Living Our Dream

Country Style

Berlin, OH - Events of Tuesday, June 21 to Sunday, June 26, 2016

Even though we don't own a sticks-and-bricks home, we still like to watch programs about home remodeling on HGTV. One of our favorite programs is "Fixer Upper," which features a couple (Chip and Joanna Gaines) in Waco, Texas, who remodel run-down homes and redecorate them for their clients. Their style has a rustic, country look while still remaining somewhat sophisticated and modern at the same time. In addition to their remodeling business, Chip and Joanna also sell their Magnolia Home line of rustic furniture and decorator items in their Magnolia Market store in Waco and online.

We recently heard about a store in nearby Millersburg called Modern Farmhouse that features rustic items for home decorating similar to what is seen on "Fixer Upper." We decided to stop in last Tuesday to check out the store.

Modern Farmhouse

Modern Farmhouse has new items made to look old, old items that have been refinished or re-purposed, and old items sold as-is so you can refinish or re-purpose them yourself.

View of some of the items for sale

Another view showing items on the second floor

Selection of vintage dining chairs

You can pick chairs from their selection to use around your vintage dining table or re-purpose one into something else like the wall shelf in the next photo.

Wall shelf made from an old chair

The store not only has their own items that are similar to those seen on "Fixer Upper," but they even stock some items from Magnolia Market.

Bed from Magnolia Home

Magnolia Home coffee table and accessories

Paul had an appointment for a colonoscopy in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. As always, the prep he had to do late in the afternoon and into the evening on Tuesday was the worst part. The colonoscopy itself went well with no problems reported. Now Paul knows how a Muppet feels.

After we returned from Pittsburgh on Wednesday, Paul spent most of the rest of the day sleeping off the anesthetic.

We hung around the 5th wheel on Thursday, then went to see "Now You See Me 2" at a theater in nearby Massillon on Friday. We recently saw the original movie on TV and liked it so we went to see the sequel. The story is about a group of magicians who use their illusions to right past wrongs. There are parts of the story that are a little far-fetched, like how they set up such elaborate illusions in such a short period of time, but it's a fun story. The original movie had an unexpected twist at the end, and so did the sequel.

On Saturday, we fired up the smoker to make honey-barbecued chicken thighs. We have previously used this recipe for wings and for boneless, skinless thighs. This time we smoked four, large bone-in, thighs with skin. We had two thighs for dinner and saved two for a future meal.

Smoked chicken thighs

Since smoking is done at relatively low temperatures, the skin doesn't get very crispy. Therefore, Paul grilled the thighs after he smoked them to crisp up the skin. He brushed them with honey-barbecue sauce while they were on the grill.

Thighs on the grill to crisp up the skin

We also smoked some mac and cheese. If you've never had smoked mac and cheese and you like smoked foods, you're missing a real treat.

Smoked mac and cheese with its golden brown, smokey crust

Closeup of the ooey gooey goodness of the mac and cheese

The thighs were delish! Boneless thighs are obviously easier to eat than wings, but the ones with the bone in and with skin are juicer. The mac and cheese was to die for!

Paul cleaned up the smoker on Sunday, and we relaxed the rest of the day. We had no concrete plans for the upcoming week, but we'll wait to see if anything pops up. Stay tuned.

Another Quiet Week

Berlin, OH - Events of Wednesday, June 15 to Friday, June 17, 2016

Except for a trip to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to visit Lora, J. Michael and Lydia, last week was another quiet week. Our visit was fairly routine, so we don't even have many pictures to show for it. We got there in the late morning and played with Lydia for a while.

Lora had a couple of "daddy do" projects for Paul to work on. He re-glued one of the spindles on their stairs that was loose. Lydia can't reach the handrail, so she hangs onto the spindles on her way up and down the stairs. She noticed one of them was loose, and Lora told her Poppy would fix it. Just about every time she went up and down the steps, she would say, "Poppy fix" when she came to the loose spindle. A couple of shims, a little glue and a finishing nail fixed it good as new.

The other project was to prune several overgrown shrubs in the front of their house. He tackled that project next and Lydia soon came out to help. She got the job of picking up some of the smaller branches.

Lydia helping Poppy prune the shrubs

Afterwards, Lydia went in for her nap. Well, it wasn't actually a nap. Lydia gave up her morning naps some time ago, and she is now in the process of giving up her afternoon naps. She mostly sits in her crib and plays quietly during nap time. She doesn't sleep, but at least she is relatively quiet, and it gives Lora a little time to rest. After Lydia's nap, she sat on Grammy's lap and had a snack.

Lydia and Grammy

Lora, J. Michael and Margery had a pizza from Hunner's Pizza that J. Michael stopped to pick up on his way home from work. Paul had half an Italian sub. Shortly after dinner, we headed back to Ohio.

