Still waiting for Spring

Like a tractor on an icy road, February somehow slipped past us.  Ahhh, sorry Rob - I couldn't resist ....

The icy roads I mentioned in last month's blog, didn't improve much in early February. Often a good snowfall will stick to the ice and change the conditions in our favour, but not this time. Rob was out plowing and hit a particularly icy spot, and found himself sliding off over the edge of our road. We tried using a shovel to remove all the surrounding snow from the tires, but the tractor just kept going in deeper. Rob tried to use the tractor's front bucket for leverage but that just made the tires spin, and pushed the tractor further into the bush. For a while it looked like we were going to have to call someone and get pulled out, but Rob decided to give it one more go, and he lucked out, and somehow got enough leverage to push the tractor out backwards and back onto the road.

On the plus side, that was the last time we saw a snowstorm! There have been quite a few to the south of us, but so far the Valley has missed them all, and we haven’t plowed since. Not that winter is quite over. Certainly the cold weather is still with us, with wind chill and frost bite warnings continuing, even now that it is mid-March. I don’t know how many times we’ve thought “this must be the last really cold night”, but then we see more in the forecast. Hopefully not too many more, as we have are now burning up the last of our firewood.

Rob has managed to spend a couple of days in his makeshift shelter on the porch, working on timber braces, but nowhere near as much time as he hoped he would. It's just been too cold.

He has however, been able to spend a huge amount of time on the house designs, which will prove to be a good thing when the weather turns, as he can then dedicate his time to the actual building. He finished all the final window designs, and we got our last quote back and have sent in our order!

We just need to let them know what colour we want the window exteriors to be. In order to do that, we have to figure out the exterior cedar colour, and roof colour, so that we can get the window colour right. Every time I drive anywhere, I find myself looking for metal roofs, and checking out people's window colours (most of the windows are white and we know we don't want white so it hasn't been very helpful!) Rob and I both agreed we like the rusty barn roofs the best, and discovered you can actually order a rusting roof. The web sites advertise "new steel that looks 100 years old" ! It's kind of tempting, but we think there may be some issues, so we will go with a coloured roof instead. We spent a day driving around to some of the stores to see what roofing is available, and Rob got busy figuring out how much we'll need. This is the roof design, although it has probably changed since I took a photo of Rob's screen.

We just received our exterior stain samples, and have little pieces of cedar all coated with the various colours that we think we might like. At the same time, we also ordered and received some interior white "wash" samples for the pine ceilings.   Hopefully this week we will sort all these colours out, and make some final decisions.

Rob has worked his way through all of the drawings, in an attempt to visualize how he is going to assemble all the timbers once they are ready.  In one breath he is talking to me about renting a crane, vs. building his own assembly, and in the next he is back to talking about double walls, vapour barriers, and sources for the insulation.

Most days he spends hours and hours on the PC, and if I find it hard to keep up with his conversational topic switches, it's nothing compared to what I see him doing on his PC screen.  Watching how-to videos one moment, calculating costs and budgets the next, installing software for room designs to try to figure out wood stove placement, following numerous building forums, researching woodworking tools.... and that's just a small part of it!

Fortunately Jet requires daily play times, and some good long walks, so Rob has lots of opportunities to get up from that chair and get some fresh air and exercise.   Jet's always happy to go the building site, where he can check for the scent of deer, while Rob can think a bit about the house.

Jet is a bit too keen on checking for deer though, so is back to being walked on a long line again, after running off one evening and putting both Rob and I into a panic when he didn't return.  He came back eventually, tired and (perhaps) a touch contrite, so Rob has doubled his efforts now on recalls, heeling, and general off leash behaviour. They have an intricate series of game playing, interspersed with training that Jet seems to enjoy.  It's good to get his brain working too! (Jet's - not Rob's. Rob's brain is busy enough!)

We didn't think that the river surface froze over completely last year, so checked on some of our photos and sure enough, it was open in the center, and there were very few signs of animals crossing the river. But this year it actually did freeze over, and the deer have been crossing it constantly. We didn't really know if this was normal, but then we read that the Great Lakes have frozen over more than they have in decades, and even a small part of Niagara Falls froze !  So this really is an unusual year.

