Henager Family: Ruth's Blog

Creamy Tomato SoupOctober 22, 2009

I made this soup on Saturday, June 20th. This is the first time I’ve ever made tomato soup from fresh tomatoes, and it was amazing! I honestly don’t remember everything I did, but I’m pretty sure I mainly used this recipe from Food Network. I used dried thyme instead of fresh since it was late at night and I didn’t feel like messing with it. I have some growing outside in my planter. I did go out and grab a sprig of parsley for garnish, and then I sprinkled parmesan cheese on top. I may have thrown in some fresh chives too…I really don’t remember, lol.

It was so good! I had to take a picture and make a post about it!

— Ruth Henager

Food

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Guinan's MoltOctober 16, 2009

Our pet bird Guinan is a Crimson-Bellied Conure. She was hatched on May 8th, 2008 by bird breeder Marcy Covault (birdcompanions.com). They can live 25 to 35 years, if kept appropriately. Guinan says small phrases, although she is a little difficult to understand. So far, she says “come here,” “good bird,” “pretty bird,” and throws in some situation appropriate phrases like saying a dog’s name when we’re calling them in from the back yard. She makes loud whistling sounds, little bitty whistling sounds, and she’ll go back and forth with us saying “what”. She also loves being in the bathroom with us when we’re showering.

Crimson-bellied conures grow up to be extremely colorful birds, but have relatively dull coloring when they are young. Around their first birthday, they shed their baby colors and you see more and more color as the adult feathers appear. I documented Guinan’s molt during her most active molting months, although I missed one or two. Some of the photos aren’t in focus because of lighting and having the wrong setting on the camera, but you can still see her colors, heh.

December

March

April

June

Adult Plumage

— Ruth Henager

Pets

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Planted Aquarium HobbyOctober 16, 2009

Many people keep fish tanks. A lot of people have kids who keep fish. I’ve kept fish around since I was very young, but I have never enjoyed aquariums as much as I am enjoying them now.

When I was quite little, we had a 10 gallon fish tank that had colorful gravel, lots of sea shells, plastic plants, and a water wheel air stone. Our fish actually survived pretty well as I recall, but I was too young to remember when we first got the tank. We were the typical kids with fish.

I tried my own tank when I was in my early high school years, but I had terrible “luck” (lack of information, turns out), and my fish all died. I kept a few bettas, and they survived okay in their little bowls, but they didn’t hold any particular facination for me.

When I got into college, I began keeping fish again. This time, I asked questions at the fish store, and after a few failed attempts, I managed to keep a few fish alive. I then bought more fish, and they all stayed alive. I liked them around in my office, but when I got married and we moved to Duncan, I began to lose interest again. My 10 gallon tank would get completely covered in algae, and I would sometimes go six weeks between water changes. (Amazingly, my 8 fish survived this treatment.) It got to the point that I decided that I would scrap the fish tank as soon as the present inhabitants died. I hated cleaning that thing.

Then, I stumbled upon a blog called aquatic-eden and was absolutely amazed at what can be created in a fish tank. Planted tanks are any tanks with live plants in them, and aquascaping is when you use plants and hardscape (rocks and driftwood, typically) to create a work of art. Aquascapes come in wide varieties: they range from model mountain ranges complete with trees, grass, and rivers, to aquascapes endemic to a specific habitat. Some are miniatures of a scene, like a lone tree by a creek bed with a flock of “birds” which are actually very small fish. It’s just amazing what can be done in an aquarium.

I was absolutely blown away by the pictures! Do a google image search on Takashi Amano and you’ll see what I mean. He is a renowned aquascapist, and had a huge hand in making the hobby popular.

I’m not going to jump into making fancy landscapes. I redid my substrate from epoxy-coated gravel to pea gravel, seachem flourite, and pool filter sand. I’ve added a lot of plants, and most of them are doing very well. A few didn’t work out, but I believe it’s because my water parameters are probably much different than the sellers from whom I buy the plants. I have very hard water and a ph of 8.2.

Here are some transformation pictures of my 10 gallon and my 37 gallon tanks:

— Ruth Henager

Interests Pets

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Home ImprovementApril 28, 2009

Yes, well…I haven’t had a blog for…a little over three years, I think. I’ve thought about making a new one… You can see the failed attempt at www.chiriohs.blogspot.com. Interestingly enough, it was a year ago this month that I tried that. I enjoyed learning about html more than blogging after a certain point. I blogged a lot when I was in my mid-teens, but after a messy relationship with my first and only boyfriend before Alan, I restarted my blog and mainly used it for html experimentation. So, since I was burnt out, it’s taken me awhile to even wrap my head around blogging again…but here I am!

Since becoming a first-time homeowner, I’ve discovered a new interest: home improvement. I knew I liked it a small amount when I lived with my parents because I was constantly trying to improve my room, but there’s only so much you can do with one room without too much effort! I still haven’t tackled a big project. Although I did PAY for my first big project. Alan and I paid a guy for a privacy fence. This was his first fence, and it wasn’t too bad. The only thing we have an issue with is the gates. I believe they can be fixed fairly easily, but I haven’t decided whether or not to try fixing it myself or having the guy come back and help or do it himself. The other thing we’d like to do with it eventually is level off all the pickets on the fence. We have a lot of uneven ground on our property, so the fence looks like it’s on an ocean. We’d like to trim some pickets and shuffle them around to get a nice even slope. Now that will be quite a job, but I think it will definitely improve the curb appeal. The fence looks nice, but it could look nicer. Especially the gates, lol.

There’s a lot I’d like to do to this house. I think we’ve pretty much decided that instead of staying put and potentially adding onto this house, that we’d rather raise the value and sell it. I don’t know what houses our size are going for in our neighborhood, but we’re guessing we can get about $90,000 for it. We bought it for $75,000, so that would be a nice raise for the money, I think. It is a rather large 2 bed 1 bath house, that’s for sure. Our property has 2 acres (and a wonderful view!!), and all of the properties surrounding us seem to have 2 acres or more. I believe this area is going to really skyrocket in value once the Duncan Bypass starts having businesses put in.

I can’t wait to finish our house, and I’m surprised at how excited I am about it. I guess it’s the supressed artist in me. I haven’t gotten to paint or made time for piano (or drumming) in a long time. And I wont be sorry if it turns out my new outlet will help make us some money!

My list of things to do is long…first off is to get completely moved in, lol. That includes giving the house it’s first deep clean. Hopefully that’ll happen soon. With Faith’s help, probably. It’s a big house to clean.

In order of priority:
1) Clean the house
2) Landscape the front and back yards
3) Paint the two bedrooms
4) Paint the bathroom
5) Paint the utility room and the storage closet
6) Replace carpet in the two bedrooms
7) Replace ceiling fans in the two bedrooms (to match the dining and den fans)
8) Replace siding with vinyl cedar shingle siding (will really look awesome)
9) Replace faux-wood floor
10) Remodel bathroom including floor (this might not happen)
11) Remodel kitchen including floor (this might not happen either)

We also plan to install a whole house sediment filter, among other small improvements.

Other projects include building a dog kennel, running electric wire along our fence (to keep the dogs in), hauling off junk from the back yard (looks like 2 or 3 surf boards(???), a big satellite dish, a small animal cage, some wood boards, some extra fencing, a kiddie pool, an old bag of dog food, and a couple bikes), filling in holes using the small mountain of dirt in the back yard, and taking the front-yard chinaberry trees out (because they’re dead or dying). All this on top of trying to keep the clean house clean once we manage to get it clean in the first place. The hardest work is getting it clean, the most challenging part is keeping it clean.

— Ruth Henager

Interests Abode

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