A Slow Spring - 2018

The "deep freeze" of late December and early January had me scurrying around the way squirrels do in the fall; gathering up food and stashing it away. I seemed to spend all of my free hours chopping up vegetables and cooking up soups and tucking them into the refrigerator freezer until there wasn't an inch more space available. I'm not sure what I thought I was preparing for, but it seemed like something I needed to do.  A gift of fresh Poblano peppers from our friend Elizabeth was an absolute treat, and gave me a bit of respite from soup-making. I happily spent a day roasting and steaming them, peeling the skins and deseeding them before then stuffing them with a spicy rice filling, topped with a freshly made tomato sauce. My only lament was that I didn't have my cookbooks here to help fill the memory gaps when I made the dish, but given that it's been quite a while since I cooked with fresh poblanos, I still managed to pull off a pretty good rendition of a favourite recipe.  With kudos to the Internet for the tips I found on how to steam peppers after roasting them when you discover you don't have a paper bag. (Place the peppers on a wood cutting board, invert a large ceramic bowl over top of them for 5 minutes, and they steam beautifully, allowing for easy removal of the roasted skins.) And kudos as well to Summer for her help via Facebook, when I posted that I've always used a broiler to roast my chile peppers, and discovered that our broiler element didn't work!  Her first suggestion was to use the BBQ but that was not really feasible considering it was minus 30 something outside! ( But understandable advice given that she lives in California.)  Her second suggestion to simply bake them on a cookie sheet in a really hot oven, as close as possible to the working oven element did the trick. Thanks Summer! I only wished I could have shared some with you..

I knew things were going well when Rob walked into the cabin and remarked that the cabin smelled the way our dome-house used to ! There's nothing like the sweet aroma of roasted chiles, and it's been far too long since we've enjoyed some.

And kudos to Rob too - for the spiffy blender.  When the base of my old one started pouring out smoke in the early Fall, I did some research and chose a new model I liked but thought was too expensive. Rob kept an eye out for a sale, and then not only found one on sale for half price, but scooped a huge rebate from the manufacturer. Although it works beautifully, Jet doesn't seem to like it, and barks every time I start it up. He'll get used to the sound eventually I'm sure.

I always imagine that winter will bring lots of free time to sit home and read, curled up next to the warm wood stove. But in actual fact most winter days we seem busier than ever, and reading times are far and few between.  With the extreme cold we were kept busy filling the wood stove both here in the the cabin, and over at the new house, pulling firewood out of our wood pile and stacking it on the nearby porches, and watching in dismay as our wood pile quickly dwindled. Luckily we both really enjoy winter, so it's no real hardship to spend extra time bundling up in multiple layers before we leave the cabin, getting all our outer wear hung to dry afterwards, being outside clearing ice and snow from the truck, around the cabin and the house, and plowing the lane ways. We almost always get Jet out for three good walks no matter what the weather,  and added in with the regular house keeping tasks, cat care, meal preparation and some attempt to get some  work done on the new house, well - the days sure fly by. Everything seems to take a little longer in the winter, and the daylight hours are just so much shorter too! But while I may not sit and read, the beauty around us always lures me out, and I make time for a good long walk whenever I can.  I almost always spend a good deal of time down by the river. The cold temperatures in January brought swift and dramatic changes to the water, both in the way it looked, and the way it sounded.

Eventually even that small amount of open water disappeared from view.  But standing at the river's edge I could always hear the flow - it's a magical sound almost like a steel drum as it pounds against the ice above it, tumbles over the rocks below, and laps unseen at the river's edge.

One morning I visited the river and it was a simple white vista; a few short hours later the water levels had risen, flowing over the white snow cover, and turned the river into what looked like a magical skating rink.  It wasn't safe of course to try it out, as we knew it wasn't actually truly frozen over!  But it was absolutely beautiful to look at.

