Is Benjamin Always so Well Behaved? // How Many Siblings Do You Have? // Recap 🌿

hey guys how's it going welcome to this week's recap video we have six videos to go through today we woke up to a little bit of snow so it's feeling extra cozy and festive in here i did want to mention before we get into the videos that our video posting schedule on our main channel is gonna change just a little bit we have mentioned that we were going to maybe take one extra day off a week which means we'll only be posting five videos on the main channel and then we'll be posting of course the recap video on our highlights channel on sunday so it's still six days a week of posting but on the main channel we're going to take the weekends off so we'll be posting videos on our main channel monday through friday taking saturday sunday off and it's really just in an effort to have more time for family i mean there's so many things more time for family in the wintertime it's just naturally there's not as much going on and you know i would have no problem filling up seven days a week of projects i would have no problem with that but it is nice to be able to pursue other things like i like to cook with benjamin a lot and i don't want to film all of it so extra time for that just extra hobbies and going and doing things and all of that so anyway i just wanted to let you know about that we'll probably start that this weekend so actually before this video comes out so i'll make a post on youtube community on our main channel just to let everybody know uh and i don't expect that to continue once spring hits and we're like like rolling you know yeah when there's a lot of things going on we'll probably go back to six seven days well it's hard to say though because we might you know the whole point is to kind of like cultivate some other things in our lives as well yeah um because it's been like videos for seven years yeah and it's been fun it has and you know like there's been growth on the channel which is super fun to see but at a certain point you do kind of need to take a step back and just say like we don't want to burn out and and we're not we're not but it's like you need to make sure that you're putting things in place to where that doesn't happen i think priorities too like once your kids i mean i feel like benjamin he's turning four and samantha grace will be one in january and we're gonna want to start taking family vacations like you know we we talked about waiting until the kids were a little older so that they would remember it uh and traveling with small children i can only imagine what that's like but benjamin's at the age where i think he will and so even though samantha's younger and won't remember i think for the sake of i don't know it's good we kind of need to get past the whole like nap time phase with samantha otherwise i mean a lot of people do it with you know napping kids i don't know how they do it because we're just like nope nap time yep we don't go anywhere when the kids need to know it's such a huge difference though like a happy baby versus uh needing a nap baby yeah it's a it's definitely a worth it time sacrifice just to stay home and yeah anyway all that said uh we will just jump right into the videos uh first one was snow day garden tour so we had a beautiful snowy day it was like snow globe-esque don't you think like it was perfect because the wind wasn't blowing the snowflakes were like big and beautiful and there was enough down on the ground to really show what the garden looks like in the winter when there is snow it's just such a good thing to do to go out and look and assess your space and like i know lots of spaces where we need evergreen interest and brightly colored bark and things like that there was a comment somebody um said that it was like their father that said that everybody's yard is equal in the snow and i thought that was really true because like the snow just like is like the great equalizer you know yeah like you have no idea how the grass looks or if there's grass or weeds true um and just everything looks pretty and so it cover covers over all imperfections it covers over all the drip tube that's the thing for me like when i can see drip tube and flower beds i'm just you know how it like i love it when mulch is covering everything it looks so tidy and fresh but when i can see like brown plastic i think that's what it is like you want this beautiful natural garden and then you've got brown plastic tubes coming up out of the ground it looks like have you noticed though that like every landscape that's really beautiful in the summer has has that like i've never seen i don't know i think they have rain well that's true i guess maybe i'm thinking like in our area yeah yeah or or within like a you know a couple hundred mile radius you have to have drip or you have no garden yeah anyway that was a law sorry that didn't take a long time answering that or do i don't even answer i don't even have a question okay first was jmc34 russell running in the snow's great winter interest too you're not wrong that is true russell doesn't seem to mind the snow he just likes to be where we're at uh lisa said is benjamin always so well behaved he's a pretty good kid it seems he knows you are working and he needs to be quiet i'm so impressed or is he more rambunctious when the cameras are off he's so cute enjoying the snow while you were by the area where the pasture used to be um he is naturally a good kid he is he has his moments like all kids do he's three he's a three-year-old boy um so he's a ton of energy uh sometimes like when aaron and i are real tired and we're playing with samantha on the floor we just tell him like run around the house inside because there's a really good like circular path through our house and we'll count how many times you run and he thinks that as long as you just like you encourage him and be like oh when he comes back so fast yeah he was some nights that's even hard like him good job benjamin but he just like soaks that in and just loves it uh just to get some of his energy out there's a few moments um where he'll get silly uh even when he's out here with me and i tell him dude like you can be out here with me while i'm working and filming and things and you can be part of it whatever i'm working on but you have to you know be quiet and you have to like not you know do loud things and so occasionally he'll be like well i'll go back to the house and so that's when he exits and you don't see him in a video anymore um so occasionally we have to have a conversation about it but it's usually just a conversation and it's done so uh k federer said i know you have power plugs for your porch lights but how do you get power to the lights on the trees and arbors we have power that runs everywhere we do have power and a lot of space we're gonna actually make it even a little better uh really well around the hartley well because we'll be trenching a bunch of stuff so i'll be putting in maybe like four more outlets in the landscape nice we need to figure out exterior lighting that's something that we would yeah especially once we get more bigger trees on the new property the south garden um getting like uplift trees and like lighting the house eventually once we get the house looking the way we want it to look i don't know anything about it i know like jack barnwell knows some about it oh you know what but i want i want somebody who is like this is the option that you need and here's why you want this option and here's why you don't want other options i'll come install it first install it you don't even need to worry about it and like we'll pay it's not like you know we're expecting somebody to come to it for free but i really want someone who's like knowledgeable and that's how i feel about curtains yeah oh i'm like there are a lot of details about curtains like not using adjustable rods because your curtains won't hang straight and getting custom rods and having them at the right height i can't stand it when i see curtains hung like the bar below the molding of the window like i personally can't stand that and there's so many like little details and i'm so afraid i'm gonna do it wrong i just need a professional come in and do it for me do you ever feel like sometimes when it comes to professionals that um like within a