DO YOU LIKE MUSIC?

I like to listen to the radio when I am cooking, but I surely do not like
commercials, repeated songs or disc jockey opinions and dumb jokes.

My brother sent me to this amazing radio station where you control
ALL the music. And it's FREE. And there are NO commercials. Right

now they have even added several styles of Christmas music so you can
create your very own Christmas station. Try it--I bet you'll like it!

Pandora Internet Radio

CONTINUING ON WITH THE YARD

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. I know we ate more than we
should have because the desserts were barely touched!

Well our yard is nearing completion, at least the heaviest jobs requiring the trackhoe.
My husband is now moving dirt and gravel with his smaller tractor and replanting 

the trees and shrubs that were moved when this all began.

All in all it was a success--we gained several parking spots, took care of the water
drainage problem and now the yard looks like something more than just a jungle. It

will be better in spring when the trees have leaves and we can put in more plants.

We are talking about putting in a nice fire pit too with benches around it.

Here he was still removing a layer from the yard. He would park the 

dumptruck on the driveway, fill it with dirt, take it away and then do

 it all over again all day long.

Helping to move the heavy trees while the trackhoe was still here. That tree 

is a golden chain, very pretty with golden flowers hanging down in the summer.

 I really hope it lives after being moved around so much...

Whenever the driver would take a load of dirt away in the dumptruck the 

trackhoe would still be operating--weird. When I investigated I found a familiar 

face operating the machine. He was like a kid in a candy shop in that huge thing.

We have a large parking area to the right and they even made 

one in front of the rock wall for one vehicle. 

This is today in the pouring rain. Even the little neighbor girl in purple 

came over to help move rocks. This time last year we already had serious

 snowfall--in comparison this isn't too bad!

DIRT WORK AND DIRT BIKES

There has been a lot of progress on the yard work this week! The 

weather kind of cooperated and much dirt was moved, scooped and 

hauled while rock was brought in and expertly arranged into place.

The new parking area. I am amazed how much room this created 

and we were able to keep the trees, which do a great job of blocking 

our view of the road and public beach down below.

Here he is digging into and removing a large portion of our yard. I think

I heard that he hauled away 12 truckloads of dirt and fill material with

still several more to go.

What a change in the landscape of our property! The area where the 

trackhoe is sitting will now be another parking area for our home repair 

trailers. My husband is toying with the idea of building a small covered 

area there since it is low enough now that it won't block our view. 

The next step is to lower the entire rest of the yard  a bit and fix the 

drainage problem that runs along the driveway. Last year the water

ran next to the driveway and when it froze there was a thick mass of

white ice right where the cars had to go down the hill. I would so like

to avoid that this year!

My older daughter enjoying her dirtbike on Friday, one of the few 

sunny days this year.

Yesterday's mail; 4 credit card offers, already approved and waiting for our O.K.  

Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like there shouldn't be so much credit pandering 

with the credit-induced financial crisis our country is facing right now?????

ENDING ONE, STARTING ANOTHER

The stairway cover project is complete! It was actually finished more than a week ago,

but the time got away from me to post about it. The junk still needs to be moved from

under the stairs, but doesn't the cover look great? We already made great use of it with

Keith coming over for dinner Sunday night with the rest of the family. It was raining 

hard and he would have gotten very wet if not for this cover, so we are grateful for it!

O.K.--on to the next project. It's never boring around here! We are 

finally getting our yard fixed up the way we want it. The project is too

large for my husband to tackle with our Kubota tractor, so we hired my 

cousin's son to bring his trackhoe over and just get it done.

We are lacking space for parking our trailers and equipment for the home 

repair business, so that was a priority. We also want our yard to look nice 

and he will be putting in a rock wall that we will be able to plant in and make 

really nice.

We are very happy with his work so far and my husband is impressed with the 

way he can finesse these huge boulders into place. It is very exciting to watch 

the progress!

It looks like a jungle! The previous owners of this house didn't do 

anything at all to the yard. My husband topped the trees to expand 

our view--the neighbors to the north were SO happy! She said they 

hadn't seen the mountains to the south for 9 years.

Looking down the driveway.

Looking up the driveway. It is going to look so nice with a rock wall and plants.

We also have a drainage problem running along the edge that will be fixed.

This will be a rock wall and parking for our trailers and tractor.

The first scoop...

ANOTHER PROJECT BEGINS

We didn't get summer this year. For all of you people out there that are 

thankful that fall is coming so the weather will cool down I say Come visit! 

Come and cool down! Way down! I think we may have hit 70 degrees one day 

this year, but I can't be certain. I know we have been measuring the sunny 

days in hours, as in "Wasn't it nice for half a day last Thursday?"

And now that the calendar says fall is approaching (we have no other way of 

knowing this for sure) winter is not far behind. My husband has been talking 

about making a roof over our front entryway since last year. When we had 4 feet

of snow sticking around for weeks the ice was really building up because it would 

thaw just enough to form ice and then freeze again overnight. I think the decision 

was made to start the project because roofing went on sale this last week.

Isn't our front door pretty? It's one of my favorite things about our

house. The glass is burgundy and clear with gold outlines. We definitely

don't want the weather ruining it!

Our front entry steps became treacherous last winter with thick ice and fresh 

snow falling on top of it continuously. Have you ever tried chipping thick ice 

with a snow shovel? It's not happening. Plus there was not one bag of de-icer

or rock salt to be had in this town. Every store sold out and there was none 

forthcoming. I just saw a sign yesterday that some places are already selling

it--a smart person would probably go get some now wouldn't they? 