Mid-January the extremely cold temperatures eased somewhat.  Rob and I were assessing the propane usage in the workshop, and decided that although our idea of installing two 100 lb. tanks and driving them into the nearest town for fill-ups, had seemed like a good idea, it was in fact a rather difficult task. They are awkward enough when empty, and even more so when full, and we were refilling them far too often. We called around for pricing and checked with a neighbour for a recommendation, and decided to sign up with a company that would deliver two larger sized tanks, and then fill them for us on a regular basis.  If the cost becomes too exorbitant we may have to look at another solution, but for now this is working beautifully. We had an inspection of our system, they brought two new tanks and installed them, and one crazy stormy night a truck pulled up and the driver hopped out cheerily and filled our tanks!

The second half of January was a bit of a blur.  Rob was complaining of a slightly sore shoulder, when Jet decided one day to lunge up at a passing Raven, and the next thing we knew all symptoms were pointing towards a torn rotator cuff.  We can't sing the praises enough for our health care system here, that saw Rob processed quickly through Emergency, X-rays, an MRI and a visit with a sports medicine specialist within a few short days! Fortunately, he "only" has arthritis, and the extreme pain he had was in fact due to deep inflammation, so with the help of some anti inflammatory meds, rest and exercises, he was soon back on his feet, and using that arm.  While recuperating though, he stayed home, watching dozens of "how-to" videos on everything from dust collection systems to tiling jobs, resting that shoulder, and promising not to get back at working on the house until he was able.

When he was able, he eased in gently and spent time getting his workshop set up.  With all the interior work on the house that remains to be done, he needed some proper working space, and access to his tools to start building what we will need. I think it will be quite a while before the workshop is truly set up in the way that works best, but for now, it's more usable, and things are starting to find their place.

Early February we had a small celebration of our first date FORTY years ago - Yikes!  I am sure that somewhere there are some earlier photos of the two of us together, but I haven't come across them yet. We only recently pulled out our box of photos and photo albums from storage and haven't gone through them all.  These are about the earliest I could find, and even then I think it may be a year or two into our life together. I just took a quick photo of them for now, but should scan them properly sometime. The first two snaps were taken with an old instant camera, and have held up fairly well considering!  And I can't help but comment that in the first photo, behind Rob I can see the old cantilever stairs he built, and he was mudding the drywall in the dome.  Hmmmm...some things never change!

And here we are with our friend Gary (on the right), who later was best man at our wedding!

With celebrations (and plenty of reminiscing!) out of the way, we got back to working on the new house.
The first task seemed easy enough (I thought) as we began preparing the guest bathroom shower area.  Rob worked on defining the shower area, installing some concrete board, smoothing and leveling the shower floor base, and installing the linear drain.

"The devil is in the details" they say, and that's proving to be true when building this space.  We've spent time looking at photos of hundreds of "shower niches" used to hold soap and shampoos etc., and had lots of discussions about the size, design and placement of the niche, not to mention location of towel racks, and shower heads.  The linear drain had it's own issues, and the levels of the original concrete floor did as well.  I don't know why I thought I would come home from work to see all the tiles up, as even now, we haven't even started!  We are using 3 different styles of tiles, and have detailed drawings of all the possible combinations of the three, but are now happy (we hope) with the design we've chosen. I guess we'll know when we start tiling.

As usual in the winter, just as Rob got back to working on the house, a snow storm arrived, and he was pulled away to plow the lane way and road in.   However, as he has been warned not to use his arm for repetitive tasks, changing jobs often probably isn't a bad thing right now.  I'm just glad we didn't get any snow while his arm was healing, as I can't drive the tractor/snowblower! (But clearly I shall have to learn....)

Once the snow was taken care of, work continued on the guest bathroom, and it was an exciting day (for me anyway) the day the shower head got installed. Who could resist jumping into the shower space and pretending to be under the shower?  Well, not me; jump in I did.

