Road Trip

Living in the boonies means that some times you have to put four hours in the car just to go to the doctor's office. It sounds painful to me, I just don't like cars that much and my youngest gets carsick. I always forget though that the view on the way there is magical and the time flies right by.

This day it was cloudy, misty and foggy. The highway runs along side several lakes, including Lake Superior at the beginning of the trip and then plunged into woods and large hills. The lake often mimics the sky here which means the water is always changing.; Bright Blue, Green, Dark Murky Blue, and it was Grey as the sky today.; It was very hard to tell where the lake started and the clouds began.  I couldn't snap any pictures because I was driving.

On the way back we decided with the help of someone yelling "Pit Stop" from the back to explore one of the road side parks.; I had heard that there was a couple a of waterfall at one of them.




Anyone for a walk in the woods with me?


There it is!




It was not the biggest, or the best but the journey to it was fun and a great break.


Signs of Beaver!



And what 9 year old could resist pumping the drinking fountain?

Our new favorite Beach

It was in the 60's last week and we picked up my Love and headed for our new favorite beach with firewood and a snack.  This beach is perfect for us.  Sugar white sand that goes on for miles is hard to come by here.  There is a little stream that puts out at the park so Wynn can fish.  They allow campfires which is rare to find.  Most beaches either have picnic tables or a fire ring but not both.  At this beach the fire rings can be picked up and moved easily.  We planned to return the next day with food to grill because they also had BBQ's. 

We are excited to see how this area blooms this Spring, those are all blueberry bushes along the shore and if they are like last years we hope to stock up.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

The wait

As we wait to make sure the floors and walls are completely dry we are thinking about our next step. We had originally thought we would paint the wood floors and I've been pintresting many very nice painted floors.  However we pulled up the rest of the laminate flooring and discovered the majority of the room may have never been painted at all.  They had a really big rug in here.

After researching the steps to paint a floor the right way, which involves many coats of paint left to dry over night and then a coat of poly, it came to me that it might be much quicker just to sand and poly the floor.  We have done this before and the great thing about water based poly is that you can get all three coats on in one REALLY long day.  So for now that is the next step after the waiting.

The laundry room is another beast altogether.



Please please ignore the mess.  It became very obvious to us that the shelf we put in does not function.  Well here is the opportunity to fix this room.  So the plan here is to get some sort of water resistant flooring like the newer vinyl wood planks. There are two layers of vinyl tile in here and we don't plan on prying it up and releasing whatever may lurk below.

The mysterious wall with a window inside will be opened up and possibly closed back up at a much smaller rate so that the dryer door can open all the way.  The shelving will go and replaced with something so much more functional. 

Wow. 
Ugh.

This makes digging out a garden out of the rock back yard like a easy chore.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Plumbing problems

We've made careful considerations for what we would demo and restore in this house.  The main bathroom is first because of water issues and tiles set on drywall. The kitchen? Maybe.

It had never entered my mind to work on my daughters room or the laundry room but that is exactly what is next due to a leaking water line in the wall of our laundry room.  It was spraying water directly onto my daughters closet and it had soaked the wood joists, and wood floor and wicked it's way up into the plaster.   This might have been okay, however there is drywall placed OVER the plaster so now we have a big wet mess.



This was before we were finishing tearing out wet stuff. 


New plumbing ran and big fans put on all of it to dry it out.

My daughter's room.



On the plus side there are 100 year old wood floors under that laminate.  However it is wet. :(





Luckily we live in a four bedroom house so we moved all of my daughter's things up stairs into the youngest's room and he moved over to bunk up with his big brother in the bunk beds.  I told the kids to shoot for about 2 weeks living like this.  A week to make sure everything is dried up and another week to hang the drywall back and paint and seal the wood floors.  I have a feeling it will be longer.  Maybe a week longer?  We are so lucky that my love will be wrapped up with school in the next two weeks and his schedule will open up a little more because it is overwhelming to me at the moment, but as a team we can do this.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Clothespin Apron

We bought and installed a new pop up clothes line last weekend, just in time for it to turn cold and flurry all week.  So that gave me time to hole up in the studio and create!  I really disliked my last apron for clothespins, but it was functional.  So I knew I needed a new apron and I wanted it to have one BIG pocket.  I've been playing around with some little bird friends and thought one in her kerchief would be perfect.