While we always remain cautious and stick close to the edge, it was lovely to be able to walk along and look up and down the river. But one day as I stood at the edge I realized I could hear the river running under the ice, and although the surface still appeared to be frozen, there were fewer fresh deer tracks, so I followed their cue, and decided it was time to stop walking the edge. Sure enough we had a short mild spell, and the slush began to form on the surface.

But then it got cold and everything froze again! These are Jets big paw prints.

And so begins the pre-spring tease.  A little breath of warm air followed by another deep freeze.  Slowly though things are beginning to emerge.

We didn't manage to go snowshoeing yet with our friend Bob, but we did go out for a good long walk along the road near to where he lives.

In his area there is a lot more hardwood, whereas we have a lot more cedar, balsam and spruce.  We don't have a single beech tree here, yet there, they were everywhere we looked. We think we may try planting some beech nuts here and see if we can get some growing. We had some beautiful big beech trees around the dome and always loved them.  The birds and squirrels loved the beech nuts as well, although here they certainly seem to enjoy the feast of cedar seeds so they aren't lacking for food!

We live in logging country, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see logging equipment on our walk, but I was.

This is the biggest saw I've ever seen, and it was interesting to see the equipment they use. In another couple of weeks this area will be a sea of mud, so I guess it's easier to do the cutting now.

On the way home we pass a lot of planted forests, all perfectly lined up, with the forest floor bare. Even from the car you can see through a long way!

Both Rob and I say we are reluctantly saying goodbye to winter in a way – it’s been nice to be cozied up near the wood stove, and we know we have a pile of work coming our way!  These lovely early evening winter walks are about to end.

There is a quiet beauty to our winter surroundings, a stillness and pristine whiteness.  But this morning the air was filling with sounds, the lovely sounds of small birds, blue jays, crows and ravens, and red squirrels chattering, but also the sounds of the trucks on the other side of the river in the gravel pits, chain saws in the distance…. We are slowly emerging into the sunshine and warmer weather, getting ready to build our nests.... and in our case our new timber frame house!

Looking in, Looking out

If I had to sum up January in just one word this year, I guess it would be "cold". We've been keeping close to the wood stove, and burning up a rather alarming amount of firewood. There have been days when we thought there was something wrong with our lovely little stove, thinking it wasn't putting out much heat. It took a while, but we finally realized that it does just fine when the temperature doesn't go much below minus 20 degrees Celsius. We had lots of nights that were well below minus 30, and days that hung in around minus 25, and that's before the wind chill factor. We do have electric baseboards, and did have to leave a couple of them on in the downstairs rooms overnight. We found that if we let the house get too cold, we spend all day fighting to warm it up again.

Jet doesn't seem to even notice the cold, so he had us out everyday for the usual play times, and walks.

 

 

But there were a few times when we just had to cut the walks short a bit. As wrapped up as we were, with just our eyes, nose and cheeks bare, we could feel the biting wind on our skin, and worried about Jet's ears and paws getting too cold.

In between the cold spells, we did have our usual January thaw, which lowered the snow bank levels, brought rain, and freezing rain, and left our roadway rather an icy mess. Wood stove ashes do a marvellous job of providing traction on ice though, so after spreading them on one of the hills, I was able to get the truck out after only one or two mishaps of getting stuck!

There has been some carnage on the river - one night something took a deer down - either a coyote or a wolf I suppose, leaving the remains of the deer on the other side of the river. It's "Nature's way" as they say, and there is no doubt it provided crows, ravens and bald eagles with a bit of a feast for more than a few days. In the spirit of photography, I placed a deck chair in the snow along our shoreline, and waited for a while to see if there would be any opportunities to photograph a bald eagle. I must say that I did have a few anxious moments, sitting all alone in the woods, when I started to think about what it was exactly that took a deer down....but decided I wouldn't worry.

There were no signs of the bald eagle while I sat there so I left, and no sooner did I leave than all the birds returned. They seemed to know I was in the area and must have been hanging around nearby.

