Category Archives: music

life keeps on a rollin’

Tobias’ arrival our home marked a new chapter in our lives, that’s for sure. We have been so blessed by his cheerful and joyful disposition- he’s like a little ray of sunshine in our lives!

I was still plowing through school, and making somewhat decent progress. I was paying for school as I went, and each new lesson arriving in the mail made me more and more excited to reach the end goal.

Spring had also very decidedly set in….and with it? Mud!! I got the John Deer stuck in the mud and had to get it all dug out…. oops.

Homesteading projects were in full-swing….

….and so was writing to a certain Australian. Remember me mentioning that I had signed up for that dating website again? Well, someone amazing wrote to me during my time there. We traded a few emails, and then started writing every day. We also traded Instagram handles after we realized we had a mutual love of photographing sunsets and sunrises, and that was a good way to be able to see the pictures each of us had posted.

After a couple of weeks of our writing back and forth, he expressed a desire to be more intentional in our correspondence, so I went and took copies of all of our notes to my parents. I was going to print them out to make it easier to read, but upon realizing we had exchanged 53 pages worth of correspondence (in TWO weeks!), I thought it might be better to just take the laptop instead. 😀 After discussing my thoughts with my parents, and asking their advice on the matter, I decided to write back and let him know that I was interested in being more intentional with our correspondence, with one condition- we would have to spend a great deal of time in communication with each other, and we would need to meet and spend a substantial amount of time in person. He responded back with a “no problem!”, and planned a trip to come out and meet my family and I to see where things might go. I emailed a few mentors in my life and asked them to be praying over the situation and that we would have wisdom to make the right decisions, no matter what the end result was.

Now, after a few weeks of us being friends on Instagram, I started to have other friends noticing that I had a new friend on Instagram….and so the questions started. 🙂 “So, who exactly is this guy that is suddenly quite active on your Instagram?” “Dare I ask who this guy is?” “How did you meet?”….etc. 😀 You see, this Australian and I were starting to realize more and more by the day of just how much we had in common, and conversation was easy between us.

We had our first phone call not too long after “that” email. I remember being so terribly nervous….we are both introverts…would we even talk?!? To my surprise, we had a rather nice phone conversation- not too long, not too short, and we had broken the ice. It wasn’t too many days after that when Mr. Australia sent me his travel dates…he was actually coming here to meet us! We had a few more phone calls in-between him sending the travel dates and him arriving here, each growing longer than the last. I think the last one was right around 3 hours long! We were also still emailing pretty much daily, and by this point, had a text conversation going, were friends on Facebook, and were ever-more active commenting on Instagram. I couldn’t wait to meet him in person, and find out if he was the same in person as he had been online and over the phone. I was becoming quite interested in learning more about this guy from the Land Down Under

While counting days until his arrival, life continued to roll on at the Lambert Estate…

I had just finished installing our first round of bees, and caring for them each day was such a delight:

I was still working:

And of course, enjoying the lovely sights of my beloved Lambert Estate….

Learning new skills…

Oh, and Jacob purchased a shiny red ‘Stang….. it has been such fun to go on various adventures with him with the top down and our hair blowing in the wind….

I was still working on school….

And branding for a new endeavor we were working on….I was so tickled to see things I had designed on the computer arrive and turn out so nicely in person!!

Hand’s down, having the booth at the farmer’s market was one of my favorite things that we did over the spring and summer. I loved working together with my family to get everything done each week, and then later on with my stock tracking buddy (you know who you are! 😉 ) to make sure that the inventory was being tracked correctly. We loved meeting people, developing our products, trying new experiments for marketing, and so many other things. It was a huge blessing!

Time was winding down until Mr. Australia arrived….and then, finally, it was June 13th- the day he was to arrive. Was he really real? We were about to find out…

{adventuring}

December days continued to roll by, and with them, more adventures by the day. 😀

I thought it might be fun to start working on a few new songs on the ole’ instruments. I had a little project in mind for these songs….

Continuing on with trying new things, I found a strand of purple lights down in the basement and thought I’d hang them up in my bedroom. Jess was thrilled! 😉

The next new adventure came on New Year’s Eve. I learned to play Texas Hold’Em Poker.

I wasn’t expecting to like it.

It was so much fun!!!

I’ve been working on some piano actions:

And getting to hold the cute little squishy adorable baby nephew:

Now, the nephew needed some new pictures, and my brother and sister-in-love needed their piano tuned, which meant I got to have a rather fun workday. My real job is flexible enough for me to work from my brother’s house, so, I packed up the laptop, tuning tools and camera, and headed out!

