She Sleeps in a Thong.

I just had to share this with you all. We got a new kitten, not sure of her name yet, probably
Miss Meu. She is 8 weeks old and has pretty markings and blue eyes.

I was standing talking with my friend Susan Nixon of CQ4fun, who came for a 4 day visit with hubby Paul, and took my foot out of my flip flop, ya know how ya do and put my foot on my leg. Well when I wanted to put my foot back in my sandal guess who was asleep in it. I do not know what possessed her to do this but she did. She slept there for about 30 minutes.















We laughed and laughed over this. She does like shoes and we find her playing in them often. She is full of vim and vinegar. She loves to climb our pant legs (which can be a problem when we are in shorts), I now have a cat swatter instead of a fly swatter, LOL, thankfully it doesn't take much to detour her, she is persistent though. She has already taken over the house, the big cat is not to pleased with her and avoids her, I hope they will become fast friends. We have not let her be around the dogs to much, just because they are labs and she could get hurt, though I have a feeling she will make it known, that she is a tough cookie.















Susan and Paul just pulled out, we had such a good time together, it is already to quite/lonely.

More on our visit later.

Vacation

Our vacation was so nice. We took a trip to North Dakota with Kirk's parents.

Our first stop was Mount Rushmore. This was my first time there and it is quite impressive. All the state in the union are represented. We spent about 2 hours learning about this amazing sculpture. Kirk even talked to one of the surviving men who worked on it.















Later that day we got to the exact middle of North America, which is in Rugby, ND. We took Flat Stanley with us on many of our adventures.
















Our final destination is Cando, ND. Kirk's grandparents on both sides settled here long ago. It is a farming community and his cousins still have the Odegaard family farm. Of 13 children, 7 are still living and able to attend the family gathering. We did alot of visiting. I felt like I belonged right away, which is so nice. There was a birthday party for all the siblings, some turning 80 this year. After the party we were able to spend the evening in the former home of Kirk's grandparents, lots of good family memories were shared. There were about 60 family members present.

The next day we got to go out and see the family farm and we had a great time. We were treated to rides on some of the farm equipment like the sprayer below. These are all GPS guided and quite comfortable, I should have been a farmers wife because I was out on the farm and in the fields, not in the house with all the other women. LOL.















The crops that they are growing are wheat, corn and sunflowers. It is so amazing to see miles and miles of sunflowers, some will with their petals.....so beautiful. Flat Stanley had to have his picture taken with the big tractor and in the sunflowers.


Just look at all of the
sunflowers. I got to
bring a couple home for
fall decoration.









We also went on a tour of Devils Lake. This town is in danger of flooding. Back in the olden days people settled around this huge inland lake, as the water receded during dry years people followed the water line, building and farming on the now dry land. The problem with that is, the lake is rising and now alot of these farms and fields are under 15 feet of water, the town of Devils Lake has now installed dikes to hold back the water which is today 10 feet higher then the homes in the lower parts of town, which is over half of town. The lake has not reached it peak of an addition 10 feet at which point any excess can then drain away. It is amazing to me how people can ignore this fact, but they do. There is enough water in the lake to flood many miles of land. I guess Fargo is experiencing similar problems with the river that runs through it.

All in all a very enjoyable trip and a good time with family.

We are wrapped up.

Praise God for beautiful, calm weather. As you can see by this picture we got the addition wrapped and the windows in. We worked hard to finish up. Now things are closed up against the weather.















From the inside of the upper bay window. It was quite a feat to finish this up, Kirk had to use the ladder truck to do that one side and then as you can see a temporary scaffolding on the right side.
















The North side is wrapped now, too. Could not do this yesterday in those 30 mph winds. We also put in this window and the door. WE HAVE WINDOWS AND DOORS...........
There is one more window to put in on the other side of the door, but we don't have it yet.
