By mid February, the house began to take on a different look.  Rob was interspersing work on the bathroom with "mudding" the drywall throughout some areas of the house. As well, areas that had been left to "deal with later" now needed dealing with, and all the finishing bits of drywall had to be installed once and for all.  While a coat of drywall compound was drying on one wall, Rob would continue along in another place in the house.  It's a seemingly endless task at first. But slowly, the look and design of specific areas began to come together. And those lovely timbers began to emerge again, as the areas around them became a little bit more finished.  I can't even imagine what it will look like when we begin to paint!

This was taken from the front hallway looking toward the guest bedroom/guest bathroom area. There's a nice little "niche" area in the left hand side of the hallway that will someday hold some of our favourite art pieces.

Looking at the guest room on the left, guest bathroom on the right. Some tricky angles there, but after all those years of dry walling the triangles in our dome, Rob should be used to it!

The view from inside the shower!  I love the timbers... And the shower will have a tempered glass wall so I won't lose that view of them when I'm in the shower.

The drywall taping and "mudding" getting done in the other areas of the house. (And yes, that is still a temporary staircase; the permanent one will have proper railings!)

Baseboards installed in the living room, with speaker wires all tucked in behind as well.  Baseboards are REALLY BIG for me - as we never did get around to installing them in the dome, until we were preparing to sell it.  Honestly, I can't believe we have some installed already!

Note - Rob designed a different kind of baseboard for the living room/dining room area only, that will tie in with the look of the windows frames that are being built and installed.  They were a pain to do though, and the rest of the house won't have these. But the other rooms will still have baseboards - right Rob?

A different view of the front hall:

Unfortunately, for now, work on our bedroom and bathroom has come to a halt, as we had to stuff everything into that space in order to work on the rest of the house. The floors there have not been acid stained either, so there's a lot of work to be done there!

Between "mudding" drywall, and climbing up and down off scaffolding, and putting in rather long days doing both, Rob needed a break.  So he took some time to go back to a job he had started before Christmas; window frames!  And installed the frames in the dining room.

And began to work on the frames in the living room too.

Having scaffolding in the living room feels entirely normal to me.  There was a period of time when it was our staircase at the dome, when we were dry walling and painting the interior. A rather long period of time as I recall...

And this one is for me. A closet.  I dream of these!  My clothes are currently stuffed into drawers, and cabinets or in storage.  While it works, I really think a closet is going to be so much better.

We've picked paint colours and have a gallon of each of our choices mixed and ready to use.  It was somewhat disconcerting when the paint store owner said "Pink and peach colours eh? No one picks those anymore.  But they are really nice warm colours." Rob and I just smiled and then got in the truck and looked at each other somewhat horrified. Did we really pick pink and peach? Well, time will tell, but we don't think we did, and we've been staring at these colour chips for a really long time.  There's no question the "pink" paint has a bit of a red tone as we read it's a good choice for a north facing room, but neither of us see peach in the other room choices.  Fingers crossed we got it right!

Mid February our weather changed, and became positively spring like.  Our firewood consumption dropped significantly, and we began to dream of open windows, and fresh air.  Unfortunately it also brought rain, freezing rain and ice pellets, and turned our entire road in to the cabin into a massive skating rink.

Each rain storm just built up that ice a bit more and we found ourselves hoping for wet snow that would stick to the ice and give us some traction.  For 3 weeks or more we wouldn't leave the house without our boot cleats on, and Jet had no "play times" as it was too icy.  Even walking him was a chore.  I stuffed the truck into a snow bank twice after getting stuck on one of the small hills in, and one morning just could not get up the main hill. I had to reverse several times back down the hill (mostly sliding down backwards) after only making it partway up, until I gave up and went back to get Rob to give it a try.  I soon learned to bring my boot cleats along with me in the truck so I could walk home!

Ahhh, boot cleats. Wish I had known about those years ago.  With my cleats on I was able to still go for a walk with my camera on my days off. Although I am always out with my camera every chance I can get, I realized I was missing the PhotoCoach challenges from 2017, so was really happy when "Charles the Light Coach" announced he would post the weekly challenges again in 2018.  I still can't believe that anyone could be so generous with their time and expertise, but gladly have jumped in again with my weekly submissions.