In progress:

I really enjoyed taking photos of the aforementioned cute and squishy baby nephew. 🙂

The next order of business was Elvis Presley’s birthday. I don’t have any photos of me rocking out to the Elvis tunes, unfortunately. I’ll have to do better next year. 🙂

Next, it was time to get the 4-H on! I took the kids to Columbiana for their first Livestock Quizbowl and Skill-a-thon. I still have my 4-H shirt from when I went and participated in a 4-H day when I was younger, so, I embarrassed the kids to death by wearing the aforementioned shirt when I went to drop them off. BEST BIG SISTER EVER!!! 😉

I got to hang out with them until it was time for them to head back to their dorms, which meant I got to stick around for the campfire. It was SO MUCH FUN!! I have a few ideas tucked away now for the next time we have a campfire. Sitting under the stars though…I’m overwhelmed. Our creator-God is so amazing. To know that He created each star and put it into place is absolutely amazing. <3 We were out in the middle of nowhere Alabama, so all of the stars were super-clear and just gorgeous.

Since all the kids were at camp, our normal chicken feeding crew was “afc”….away from coop. 😀 This meant that it was my turn to feed the chickens. Did I mention that this was my first time ever to feed them??

It was also my first time to put them all away. A nice big rainstorm moved in right while I was getting them put up. I was very thankful for my big, waterproof flashlight!

All in all, late December and early January were definitely getting off to a “hopping” start, and there’s more to come soon! 🙂

~Miss Court

{pursuits in piano-land}

And so, several weeks ago, I began to pray specifically about what the Lord would have me be working on, and I started looking into the possibility of becoming a piano tech. I had thought about pursuing it after graduating several years ago, but didn’t really have the “let’s do this!” mentality at the time.

I wrote to several schools to get more information, and had narrowed it down to two possible schools. I knew that I didn’t want to get any sort of student loans, but wanted to be able to pay for the schooling myself, so I wrote next inquiring about financial aid. The president of my top choice of the schools and I began to exchange emails, and I found out that I would indeed qualify for a discount/financial aid with them. As we continued to write back and forth, the Lord allowed for the topic of Christianity to come up, and I found out she was saved as well. That was absolutely amazing! It’s always a blessing to meet other Christians around the world, whether in person or online.

I enrolled in school, and anxiously awaited for the first lesson and materials to show up. In the meantime, I had already ordered a tuning kit, and knew I would need a toolbox. Off to Wally World I went. 🙂 When I got there, I found a huge waterproof toolbox that was on sale for 1/2 off, and would accommodate the various tools and basic parts I would need as I begin to put together my business. Once again, God had opened the door up even further by allowing me to begin to acquire the various things I would need and at a fraction of the cost. It’s still amazing to me.

While still waiting, I decided I would go ahead and open up our piano and start seeing what all was broken, begin cleaning things, etc. to be ready to jump right into tuning and repair. Here are a few photos from the “first look”:

I found quite a few interesting finds while in there. This is one of my favorites:

It’s where a piano tuner had tuned the piano back in 1948. My name is now signed under his, along with the date I began the repairs. =] It’s starting to make everything feel more “real”. 🙂

I also found a buffalo nickel, a wheat penny, and several hair pins….

It’s been amazing to start looking at how each little piece works together to make music. I’m still in absolute amazement. 🙂

My tools and first lesson finally arrived, and I set right to studying and beginning to learn how it all works.

To start learning how all the little pieces of the piano actions work, I made an art piece for my room that hangs by my bed. That allows me to see all the pieces of the action along with their names so that I can memorize them faster, hopefully. 🙂

I’ve been peeking over into the inside of pianos to find their serial numbers at thrift stores and other places, and have been looking those up to determine their age so that I can get better at guessing the age of pianos…

And of course, just practicing the tuning:

I tuned 7 of the keys (21 strings), and then got frustrated because there was a sticky key next on one side and a dead key on the other, and it was making it extremely difficult to tune. There was only one thing to do…take the action assembly out to start making the repairs. 🙂

I have discovered thus far that there is quite a lot of glue failure, and some broken parts within the action assembly:

With that, I’ve been gluing broken pieces and am waiting on my replacement bridle straps to come in so that I can begin the repairs. I’m hoping they will be expedient in their arrival. I’m strongly considering replacing all the felts and hammers now as well. I so want to breath life into this piano-o-mine. It’s got rather strong sentimental value for me, and I’d sure love to hear it sing once more. <3 I'm planning on continuing to photo-blog my process through school and through the piano repairs, so if you're on Instagram and would like to follow along, I'm on there as thepianopractitioner.

I can’t wait to see how God continues to open this door. I’m looking forward to working on many pianos in the future, the Lord willing. I continue to be amazed at how fulfilling and wonderful this process has been so far. It’s truly been a blessing. <3