The girls have arrived!

My Hens are here.  

Meet Hen #1, because we don't have a name for her yet.

 We are waiting on J to name her, so until then she is #1. 

This little one is Sprout. 

She is 2 months old, this is Elyssa's chicken. 

She has a twin that Ash, named bob....

This is the west side of my coop and the egg door. 

The roof is copper colored metal over plywood.

 I have a big copper star I may put out here and change up the look of this side. 

Not sure I am completely happy with it.

 I want an Americana look. 

I may incorporate more onto the door as well. 

Here is my chicken, Americus. 

This is a picture of the south side of the coop and the run.

Bgawk!

I have been watching several different ads lately,

 waiting for the right kind of chickens at the right price. 

Yesterday my BIL messaged me to tell me one of his students,

 was trying to get rid of his chickens.

 And did I want them? 

 Of course, I jumped on it, 

he just wanted to give them away. 

 So I ended up with 2, eight week old chickens. 

Then as I was watching the ads yesterday,

 a guy was trying to get rid of 2 hens free. 

I called on it but I was too late someone else had claimed them.

 However late last night he called me to ask if I wanted them,

 because the other person never showed up to claim them. 

I jumped on it and picked them up early this morning. 

Tonight I went to close up the coop and all 4 hens were on their roosts. 

I was completely amazed.

But I was flabbergasted when I checked the nesting boxes and there was an egg. 

Our very first egg! 

We had the chickens less than 8 hours and we had our first egg!

Amazing! 

time to play catch up...

It has been a while since we got home from St. George. Well about a month. I feel like I have been playing catch up the whole time. So much has been going on around us and just trying to keep up is a bit overwhelming some days. Especially after our super laid back months, being away from home.

 And we brought a puppy with us! So add that to the mix and it has been busy. I am constantly running around trying to rescue my bra's and underwear from that dog! What is it with dogs and under clothes? Really, My best bra?!?  Dixie did you really have to chew up both cups?

We have been spring cleaning, and I must have got it bad, because I am tossing stuff into the donation pile left and right. I vacuumed the whole house the other day, I cleaned out the spice drawer (it has been bothering me for a while), I organized my food storage area (HUGE accomplishment). Cleaning up the school room/office/hobby room, tough job, I am making small bits of progress though.

Other things I have been up to?

  I built a chicken coop (now if the rain would stop so I could finish it! pics coming soon). The more I read about and research having chickens, the more excited I get! My dear husband was a tremendously wonderful help in building the actual coop! I could not have done it with out his expert help. All I had to do was tell him exactly what I wanted and he helped me get it done.  Just a bit of trivia here... Did you know that the city of Diest, in Belgium actually handed out chickens to their citizens to help cut down the amount of waste going into the land fills? Chickens will eat anything humans will and also lots of things they won't.

I started couponing again, this time on a much larger scale. My goal is to be an extreme couponer. In the last 2 weeks I have purchased 48 boxes of pasta. They were all free with in-ad deals and coupons.  Last Sunday I went to Smith's to use up the last of my coupons for pasta and a few other things. My total bill came to $0.12!!! that was a savings of 100% for 10 boxes of pasta and a tube of toothpaste. That was at the first store. At the second store, I purchased: 1 bbq sauce, 6 boxes of pasta, 1 sunny delight, 2 quaker quakes rice snacks, my total was $2.27 cents! So in total I spent $2.39.

I have so much cereal from my past attempts at couponing which were fairly meager and my last 3 weeks of couponing, that I am not quite sure where to store it all. I most definitely want to take some of it to to the food bank at the church. Along with some of the pasta and 84 razors I have purchased.
My goal is to have enough food on hand that if my husband gets laid off from work we will be able to survive with out it being a huge burden to him. We have definitely seen that side of the barrel before. Construction work is feast or famine. The other goal is to have enough on hand that I can help out others going through similar situations.

Also I am helping throw a baby shower for the dear young woman who was the first ever to baby sit my children. She lives in England now but we are having a shower for her anyway. Her mom and I will be hosting this Baby-Shower-in-a Suitcase if you will. Her mom and dad will be headed out to England shortly after and will be taking all of the baby shower gifts and a video to the new parents and baby. That shower is the first weekend in June.

Lastly I have been involved in a renewal of wedding vows ceremony that will take place a month from now. I will be catering it.

Well I guess that pretty much sums up what is going on around here and why I have not blogged in a while.   I promise to do better just as soon as I get my girls (hens) and get them settled in their coop.