I don't often do "selfies" but as the main photographer on the blog, it isn't often that there is a photo of me!.  Here I am, sitting at one of my favourite spots near the river.  It's often the place that I find some inspiration for the weekly challenge. It's a lovely place to sit.

With the milder weather in February, the river began to open up quickly, and it was amazing to watch the ice break up.

It opened up more each day.

Until it was flowing quickly by once again.  There is still lots of ice along the banks though, and every now and then a large piece will break off and float by!

When I'm not by the river I walk through the woods and up past the farmer's fields.

Where we recently spotted an owl, and had the opportunity to watch a red fox making it's way through the field. The owl was pretty shy and flew away long before we got close. We don't often see a fox out in the open and it was a pleasure to be able to observe it for a while. It would turn and look back at us every now and then, with no apparent concern.

The arrival of March brought back quite a bit of winter weather for us.  But the daylight hours are at least longer now.  Rob can work longer days over at the new house, as he doesn't have to quit working quite so early just so that he can get Jet out for his last walk of the day before dark. Jet seems to know that he now goes out later than he used to, but still, at the end of the day, I always find him at the window, waiting for Rob's arrival.

The next couple of months will see a lot of finishing work done at the new house, and I'm sure that by the time I post the next blog, there will be a multitude of changes to be seen in the house.  Even as I write this, Rob is busy putting in more interior window frames, and he is getting closer to where he can begin sanding the drywall seams. Our evening conversations, which used to consist of construction how-to questions, have now switched into "where things will go" discussions, which has to be a good thing doesn't it?

Spring has arrived, at least according to the calendar, and we will soon be seeing signs of it here as well.  We've seen robins and geese arriving, and today Rob heard Sandhill Cranes flying over the river.  I'm sure Spring can't be too far away. I may miss our evenings curled up by a warm wood stove, but I'm anxious to open our windows, hear some bird song, and sweep the winter's dust out through an open door.

Farewell to 2017

I think that if I decide to make any New Year's Resolutions for 2018, the top one on my list should be to keep the blog updated a bit more often!  The last post was in August, so the task of looking back over the past four months worth of photos and diary entries and then trying to write something just doesn't work all that well for me, and I obviously should have kept up with it better. That said, I'll do my best to put a little something together although it may seem to be a bit of a choppy read at times.

Recent temperatures have been around minus 33 degrees C, and with the biting cold and a thick blanket of snow on the ground from the December snow storms, I must say it's quite lovely to be looking back to photos I took in August and and to remember a time when it was warmer, with a land covered in greenery. Funny too, to think that back then I complained that it was an unusually cool summer!

The end of August saw us getting ready for the concrete pour at the entrance of the workshop:

And a small porch area at the front entrance of the new house:

Rob prepared both areas, and then decided to prepare an extra pad next to the workshop as well; one that would serve to hold our propane tanks, in case there was enough concrete left over to do so.

Alas, due to a slight miscalculation, there was quite a bit of concrete left over! On the plus side, we definitely had enough for the propane tank "pad" but there was still had an awful lot of concrete leftover. Unfortunately, concrete trucks hate waiting while you try to build something to contain the excess, so with only minutes to decide what to do, he hastily plopped down some 6x6 timbers and had them pour a quick pad next to an existing one elsewhere on the property.  And this is where it will sit, possibly forever, as a constant reminder that when calculating cubic yards, 3x3x3 feet does not equal nine. Another useful fact is that concrete flows downhill as evidenced by the wonky corner. Again, on the plus side, the slab has excellent drainage. I'm thinking maybe we could build a little goat shed on it in future. Goats won't mind that it isn't perfect will they? Or maybe it will work for a small pony! (More likely though it will end up as a base for a wood shed. Still, it was fun to dream.)

