Usually the Daily Farm Adventures are filled with…well…farm adventures. {smile} But this weekend our days were filled with sailboats and shopping for the Ladybug’s birthday. She turns 10 today, ya know.

And she celebrated in grand style by winning the church’s first Sailboat Regatta!

The kiddos and Mr. Fix-It have been working on their first sailboats for a week now. They sanded, and sanded, and sanded, and sanded some more, and then painted. This was the first time they used spray paint. There were a few runs, but mostly on the curved bottom, so you don’t notice.

The Ladybug went patriotic, which has been her standard lately.  The Cowboy went with a battleship, and called Grandpa Hohner to get the name and number of his destroyer when he was in the Navy. And Speedracer when back and forth about a pirate ship or a viking ship and picked the Jolly Roger (over Mr. Fix-It’s suggestion).

 

They watched some youtube videos together and went with an odd sail configuration (odd to me anyway) that was apparently pretty successful. Then Mr. Fix-It sat down with each of them to help them decorate it.

He and the Cowboy designed gun turrets for “The Destroyer” and they used a Sharpie to just draw in all the details. I helped him use a shot-glass to trace the Captain America sail. (That’s always interesting. My munchkins think shot-glasses are for drawing and hold teeth that fall out until Daddy gets home. One day I reckon we’re going to have an interesting discussion on that one.)

I have no idea how he and Speedracer did those railings, but I know the “ram” is a toothpick and all the rest of the decals are just more black Sharpie work. {smile} Then Speedracer took some yellow and green paint and did…something…I have no idea what those splotches are. But when I asked, he told me “I know what I’m doing.” So I left him alone.

The Ladybug spent some time looking at pictures before doing hers. She painted her pinstripes on the body, but her other flags are colored with magic marker–which smeared during the race. Then she and Mr. Fix-It used a ruler with a pen to make the beautiful “wooden” decking.

The last step was to shellack the boats to make them water-tight. Mr. Fix-It and Grandpa Ray took care of that part, because spraying chemicals and then baking them off in the oven is not something I think the crew is quite up for yet. {smile}

The hardest part was keeping the kiddos from playing with them before the race. (Which is always a problem with their derby cars as well!)

But they had fun, brought home a couple design awards, and a first and third place ribbon.

Then we headed right out to do some shopping in “the big city” for the Ladybug’s birthday. (Just Virginia Beach.) She’s getting a room make-over before school starts. Paint, a few small pieces of furniture, a deep cleaning, a little re-arranging, and some organizational help before school-work commences.

The camera phone pictures don’t do these pieces justice. We’re working with a sky blue chair, a bright teal nightstand, and a pink and every-other-color-of-the-rainbow lamp. {smile} We hit a couple antique stores for the furniture and gave the Ladybug a little guided lesson on choosing sturdy, solid wood furniture so you can paint it later if you want too. She’s a bit like me and gets drawn to the color first and the shape second.

If you ever come to visit or see pictures of our house, Mr. Fix-It and I have a very rustic, antique, farmhouse style. The Ladybug seems to have more of a free-spirit, bright, Bohemian style, with a little frilly junk gypsy thrown in. The color she picked for her walls is called “calypso.” {sigh}

I lost my nerve this morning and asked Mr. Fix-It if we should just start with a sample can of paint, but he reminded me that we set a few boundaries but were letting her pick.

Be sure to hop over and follow us on Facebook to see the changes in progress over the next two weeks.

In the meantime, the weather has been unusually easy this summer. No drought. No 100+ degree days. No sweltering humidity for weeks and weeks. I’m not sure if it’s just a nice break, or if we’re being set up for a hard hurricane season. We’ve finished up processing meat chickens for the year, but haven’t made much progress on selling off our larger stock early. We’ve had a few animals leave, but it looks like we’ll still have almost a full lamb crop for sale this Fall for our regular lamb harvest. (Pss…if you’re looking for breeding stock, call me!) I’ll be glad to get that off our plate in a few months. Change can be hard, but once we set our minds to it, I’m kinda looking forward to an easier winter.

Do you feel like Fall is coming a little earlier than usual this year?

By the way, speaking of birthdays, the new Jessica George book is available for pre-order this week…Thursdays With The Crown. The Ladybug loves these and the Dragon Slipper stories! I was hoping it would be out by now, but I guess I’ll be ordering it and saving it for Christmas. It will go nicely on her new nightstand. {smile}

 

And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter! I’ll be sharing reading recommendations for the holidays over the next couple monthly issues–because you know there’s always books on Christmas lists around here! {smile} 

See where I’m sharing this week…