January is always a good time to try out some new recipes, so I spent some time in the kitchen, trying my hand at making my own pizza crust, hummus, and a big pot of posole with pork. I still have rather a lot of dried chiles stored away, as well as an enormous bag of dried blue corn, so decided it was time to use some supplies up.  Next on the list will be hand made corn tortillas.  Rob thinks we should figure out how to make wood oven bagels, but I haven't got that adventurous yet! I am once again able to pick up my monthly order from the local food co-op due to a change in pick up location, so I was happy to get some organic Highland beef for chili too. Turning the oven on seems to warm up the kitchen a bit more, so it was nice to spend some time close to the stove, and we now have a good supply of meals in our freezer again.

Rob has been working hard the last few weeks on window designs, sending out requests for quotes, and getting ideas from my brother Mike who, because of his job, knows a whole lot about windows! Which is lucky for us...

It's been a bit of a struggle and the program Rob uses to do the drawings crashes an awful lot, which doesn't help. But there is also (as always!) a lot to think about. How the windows will look from both the inside and outside. What size they should be and what shape. How many there should be. Which ones should open. How they should open. (Open in, open out, open vertically, open horizontally, or even tilt!) Double glazed vs. triple glazed. Heat transfer, U factor, Solar gain... Wood vs. fibreglass vs vinyl.. Inside colour, outside colour .... I don't think I will ever think of windows in the same way again.

When we first moved into the cabin I was thrilled to just have windows that opened easily, and in fact I'm still amazed that I can just crank them open whenever I need to.

Rob made them all by hand, and would love to do that again, but it would take way too long, and really isn't practical this time if we ever want get this house built! In the dome the windows he built were a bit more interesting and I loved them, but they were difficult to open and close and I couldn't reach most of them to ever clean them.

Every decision we make about windows, also seems to affect the cost. Rob did manage to get the cost down for most of them, although in the end he actually added windows and increased the size of some so that cost went up! But I think he's done a good job, and we'll be happy with them. The views are stunning on the building site, and we want to be able to enjoy those views through the windows as much as possible.  This will be my view from the kitchen!

We didn't venture out much in January, but did go to an open house at a local farm, complete with a wagon ride - and picked up delicious rainbow carrots, and potatoes, and Feta and Tomme cheese made from sheep's milk.  The farm is off grid and we had an enjoyable time learning about their unique cold cellar, and looking around a bit.

Next time we should bring our snow shoes as there were trails available, and it is in a beautiful spot. They also have a yurt!

We hadn't been in one since visiting our friends Ross and Hanne in New Mexico for sound healing and shamanic healing sessions.  Sadly our dear friend Ross passed away after a brief and unexpected illness in January.  He was an amazing man; healer, teacher, artist, friend, and so much more....His passing has made both of us spend some time looking in, and looking out....missing him, yet ever aware of our joy and gratitude for knowing him.

Being outdoors is always healing, so we took some time out for a bit of a snowshoe hike, and for some gentle walks around.  There is a lovely spot on the edge of the river with a perfect log for sitting on.  Under the shelter of the trees, on a sunny day I can sit comfortably for quite a while, listening to the silence. The river is almost frozen over, so I can no longer hear it. But if I sit for a while, I will hear the drum of the pileated woodpecker, the scolding of a red squirrel, and the sound of the raven. So it isn't all that silent after all.

We are cautious and stay close to the edge of the river, but it really does seem to be quite frozen this year. Here there is a lovely natural clearing next to the river's edge. The previous owners of the property used to clear the snow, and their kids would skate here in the winter!

On the other side of the tree line (above Rob's head)  is our new house site.

On the day we were out there were a few animal tracks across the river, but not many. Two days later it looked like the deer were dancing all over the river. 

When we were snowshoeing we discovered deep deer trails through the woods too.

 

And circling high above us one day, some ravens and that bald eagle!