As soon as we got over the "concrete thing" (note from Rob: I'm not over it yet!) we moved on and got back to work.  It was time to finish the back roof on the workshop, as we had run out of time the previous fall and didn't want it to go another winter without the roofing and ridge cover.  I don't think Rob was eager to get at it, but if it's any consolation, we think it may be the last roof he has to do (not true of course - see later in blog)!

I think it came out looking pretty good, and it was a relief to see it get done this year.

The September long weekend was rainy and cool and probably not a surprising ending to the "summer that wasn't".  With morning temperatures of only 3 degrees, and imminent frost warnings, we decided we'd better service the tractor and generator while the weather was still reasonable, as neither are tasks you want to do when it's cold or snowing!

With some of the outdoor tasks done, Rob got back to constructing the interior window frames.  Our bathroom frame was made of lovely cherry wood, and is truly beautiful, but it certainly was a bit of a job getting it installed behind the timber brace (it looked so easy in the drawings)!

Next came  the kitchen window frame. It has a sweet accent line of maple on the sill - which, as it turns out, is due to another mistake Rob made, but no one will ever know that (Rob's note: until now!) I think it looks perfect (he shouldn't have told me as I would never have guessed).

As always in September, we began to feel a bit of pressure due to the change of seasons. Rob was anxious to get at acid staining the concrete floors while it was still warm enough inside the house. He was going to have to move out the wood stove, so there would be no source of heat while he was doing the floors.  We had to clear all of the floors of building supplies and stuff, and move everything into our bedroom (which will have it's floor done later) and started doing some test areas on the concrete.

We did our tests in the guest bathroom, as this floor has to be tiled anyway because of the shower, so our test areas will be nicely covered up.  But before doing these, we placed a few of the floor tiles down just to confirm that we liked the choice of tile we'd made - and we did. We picked tiles that look like weathered wood with a bit of old blue paint on them and I love them.  It's a small bathroom, so we could splurge a bit on a nice tile, and Rob had picked them up earlier last year.

The first week of September saw a whole new project enter into the scheme of things. Our friend Bob who has always come to help when we needed a second pair of hands, had asked Rob to help teach him how to build a timber frame structure.  He wanted to build a small one on his own property to use for wood storage.   Rob was more than happy to oblige, as it would be a small way to thank Bob for all his effort and help.  So a deal was made to help Bob on the days that the weather was good, and on the rainy days Rob could continue working on the interior of our house. The timbers were brought to our place as we had all the tools here that would be needed, as well as a perfect setup for working on them.

Amazingly, in mid September our summer suddenly arrived! We had big beautiful blue skies, endless sunshine, and warm temperatures. It was great to be able to work comfortably outside wearing T-shirts although the mosquitoes and no-see-ums were back out in full force too, which seemed strange given the time of year.

If I had a day off work and they were busy working on the timbers, I would help prepare something for our lunch together.  Sometimes Bob would bring a nice homemade soup for us, and I was delighted when Rob set me up in the new house with a bit of work space and a hot plate, and I "cooked" our first lunch there.  Although I was technically cooking in what will eventually be my sink area, it was a total joy to be in our light filled space, window open, looking outside at the lovely river, and imagining the times to come. When the guys showed up for lunch I couldn't help grinning and exclaiming "I'm cooking lunch in my new house!".

Once they finished with the timber preparations, we moved them all over to Bob's place, where he could finish up some of  the remaining work on his own, such as making the braces.  When he was ready, Rob would go back and help with getting the frame up.

The September weather was incredible, and for the first time all year we found ourselves spending time in the evenings relaxing down at the river's edge, and we even went in for a swim a couple of times!

Some evenings, as we sat in our favourite place at a point above the river, we would see the Osprey fly by.  A short time later we would hear the telltale splash as it hit the river, in search of a fish for dinner.  I still haven't actually watched one do that, but I hope to someday.

