Guacamole!

No, not the kind you eat! But if you have ever tasted Rick's guacamole, you wish it was that kind. Delicious!

It's the name of the color of paint I bought last week. The lady at the paint store and I were having a conversation about how hard it is to pick paint colors. I told her I like my paint colors to be named after food and if I don't like the color name I won't buy the paint. Crazy, I know, but I have to have some way to narrow down the thousands of colors!

I painted the screen door on the cabin back porch and the risers on the bunkhouse steps. I considered painting each riser a different pale color, like yellow and blue, in addition to the green. But I figured that was more than Rick could live with. He's not as crazy about paint as I am! I like the green because it is so often brown out here in dry country. 

I've fallen madly in love with the houses Reclaimed Space does and was inspired to paint the screen door. I rarely stop at one thing, so had to find something else to paint and there were the steps! Check out Reclaimed Space!

We've had a colorful week with the cenizos blooming! We have several we planted but this one came up in the driveway. It is gorgeous! I could hear the hum of the bees on it long before I got close to it. 










The little bunkhouse was shared last week by Tiny House Design and Tiny House Talk. THD did a post about using a shed as the basis for a tiny house. Since that is what we did with the bunkhouse, I commented on our experience and costs. THD then did a post on that using some of my photos from the blog. Tiny House Talk included it in one of their posts for the week. They both used only one inside photo and it was one before we had put the curtain up around the toilet area. As you probably know, our main purpose of building the bunkhouse was to have room for as many beds as possible and for our bookcases. To keep family and friends from having to go to the cabin in the dark we added a toilet and sink. There wasn't room to wall it in so we bent a galvanized rod and hung it and added a curtain. But the photo that was used in these posts didn't have the curtain.

Well, there was a lot of serious distress over a toilet in a one room bunkhouse without a curtain! So I'm thinking I probably shouldn't share my "hunter's toilet" with those city slickers. When we were building the cabin there was a period we had to shut down the travel trailer bathroom and the cabin didn't have one yet. I cut the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and with a toilet seat moved it around as needed, carrying my shovel for restoration work on each site. It happened to be in the winter and some mornings the snow fell around you as you took the seat! I called it a "hunter's toilet" because I got the idea from a hunter down the road that comes out every year. I've since seen it on Mary Jane's Farm Glamping ideas and she uses a disposable diaper in the bottom! 

So I thought I would share a photo of the toilet area with the curtain in case it has been distressing any of you! :) It's not a perfect arrangement, but I think everyone that comes out will agree it sure beats going to the cabin in the dark and cold and maybe rain and trying to avoid rattlesnakes!

I finished the outdoor kitchen with a little help from Rick on the stove section. It's easier to get things put together with two people! He hooked the stove up and it's ready to go. I used it for the first time this weekend. I decided to make the grape jelly outside. We didn't have many grapes due to a couple of late freezes. Even though I covered them, we still lost most. But the jelly came out delicious and it was nice working outside! It gets messy getting the juice from the grapes. I still have to make a cover for the stove for when we aren't using it. 

I found that I needed a little table in addition to what I already had. Last week I dismantled a 23 year old picnic table we had that had some rotten wood on the legs and braces. I saved the top pieces that were still good. Today I made a small table with some of that wood. I wanted it to be small enough that one person could move it around so we can use it for different things. I'm not sure if I am going to paint it or leave as it and wax it. I'll let it set a while and then decide. I like the feel of the old wood after I sanded it. It's not the most beautiful table but it's sturdy and the cost was zero! 

In addition to all this old wood, old tin, painted wood, beautiful blooms, and jelly we have had lots of birds around. Here are a couple of the more beautiful ones, although there are some not so beautiful ones that I like just as much or more!