Last Lake Day?

Fall begins...

Our New House

We moved to the UP. We are now Yoopers. We are so excited, not only that we get to see nature, daily! But the outdoors here is part of life. There are bike lanes all over the town, hiking/crosscountry skiing trails, a downhill ski hill across the canal. And the Canal! Oh My, I am in love. Everyday the canal looks different. It's a different color, the water is calm, it is choppy, it is coming from one direction or the other, but it is never the same. I supposed that will change this winter when it's just ice but I don't know if that will change how I feel about it.

Our favorite thing is it's a 15 minute drive from Lake Superior. It feels like the Ocean only colder and much cleaner.

We found our new house on a whirlwind trip around the two towns here looking at 9 houses in two hours. We knew we wanted four bedrooms and at least two bathrooms so that limited our house choices. We also wanted an older home that needed a little love. That part is not hard to find since most of the homes in the area were built during the mining boom from 1900 to 1925. We saw a couple that would work but we all voted and this was the winner.



I would love to say that the empty lot is ours and I will be gardening in it, but it is the neighboors. We do have about a four foot sliver along the drive that I hope to put some raised beds in next spring.





I love having an entryway. We have already figured out however that we believe it opened into the office and the closet is not original.



The Salmon Color has got to go though! And it is everywhere, not just the entryway.



Also in the Dining room, and the Living room,


and the office



So our first order of business is to get rid of this orangy salmon color. This color makes me feel so cranky!

Today I Ignore the bathrooms!

That's right I am going to Ignore the bathrooms today and work on getting rid of the Salmon Color. Eww. We have already gotten it out of the living room, and dining room. It is still in the entryway and the office.



I hope to get it done today. Then we can go back to trying to figure out the bathrooms.

Oops I started demo on two bathrooms

Really I didn't mean to.


I just wanted to caulk the shower doors because water was leaking out of them. I noticed that the wall looked wet. I explored them and they were, very wet. So I quickly cut off all the wet drywall, then noticed the water had gone down to the floor. We knew from last weeks adventure of uncovering the wood floors that were probably wood floors under this cheap laminate so I pull up the first board.



The floors were still good, but the laminate was very wet with mold starting to form underneath it. This was when I called for back up. My husband came in said to pull it up. We got up the area around the shower but left it under the toilet and sink. I'm not ready for that kind of work yet, I'm still trying to get rid of the salmon color!


Fast forward a few days. I got the shower downstairs caulked and ready to use so I moved upstairs as I noticed they did a bad job caulking those tub doors and it was leaking too. Unfortunately it was worse. Much worse. I got to cutting off the drywall after heading to the store for a respirator. I got all the wet drywall off and found they tiled over drywall, and some of it was wet.


So the problem is what do we do? We know that the tile and the wet drywall has to go. So we need a new surround. Do we do the easy route and buy a surround kit? We've never gone the easy route before.


Do we buy a new tub? This one is rusted. If we have the whole thing out why not do the floors which have a 1 inch layer of build up on them. If we do the floors what would we use and will it tie in with the rest of the upstairs.



What do we do with this? I can see it getting water damage and needing to pull it down later if we keep it. It was painted shut when we moved it. I have since unstuck it but have no idea what I would keep in it.

So as you can see we have a lot to think about this weekend. By the Way my Love started his new job with an orientation all week this week and next week starts full time. This was NOT in the plan.

Garden in the rain

It's been raining here like every three days, which is why I haven't gotten that fence stained yet. The garden however is in heaven and I was wishing I had about four more garden beds. Here's my lovely green beans:

And we have the largest tomato, can't wait to eat that one:

And the garden as a whole.

Lego was fun.... traffic not so much

We made it to the Lego store! Yippee for us!

They had an area set up in the mall for kids to build a big block to help make the 8 foot tall R2D2. They had just started it when we were there.


Robert misses his bug...

Tman enjoyed all the displays.

This was the pick a brick wall. You get a cup and you get to fill it up with bricks from the wall. Here Tman is trying to figure out exactly what bricks he needs the most. It took quite some time to try to get them all in the cup and in the end we had to put some back despite having read some tutorials on how to pack a pick a brick cup.

So the way home we were trucking along and then hit.... traffic. I hate traffic. It is the one thing I hate about living in a huge metroplex, and it is that reason that I try never to go far from home unless I can return around 3pm. We were on the way home at 4. We sat for quite a while. Finally when we got close enough to our part of town we pull off the highway, all car sick from the stop and go, and me with a splitting headache. I was lucky enough to be driving, if I had been a passenger I would have gotten sick. W fell asleep before we hit the stalled and stop and go traffic and that was great cause he is the most car sick of all of us.

We are happy!

Things are looking good here in Scatterville. Summer is blooming, the tomatoes are huge already with six or so little green ones already. I think this year I am going to regret planting 22 tomatoes, but after last years failure of the six I did plant I was not going to take any chances.

We got an offer on the old Scatterville, and I have held off posting about it because I did not want to jinx it. We accepted, they did the inspection. They wanted a few little things done, and we said yes. We will close on the 1st of June. We will no longer be the home owners of two homes. The feeling of future relief is amazing, however we are still holding our breathe and won't believe it's a done deal until all the forms have been signed.

So what do you get when you go ice skating with friends? Balloons. See how well W's Balloon is behaving? He was so excited about it's good behavior, he wanted to take it's picture. They were both so serious in this picture.