There is the door! It is amazing how different having the door on makes the space feel. Rocky doesn't think it is cool, he can't come in whenever he wants, LOL. No more strolls on the roof for him.
You can really see the South wall of windows in this picture, under the middle 3 is where I will put my design wall. It goes up like that because the shop roof connects there.
Each step forward makes this more and more exciting.















Susan asked for a picture from farther away, to get the whole scope of things. Please excuse the construction mess. You can see the green house on the right, it needs to get finished, one of these days, one of the problems there is I can't decide what I want to do. As for the new addition, it will have the silver tin, but the bays will have river rock on them and the roof over the bays will have black or dark gray shingles.

You might be a red neck if you have
a tractor trail box for a shed. LOL.

You might be a red neck if you live
in a tin shack (that is what the
phone guy call our place).








Well, that is it for now. We will be taking a little break and making a trip to visit family in ND.
I will share some vacation pictures with you....see you on the flip side.
Until later.
God Bless.

Sunny & Warm........NOT!!

I would like to introduce you to Flat Stanley. I had never met Flat Stanley before, though I understand he has several books out. Flat Stanley arrived in my mail box on Wed., sent to visit with Papa and I for awhile. Here is the letter that he gave to us.




















Dear Nana and Papa:

This is Flat Stanley. He was flattened when his bulletin board fell on him while he was sleeping! It flattened him flat as a pancake!
Since becoming flat, Stanley has been on many exciting adventures. One day, his brother tied a string to Stanley and flew Stanley like a kite. Unfortunately, he got stuck in a tree.
On another adventure, Stanley's mother dropped her favorite ring into the sewer. Stanley tied a string to his belt and his mom lowered him down to get the ring. Stanley saved the day!
Please keep Stanley for a week or so, taking him on many more fun adventures with you. Then, write back telling me about Stanley's adventures with you.
You may also include any pictures, souvenirs, or even a video of Flat Stanley's adventures.
I hope you have an exciting adventure with Flat Stanley!

Love Bryce.


Flat Stanley went quilting with me the other day and today we showed him our building project, he wanted to give a tour.















Hi, Flat Stanley here. I wanted to give you a tour of Nana's new studio in progress. Papa is working very hard to make this very nice space.
Here you can see the new bay window, Nana's sewing area will be right here in front of the window behind me. Her long arm will be over there on the right.
















Turning around now, you can see the wall to the other end of the studio, the bathroom is behind there.
I have to tell you, the wind is blowing very, very hard. Nana says it is about 30 mph out there, which means I can't stay out here very long, I don't want to blow away. I was going to help Papa do some work but the wind won't let me.
I can tell you that both Nana and Papa worked all day getting the sheeting on the bay windows on the front side of the house. Yes in the howling winds. They could not get the building wrap on the upper story today or the windows in, hopefully tomorrow it will be nice like the weather man promised for today.
Look!......at the lower bay, it now has windows....Nana and Papa are very happy and very, very tired. AND....the wind has slowed down. Oh ya, it rained a little, too. Hummm, guess the weather man got confused.
Ok, Flat Stanley signing off for now. Thank you for visiting.















Flat Stanley will be spending time with us, including going on our trip to ND, so stay tuned for more interviews with Flat Stanley.

Bay & Rain

This weekend the objective is to get the roof section on the bay window. Sounds like a benign task, right? HA!!!

First, how does one work on something in mid air? So the morning is spent building a temporary scaffolding. We have been thinking how we might use this space under the scaffolding, other then just filling it with dirt, we have considered a shed, or perhaps a root cellar. Well, this is something for another day.















After much trial and error the ceiling of the bay is starting to take shape. We know there is a way to do this but we can't find the formula. Now at this point I have to say I have had this weekend off, nothing I can do to help figure this out except create more confusion. So I spent my Saturday cleaning the greenhouse, getting rid of things that weren't going to produce by time the cold hit. Washing windows and vacuuming up debris, it is looking alot better, still some things to do, perhaps tomorrow.















Isn't the bay awesome? I just love it. To think I have never had a bay window before and now I have 3. WOW.















