Christmas Decorating!

I thought there must be some mistake when this giant box showed up in the mail....I was looking for my prize from SC Johnson Right at Home for the Houseblogs.net contest, but I was expecting a little envelope with a gift card. Let me tell you I felt like the dad from A Christmas Story receiving the "significant award!"


They sent this huge basket of products and the gift cards...so nice! Thank you to houseblogs.net and to SC Johnson.

I knit up a hat for Mike's stocking and made the mistake of letting him try it on...he liked it so much he wanted to start wearing it right away. Well, I'm glad he liked it!

Then I used the left over gray from Mike's hat and some red I dyed (same kind of yarn) to start a hat for Joe. He's tricky because he has a much bigger head. I altered it to fit...and I hope it does!

Tonight we started decorating for Christmas....Hawkeye's pretty sure this is not where the wreath should go.


Joe got it done in the warmth of the house and then went out and hung it up. It's starting to look alot like Christmas!

Home is where the heart is....

I gave the dog a bath, changed the mantle from Halloween to autumn decor, made a fire in the fireplace and I'm doing laundry. I'm going to knit a little while the next load is drying. I feel so content being here getting these things done. I know that doesn't sound like an exciting day, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can spend my days at home again.

I love running the shop, but I don't like being away from home and having things fall so behind here. I don't think it will happen anytime right away though. The shop is starting to pick up and I'm hoping the income from that can help with our daughter's college expenses. I don't want to give you the impression that I'm the perfect homemaker even when I am home though...I usually have a ton of projects, volunteering, and of course I always have struggled with being organized. But this is where my heart is.


I love to put lights on the mantle. When we renovated the kitchen, I had them put an outlet on the mantle. Now I can have the lights with out cords draping all over. It's pretty easy to hide the outlet with greenery, photos or other objects.

When my day off falls on a 76 degree November day.....

well, how could we resist? We just had to get out and enjoy it! Hawkeye says, "Come on, Mom!"


Our courthouse is a gem.


Lincoln practiced law in our county.


The colors are amazing for this late in the season!


Several of these bridges make it easy to walk from place to place in our little town.


Then we went for a ride and ended up at my aunt and uncle's farm. As I walked, I found myself feeling full of hope for the future. I've been very anxious about the election lately, but today I felt at peace. I just prayed that God's will be done. I hope this is the time and the place for history to be made. This is not a political blog, but some of you know I support Obama. I'm excited that we have an amazing man...one with dignity, morals, family values, a strong love for his country, and tons of brains to vote for. I'm happy for our country that 50 years following the civil rights movement we have come to this point. Whether you agree with my choice or not, I hope you all get out and exercise your right to vote. It's an amazing country we live in and a wonderful thing that we get to have our say.

Time to go back home and get busy!

Not Again!

Today I came home from a meeting to find this. Yup, Hawkeye got into my knitting again. What is it he likes so much about yarn?! He hasn't chewed up other things, but obviously I'm going to have to get myself a knitting bag that closes up tight. This time he mangled the cast on row too, so I couldnt' just rip it back a way. I was going to have to start over.


I decided we needed to get out and run off some energy, so we went to the farm. It was a cool, crisp, beautiful evening.


Look at him. He's so cute. He can't be ornery, can he? Nah.

After we had run off some steam, I went home ripped it back and started over. I spent a pleasant couple of hours talking about the presidential race with Margaret at Fabrics & Fibers & Frills while I worked on reknitting. I'm now back to where I was when I started out this morning.

Joe is 50!

My hubby turned 50 this week. We had a birthday dinner for him last night where he took a lot of old age jokes in stride. I think he's pretty hot at 50!


Check out that cloud of smoke!


I started a new project tonight. I'm trying to knit a sweater for DD. If she doesn't like it, I'll have to make sure I lose enough weight to wear it. It will remain to be seen if either of us will like it though...I've knit sweaters for babies, but not for grown-ups.


Are you tired of my socks yet? I promise this is the last pic of them you'll see!


We just had an elevator installed in our building at work. Hawkeye loves to ride it. ...no matter who is going up, he will try to ride with them. He's a stitch.

Painting the Garage and Fireball Run

I painted the garage about 8 years ago. It was definitely time to do it again. Our son has been home lately because he is laid off from his job for, hopefully, just a few weeks. He is an apprentice pipefitter and the slowdown in construction in this economy is coming home to roost. Here the garage is...he has already scraped it.


This is the backside which never did get painted the first time. We keep ladders stored by hanging on this back side.


He's got it this side primed today before he had to leave for school. It's looking so much better already.


Tonight Joe and I gave Hawkeye a haircut. We clip him short...and then he gets more and more lamb like as it grows back. The haircut lasts longer this way, and the burrs are a lot easier to get out after romp in the country. I hate using a flash on dogs....you always get that doggie "red" eye.

Here's another fun thing we did lately. The Fireball Run stopped in our town for lunch. It's a scavenger hunt done by people who have some really awesome cars. It's kind of like "The Amazing Race" but across the US and done to publicize the plight of missing children...and hopefully find them. One of the goals is to pass out flyers with missing children's photos in as many places as possible. This is my son and Dot's son by the car from the movie Back to the Future II. Our little town was full of Jaguars, Lamborginis, Ferraris, and all kinds of cool vehicles.

On the Shelf

I bought a couple of cheap shelves at Lowes, and I needed a phillips head screwdriver. For some reason no matter how many we have...there's never one where it's supposed to be in this house. Hubby went out and came back with a screwdriver just for me. Maybe this one won't disappear!