Then, THE BROTHER, appears and jumps into the scene without asking flailing limbs, causing the worst day EVER!






The kids have already planned some adventures with the proceeds of the house sale, like finishing the tree house deck, getting a bigger swimming pool, and going to Disney World. My plans include paying off massive amount of debt that have accumulated during the whole period of not living in the old scatterville, yet still paying to fix it up. That will feel nice to not be carrying anymore too.

Today we will be heading over to the new Lego Store Grand Opening and filling a cup from the pick a brick wall. I'll let you know how that goes.

Beautiful Sunday

Saturday while the rest of the midwest was expecting snow, blizzard like conditions it was supposed to be cold here. You know grab your parkas, gloves and hats. R and I laugh to ourselves in our longsleeves. Cold to us is when the snot freezes in your nose. It was not cold. Sunday it rebounded into the 70's and K, W and I headed to the local u-pick farm for the first round of their strawberries.
It was our first time u-picking and it was a blast. We will have to go again, once I use up the 5 pounds we came home with.






We have plans to make Strawberry Jelly but first we need jars, lids and other supplies. I already checked two stores, but I guess I need to bite my lip and go into Walmart. Gulp.

I spent the rest of the day digging out all the sod from the new garden bed area and moving it by shovel load to the front yard where the gas guys left a gaping grass free area. I hope that the grass will take and grow in so the bald spot will be gone. I definately got in a work out, that I am afraid I will pay for in aching back later.

Today's project new shirt

This is from my new book weekend sewing. I love this shirt, but I like short sleeves and being a Lot bigger then the normal B cup that patterns are made for I knew I had to make adjustments to the pattern. So using the directions here I got to work. I am very happy with the results in the bust, the back seems a little tighter then I would like as do the sleeves. This was my muslim try, using some cheaper materials I had on hand before I use my "nice" stuff.
This is a close up of the shirt placket and the vintage button I had in my stash, bought from a old lady who lived down the street.
And here is the shirt!

Creative Juices

I've been quite busy. Despite starting school work again this week I have been able to get the children to do it early in the day so I can do "other" things. Yesterday we constructed a garden bed. Today I shoveled off some of the grass to transplant it to where the gas men left huge dirt paths in my yard. We moved some carrot seedlings around, they were every where but where they should be. We found two carrots from fall that were quickly eaten. Yum.



After lunch K and I sat down with my new book


We drooled over all the things to make. I bought this because it actually has some Women's patterns in it. I am disappointed that it has a children section but it is for kids who wear size 4 and under. My smallest is a 6 now. So K and I decided that we (I) could scale an adult dress down to her size.

So... five hours later we have.

Bathroom update

Life is busy. Spring is here and that means projects galore. This weekend we went to Ikea and scored some bathroom cabinets for $30 each. We had to get three because, well we have three bathroom sinks. We only bought one sink however and will have to go back and get the other ones when we are ready for them. We have to get tiles for the floors first.

So remember that bathroom that I started on like a year ago? Here's a refresher:



Well after a year of scraping off wallpaper, and figuring out that there was no way to remove it from the bottom of the walls, we decided to use plywood and just go over it. We still need to fix the corners, but we got everything done now but the plumbing working, and the mirror hung. We want new lights too but that can wait. So here is the new bathroom! (I don't like the paint color either)




We got the old school house back for sale again in Kansas and are excited about it this year. Maybe just maybe we can sell it this time? Let's cross ourselves, our toes, and our nose hairs and maybe just maybe.


I am considering extending spring break for another week so that I can get the other things done around here. I have a garden bed ready to be put together and need to get soil for it. I have to finish painting K's room, which has three walls left to get the second coat on. Then I am sure she will want me to start painting all her furniture too since we bought paint for them. That would be a dresser and bedframe.

Hopefully I can hold off the boys for a few days then I will paint their room...and furniture.
Hmmm and I never did finish that second coat of paint in the hallway. Man, I think I will need more then a week to get all that done.

Introducing R... at the White House

R was invited to the White House this week, although he could not make it. Dang that would have been expensive. But his Ornament for the White House Tree did make it and Laura Bush announced her Red, White and Blue Christmas. So for the rest of us who could not make it to see the ornament anyway, here it is.


I am very excited and proud for him. He is taking it all in strides.

We will miss you...

We lost one of our best friends last week. He thought he was a dog, and loved being an outside/inside kitty. He always thought of himself as a barn cat, and that he still lived out in the country. This meant that he would saunter across the street at a his leasure. Because of his laid back attitude we renamed him from Marshmallow to Marsh E. Mellow. We called him Marshy for short. He got hit by a car last week and managed to crawl up to our carport, where R found him. He rushed him to the 24 hour vet but the damage was to extensive and we had to put him to sleep.


So here are some pictures of our lovely cat, who loved to be held, and waited every morning to go outside with the dogs. He also came home every night when I called his name. The night before we lost him, he ran towards me at such a brisk pace, he was so happy I was calling him, and love it when I scooped him up.

Fall

One of the down falls of where I live is we do not get a beautiful fall. Most of the trees in our yard, just fall off the tree, without even thinking about changing colors. They just give up and drop off. My neighbor has one of the only trees on the block changing colors and I have a gorgeous shot of it right out of our bedroom window. I thought I would share it with you.

Halloween

I will add some descriptions later. Gotta run now.