Last week, Paul also did a couple of small repairs around the 5th wheel. The spring broke in the latch of the bathroom door earlier in the week. Even with Keim Lumber and several well-stocked hardware stores in the area, he couldn't find the right kind of replacement latch locally, so he ordered a latch from Amazon and installed it on Thursday. He also removed the louvered, wooden grate that serves as a cold air return for the furnace and repaired numerous loose louvers.

We fired up the smoker on Friday and smoked some country-style ribs, which are strips cut from pork shoulder. Unlike pork shoulder, the country-style ribs don't get pulled; and since they are strips instead of the whole shoulder, they get much more flavor from the dry rub that gets put on prior to smoking. They were delish!

That's about all we have to report. The coming week promises to be pretty quiet, too.

Hangin' Around in Ohio

Berlin, OH - Events of Tuesday, March 31 to Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Well, we don't have a lot to report this week. We are still resting up after our busy Memorial Day weekend with Lora, J. Michael and Lydia. We ate way too much over the weekend, so we haven't even stopped for a cream stick or fry pie even though we had to go right past Der Dutchman Bakery on our way to Walnut Creek Cheese one day to pick up some meat and cheese for a couple of recipes Margery was planning for our dinners.

Since most of the visitors had left town following the long Memorial Day weekend, we decided to head to downtown Berlin on Tuesday. We normally avoid downtown on weekends, especially holiday weekends, because of the heavy traffic. This year more than ever there is reason to avoid downtown Berlin because the whole downtown area is under construction. The main street is partially torn up, as are the sidewalks on one side of the street.

Construction in downtown Berlin

Work started last fall on building several new parking lots. The plan is to eliminate all on-street parking, add a turning lane through the downtown area and widen all the sidewalks. Weekend traffic through downtown was always heavy before, but during construction, it can be horrendous. You know what they say - temporary inconvenience for a permanent improvement. Fortunately, should we ever have to get into downtown when traffic is heavy, we know several back ways.

We headed downtown not only to check on the construction progress, but also to stop in to Country Gatherings to look for some type of stand on which to put our pot of flowers back at the campground. We are currently using a plastic folding table, which works well, but Paul would like to free up the table so he can use it as a side table for grilling and smoking.

Country Gatherings had several nice stands to choose from, but they were all too heavy and/or bulky to carry with us in the 5th wheel. Although we didn't get a plant stand, we did enjoy looking around. In addition to lots of garden-related items, they had numerous container gardens. There was also a miniature demonstration garden planted along a wall.

Miniature garden

We have though it might be nice to have some sort of water feature for our site in Florida, so we were attracted to the stone mushroom fountain at Country Gatherings. If we do end up with a water feature, we'll have to buy it in Florida because it will be much too big and heavy to transport in the 5th wheel.

Stone mushroom fountain

We ended up hanging our flower pot from a metal hook we got at Keim Lumber. We originally were afraid the pot would be too heavy for a hook, especially since we get a fair amount of wind up on the hill where our site is located; but the hook we got from Keim isn't very tall, and it's nice and sturdy.

New plant hook

Other than our trip downtown and a stop at Walnut Creek Cheese and another at Walmart for groceries, we've been hangin' around the rig most of the time. One reason we hung around the rig so much is the ice maker in our residential refrigerator started acting up, and Paul spent several days trying to solve the problem.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed our ice cubes were getting bigger. Instead of nice crescents, we were starting to get long strips with the crescents joined together. Then on Friday, we noticed a small iceberg over on one side of the ice bin. We cleaned it out, but on Saturday the iceberg was even bigger. By Sunday, the entire bottom of the ice bin was one big sheet of ice with all our ice cubes frozen together. Uh-oh.

Paul knew older ice makers had a screw on the side or under the outer cover that enabled you to adjust the size of the ice cubes, so on Monday, he started fiddling with ours trying to find the adjusting screw. Paul found out the hard way new ice makers don't have an adjusting screw. In his attempt to take off one too many covers to look for the non-existent screw and because he was rushing to do the work while the ice maker was still in the freezer, he ended up ruining our ice maker.

Paul found an exact replacement on Amazon and had it shipped next day. In the meantime, he figured the solenoid valve in the back of the refrigerator must be leaking and allowing excess water into the ice maker. He had a brand new spare, so he installed it while waiting for the new ice maker to arrive.

The ice maker arrived early in the afternoon on Tuesday, and Paul put it in right away. We couldn't tell much from the first batch of ice because there was still air in the water line from replacing the solenoid valve. The water overflowed when the second batch filled. Double uh-oh. We had a brand new ice maker and a brand new solenoid, and the water still overfilled.

To make a long story short, after many hours of searching the internet and trying different things, Paul never did find the exact cause. However, he did fix the problem by installing a needle valve in the water line to the ice maker so we can control the water flow. We may need to adjust the valve in the future for varying water pressures at different campgrounds, but at least we no longer have icebergs in our freezer.

Look for our post.