lot of different industries they'll start at like the cheapest or the the bottom level of something and work up from there instead of just kind of like doing a really cursory uh like explainer on what everything is because i feel like when i'm trying to research something i want to know what's out there i want to know like the best thing that's out there and usually we it's like that's not the option that i'll ever choose but it's oftentimes it's like a couple steps below that like modify the best option right but i want to know what the best option is i don't want to know what the cheapest is first and then just kind of go with that you know but i feel like like show me the refrigerators i can't afford yeah and like with the cool features and then we'll kind of go down a few steps and that's the one we'll fix well because sometimes in like the nicest refrigerators or whatever it is there's like one feature that you're like oh i have to have that but you can actually find that in like a middle of the middle of the road but you wouldn't even know that unless you kind of knew what the best thing was out there right it's kind of fun to look at this i saw a meme that was like um i want to let me try to remember what it was oh it was i hope one day in my life i can sort by price highest to lowest that's true that's like everyone's dream yeah cindy said what happened to your waterfall pond you put in last year with the pond guy and aquascape do you did you have to remove it to put in the hartley we did not remove it it's still sitting there i figured the best plan was just to leave it kind of in its state the way it is so that when we do move it because we will have to move it in the spring we'll kind of be able to i'm hoping we can kind of take it apart prep the area first where we're going to move it which i think we should put it on the new property somewhere that'll be kind of a natural fit out there i think we should prep the area like kind of dig out the area and then move the fountain all in one day kind of so we can kind of take it apart and then put it back together well you know they're so modular that like it doesn't have to be the same fountain that gets put out there because how brian put that together though i think it kind of needed the the trees but we'll have the trees it's kind of one of those i mean are you thinking take it apart and then wait to put it up either somewhere or or just modify the whole idea and maybe because like on the new space i feel like we're gonna need something a little bit bigger to have unless you were to put it maybe around where the pallet walkway where you want to tuck it in i'm thinking tucked in yeah you could tuck in a small one somewhere around that area eventually like it'll look weird in the beginning it's a little bit like it's super fun but it's a little bit frustrating because we both kind of know what we want it to look like and so it just takes forever to get a space to look like that that especially when you're dealing with like almost like we had to go back a few steps like not even raw land we had to take it down like trenching and all of that stuff yeah you know just so much a lot of work it takes time to get it all done billy said as i follow you on this video you spoke about your parking how about building a covered shed arbor on the right side of the barn it would serve as cover for your vehicles also hide the stuff behind the barn just a suggestion of course and it would be more in line with the kitchen entrance i actually saw your comment i read it to aaron i'm like that is a thought you know it definitely is if we could extend the barn somehow um we're hoping though in the next year or so we're gonna be able to like move some stuff around a little bit the way we're thinking about organizing we'll show you you know for car print well like how we're going to be organizing palletized things and tractor stuff it's going to change a little bit yeah the problem it seems like i really i don't know what the word is but like it's just a little bit too far to walk parking near the barn with the vehicles well when you have heavy groceries and stuff like that it is it's a it's a it's a pain it's not a problem it's just a it's just yeah you can do it but it just you know we've tried in the past like a conveyor belt yeah we put all of our groceries on and just send them to the house yeah uh jennifer said why don't you bring the hedge of the boxwood forward and curve at the driveway to give direction that is a thought because uh she's talking about that triangle shaped garden where we've got the random gravelness around gravel and whatever gravel driveway fish around it and we're going to incorporate that into the garden somehow so that nobody mistakenly goes back there because it's hard to turn around and we don't really want people going back there necessarily it just wrecks the flow of everything we got going on um anyway so yeah i mean that's definitely something we may do i would kind of like to have talked about if we take that three rail fence out which i think we will but i think in the end like looking through the hartley now that we've had the hartley sitting there it would be nice to be looking at maybe more of a wall of green and have like a secret secret garden back there or something like that not white fencing um which i don't mind the white fencing but i think it might be softer and well i personally think that you could you could do boxwoods but i would say go taller and just do a mixed border and just do lots of evergreens um so maybe some north pole arbs oh jesus not in a row like not in uh not like soldiers but you don't know yes i do or spikes but you're you're right like creating like kind of a walled space back there because i think you know it's pretty right now our neighbor having the barn and the horses and everything but like in our area you know he could sell it um and somebody could be like i'm gonna put in a dirt bike you know trail back here and like that's that's what it could be you know and so like i feel like it'd be smarter our neighbor would not do that though no they would but well i mean you never know not that our neighbor would do that but they he could sell it to somebody that would want to do that i think he would sell it to us first we've told everybody like as you are thinking about selling property if we're able to at whatever time you're going to sell we'd have to split the land though and so like it there could be a situation where he's like no i don't want to split the land i just want to sell everything in which case you know yeah that's it is possible it's not something that we're ever ever able to get which is fine i do so enjoy his horses though yeah you want to that's a bucket list item forever if you can i don't know very much about horses but i've always loved them it's like a childhood dream to be able to to have horses you know who would be here all the time if we had horses my mom really you know she would too i've always wanted horses my dad grew up with them though and my dad doesn't really care he didn't want that extra i don't know he and horses just never really got along that way kicked by a horse several times yeah um anyway but my mom always wanted him just to pet them she's like i don't even necessarily want to ride them i just want to go pet them and smell them that's so my mom uh elder said elder mountain elder mountain dreaming said are your plants native to the natural environment not invasives are plants native to the natural environment have you seen our natural environment nothing is nothing is natural here except for junipers dry land grass the occasional crap elm tree well you know right next to water you know because we've got like the snake river that goes through which is a really long but even then you get the junky trees you get the junk yeah like this really weak wood trees with bug issues no there really isn't junipers are nice there's a lot of nice junipers we have a beautiful one big tall one and yeah there's really just not a lot native to our area unless you're immediately next to a water source however it's a heavy agricultural area that brings in tons of water our aquifers are always plentiful plentiful because all that water kind of goes back down and refills the aquifers it's kind of this amazing it's amazing