(Writing a note to myself...)

This roof will keep us nice and dry instead of having to run to get inside 

before all the groceries get soaked. We hardly ever use our actual front 

entryway--we park the cars and use the smaller garage door on the right.

My husband made a comment when we were coming home yesterday that

he is going to have to put reflectors on the post he just put up. I wonder

if that's because I am the one that parks on that side of the driveway...

More pictures as the project progresses.

A LITTLE OF THIS AND THAT...

We had dirt delivered yesterday to begin filling our raised beds and pots for vegetables.
My niece's boyfriend was the driver of the truck (you can see him up on top) He did a
great job backing that monster into a very small space with our deck at the top. There
were about 2 inches to spare between the running board of the dump truck and the
support beam of our deck. Whew.

My husband built a 3 way bird feeder for the deck now that the hummingbirds have
arrived. They are excited about our Pink Cranberry bush in the yard, but I haven't
seen them at the feeder yet. I wonder if they will come with the larger bird's food
hanging right next to their feeder?

I found a new recipe for Cinnamon Rolls and tried it last night. I didn't realize I was
almost out of flour and it took 9 cups, so I ended up making up the difference with
whole wheat flour. They are gigantic rolls since you cut each roll 2 inches wide instead
of the usual 1 inch. I am going to try them again with regular flour and see how they
turn out. They were good, just not as light and fluffy as I like them because of the
whole wheat flour's heaviness. I'll post the recipe here after I make them again. It
made a gob--16 huge rolls that we ate with dinner, breakfast and again at lunch!

I found this beautiful painting in WA state in an old antique store I used to frequent.
The owner's found it at an estate sale and hung it up near the ceiling in an old, unused
part of the store. I saw it up there and asked how much? $40 bucks. When they took it
down I realized it is an original oil painting! The name signed on it is K. Williams.

It was unframed, so my husband took some old wood from our church remodel and
made this lovely frame for it. He was kind of bumming when he sanded it down because
of a vertical nail mark in the lower right of the wood. I saw it and suggested that he make
a horizontal mark and voila! we have a cross. I think it fits nicely with the subject matter,
don't you?

I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE CARPET

I know I said the next project around our house would be to replace the yucky blue carpet
on the stairs, but someone (who shall remain nameless) decided he needed to add a sunroom
onto the back deck. This sunroom will serve several purposes: the hot tub is in there and it
looks out onto the mountain and ocean, so it will be nice to be dry while hot tubbing instead
of the steady drip, drip, drip from the top deck. 
We also want to make it into a greenhouse so we can grow some stuff year round, like lettuce,
beets, radishes, etc. If it works as well as I think it will I am hoping to grow enough in there to
be able to preserve some of it. With the cost of food going through the roof these days and the
quality of the food supply diminishing all over the world, we are trying to come up with all kinds
of alternatives. Plus when you grow your own you don't have to worry about pesticides and poisons
on your food!
This is what the deck looked like when we moved in here. Yawn.

A NEW DOOR

Now that the TV spot has been completed, the next project is my younger daughter's
bedroom door. I think the people that owned the house before us used the room as
an office and home business because the closet is tiny and funky and there were French 

Doors instead of a regular bedroom door. Plus when we looked at the house there was 

a full sized tanning bed in there--I guess that was our first clue.

French Doors before. There were curtains, but they were sheer, so they were not the ideal covering
for a bedroom. The door to the right is the upstairs bathroom.

Doors removed and small wall built in so there can be one door.

Wall piece sheetrocked and mudded.

Finished! Beautiful 4 panel door matches the rest of the house and the sprayed texture matches perfectly
with the rest of the room. The color is nice and warm, it just looks bright in this photo because of all the
windows in this room.

Next project: replace the yucky blue carpet on the stairs!

POOR MAN'S PLASMA

That's the new name for the latest home improvement project in our house.
We own a Home Repair and Maintenance business in real life and it just kind
of spills over into our house. People always ask me if my house is like the
shoemaker's son; always needing the repairs that are done to everybody
else's homes.

Actually, it's quite the opposite--there is always something being constructed,
moved, painted, textured, covered, uncovered, hammered or demolished
around here. I guess you could call it OUR WAY OF LIFE. My kids grew up
breathing sheetrock dust and paint fumes (that explains a few things!)

Anyway, the latest improvement to the old homefront:

This was a side window on our living room that really didn't need to be there. It
basically looked out at our deck and the neighbor's dining room. So my husband
had the idea to remove the window and make an opening over just a ways and build
it out to house the TV. The idea was to get the TV out from the living room and
free up some floor space. Plus we could pretend we had a plasma TV attached to
the wall.

Window gone and tar paper holding out the winter. Good thing he gets things
done pronto or it would have gotten very cold in here!

New hole in the wall and old window opening sheetrocked in.

Peek a boo! The plastic really helps keep the dust and mess to a minimum, which
keeps my ranting and raving to a minimum.

New TV room sheetrocked and textured. Yes, that's my husband standing on
the woodstove in the background. Why bother with a ladder when there's all 

these neat things sitting around you can use, right? I wish I had thought to get a
picture of him standing on top of the refrigerator to paint the kitchen--nobody
ever believes me when I tell them!

Ta Da!! The finished project with a nice, warm new paint color on the wall too.
Doesn't he do great work? The only minor details left are the finishing strips on the
very front of the shelves. We tried it out, it works great and I love the space it freed
up in the living room.