Catching Up

Wow, a lot has happened on the Rivir Ranch since I last blogged. Let's catch up. After we got back from our trip to California my sister was beginning the state softball tournament. For about six weeks we were consumed with softball games. It was a very exciting season and the girls went on to win the state championship. At the same time my youngest brother played in his first season of baseball so we were able to enjoy some baseball games too.

After softball season ended, we were invited to six weddings and bridal showers and a whole bunch of birthday parties and other celebrations. Those kept us busy for quite awhile to say the least. One of the most fun events was that I had the chance to co-host, along with my mom and sister, a bridal shower for my cousin Danielle. Thanks to Pinterest, I had a lot of inspiration for this shower and made several little things for the bridal shower.

In addition, to all of the family get-togethers, we have season tickets and are part of the Directors Club at our local theater. There are six shows in the summer, one every two weeks, and it is so much fun. We have really enjoyed getting more involved with the theater and learning more about how it all works. It's by far one my most favorite parts of summer.  And then on July 1st, we celebrated one year in our new home. The past year has flown by and it's really neat to look back at the pictures and to think just a year ago we were living in the tiny little lake cottage preparing for big move to the country. We have both loved every minute in our new house, it's just perfect for us!

Well, that sums up most of our summer so far, I'll do a few other posts about all the different plants we have growing on the Rivir Ranch this year. The flowers, garden vegetables and big corn patch are all doing well this year despite the drought.

Our Big Gardening Idea

Last year at the end of gardening season, Carl and I got the brilliant idea of planting sweet corn and selling it. We have plenty of open ground at the Ranch so we thought we would plant an acre of corn. In theory this was a great idea, it would be approximately 41,000 ears of corn and alot of profit. So for the entire winter we have been planning to have one acre of corn then we went out to measure off the one acre to actually see how big of an area we would be working with and whoa...we changed our minds. That's way to much corn for two people to deal with and that's alot of weeds, watering, fertilizing and more work than we really thought it might be. We have now narrowed our corn patch down to 1/8th of an acre (100'x50'). It's quite a drastic change but we think it will be more manageable especially for our first year. On Sunday, Carl plowed the area that is going to be our new corn patch. It needs alot more work but this is at least a start.

While Carl had the plow hooked up the to the tractor, he worked up an area for my flower garden. This area is 30'x20'. It's going to have a few paths through it so it won't be completely flowers but still it's a pretty big flower garden. I'm planning to plant alot of wild flowers here.

And in plant news, the tomatoes have taken up residence in the living room. Since all of the plants are getting so big, we were running out of room in the dining room that has prime sunshine space.

The other plants are doing quite well in the dining now that the tomatoes have been moved.



And There Was Light

You may remember when Carl, Spencer and Grant set the light pole in November and I accidentally stepped on the light bulb. So, since November we have had a light pole and light but there wasn't a light bulb in it. Over the weekend, Spencer came over with a giant ladder and climbed to the top to install the light bulb so now we have light. Carl also installed an electrical box at the base of the pole so we have power out there too. Just has I was not paying attention the last time I was out there taking pictures of them working, I stepped on the light bulb, well this time I was inside the house when they installed the light bulb but then later came outside to check on them and take some pictures. And just like last time I was concentrating on getting pictures that I stepped on the light bulb box but luckily it was empty this time but the guys were sure to let me know all about it again and how I need to pay attention to where I walk.

Now we officially have a light pole with a working light...amazing. The light is really bright and lights up the the front of the house great.

Setting the Light Pole Rivir Ranch Style

On Thursday night/Friday morning, Spencer and his buddy Grant came over to go Black Friday shopping with us. When we came home from shopping on Friday afternoon, Spencer and Grant offered to help Carl set the light pole. So here are a bunch of pictures show you how the guys set the light pole....

First up was to hook up the post hole digger to the tractor. Of course it takes three guys to do this task.

 They got the post hole digger hooked to the tractor but the auger didn't want to attach very easily. There solution...

Spencer stood on top of it while Carl beat the auger with a hammer. They eventually got it attached.

The post hole digger was bent so it wouldn't dig a hole straight into the ground. After deciding that they couldn't bend the post hole digger, Spencer thought to just shim up the tractor a few inches to straighten it out.

It still wasn't perfectly straight so Carl and Grant had to put a little muscle on it and that worked well enough.

They finally got the hole dug, next was putting the 30+ foot telephone pole into the hole.

The pole was big and very heavy. The placed the telephone pole into the hole 'Iwo Jima' style.

They crept their way closer to the end and got it in the hole.

But it was really crooked.

Again, their solution to get the pole straight...

Once they got the pole set straight the packed the dirt all around it. It's not going anywhere now.

When we built the house we knew we wanted a pole light so the electricians left a roll of cable for us on the side of the house to use for the pole light. Spencer and Grant trenched in the cable for us. You can't even see the trench, they did a nice job.

So they got the pole set and the electrical cable trenched up now they need to get the light and cable attached to the pole. Again, their solution....use the deer stand.

Carl harnessed himself to the pole and climbed his way to the top. It was really windy that day so he was a little wobbly up there and the pole isn't really wide enough for the deer stand to grip really well but he made it up there.

He didn't take any tools up with him while climbing so the guys sent up a box with the light and some other parts.