how it all works i don't even i'm not sure i completely understand it anna said maybe for the road where you don't want to move the pots but also don't want cars to drive you put something else right in the center of the gravel there like a sign i know it couldn't it could be just an elegant arrow or a statue either side would still be able to fit the gator but it would make it hard or impossible to go straight just temporarily until you are ready to re-landscape it i think we're so close to maybe tackling that project yeah and you know the other thing we could do is we could put a sign up a lot farther at the first fork when people enter the property and just don't even have them go down the line of trees have them have them take a left oh sure yeah and then bring things to the front door like packages and it's mostly just people that don't know our property that do that okay let's go into the next video which which was making a wreath with materials forged from our garden um so that same day i think right after we did the tour we hopped back out and did a video of just gathering up some some stuff some evergreens berries crab apples twigs seed heads and i made a wreath for the chicken coop door and i really love how it turned out even corp incorporated ivy and it's still looking good on the wreath i didn't know how that would handle like it would start looking all dried up and but it's still looking really good i think it's just because of the cold nancy said the photography and music are exquisite ken outdid himself on this one aaron did all the videography on that one yeah ken did the editing yeah he did a good job he did do a good job but you did a good job too capturing it that's fun though i i've done a few you did a good job pruning all the things good job all the way around um those are fun to film i have filmed not myself but i have filmed some videos like a rainy day or a snow day or whatever tour and it's fun because it's so gorgeous it's fun to find like fun angles where you know you're getting the snow in the backdrop and then there's like a still of berries right here but then you're capturing something right in the middle it's fun to set those kinds of shots up jay's holiday wonderland said aaron i'm a little paranoid after the photoshop sky thumbnails was the snow really coming down like that or did you play more tricks on us laura the wreath was beautiful thank you for that and that was 100 real i think you've only we've photoshopped the thumbnail and how many oh i did like six in a row because um we kept it was like smoky smoky yeah and so you couldn't see blue sky and i was just so sick of it so i started photoshopping a blue sky into our thumbnail and it was the same one every time it's the same class i sent it to my sister i sent three thumbnails and you could clearly see that the sky was exactly the same like the clouds were in the same spot and i was like isn't this crazy that the clouds just formed three times in a row for these thumbnails and she was like wow that's great that's amazing nature nature nature is amazing yeah there's a girl in the gardens that said is the garden answer website link in the description box not working it's not coming up in a google search either yeah our website was down um it was something with the dns server i don't know i got it fixed all good yeah but it was down for like a week and we didn't know anything about it we don't do anything with it so red and black edit said what's the name of the kind of crabapple trees that holds onto its berries throughout the winter persistent there's a lot there are a lot of different varieties of crab apple that have persistent crab apples so those crab apples will stay on the tree until new growth pushes them out typically the birds pick them up first though so they're never a mess so just look for the word persistent after the description of what size and color the crab apples are on that variety that you're looking at h.j carpentier carpenter said i wonder if i put in a redwood red dogwood will it be ready for cutting next christmas yep probably it depends on what size though i mean so there are two methods of pruning a red twig dogwood in order to have the best color because they produce their best color on new growth now if you're planting a little tiny itty bitty dogwood i would give it a few years to kind of stool out you might get a few branches off of it but the two ways of pruning are every other year you can go in and cut the plant back like rejuvenate prune it and let it grow fresh and then the next year you don't touch it and then the year after that cut it all the way back i tend to like that method because it's easy uh the other method is every year rather than every other year you go in and you cut out a third of the old wood which the old wood starts to take on kind of a quirky brown woody appearance pretty easy to distinguish but it's just a little bit more of a chore because you kind of have to you know go through the true and the true show i was thinking shrub and tree at the same time you need to go through the shrub and determine which branches to take out and you know leave some and make sure you're not cutting too much but that way either either one of those pruning methods whatever you prefer will help you have the brightest red of uh branches my word the only downside to doing the full cut back every other year is if you're using your dogwoods as a screen of any kind then you eliminate that screen for a little while i mean the plant will grow that year and flush back but you'll have several months where it'll be fairly short tina said how many bundles did it take to go around the wreath and what size was the wreath form i would say the wreath form was what about 14 inch wreath form roughly i think it's 14. and the bundles i didn't even count but i want to say like one two three four five maybe like 12 or 13 that's probably a pretty close guess carson said how are your raised beds holding up do you think you will have to replace them sooner down the road they're holding up fairly decently and the only reason is because eddie who built them they're made out of redwood and i chose redwood over cedar because it was way less expensive but still does pretty well yeah water wise like it it holds up to water and soil and stuff being up against it but i had him miter the corners so i had him cut 45s is that right 45's that come together like that and that's not a good idea i would have had if we do it again or when we do it again i'll just have one board and have the other board just sandwich it like that it doesn't look as fancy do i think we should do because we should like one day no no whenever it's necessary i think we should mirror the raised beds like the berry beds and do like build them up a little ways but you could paint them black or not you could leave them natural if you wanted to but something like real thick like those six inches four by sixes yeah we did those melt are those six by six no were four by sixes i thought that they were square no oh you might be right you might be right that they were six wide and four tall i think so because they're they maybe they weren't either way i think that that would look great yeah something more substantial yeah but think of brick ones it'd be so expensive but maybe we just do a few at a time no you got to do the whole thing anyway all that said the only reason why they are staying together because those mitered edges are starting to kind of like bow out a little bit because of all the moisture uh eddie put l brackets metal l brackets on the inside and so it's holding them together and they'll stay together for like until the wood falls apart um but the edges on some of them don't look or the corners don't look super like finished or tight but they're holding up great we'll keep them as long as like as long as they stand probably i love the look with the great outward i don't like it i love it it looks i don't know it looks nice i think you're shooting for like an english like an old english look sort of yeah yeah i love it shelley said the iv woven throughout is a fun whimsical touch a long time ago you did a video on making a living wreath would you ever do a living ivy wreath like that would be really pretty now living reads are a complete pain in our area to keep looking nice