The March Winds

Blair Elizabeth Waldorf is wishing you a Happy March :)

Happy March everyone! We took a couple of days off to celebrate Savannah’s birthday which was on the 3rd. This year Savannah chose to relax at home and watch Harry Potter movies all day. I never got into the Harry Potter books or movies, so I never want to watch them - same with the Lord of the Rings. We treat the birthday girl by letting her pick what she wants to watch and she doesn’t have to do any cooking or cleaning. Per her request, I made her a funfetti boxed caked with cream cheese frosting. Bless her heart because I have celiac and can’t eat gluten she also ends up eating mostly gluten free. But on her birthday she gets a gluten full cake. We froze the rest of the cupcakes so she can enjoy them later.

This past Saturday we went to tea with my mother at this adorable tea room in a town a little over an hour away. They had gluten free options which was such a treat for me. There was also a cute little quilt shop next door and we got some new fabric. One of our low buy/no buy rules for 2025 was that we weren’t supposed to buy any new fabric until we had gone through our personal stash. If we did go through our stash and determined we really needed fabric, we had to buy from an independent retailer. However, this is the second time we’ve broken that rule. Joann is going out of business and we picked up some fabric there the last time we were near one. And even though we don’t really need any fabric, we just had to buy some at this cute quilt shop. We have a weakness for textiles.

This week we’ve worked on getting our covered porch off the side of our storage shed covered in plastic. We had to move some building materials in there that were in the greenhouse. We were expecting rain and even though there is a roof, the floor still gets wet -so we wrapped it in plastic. This is just a temporary solution until we get a chance to use those building materials which should be very soon. One of greatest but most neglected needs we have is a place to store building materials. We have plans to build an awning similar to the one pictured here on the other side of the shed just to store wood and tools. We keep most of our tools in our shed but we want a place to keep our chop saw/miter saw, table saw, and wood planer. This awning you see here is supposed to be our outdoor kitchen but it is often been a place to store things. You gotta do what you gotta do.

From March 2022- that Harbor Freight canopy didn’t stand a chance

It has been SO windy here! When we first moved here our neighbor joked about the winds in March. I didn’t think much of it until we spent our first March here. It’s wild but they come like clockwork. Our first March here we installed a cheap canopy/portable car port from Harbor Freight as a place to store materials. We did a lot to secure it or so we thought. Savannah went out of town and while she was gone, we had a windstorm and it blew that sucker all over the place. We literally only had it up for a matter of days, and it was basically ruined. The night we put the plastic up on our awning we had a terrible windstorm, and I was afraid our new plastic covering was going to get ripped to smithereens. Even though many trees were blown down all around us, and our gates broke off of their posts, the plastic on the awning stayed in place. We thankfully didn’t have any major damage on our property.

Another project we’ve worked on is sewing our duvet covers. We couldn’t find any that we liked so we got 2 twin sheets and sewed them together. They turned out so cute and it makes me want to get our bedroom finished, but that’s not likely happening anytime soon. It is on our very giant to-do list for this year though! We’re focused on getting the greenhouse finished and then we need to several other projects to get us ready for the growing season. We have not had great growing seasons since living here. Our first summer here was probably the best. It’s been hard to focus on the garden when we’ve got so many other things going on.

I went back to the doctor to get a follow up x-ray for my broken fibula. It is healing but the PA said she would like to have seen more progress. She also said not to worry. Overall, I don’t have much pain but the muscles around the broken bone are sore. She gave me some exercises to do. She also told me to start taking calcium & vitamin D, so I have started that.

In other news, I am writing this post on my brand new laptop. This is not normally something I would share because- who cares? But it’s wild beacuse my old laptop was TEN years old!!! Can you believe that? My laptop before that lasted 7 years. They were both MacBook Pros and even though they are more expensive than other laptops, they last for much much longer. Before I started buying Apple computers, I had to replace my PCs every couple of years. Maybe they’ve gotten better now? I also love that I can go to the Apple Store and get help with any problems. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used that service. But with PCs, you have to pay someone money just to diagnose the problem. Really my old laptop was still working, albeit hanging on by a limb, but with the new tariffs I didn’t want to have to pay a higher price for a new laptop down the road.

We will have a new YouTube video up tomorrow where we will be showing the greenhouse in all of her painted glory!! We are doing some other things too of course, so be sure to check it out.

Thanks for reading!!

-Casey