As the end of September approached we knew that these warm summer-like days were about to end so we made the most of them.  I would rush home from work each day to grab a bit of that warmth and sunshine while I could. The birds were beginning to migrate, and we knew this weather couldn't last. But with promises of the weather holding for a little while longer, we decided to make a trip out and pick up some timbers for our entrance ways, as it seemed like we might have time to get them ready and installed.

During the first week of October, Rob and Bob got Bob's frame up. Well, it took two tries, as they discovered a few adjustments that needed to be made!.  But they didn't lose too much time, and Bob hoped he would still have enough time to get his roof up and on before the snow arrived.

We were glad we could do a little something in return for Bob's efforts, but now it was time to get back at our own project again.  Rob began cleaning our concrete floors in preparation for the acid stain.

He also had a design in mind for the baseboards, and needed to cut the drywall off a bit where it met the floor.

He taped cardboard between the floor and the drywall before applying the stain, so the drywall wouldn't get sprayed (it did anyway!) and then sprayed 2 coats of the acid stain on using a standard pressurized hand sprayer.  After the stain dried he had to neutralize, wash and scrub off the residue, using the shop vac to remove any excess water.

We loved the way it turned out, but knew it might change a bit after we put on a finishing coat to protect the concrete surface.   This is how the guest room looked before the protective coating:

A view of the kitchen while the acid stain was drying:

 The front entrance:

The kitchen and dining room:

I loved the turquoise colour running through the kitchen!

So the colours worked great but when we put the finishing coat on - ugghhhh.... it was too shiny! It was supposed to be a matte finish and it just didn't come out that way at all. It was also really "patchy" looking, with varying glossiness and although we loved the depth of colour, it just wasn't what we wanted.  Rob did some research and came up with a new product to try that was guaranteed to be "matte".

While we waited for delivery of the new floor finish, Rob's birthday arrived, and we took the afternoon to go for a glorious walk in the very beautiful Shaw Woods.

We've seen snow here on Rob's birthday in the past, so we really appreciated how lovely it was to be out in the woods enjoying warm weather and brilliant sunshine, with all the truly golden colours of fall all around us.

It was also great to have a visit from our wonderful friend Marilyn just before Rob's birthday - no photos (unfortunately) but a perfect day. Several years ago Marilyn gave Rob a ceramic geodesic bird house that has graced our driveway ever since we started building. At least she got to see it - a few days after her visit a branch came down in a windstorm and destroyed it. It must have been waiting to see her before leaving!

With November fast approaching, we still had more than a few tasks that needed completing before the weather changed. Rob was still hoping to get the exterior timber structures up in the porch areas where we had poured the concrete, so each day he would work putting a layer of the new finish on the floor, then while it was drying he'd go up and work on the timbers.

He first had to sand down the glossy finish on all the floors,  and then applied the new product. We lost a bit of the depth of colour in the process, but we were both really happy with the results.

As soon as the timbers were ready, Rob moved them down to the new house, and was even able to get a protective coating of Cetol on them.

The weather was beginning to change and I started pulling out the garden, gathering wood and kindling to store on the porch, moving my summer clothing out and back into storage, bringing winter clothing in, and getting the cabin sorted out.

We moved the wood stove back into place in the new house, serviced the snow plow, and got the truck ready for winter.

We still had more than a few cords of firewood to split, so stopped everything else and took a couple of days to get it done together.  Then we had to move what we hoped would be enough of the dry split wood down closer to the cabin, and got it neatly stacked and covered.

We also took some over to the new house and stacked it under the shelter of the workshop roof.

Rob made one more trip over to our friend Bob's to help him get his roof on, although they had to wait until a snow squall passed before they could finish it. Bob is at a higher altitude than us, so often gets snow when we don't.

We didn't quite get our entrance way timbers up in time, as then it snowed here too. And got much colder!

It sure was pretty though.

Our long time friends, Gary and Liz decided to come up from Florida for a visit.  While we were really looking forward to seeing them, we couldn't help but wonder why anyone would leave Florida in November to come to Ontario!  We can only guess that they missed the snow and crisp cold air! Luckily we were able to provide them with plenty of both.