and keep them watered because you have to take them down off their wherever they're hanging they're like a hanging basket like they need water a lot here because it's so dry and so you have to put it on the ground water they get really heavy and then of course wet so it depends on what you have them hanging on but you can't really hang them up like sopping wet or dripping so basically it lives on the ground for most most of the time that's what's happened with every single living wreath i've made unless you could put it somewhere where it could drip and if you could run like drip tubing you sure could maybe we should re-address and try that because they're really fun like they're really beautiful and a really fun alternative i love to have reads up but like during the summer what what kind of wreath do you have up that's not artificial you know that would be a fun one but you're right you can't really put it on the door no it has to be on like a fence or like a i don't know something like that that's more whatever you don't have to open and close and maybe that um it's vinyl that won't almost you almost have to treat it like a hanging basket yeah uh next video was antiquing with my sister for my mom's christmas present and that was a really fun one i mean you know usually i take my mom with me when we do our antiquing forays but we were shopping for my mom for christmas found so many good things and my sister came along and um it was a good sport being in the video so anyway yeah i still have all that stuff spread out on the table and my mom's coming to watch the kids tomorrow afternoon i think i told you do not go into the butler's pantry that is off limits for you and she won't she hates having surprises ruined in the title in fact i put like mom don't watch this video and she hasn't okay first comment was from kara kira these girls and their gorgeous hair love this channel you get so much of um all the things i love plants antiques moms and a fun sense of humor nice thank you bubba said okay i need that white framed forest painting that was in the christmas store anyone know the name of the store so i can find out about the painting it's called etovola a and then tavola is t-a-v-o-l-a it's a like a deli catering slash they do a christmas christmas shop for six weeks in the winter they've got the most beautiful things ella said i enjoyed the video great sibling shopping i'm curious wouldn't your mom see this video title and watch it no like i explained she does not like to have a surprise ruined what antique store is this in oregon so we're at idaho when we shop we're right on the oregon idaho border so whenever we do any of our shopping it's always over in the boise idaho area we live about i don't know 45 minutes an hour away from boise d said does your sister have a gorgeous garden too now my sister is not a huge gardener she loves to cook that's her thing she loves to cook and she loves to read she has a few containers i think she's going to do a hot pepper garden this next year and do a whole bunch of different types of spicy peppers she loves loves spicy food it's her favorite so that'll be fun to see what varieties she chooses to grow but yeah she just doesn't she does work at the garden center she does she works at the garden center i tried when she moved back recently this last year i tried to poach her from my parents and tried to have her work for us because she does a great job with all the stuff that that she tackles but it's just not her thing on her personal time yeah it's not her passion she does have an appreciation for it though tanya said did anyone else see the title and think i bet it's a bistro set i didn't see any bistro sets that day did i did i see any or did my brain doesn't look for him like my mom's does i need her to have her be on the lookout though for one for in front of the or around the cut flower shed because i want one that just sits out there just kind of informally that you can just sit quick you know and or set something on the table um i think that would look really sweet that's somewhere in the orchard we get so windy here bistro sets to me unless they're like really tucked in they look like they would just blow over well some would for sure but you just got to get like iron ones something like heavy metal i feel like um concrete is more your speed like you need something this one though i want the ability to move it because okay so in my in my mind i'm imagining the orchard trees a little older more mature like the grassy meadowy with the bulbs and then like one day if you want to like have somebody over for coffee you can just pop your bistro set right in the middle of that meadow and have your coffee and is that wishful thinking i don't know i just want the ability to be able to move it around to wherever the prettiest spot is debra said how many siblings do you have so i have my little sister she's three years younger than i am and then my brother is 17 months older than me and that's it two siblings uh kim said did anyone catch what song it was that laura said she walked down the aisle too it's a michael w smith song of all songs wasn't it out of africa no oh was that the just a processional the out of africa song was the one that our moms walked down to and then we walked down to michael w smith it's his instrumental album i can't remember the name of the album or the song but i know it when i hear it yeah do you remember what's the name of it it's um i can picture the album art as him like sitting in a chair kind of like bent over uh but it's like an orchestra room what do you call that sepia toned yeah maybe mm-hmm it's called freedom he's sitting at a yeah it's sepia it's uh he's sitting in a piano at a piano it's kind of like bent over yeah a little bit like looking at what's carol anne yes so it was a michael w smith's freedom album carol anne yeah yeah that was the song we walked down the aisle to we can't play it you can look it up but we can't play it otherwise we'll otherwise whatever money we would make from this video we'll go to michaela smith actually it wouldn't go to him i'll bet the majority would go to his uh his record label we don't want that some executive somewhere getting all the money okay next video was decorating a tree at the children's relief nursery and flowerbed cleanup um so just took a tree down to the children's relief nursery and got it all decorated with snowman themed stuff with candy canes and it was really fun i thought it turned out pretty cute and then came home did some flower bed clean up so i cleaned up that brick raised bed uh that had supertunias still in it and a vertigo penicidum and then i cut back the miscanthus cabaret up front and then we filled bird feeders and put them up in the front trees and those bird feeders have been super fun benjamin um he found me like a couple days after i did that and he said mama i love the bird feeder she put in the tree and then he tells me oh there's like four birds on your feeder so he's watching them and that's fun larae said what a lovely display at the children's relief center the candy canes are always fun for kids on a tree i also love that you took the time to show the birds coming to their feeders all this recent all these recent videos have really contributed to the christmas spirit for me this year that's good to hear i'm glad i feel like our stuff has changed well our videos have changed a lot through the years and you know i see some people who um are doing tons of projects right now like just churning out projects and we used to do that like tons of holiday themed projects and sometimes i feel like we should be doing that but then i don't know our life and the way our video videos are it's just changed a lot yeah and we just like we're taking more time to be with the kids and um just a little bit more natural yeah we're doing things that are just natural like instead of just coming up with projects because that's what it is like where do you put all these projects that's something that i always ran into like everything i have showed you and done it's all displayed in the house all of it and or given to other people and before you know you do a fairy garden it's like well where do i put this fairy garden like do i take it down to the garden center they were always enjoyed and it was never a waste but it