Now I am waiting not very patiently for it to warm up this weekend again so I hang out some clothes.

Studio Peek

I finally got to work today!  There are several things in process, but I am most excited about this one!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

It was Spring, now it's back to blah.

We were duped.  We all thought that spring was on the way.  And it is really.  The Crocus tell us that and the trees just starting to bud, but after that week of glorious 70's were got spoiled.  The uppper 40's feel cold and gloomy.  We are not motivated to work on making a garden despite the deadline of May 4th for getting trees and strawberries and raspberries.

We have been slowly moving rocks from our backyard to the spot by the kitchen door where the garden will be.  It's hard back breaking work, and my back is not up for it this.




In the house I am wrapping up the "ugly" hallway and hope to have pictures soon.  I have one more bump to smooth out and I need to figure out what to do with the floors.

My love made the mistake a few weeks ago in the laundry room.  I've been ticked at that little room since we got here.  When you open the dryer it hits the wall across from it making it hard to get laundry in and out of the dryer.  I can get only one laundry basket in the area and it rubs the walls as I move it in and out.  So his mistake?

He told me he didn't think that the bump out in the wall needed to be that big. (I've been telling him for months that it is a hollow wall.)
• back story•  Our home has plaster walls with drywall up over the plaster walls.  So we can tell by thumping them if they are original walls or not.

Well I heard this, " You should knock down that wall and see what's back there." Since I'm the one who usually does the drywall and the also the one who tapes and mud I give myself permission to do random stuff like this.




So I cut a little hole.  It was hollow. I could not figure out what was in the wall so I made it bigger.  The boys thought that this exploring of the walls was so exciting.  Me too.

Well here's what we found.



A window!  This is the very center of the house, a brick house with all matching windows so we know it wasn't added on it.  The only thing that I can think of is that since it was built in 1900 when there was little electricity (especially in this area) that this window allowed light to come from the dining room to the butlers pantry.

We knew the duct was there and we are happy it is small. Now the problem is what do we do with this area?  I know we want to open it  up and we will but do we show the window or not?  We can not move the duct since it is the only return from the second floor.  There is also drywall covering the window in the dining room. hmmm...

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Warm Weekend

We had a blissful weekend.  That is the only way to describe it.  The high's were in the upper 70's. Unheard of here!  We set record highs all week, the locals are confused and muttering things like, "It is so hot!", which makes me giggle. We set out after coffee on the porch to find waterfalls, and to explore our favorite beach.

After last weekends sledding we didn't know what to expect of the ice fields at the lake but we found it mostly melted.

 

We found out quite by accident that the ice was so melted that you could collapse it with one good jump. So jump we did.

 

The rock hunting was very good and we all came home with our pockets full of "keepers".

 

Some of us were not afraid of the cold water.  

Especially since his boots got soaked when he waded in the lake.

We hit our favorite lunch spot and went on in search of waterfalls.  The melt off has been so rapid here that they are literally everywhere. I guess that's what happens when you go from four feet of snow to nothing in a period of one week.

 

Our quest was completed.

 

I still can't believe this is March!

Weekending

It feels like Spring is Here. The snow has been melting rapidly. It has been in the 60's and we decided to head out to the lake and see if we could find any agates to collect. Once we got there were found there was still ice as far as you could see.




Only little patches of rocks or beach poked through and my little rock hound stopped at everyone in search of the perfect rock.










So we pulled out the sleds that were in the back of the car for those "just in case we find a hill" emergencies.  We found a good one, and all of us had so much fun.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama