The barn is going up at the Mother Ranch! (newsletter)

You know how people on social are always posting, "Tell me you have a (fill in the blank) without telling me!" I have one for you! Tell me you have a 14 year old boy without telling me you have a 14 year old boy:

Exhibit A:

What's even funnier about this picture is that I had forgotten, and just noticed, he's in the picture! It's a Where's Waldo/ManChild moment. I should have remembered as he moaned the whole time I was opening the blinds. The little mole.

This desk is usually completely covered in dishes...

Exhibit B:

The horror.

I've shown you mine, show me yours!

The real reason I'm showing this to you is to tell you what's happening now :-) We've moved ManChild to another room and I have taken over his room as my office and neurofeedback space! Oh happy day! That means I will soon be offering neurofeedback to the public again! Pics to come next week! I have my desk and neuro chair in the space and it has been cleaned "scorched earth" style as we say in my family. The room is a yellowy-green but I have other plans:

My office at our last ranch was kind of a soft rose pink and I just loved it so I'm looking at pale pinks again. I think I'm going to have to go back to Lowe's for more paint chips as these are either too gray or too cotton candy pink.

My view! This bedroom has the best view (even on this cloudy day) which was lost on ManChild because he closed all the blinds! Now he walks in and says, "Wow, it's so pretty in here! And it smells good too! Why does it smell so different?" I couldn't stop laughing over that one!

I will show you the attached bath (this will be the client restroom) because it was such an ordeal to get it clean and I'm so happy with how it turned out! Thank God the floor is tile and toilet/sink/tub are porcelain—my scorched earth know-how was put to the test though! Why are teenage boys so gross?!

New bottom up blinds are coming!

If you remember from last week I have taken my huge master closet as my art studio. I got the nicest note this week from someone saying they weren't a clothes horse either and would love to have this space full of shelves for her craft room too! Ah-ha! I'm not alone in this!

It used to be a study before our time and had a door to the hall in it. Somewhere along the way when the house was redone, the door went away. Magic-I-Can-Do-Anything-Brad is restoring that door so I can leave neurofeedback clients in the office and go paint while they are here but still be two steps away.

On to the barn!

The grading guy came last Saturday to make the area nice and flat. It's 40x40 with the whole right side being 3 stalls for Rayn, Wynter, and Sweetness. Here in the south, people will often put their horses inside a shady barn in the daytime and out at night to graze. I thought it was kinda strange at first since we left our horses on pasture in Colorado 24/7. Two quick realizations happened:
1. We had 15 acres of pasture in Colorado and only 2 acres of pasture out of our total 7.5 acres here in NC.
2. It's equally as hot in NC as CO in the summer but the humidity is off the charts here. Of course I knew this, I lived here for 20 years before we moved to CO. What I didn't know was that the horses will stand in a sweaty stupor wherever they have planted their feet which is usually in the sun. Good gawd. There is shade to go to but they don't! If they got hot in CO they would move to the shade but I think the humidity is such a shock to the system they just can't cope well. All thought processes are offline.

All that to say, stalls are coming! lol

Then they dug the holes and poured in concrete for footings:

The ground here is interesting. In some places it's sandy clay:

And in other areas, straight clay. I'm reminded again why so many buildings are brick here :-)

One year in Colorado, Brad was using the tractor auger to dig a post hole. I was with him and saw the auger dig down through this big layer of gray clay. I knew our ground there was clay but I didn't realize that like the picture above, there were veins of just clay. I pulled out a big piece of it, took it inside, and started sifting through it with my wet fingers, pulling out bits of grass and grit. When I had a fairly smooth consistency, I created this little horse coming up out of the ground. It's not fired or anything and is just rough but I love it so much. I think I may have to make one out of our red clay here!

On Tuesday our barn kit arrived:

On Thursday the 6x6" posts started going up!

And this was Friday evening:

THE GIVEAWAY:

Congratulations to Jennifer Hadley, you won the print of Jack! Keep an eye on your email!

See all of the prints of my original watercolors here!

Next week I'll be giving away Mary! If you're already on my list, you're already entered to win!

Thank you for reading :-) My blog is reader-supported—that's you my wonderful friends! The best way to support my work locally (Research Triangle area of NC) is:

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