started to feel kind of like i don't want this to be like i don't want people to think that what i'm doing all these projects is something that i always do it's something they need to live up to oh yeah you know i don't know sure i have lots of feelings about it i don't know feeling a little introspective this time of year shayna said i'm so curious to see what is under those bricks time lapse of demo day uh i am too i'm really curious to see if there's actually a cement pad or concrete pad what's the difference oh i don't know what the difference is i predict that there is cement underneath the you know raised bed area yeah but not under the rest of the brick here you don't think so no it'll be interesting to see we will we'll set up some sort of something so we can see what's going on under there alonso said can you do a video when you divide the grass with lots of close-ups we should do that yeah that would be an excellent time of year is best it's great well typically spring yeah before it breaks dormancy you know get in there and get it all broken up you can wait till it breaks because like in that grasses case you know it's a huge clump and half of it is dead i can tell which half is dead and it's been like that for a couple of years but you could wait till you start to see a tiny little bit of growth coming up so you can see exactly where to cut that would be fine too but just do it early enough in the season where the temperatures are still cool and it's not a struggle for the plant to kind of keep up with water and heat and all that debra said do you ever play the piano for your channel videos i do not i don't play as often as i used to i used to play every single day it was a huge priority to me you know i took lessons for 17 years or so and i've gotten a little bit rusty over the years not practicing as much as i used to it's still on my bucket list one day to have a baby grand piano in our house i um we were able to babysit some friends of ours we're moving and they couldn't take their baby grand and they didn't really want to store it and so they let us store it for them because we have to have this room with no furniture in it and it was fantastic because i was able to see what size and i figured out that i want pretty much the smallest size of baby ground there is because it gives you so much versatility to like move it in places it's not like enormous you you know set it somewhere and have to leave it there forever and then color wise like i don't know it was just fun to see that because i always thought maybe i'd want a brown one like an actual wood or but i like the black one i thought that was really pretty uh monique said can you give the back story as to how you got involved with the children's relief nursery if it's okay to share uh you know it's just something i think it was something that happened after we had benjamin i started i just had a different i just felt differently about children i felt differently about kids and it just started to really like weigh on me um you know what kids have to go some kids have to go through and i just and i've never i've never been around or have dealt or personally gone through any you know tragic situations like that or had to witness anything like that thankfully but i just like i just started really i don't know so i just was trying to figure out a way to be involved and that's the other thing i struggle with how to like insert myself into a cause like i don't know i don't want to do something that's not super helpful we can go plant up their garden and make things look pretty and festive and things like that it felt like a natural way and nobody was doing it at the time so i thought well i could do that and if it's not a pain for them like if we can make sure like i store all the stuff so i take the tree and all the ornaments down and we put it up and then i go take them down and we storm here so that they don't have to find a spot for anything um anyway yeah uh jean said will you be doing any mail times in the near future you know i don't think so we recently talked about this i'm not sure how long ago that was maybe a few male times back nail times maybe a few recaps back i think the last one we did was maybe it was after samantha grace was born we did like one more and said like this is gonna be it it's tough you know because when when you do mail times it encourages people to send more things and we don't want to be seen and we don't want people to get the idea that we're asking for things you know we're asking for gifts i know you know um so it's like it's it's a fun thing to do but it also kind of encourages just more of that same thing and it's it's really tough because you know we've talked about how it's people's love language they wanna they that's how they express their things and you don't wanna disrespect somebody that the way that they express that but i want to be able to properly think somebody and so now that we're doing less mail times we actually receive less mail still a lot of mail but it gives us time to like do handwritten notes which i prefer doing because it makes me feel like i'm actually connecting with somebody who has connected with what we're doing and i think that's way more special than just opening stuff on camera and just boom boom boom boom like i just open it like thank you next thank you next and it feels a little what's like disingenuous is that the right word sure it just doesn't feel very genuine and i i mean it is i'm always thankful for everything that people send out and it's always super thoughtful most off most of the time it's super thoughtful things and um like somebody i just opened up a package this morning and somebody's found this um i took a picture of it it's a flower book like an antique flower book called the language of flowers i will pop the picture up on the screen so you can see it and that was from patty in new york and that was just the sweetest thing you know somebody sees something they have it our videos have resonated with them or help them in some way and so they send it out and that is special that's special to be able to create a relationship with somebody like that and so anyway it's just it's a tender thing it really is we've actually talked about it so many times because we were going to abandon mail times long before we actually did and we could never find the right thing to say to where we felt like it would would be palatable in a way it is interesting though because every creator that i've watched on youtube that has done mail times has stopped yeah i think everybody reached the same conclusion that it's just like you're just you're creating in a way like this is you know you're creating a monster in a way a lot of people like to give gifts but also for the creator it's just unsustainable yeah you can't keep doing it long term yeah and it was sustainable for a while yeah until it started to grow yeah yeah uh kimberly said i've been meaning to ask you snakes do you have any snakes i remember there was a dead one in the driveway uh we do have snakes very rare really the way she posed the question it sounds like she's petrified which i understand because most of the time you don't see the snake until you're about ready to step on it or grab it with your hand like grabbing for leaves or whatever and then they move and it just frightens you and that part i mean that just the sudden movement scares me snakes don't scare me um because we don't have any really bad ones here and i think that's why if we had well we have rattlesnakes up in the hills but they don't they're not down here in the valley typically unless you're right on the edge of the desert uh like i don't even know that my parents have ever even had a rattlesnake and they're pretty close to the edge um they get big bowl snakes right is that what they're called bowl snakes i think i know we had a big one in our backyard remember down at the town house yeah it was like this big around and i have this big oh it's the brick uh nut brick the clay red brick no black clay oh you'll get it you'll get it you're almost there it's the black clay pot for crying out loud that i've had the japanese maple in that keeps dying um by our back kitchen entrance anyway we have that pot at the last house with a japanese maple in it and that snake was curved all the way around