garden this year.
And that garden resulted in nine hundred and ninety nine thousand tomatoes.
They dominated my kitchen counters for months.
In buckets and tubs and every mixing bowl in the house.
Like the ancient Egyptians [...]
Here are the entries for the first ever MSFH 30 Day Mini-Makeover Contest! The entries are all fabulous and I may have to call in a few reinforcements to make a decision… like my mom… and my sister… and maybe my neighbor, Jenny. Jenny? Are you there Jenny? Which one do I pick?
#1
From [...]
My mom’s brother Chuck passed away a few months ago. Chuck was a passionate, gourmet cook and he left quite a legacy of pots and pans.
Chuck had no family of his own, so my mom had the task of organizing his small estate. April and I both received some of his cookware.
The copper pots are [...]
Early this summer, I found three bright orange pumpkins growing in my compost pile.
It was far too early to carve a jack-o-lantern or even think about pumpkin pie, so I took a few photos of them and then threw them right back into the compost heap.
A few weeks ago, I noticed another pumpkin [...]
Way back in April, we planted us a patch o’ tallgrass. Mike and I both love the Flint Hills and the Tall Grass Prairie preserves in our area. We have a few acres on which nothing but brome grows, so we thought it would be interesting to see if we could get some [...]