Rob decided to move a few things into the new house so that we could have a more comfortable visit with them, so moved in our fridge, dining table and chairs, two living room chairs and our stereo and speakers.  While we still couldn't offer them a comfortable place to stay, we could at least gather easily around the wood stove, and provide some snacks and such.  With a hot plate and a bit of planning, we even managed to provide a hot soup for lunch, and a simple dinner of veggie burgers and salad for a quick dinner!

Here I am (slightly blurry...) cooking our first dinner in the house!

And with our friends in our dining room:

We even managed to get out for a drive and showed them Bob's new (finished) timber frame.

After they left, it warmed up very slightly and Rob decided it was a good time to get the generator hook up installed while he had a chance. This will allow us to start up the generator and plug it into our off grid system if we need to charge the batteries, or simply run off of the generator at any point. He also decided to try to get the timber frame structure up under the roof overhang of the shop and new house front entrance.

We managed to get them up, but not totally installed, when it snowed again, and our temperatures plummeted. They will probably have to remain in this state until spring.

We always look forward to winter, and the changes it brings, but we always forget that it brings some new challenges with it.  The shorter hours of daylight result in Rob stopping early in the afternoon in order to get Jet out for one last walk before darkness falls. With an unusually cold December, we went through a lot more fire wood than normal, and it was a bit more effort to keep both the cabin and the new house warm.  When it warms up a bit we get snow, and then we spend a day plowing and clearing, which is how we spent Christmas Day!  Not to mention having to keep the solar panels clear of snow.

Still, it's nice in the winter to curl up in a warm house and have a game of scrabble with Jet but he was complaining that I used the "O" he wanted to use and put it on his triple letter space.   (O.k. - it might have been a staged photo as I was trying to get one of my PhotoCoach challenge entries completed - but I had fun doing it, and Jet's always willing to help out).

We also tried to take a bit of time to sit by the wood stove in the new house, while we still had the chairs and stereo there to enjoy.  It's nice to sit and listen to some of the many CD's we have that have been tucked away in storage all this time - not to mention enjoying the sound of real speakers! We've been listening to a limited number of CD's through a Walkman plugged into a docking station for far too long...

All this will end though, as we are about to move that little bit of furniture back out, so that Rob can begin the task of taping drywall, sanding, and painting. The house is about to go through some real changes!

He's spent the last week or so trying to get his workshop organized so that he has room to build the cabinets and things that will fill the new house.  Wisely, he decided not to rent a floor sander over Christmas to do the upper floors!  Instead, we curled up on Christmas Eve, with our little tree outside all lit up, and toasted each other with hopes that Christmas next year will truly be celebrated in the new house.

New Year's Eve came and went, with severe cold warnings, and bright blue skies.  We stayed pretty close to the wood stove for the most part, although I couldn't resist bundling up and going down to see the changes in the river.  This time last year the river was wide open, but this year there was a small narrow channel here and there, and for the most part it was mostly ice.  While there are lots of animal footprints along the edges, you won't see mine as I am pretty cautious not to get too close to the edge, which still changes almost daily.

And so, as 2018 begins, we continue to dream and plan and design the house interior, and look forward to the coming months as everything (hopefully) comes together. Our time here in the cabin has been sweet, and I know there are things I will surely miss, but at the same time I am looking forward to the change.  We are anxious to pull out our boxes of "stuff" to see what has survived, to rediscover some of the art work we have missed seeing on our walls, and to listen to more of the music we have missed all this time.

My mantra this year is simple, yet complex. It is "Community".  For while this project has gone on, it is something we have had in some ways, but not in others.  I hope that the finishing of this house will bring more community back into our lives somehow, whether through more frequent visits with friends, or the bringing together somehow of more like minded people.  I'm not sure yet where it will begin, but I know this word is for me this year, so I will remember it, sing it, chant it, and see what happens.

Wishing all the very best for 2018, and peace, love and joy to all.