that pot it was big like it was long i think your mom found it under her house later we lived right next door to his parents under the house like because i think she had like a den under her house of snakes when they were doing all the construction and such and she posted a picture last year she was out doing some work in her flower bed and she looked up and there was a snake looking straight at her in a shrub i don't think she's petrified of snakes thankfully um but yeah all the ones we have down here i mean the big ones are really rare and the garden ones are harmless they're really good for rodents and bugs and such so i just leave them alone erica said i know you have many exciting projects for several garden spaces but do you ever think you will run out of projects in the garden never i don't think we'll ever run out of projects because once once you're done with i don't know everything evolves and every things need to be readdressed too like you might think you're done with an area but then all of a sudden you have something die that you're like well or like the spruce tree i thought i was golden in that area like winter interest check and then it falls down in a wind storm and then you have to go back to square one gardens just have a way of just continuing the work well a lot of the i mean a lot of things about gardening is not new um right so like we can do videos forever because we all constantly have new people you know subscribe to the channel and you know people falling off as well because they move on or whatever and so you you can readdress a lot of the same things because there's constantly new people that are wanting you know yeah the same well i feel like too every year i do a garlic video you know and i sometimes i feel like oh i'm doing this again here we are again doing garlic but you know like you said there's new people who don't know about garlic and it's also part of what i'm doing in the garden and we try to show what we're doing i mean that's the whole point of showing what we're doing in the garden um and instead of just doing like random projects that don't really make sense which what we used to do a little bit more of um i mean they're fun they're fun to do too and i like to sprinkle them but i can see at some point us doing that again possibly yeah it's just there's different seasons where you're like you're interested in different things okay next video was decorating our mantel oh that was a project i mean it wasn't once i actually figured out what i was gonna do i had a vision you know how you have a vision every once in a while then i couldn't find what i needed i started way too late in the season uh had i been thinking about it or had the idea earlier i could have probably found the ornaments i needed in the right color i could have made my own ornaments and that you know sometimes you're just like i don't i don't want to have to make everything except i just want to buy the ornaments for this project i found nine so i'm well on my way maybe we can do it next winter but i had to abandon the idea so it's set kind of like uh in halfway mode like i had branches sitting there that i was going to use for a couple of weeks before i decided to take them out and go a different direction so i stole the little noble fur trees from out in front of the cut flower said we were having some electrical issues that are now fixed but they kept popping off at night and we weren't even enjoying the christmas lights out there couldn't even see them so i thought well i may as well instead of buying a couple more which i couldn't find any anyway bring them inside use them we'll see them all the time on the mantel and it's it turned out really sweet i think and i used all the stuff that i already had so dried oranges from last year i did buy some little red bells which i thought would benjamin would love so little red bells some red bows the gold leafed little gourds i gathered gourds in my parents orchard that are really itty bitty and i made ornaments out of them last year and gold leafed them and so i used those some fairy lights and it's just it's kind of country cozy homey i just think it's really fun mama to boys said when samantha smiles she looks like you and she's serious she looks like aaron she's beautiful such a happy baby uh cute footage with russell yeah that's the other thing about that day aaron's sister was there playing with the kids and it was just like family day it was just all family around and the kids were around helping me test the lights you know it takes longer to get your projects done but it is fun and russell was in there and he has to like watch himself around samantha she loves cats she does she does this we're like when she sees a cat like at the door or whatever and i can tell like i'm holding her and she'll start to squeal it's her cat sound um and she just wants to pet we need to learn how to be gentle though yeah so she's not super gentle she likes to slap the cat so i have to be like we're careful because you know i don't want the cat to have to go through that and i don't want the cat to also like get mad and do that so it's a very much monitored situation but it's pretty cute angie said just a thought but what about a whitewash on your fireplace stone it would be so much easier than refacing you're you are right it would be easier to be able to do a finish but you know it's not only the color but i don't really like the inconsistency you know like all the rocks sticking out and like the shape of it in general i'm not sure like maybe if we wet washed it i wouldn't notice that so much and it serves really nicely as hot wheels um ledges ledges right now which is fantastic benjamin like i'll see cars at different levels in the fireplace and that's pretty sweet uh and it'll be a while before we tackle that project anyway so who knows you know i might learn to just love everything i agree with you though that like an ornate wood um like kind of scrolling built-ins yeah built-in stuff cases you just need to find a carpenter i guess it's we're so lean in our area to find like aaron and i have a lot of ideas for the inside of our house to find a designer like an architect and contractors right right now especially like in this area and the treasure valley is incredibly hard everything's really expensive right now and just to find somebody who can try to see the vision that we're we've got if you're an architect architect and you're watching this video yeah and you want to be involved because i think i mean eventually i think we're going to gut our house i don't know if we're going to be able to run into issues we're running into issues currently where we're having leaks because we have copper piping that's about 40 years old and there's a hole in our great room ceiling right now i don't know if i showed that in the video but right beneath our master bathroom it started to leak there's a big paint bubble so we have another hold a patch in the ceiling yeah the plumber said and you know comment if this is wrong because i don't know anything about plumbing but they said that um copper piping only lasts about 20 to 30 years before you start getting pin holes in it and it'll just you'll start to get leaks and then at a certain point you'll get so fed up that you'll either learn how to patch it yourself or you'll just go through and replace all the copper with packs so if we're going to be tearing stuff up you know the electrical on the old side of the house needs to be knobby yeah so the the copper piping on the new side of the house the 40 year old side of the house needs to be replaced the electrical on the other side needs to be replaced so we're kind of like man should we just gut the thing because we want to move some windows yeah it feels like we would have put a bathroom upstairs on the old side of the house yeah it feels like it would be cheaper to just do the whole thing all at once versus doing room by room because you know if you can get somebody in to just do the whole thing versus keep bringing them back out right you know i don't know i kind of want to just like tent off the old side of the house and have that all done yeah and then but i think you have to run wires yeah from one side to the other so i don't know that you can just do one at a time we're gonna have to like move in with one of