Our First Father’s Day at the Farmhouse {and a recipe fail}

When we first talked about buying the farmhouse, I was a little worried about how much work we would be taking on. I was scared we’d mess it up or it would cost a fortune to turn it into a home, but through it all my dad has been there cheering Garrett and I on. Telling us we can do this. We can make this into our dream home with our own hands, and what we don’t know he is willing to teach us…and what he doesn’t know we can look up online, haha.

He has always taught me to be handy and learn to do things myself and in many ways it was this life-long encouragement from both my parents that gave me the courage to start this blog all those years ago. It’s about learning how to do things and sharing it so that others can do it too.

I’m so grateful for all the help and support my father has given us since we bought this house. He’s always been one of my greatest cheerleaders in life, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he would support me in this too, but I still appreciate all the countless hours he has already put into helping us make this a home. It’s not uncommon these days to find out he’s been by the house while we were at work to fix or install something. Garrett and I are both very lucky to have parents who are supporting us through this adventure and we’re so appreciative of all their expertise and knowledge as homeowners. Just about every day my parents or Garrett’s parents are over to help us out with something. I don’t know how we’d do it all without them.

Yesterday on Father’s Day we asked my dad if he wanted to go out for a boat ride on the lake or go for a drive, but instead he decided to spend the day helping us clean up the yard and get some prep work done for the restoration work we’re doing on the outside. Thank you Papa Bear!

After a long day of working away, this is our “work crew” admiring what we’ve done so far.

This is what the house looked like when we first put the offer on it in March. By the time we moved in, everything was lush and green…and overgrown.

And four weeks later, it now looks like this. The porch will soon have four new posts and new stairs (those ones are just there for safety right now). The shutters will be up this summer too, along with a fresh coat of paint everywhere. The screen door leaning on the wall was found in the shed and I’m going to give it a fresh coat of paint soon and hang it up soon too. We’ve pulled out so many shrubs, invasive plants, half-dead trees and rotten stumps and we’ll slowly start replacing them with good ones.

I still want to chop down the awkwardly placed rose bush in the front yard, but it keeps coming up with blooms like this and I feel bad! Does anyone know if you can move rose bushes easily? Maybe I can give it a home somewhere else on the property.

While we were outside, four huge hawks were circling around the property.

We’re worried that they spotted the chicks out in the yard on Saturday or saw the dogs out that morning. These things are scary looking, and could take a pet in an instant.

Which meant that the chicks and these two stayed inside for most of the day. Fortifying the coop and building the dogs a fenced in run just got bumped up in the priority list.

We knew we were going to work on the house most of the day, but I still wanted to have a little Father’s Day celebration to thank my dad. I was thrilled to find out that there were local Ontario strawberries at the grocery store this weekend, and I just knew I had to make a nice dessert with them for our Sunday afternoon lunch.

Using a combination of recipes from books and online, I wanted to develop a Strawberry Cream Pie that used real strawberries with a rich cream cheese filling. I used a frozen pie crust to make life easier and then got to work making the filling while it baked.

Next came the fresh Ontario strawberries on top. It was already starting to look good.

…and that’s when I poured the glaze on and it all became a mess. I’m sharing this to tell you all that I have flops in the kitchen too. Not every recipe turns out as I would like!

I served it up anyways and it tasted amazing even if it didn’t look so good. My dad didn’t seem to mind! This idea is heading back to the test kitchen for some more tweaking.

I made up for it with this tray of goodies my mom and I put together later in the evening for our cocktail hour on the porch after a long day of work.

Everyone headed home while Garrett and I got to work putting the tools away. We had just enough time to catch the sunset over the fields for summer solstice. It was the longest day of the year and we sure did our best to fit as much as we could into it.