Can you see the dilemma here? A shed roof really causes problems with the angles for this bay roof. See the clouds coming in........sigh.















After spending all day on the bay roof on Sat. Kirk got it sheeted and ready to put wrap and shingles on. Last night it started raining and rained all night and most of today, in order to get up and work on the building he cut a part of the stair space open and put a ladder to the second floor. He got the window sheeted, wrapped and the 2 small windows in. It is raining like crazy right now and we have a fire going in the stove. At least things are dry inside the building.

I started working on cleaning my sewing area, it sure needed it. As you know one thing leads to another and I ended up washing windows, too. This took some time cause the tracks were nasty and had to be cleaned as well. So that is it for now.

Until next time,
God Bless

WOW......what a week

Rocky loves being up on the roof. Kirk and I were not even up there, but in the house when we heard the pitter patter of doggy feet and came out to find him over looking his kingdom. Since then he has gone up on the roof multiple times. The other night he greeted Kirk as he returned home from the roof, I was in the house cooking. LOL.














In my last post I mentioned the lumber we had prepared for the ceiling. Here you can see the cuts we made in the boards. We also cut shims that fit into the grooves, between the boards, kind of like tongue and groove would do.














The ceiling is so pretty, I still need to deal with the logs, alot of the bark is loose. Normally one would clean the logs before putting them up, BUT when rain is coming some things have to go by the way side for awhile.















Phopa of the week................make sure you figure your wood correctly. We are so use to getting word in board feet that we forgot to convert to square feet. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO, we are a bit short to finish the ceiling. We have ordered the rest of the wood, which we will have to cut grooves into, but it won't be here until next week. Sigh. So to fix the problem.....remember rain is coming. We had to use the 2x6's for the bays and sheeting for the siding to finish covering the roof. We......yes me, went up on top of the second story and put it down. I was very proud of myself...............I am so afraid of heights, I did not have a problem being up there. I don't know why but I am so thankful. After the sheeting was down we put a covering over it to shed the rain.
















So now you can get an idea of what the ceiling in my studio will be like. Note the eves to the right! We did not get them covered. Not to mention the walls are still open. The rain came.
It poured, and poured and can you guess what happened? It all came in and ended up downstairs, so we were up vacuuming up LOTS of water. The water got between the buildings and came in our bedroom. It really was a bad time to get rain.














Kirk took 2 days off work to try and get this done before the rain, and we did get it done but it was not quite enough. So he also took Monday and Tuesday off, we got some rain again on Tuesday. So over the weekend thru Tuesday we........................


Put up the bathroom wall..................















Put in 8 windows.............














Wrapped part of the south wall...........














Built the bay for the bathroom................here comes the rain again.



Better get the bay covered.












Put siding up.................tarpped the north side (bathroom bay). And built the bay in the studio. Covered the eves.


Terry came up with
the ladder truck to help
put up the last piece of
siding that we could not
reach, note the ground
compared to the top
corner of that wall.






This is how things look as of Tuesday night. I told Kirk he needed to go back to work.......
I need to rest....

It is now Friday and I still have not gained back all my strength, tomorrow we will be back at it.

Notice the top of the roof, I was up there.............ya I was, walking around like it was nothing. I was thinking about it and it is not just 2 stories, but we are half way up on the side of a hill, that is way up there.















After putting up the blue tarp, it looks like we are under water throught the window in our room. LOL.




















As we figured our finances, we realize we have just run out of money. We have enough supplies to get the building closed in, but won't be able to finish it until we can gather some more money. We will be able to put the stairs in, insulate and connect the bath fixtures in the downstairs bathroom. The bays will get their windows, but the window for the sewing area will wait, the door to the roof will wait, the other door will go in (we have it). We can start the electric. So it will be liveable for the holidays but not finished.

Kirk said it is pretty bad when the kids have to bring their camping stuff when they come to Nana and Papa's......it will be an adventure.

Well, that is it until next time.
God Bless