our parents yeah also you know the other thing is that we have a lot of issues with heating and cooling in terms of like events that just no longer work we have four ac units yeah so if we if we did gut it and two furnaces we could probably re-route all the you know hvac to be more efficient yeah so the vent in our bathroom doesn't work so no heat or cool gets into the master bathroom i can hear it you can put your you can put your ear down there to the vent and you can hear the air but they never like got it up into the bathroom so like in the summer when it's 100 plus degrees and we've done a video i need to clean up so we can start the next project i go into the bathroom and i'm sweating more because i'm upstairs so that's hotter anyway and there's no air running to that room and so i'm like trying to wipe all the dirt and sweat off my face i'm just continuing to sweat i wonder if they either messed up or they just like on purpose just put a vent in there that doesn't go into anything when they re uh but it's weird that you can hear it nearby and the vents work in the closet right next door yeah right it seems like a little bit of an oversight who knows i know also our kitchen if you if you sit and look at our cabinets they're painted white and they look fine but they're all kind of like askew you know they don't quite line up with each other and they're all just uh just like 80s cabinets yeah glossy white which you know is nice if you don't look close at them yeah or look at the insides there's a lot of things that i could live with for a long time yeah i feel like i feel like aaron's a little more type a about house tough than i am well i think what it is is that i just i i think i don't like to do things multiple times i just want to get in there and get it done once so i don't want to keep bringing people out yeah you know and and now that we have gas too we probably should run you know gas appliances and things like that sure and so it just feels like there's so many things that we could do to this house to bring it up and i think that's something that you just have to do in old houses like at some point you know if you have a house that was originally built in 1919 and added on in the 80s like remodels are just a part of life with old homes right like that's something that you just have to do yeah there was a moment there where we were thinking like is that something we want to do like is that actually worth like should we just go build somewhere else um you know is that worth the investment in this area yeah to dump into this house where it's at um so that's a consideration too but you know we're so rooted here right and all of our families around here i do not want to move to the boise area it has gotten just crazy wild and the traffic is horrible um so i don't know like i i feel like in the end like yes it's easier to garden in a lot of other places than it is here but it's just it's home and i don't know i feel like this conversation i hope you guys enjoy enjoy that sort of conversation but i probably need to move on okay we're gonna move on angie you just opened up a can of worms with that question kim said beautiful can you list the source for the fairy lights gardener supplies where i got those they are plug-in type so there are two options you can get plug-in or battery-operated plug-in for me i got them that way on purpose because i was putting them outside and battery-operated lights just typically don't do as well because batteries don't perform as well when it's really cold uh but anyway i was really happy that i had that option viola said i love the twig trees are you going to use them in another project they would look cute with easter eggs on them well i did one with easter eggs do you remember this year i still have it it's on the mantel on the old side of the house on the in the front parlor oh really i have it in a blue and white vase it's a white branch and i had it on the landing table all year after easter i took the eggs off but i thought it was still so striking and low maintenance that i just left it there and then i moved it up to the front parlor which i'm i'm planning i've got some ideas in fact i might run down the paint store today oh cool i've got some ideas because you know in the interim uh who knows when we're going to do a house remodel it could be years down it could be so many years and paint and curtains and things like that no big deal you know those are pretty cheap fixes for the time but anyway i'm thinking of a complete redo of that area and i think it might fit in really nicely um anyway but i'm saving all the branches so the two that i was going to use in this project i actually went and cut more um just to get the right shape and we've got them all behind the barn so yeah that one i tried on the right-hand side of the mantel i'd actually cut the year before and i had sat back behind the bard i threw all the winter and all of that all the summer and still looked pretty good leah said great video as always would you mind if you use if i use some screenshots of your garden as a reference for my drawings sure do it yeah a dark horse said is your grandmother artsy like you and your mom my grandma so my dad's mom is an amazing painter amazing she does oil paintings and she in fact my mom has a big beautiful painting that she did for her for christmas i think it was for christmas one year anyway she has that up in their bedroom it's beautiful and my mom's mom i don't think she was that that type she wasn't the like my grandma my grandma dee she didn't like she wasn't outside girl she didn't like did not like to be outside she didn't do anything craft related i think she may have sewed a little bit she cooked she liked to cook um she's a big reader she loved to read books that was her thing i think more than anything okay next video and last video was putting lights on the hartley greenhouse and christmas light tour so erin and i put twinkle lights on the hartley it just was looking so dim right there and i just want to celebrate that structure um and so i had the christmas tree in there but it looks so dim compared to the rest of the lights around it we decided to pop some twinkle lights on there um and so we just we did that it did i've started my timer on my phone and she said it would take about an hour and that's probably about what it took yeah maybe maybe like give or take a few minutes but i forgot to show the the timer afterward you know i found that timer still going like three days later yeah nice yeah um anyway we found the command light hooks right is that what they're called anyway yeah command strips that we use to adhere the lights to the hartley so they're either like to the glass to the to the metal or glass yeah i think we did glass in in all situations we didn't put any on metal i don't think so what's aluminum well that's metal aluminium aluminium yeah uh and then we gave you a tour of the rest of the lights i think the best shot and it's not in there but i don't know if you can do this but can you take the drone and act like you're a car and drive through yeah you can it's the best angle it's really hard to navigate and you know my drone has um obstacle avoidance yeah and there's so many low-hanging trees that it's really difficult to steer it because you can't really see where you're going but what we could do is we could actually drive like i thought about like getting on the hood of a pickup or something and getting my phone or or a camera i don't know would you guys enjoy another tour just like just lights it would be fun if we have like a little bit better layer of snow it's kind of melting i can see right i can see more grass than when we started this video um if we had a nice layer of snow and we did another tour where it just took a little more time to look at all the areas yeah that'd be fun yeah i think it'd be fun to show the lights in a different it's just so much work you know that you kind of want to and money yeah you got to budget well no and it's something you build on it's like everything else i just did a project yesterday where i kind of talked about that like how when i very first started doing decorating projects it was kind of discouraging because i look at these beautiful things people were doing i'm like how did they afford to to buy all the stuff to go