Time for a Hayride

One thing hubby & I are loving about the new homestead is the opportunity to host hayrides and bonfires for friends and open up our land for them to use.

In fact, right now we’re busy trying to make the driveway more accessible to an average car, putting in a culvert pipe to redirect rain to avoid future washouts of the driveway, clearing scrub brush, taking down trees, redirecting water from low lying areas in the field to one central area that we’re going to turn into a pond that we’ll see from our backyard, digging a trench to run power and telecom wires (unfortunately no natural gas cooking for me because it’s not in the road seeing how we’re in the “country” and the cost to run it in is astronomical) and coming up with a temporary shallow well. Whew!

It sounds like a lot, but really most of it can be done over the course of a few weekends. We have a deadline to shoot for because some of our friends from church asked us if they could hold their wedding reception at the farm on September 18th and of course we jumped at the opportunity. However, I think they’d like a few simple conveniences such as a driveway their guests can access, power for their sound & lights and water to connect to the high-end portable toilets their renting. Who knew people could be so demanding?! :)

We also are busy getting the land cleaned up because we’re hosting our 2nd of 4 bonfires & hayrides we have planned in a couple weekends. This one is for the team of volunteers we lead each Sunday morning at church. We are loving the “family” like atmosphere we get working with our fellow “movers & shakers” and all of us actually look forward to getting there at 7:30am each Sunday morning to set everything up and then staying until noon to take it all down. Makes for long, but very rewarding mornings.

Here’s the invitation I made for this party.

I designed them on the computer and then printed them on my color printer. I downloaded the fonts for free from this site and I found the tractor and hand as free clipart in an internet search. To add a dimensional effect, I tied olive & teal raffia around the card and tied a knot and then secured the knot with hot glue and glued the tractor (printed with the teal border and cut out) on top of the knot.

I’ll post more decor/craft projects for the party as I work on them. Wish you all lived close enough to come join us for a bonfire.