Last year, we got a new batch of chicks and one of the turned out to be a rooster, then later in the summer we adopted a second rooster, so hypothetically, we could start having chicks. Raising chickens is funny, because you walk a fine line between not wanting hens to get broody and sit on your breakfast eggs, but secretly wanting a few new chicks too. A couple of our backyard chicken friends had hens become broody this year, so we were hopeful it would happen for us too.
Finally, a few weeks ago, one of our Marans sat on a few eggs and we were off to the baby chick races. We tucked a few additional eggs under her and hoped for the best. We are terrible, I mean, extremely busy chicken farmers, and we forgot to mark which day she started (don’t do that), so the last few days have been torture. Finally, last night, we checked her and there were two cracked shells. Mama hen did a great job of hiding them, but I could hear the cheeping and finally, I found them!
They were so tiny and new, I left them alone to snuggle their mama.
This morning, our favorite local photographer, @photo_nerd, came over and captured a few adorable images of the new members of our flock.
Meet Butterscotch, born 7/6/17
And Charcoal, born 7/6/17
It’s rare for a project to come about that ties together so many things I love, but the 
Last Fall, we got a 
We used new wood because it seemed silly to spend on historic/old growth on a room that’s new construction. Just the same, we wanted the look to flow with the rest of the house. I used a combination of General Finishes gel stain and shellac and was able to add some pretty nice depth and color to builder basic wood. These boards are 1×4 that were routered to mimic the larger trim in the rest of the house.
While I worked on these windows, my engineer husband worked out a frame that we could insert in our historic windows behind the storms so we could continue working on windows through the winter, new baby permitting. He used a mural panel from one of my previous projects, so we had a lovely cartoon view for the in-progress windows.
Back in 2014, I took a class at the Des Moines Art Center in stained glass, which resulted in a transom window that was almost perfect. I adapted the design of the Keith family crest to a horizontal design, and I only needed to sort out how to add the family motto “Veritas Vincit” (truth conquers). I thought about casting metal letters, buying letters that could be soldered on, or foiling letters, but before I could execute a decision, I found out I was pregnant and didn’t want to be anywhere near lead.
We bought the Hatton House specifically because it had four bedrooms, in the hopes that it would one day house a family of five. We’d just about given up hope when we found out our third kid was due in April of 2015. So sorry for the lack of recent updates, but we had a good excuse.
Hatton House Diaries 