Here are the shelves all put together. Our house is cottage sized and has very small closets. We are always looking for more storage. I put hubby's shoes on the bottom shelf where they don't show much. I still want to doll this shelf up with a dresser scarf and some accessories. I need to rearrange the pictures and I'm planning to paint all the frames white. Holy moly, I still have a lot to do!


I'm a magazine junkie...I admit it. This is just a little portion of the ones I couldn't throw out. We are a reading family, yet we only have one bookshelf in the house. Now we have a little more. I splurged on a couple of those Shabby Chic baskets at Target. As Dot mentioned in her comment on the last post, there are a lot of things needed for everyday life that you almost never see in a decorating magazine. Like the Kleenex box. I have it in that top basket where hopefully it doesn't show as much but is still easy to reach. And of course you don't see shoes stored out in the open too much either. I want everything to be pretty, but I really want it to work too.

Mom, can we go for a walk now?

Front Porch Done

The inside of the front porch is as done as it's going to get this summer. The porch floor needs repainting, but it still looks passable. The window needs to be reputtied too, and we might get that done yet. I'll try to get a better pic of the color tomorrow. This was taken early this evening through the screen door. We bought the chairs at last year...they bounce, which I love. Someday I might recover the cushions in a more fun fabric.
Here's my sweet doggie peeking out at me.
The roses by the back patio are starting to put on a show. I think they are some kind of floribunda or rambler. They go everywhere, so this year we put an arch over the walkway so they can lean on and ramble over that instead of the sidewalk.
Dawn posted some pics of what our formerly flooded town looks like now, so I thought I'd do the same. Here is the pedestrian bridge in January and now...quite a difference!
Earlier in the spring Dawn gave me this beautiful planter as part of a blogland Pay It Forward. Thank you Dawn! Now it is my turn to pay it forward.

How does it work?

Here are the rules: I will send a gift (of my choosing) to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this "PIF" exchange, and who make the same pledge on their own blog.

The only thing you have to do in return is PAY IT FORWARD - on your own blog.

So, if you want to get a goodies from me, and are willing to do the same via your blog, let me know!
(Note that you'll need to give me your real (snail mail) address... which you can do by private email.)
Just leave a comment and I will get with you.

Priming the Bathroom/ Before Shots

I've been working on priming the trim and doors that you saw in the last post, and I thought I'd give you some background on this room. this is what it looked like when we bought the house. Complete with plastic, sort of wood looking vanity.
We bought this house in 1988 and this definitely looks like an eighties bath in an old home. In 1999 we decided that we couldn't stand it any longer. I tried to strip the wallpaper, but the wall board came with it. We did not want to gut the room at this point, so I decided to cover it if possible.
Joe and I primed lots of paper bags and tore them up into random pieces which my sis and mom and I applied with wallpaper paste. We planned to do a paint treatment over the paper.
At this time, I got terrified that I had actually made an even worse mess of the bathroom and that we'd still have to gut it.
So I mixed up some paint and did the wall behind the door...and I liked it pretty well!
We found a brand new Kohler sink at a garage sale for a dollar. Which seemed like a great deal until we realized it was a very unusual sink and would require a faucet which cost a couple of hundred bucks over what we would usually spend on a faucet. We bit the bullet and ordered the faucet. Here you see Joe constructing the counter top. He also laid a green vinyl floor.
Counter top almost done. You can see that we had to curve it back to make way for the closet (under the stair) door. I don't have pic, but a skirt hangs under this counter to cover the storage space. I wanted a vintage mirror with no medicine cabinet, but Joe wanted a medicine cabinet. Sometimes you have to compromise...I know Joe does what I want a lot, so turn about's fair play. I'm still not wild about the light on this, and may be trying to find a way to alter the lighting situation and a still keep the cabinet. Any ideas?
The business end of the room. I etched the glass on the window so we wouldn't have to have a curtain. I would love to replace the window with a bigger sash window like in the rest of the house. We could put shutters over the bottom section.

Now the room has been like this for years. We had shower doors for a long time, but they were a pain and now we have a curtain. As you can see I painted the trim a darker color the first time, and now I am going to paint it a lighter creamy color to try and freshen it up. Except the ceiling trim...I like how that kind of just blends in with the border. I'll keep you posted and show more pics as I get things back together.
Today's work....... filled nail holes and primed the doors and jams.
My helper got a little primer on his nose.

While I was doing this, Joe was up on the scaffold painting the fishscale siding on our front gable.

Florida Getaway

While Hawkeye was hanging out with his new poodle buddies, the girls and I went off to do a little exploring. Our friend Mary, who was kind enough to share her home and her poodles with us, provided us with some great maps to help us find our way around.
We went to Blue Springs. This is such a beautiful park. The spring water is crystal clear and the park is a tropical paradise.
The water looked lovely for swimming, but we saw a large alligator not far down stream from where this girl was swimming. That's pretty scary for this northern gal!


We saw seven manatees at the park that day. These two are young orphans that were recently released into the wild. The little bobbers are tracking devices.We got lots of pampering from our host and hostess and their three beautiful dogs. Murphy is the biggest poodle I've ever seen....Louie was a big boy, but Murph has him beat!
The girls spent a lot of time on the beach. On the way home we found a dog friendly beach, so even Hawkeye got to wade in the surf. At first he wasn't so sure about the waves rolling in and would run back from them. Eventually he decided it was pretty fun to splash around.

Orange Tree on Dwellable