Carl did a little work up there but still needed the drill. Send it up...

Carl got the light hooked up.

And just as he was about to install the light in it, I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and stepped on the one and only light bulb. Needless to say he wasn't very happy with me then.

So we are almost done, we still need to get a new light bulb, install the the electrical box to the base of the pole and attach the cable to the pole. Carl gets to make another trip up the light pole in the deer stand this week.

We borrowed Carl's Dad's trailer to haul the pole over to our house and when we were taking the trailer back to him on Saturday we blew a tire on the trailer about 8-10 miles from their house. We stopped and called his Dad to see what he wanted us to do but he said that we would be ok and just keep on going. We took it slow and made it to their house eventually.

It's always an adventure when working on the Rivir Ranch and setting up the light pole was no exception.

Carl's New Truck

Carl has been eyeing a new truck for awhile and on Saturday he finally got it. He traded in the Trans Am and his old truck and got a 2008 Chevy Silverado z71 truck. It's an awesome ride!

On Saturday, I had a craft show so I had to use his truck to haul my display and items to the craft show. Carl came to the show with me to help me set up but later left to go to check out this truck that he had seen last week and checked out onlne. Well the craft show was open until 3:00 in the afternoon but the car lot was only open until 5:00 and I had the truck 40 minutes away.  So Carl text me and said that he was on his way to help tear down my craft show booth so that we could make it back up to the car lot with the old truck to trade it in for the new truck by 4:00 because it takes some time to process. And sure enough, we left the car lot at 5:00 with a new truck loaded down with all my craft show stuff.

Here is Carl driving his new truck off the lot.

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Hello Again

Wow, I fell off the blogging trail. Now, I'm back to fill you in on our October happenings. Here are a few highlights.

At the beginning of October I went to Indianapolis for a business convention. Since it wasn't too far of a drive Carl visited me over the weekend and we went to Fogo de Chao. It's one of our favorite restaurants! It's all you can eat meat and it is the best meat you'll ever have. They give you a card that is green on one side and red on the other, when you flip the card to green the gauchos will start bringing you meat and they won't stop until you turn your card to red. After awhile you do have to turn the card to red and breathe a little (and unbutton your pants, haha). Here is Carl with one of the gauchos and a huge piece of steak.

My little sister just finished up the volleyball season and we went to several of her games. Suzanne is pretty much a rock star at volleyball, just like me, haha. Basketball season just started so we're looking forward to those games.



Then we went down to Carl's Alma mater, Purdue, to watch them get creamed by Notre Dame. No further elaboration needed.

With the heat wave that came through the middle of October, one of my pumpkins bit the dust and I had to haul him over to the compost pile. The rest of the pumpkins still look great though!



And the garden was still going strong in October. It was turning out tomatoes and peppers like you wouldn't believe. We've canned so many tomatoes lately, I'm not sure how we are going to eat them all. Just this week Carl canned up 7 quarts of stewed tomatoes and 7 quarts of pasta sauce in addition all the other things we canned earlier this summer.

October is also the start of deer season so Carl has been over at his parents hunting on the weekends quite a bit and I'm participating in a few craft shows the next two weeks so I've been spending a lot of time in the craft room.  I'll be back later with some more of our October adventures. 

It's a New Season

The seasons have changed from summer to fall and doesn't just mean the temperature outside, the new tv shows begin tonight. The new tv shows on TLC begin tonight and I've got the DVR ready. One of our favorites, Cake Boss, returns along with other shows that I watch. Carl refuses to watch Little Couple, 19 Kids and Counting, Sister Wives, Say Yes to the Dress, DC Cupcakes and more. Me and my reality tv...sigh. But since we do love Buddy and his famiglia on Cake Boss we drove out to Hoboken, NJ, in March to check out the bakery.

We waited in line for over two hours before we made our way into the little bakery where it was even more crammed with people. The bakery is just like it seems on tv, except smaller.

Here is Carl checking out the fondant layer cakes. At $45 a cake, it was a tough decision but we couldn't pass up the chance to try one of Buddy's famous fondant cakes.

We made our way to the end of the counter and Grace came out to the front of the bakery. Carl and I were both a little star struck and didn't know what to say to her, so all we managed to say was 'Hello' and where we are from. She probably thought we were really weird, oh well. We didn't get to see Buddy but we did see Mauro, Frankie and Joey in the backroom.

There weren't any signs labeling all the goodies and it was so packed with people that you couldn't go back to pick anything out but we did manage to buy some lobster tails, cannolis, a cupcake, cream puffs, crumb cake, 7 layer cookie, Mexican wedding cake cookies and a fondant layer cake. 

We ordered the blue fondant layer cake with the bow and they asked if we would like to have a message written on it. So I said "Sure, write Carl loves Lindsey." They took the cake to the back room to have the message written on it, the girl came back with our cake and it said "Carlo's Love Lindsey." Oh well, guess that's close enough. The cake was pretty good and the fondant was better than we expected. We were just glad that we got to have a slice of fondant cake made at Carlos Bakery.

We had a fun time visiting Carlos Bakery even though we didn't get to meet Buddy. I'm looking forward to the new season of Cake Boss and the other TLC shows this fall.



Rainbow on the Ranch

Last night we had the most beautiful and bright rainbow over the ranch. The rainbow was so big that I couldn't even get it one picture.