in these arrangements and how do they do it all over their house well usually they've been gathering for 15 20 25 years you know you see things you love you pick them up and then all of a sudden you know all of a sudden 15 years later you have enough stuff to do a few areas and i still feel like i'm in process like there's a lot of our house that i don't do anything in because i don't have enough stuff but i don't really love the thought it's like my furniture i'm the same with furniture i don't want to go out and just buy anything i don't want to go to hobby lobby and just buy all their stuff and fill up my house i want to find like pieces that are beautiful that speak to me and then then i will buy it and put it in my house so it takes a lot longer to do that but yeah i just wanted to for those of you who are starting out and same with christmas lights we've been building on those christmas lights for a lot of years we're still probably using lights we used at our last house here and so every year you build on what you already have some years maybe budgeting a little bit more than you have in the past um yeah every year is a little bit different but anyway david said every year i think how is erin going to top himself with christmas lights i'm so thankful that you love christmas these light displays are so magical i so look forward to you guys sharing them with us i wish you the merriest of christmas seasons the merriest of a christmas season ps the willow and the red trees on the west walkway are amazing yes and i have to give a huge shout out to paul who is like our main man outside we did have extra help for lights though too jordan and bethany um so thank you to all three of you who helped us with lights paul though like was pretty much the creative genius behind everything that went on outside i mean what did we did the hartley i did the lights in the butterfly garden um i did little like little big lights that we did on the tree like little projects here and there but largely paul directed everything that went on out there he like it was his idea to do the weeping willow yeah and i yeah i told him like paul you just wrecked it for yourself because now that's gonna have to be done every year it is so magical it's absolutely beautiful so anyway huge hand to those guys for uh how wonderful of a job they did amber said wow have you considered keeping the white lights that line your driveway up for at least a little while to help people see where they need to go yes so they put up those um sticks with reflective tape on the top because we until we have um flower beds that are more distinguished on the edges or something to distinguish edge there's really if there's snow i wouldn't even know where to drive i mean i would probably drive on a sprinkler because if you get off even a foot into the grass you're gonna drive over a sprinkler so i think they had the sticks up which is great but then paul came in one day and he's like i think i can swag those sticks i think we can just staple to the top of them and uh so we were like go for it and i think we will leave it up like we'll probably in in terms of like order of light take down all the lights will come off all the statuary first and then we'll start working on other things but we'll leave that up the longest because if we get snow in end of january or february it'd still be nice to see where that road is with lights really pretty debug said how do you store all of those lights totes if there's a better method for storing lights let me know because totes are expensive we use the uh the clear ones so you can see what's inside they have like they just have flaps on the top but like i just don't know a better way to store lights you know you just kind of like reel them up on your arm we looked at reels um but reels are expensive too they're like 10 bucks a piece or whatever i mean if you could get those reels i don't know if there's if there's a better method you know what we should do we should get like a like a hose reel sort of situation for the the fence swags so that somebody can just be reeling it out like walking and reeling out this big gob of lights because you could reel a lot up on i'm less concerned with the time it takes to to get them in or out i'm more just like like space saving you know because if you if you reel them up on your arm there's the hole in the middle but if you make them too tight then it is too much you have to almost re-stretch them yeah you have to re-stretch them the next year because they're you know you try to swag them and they are all bunched up i don't know totes have worked pretty well yeah yeah down sprig lane said so beautiful and magical may i ask what kind of hook you used to string the lights on top of the hartley that was a old uh well it wasn't that old it was a corona pruning saw pole pruner pole pruner that was junk by the way yes and i hated it it has telescoping type i don't know if the blade broke or what but it's basically there's no blade on the top of it and we just put a hook on the front duct tape right yeah like duct tape you can just get wire like any type of like kind of thick wire that you can bend into a hook and i think that's a legit hook though like a legit i did we steal it from andrews remember we were at andrews like a couple years ago and we were looking through some like little box that had a bunch of hooks in it or something um maybe i don't know but it does work really well like a a pull pruner without the saw on the end of it works pretty well you guys i did i did a 30 minute yoga routine um for like just lower back pain and they were super easy stretches and it felt so good i am so sore today oh my goodness ah anyway i'm glad that we've got four questions left four left nancy said did i miss it how long did it take to put the lights on the hartley i forgot to show you give or take an hour sarah said when do you take them down again what's a good rule of thumb whenever it works for you weather-wise too yeah we used it right after uh the new year like we started on it we waiting to take off the stuff off the the house last usually because or you'll just wait till it's a nice sunny day and it's not icy at all yeah uh beth said i was trying to figure out if the blinking lights were your yard or someone else's love it what fun thanks for sharing with us those are our neighbors lights in fact that whole street is so festive it's like christmas village almost everybody puts lights up and like a good amount of lights don't you think yeah and then that one in particular does one of those big like you pull up and yeah you tune into it to a specific radio station and there's like everything you could possibly imagine christmas related is represented in that yard angels nativity grinch um there's even like christmas dinosaurs out there there's a snoopy i think there's nutcrackers they're like all of it but i think somebody mentioned that it was going into perfect time with the music that was it was in the tour yeah and i looked and it did stay in time for most of it and then i kind of got off cindy said the lights are spectacular i really love the drone footage at the end what drone do you recommend as i've been looking for one dji um it's really the only brand of drone that's any good really uh for filming i mean if you just want a drone to fly up in the air you know as a toy you can get whatever you want but if you're looking to actually film and edit you know then dji and really any of their drones are good just get the cheapest one cool the sun is coming out yeah it is yeah i wonder what i could plant today half snow have sun well that is gonna be it for today's recap thank you guys so much for watching and remember on our main channel we're gonna just be posting five days a week skipping saturdays and sundays so if we don't post on saturday nothing has gone wrong we get lots of messages from you guys so sweet checking up on us if we skip and you haven't seen the message like oh are you guys okay is somebody sick so anyway yes hope you guys are having a very great holiday season and we will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Garden Answer Highlights

Views: 67,611

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Id: bFQ4kCs-uX4

Length: 61min 17sec (3677 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021