A Productive Weekend

If you think weekends are for kicking back in your favorite recliner with a cool drink, you wouldn't have enjoyed being here this weekend. We accomplished so much over the past two days. Here's a bit of what we did.

Early Saturday morning we were back at the woodpile. This is how much we had left to chop when we started Saturday.

This is how much more wood we had chopped last night. We completed one entire row from yesterday's starting point.

And this is what it looked like when we finished - another full row. There were about 4 cords in all that were chopped and stacked.

Gotta love that log splitter. We ended up with a good batch of kindling too.

On to the next project - improving the driveway and making a sidewalk for my in-laws. My husband borrowed his employer's loader and began by scraping and leveling the spot.

This is what it looked like after leveling.

He went and picked up a load of sand for our first project - the sidewalk. We had to shovel it since we didn't want to cover the driveway with sand.

We measured out the paving stones, set them in place, leveled them and filled between with sand. We hosed off the pavers and soaked the sand so it would settle. The stepping stones are very solid and level.

We used the sand to build up the area to make sure the sidewalk would be higher than the ground around it so water run off the sidewalk area. Hopefully they won't have a problem with ice build up here.

After we finished the sidewalk, my husband brought a load of rock for the parking spot and leveled it out.

There was an old honeysuckle bush that needed to be removed, so we used the loader to pull it.

Here's what it looked like in the end. My in-laws park their 5th wheel camper here all summer. This will be a nice level place out of the mud for them.

I think it turned out really well. After this, my husband and I headed to the town 100 miles away to do some grocery shopping and look at flooring. We are in the process of moving our doublewide trailer from North Carolina to Wyoming. Sounds fun, huh? There's a lot more to it than I thought, but it is coming along nicely. Anyway, we're planning to replace all of the flooring, and to paint almost every room while we have the flooring out, so this is going to be quite a project. The home is 2,400 square feet. We went to Home Depot to see what our flooring options were and think we've made a reasonable choice. You'll have to wait to see what that is though :) I'm sure I'll be blogging my way through all the renovations and why we decided to move it at a later date. We had a nice dinner together and made it home around 11:30 pm, making for a very long day.

After church Sunday it was time for more jelly-making. Chokecherry was the flavor of the day. We had enough juice for four batches - each one making about 4 1/2 pints. I didn't count.

This jelly was super easy. Boil 5 cups of juice with a packet of Sure Gel. When it comes to a full rolling boil, add 7 cups of sugar. Bring to a full rolling boil again and boil at that point for a full minute. Pour into sterilized jars, put lids on and flip upside-down for 5 minutes. Easy, right?

We're still waiting to see if it will set up. We may have syrup instead of jelly. When we were cooking it, the jelly seemed more jelly-like than the Oregon grape had, and the bubbles I had skimmed off set up like jelly should. But the jars were taking their time. Hopefully we will end up with jelly. But otherwise, syrup is tasty too :)

After all this, my husband climbed up on the roof of his parents' two story house and tightened all the screws on their metal roof, and then cleaned the chimney for them. We also had morning and evening church, and the church service at the nursing home in the afternoon. Overall, it was a good weekend with a lot accomplished.