 

Back at the cabin we load up our porch with a bit more firewood, settle in next to the wood stove, and Rob gets back to the house plans. Next on our list is to decide on the metal roof colour and exterior house colour, as we need to know what colour to order for the exterior of the windows.  In the spirit of our times in New Mexico, I would love to have a turquoise roof.  But in looking through some photos online, we are surprised to see that we both like a photo of a house with a rough grey wood siding, and grey window exteriors.  Perched on rock and surrounded by the trees, the setting is similar to ours, and the house has a peaceful sort of feeling to it. Both of us like the way it blends in naturally with the surroundings. Of course, we would have to add some colour in somehow here and there! Maybe some kind of funky accent colour. But I am no longer sure that the turquoise roof is right.  More decisions....! I know though that Rob is anxious to get the windows ordered, and to get back to working in his little closed-in area on the porch. He's been trying to work on some braces but comes back to work inside when it gets too chilly out there.

On a cold winter day Leon reminds us that sometimes the best thing to do is curl up in a cozy spot of sunshine. He's 18 years old, and failing a bit, but still purrs as loud as ever, especially when he's comfy and warm!

 

As much as Jet loves the outdoors, he seems to take a cue from Leon.

New Year - 2014

I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. Suddenly we have found ourselves into the first week of January, with Christmas and New Year's celebrations already over. Although we celebrate the season pretty simply, we both look forward to Christmas, and always enjoy the festivities. We still hang on to some of our favourite traditions; playing our favourite Christmas music, (Charles Brown Cool Christmas Blues, Jethro Tull Christmas Album, and various other bluesy Christmas albums we have picked up over the years) hanging up the Christmas cards we receive, calling some friends and family.  Eating mince meat tarts, and Christmas shortbread. Stocking the fridge with the ingredients for some special meals. We both agreed though, to opt out of the interior Christmas tree tradition again this year. Space in the cabin is just too tight. However, I came home from work one night to the wonderful glow of Christmas lights outside the cabin. Rob had decided to surprise me by hanging some lights on one of the trees outside of the kitchen.  (It was rather cold to go back outside to try to take a photo so I took it from inside the kitchen!)  It was a beautiful surprise, and lent a nice festive air to the rest of the season.

As we have done for the past few years, Rob and I agreed to each buy the other two good books for Christmas. We are so happy to have found a wonderful independent bookstore in Arnprior. We shopped together, so we were both concerned that we had picked the same books - but we didn't!

I must say though, that Rob's favourite gift this season was probably the helicopter his sweet Mom sent him. Yes - a remote control helicopter. Jet was not nearly as impressed with it, when Rob started it up and it flew into Jet's nose. Rob says he needs a large interior space to fly it in - and this cabin is clearly not large. When he suggested he could maybe try it out in the yoga studio I go to - well obviously I had to say no.... but it was tempting!

Leading up to Christmas, Rob continued to try to build an enclosed space on the porch so that he would have some where to work on some smaller timbers this winter. But the weather just did not co-operate, and we were hit with such cold temperatures that he wasn't able to do much outdoors. We've had a lot of nights in the minus 20 to minus 30 range already! He did manage to finally get something built, but it took a while. Just before New Year's things warmed up a bit, and Rob moved some timbers down in preparation.  Working outside in the snow was a still a bit of a challenge, and he found he got cold and wet pretty quickly. The "warm spell" didn't last long, and we were back into very cold weather in no time. By New Year's Eve they were forecasting lows of minus 32, with wind chills well below that. The timbers were put away again until the next "thaw".

 

 
The little wood stove we have in the cabin does an amazing job, but we did find that at really cold temperatures we were struggling a bit, and had to finally turn on some electric heat to help keep the chill off. We woke up one morning to a rather cold temperature of 8 degrees in the house. Now some of you may remember that when I first lived with Rob I used to complain when my shampoo froze in the Dome, so perhaps I have become a little soft if I can't tolerate 8 degrees now! Luckily I have a good supply of long johns, and a good thick warm wool sweater, so I can get warm even when the cabin feels a bit chilly.

Despite the cold though, we still find ourselves outdoors several times a day. The beauty of the woods and the river beckons no matter what the temperature is. The river changes daily, and we like to walk along the edge to see the changes in the flow, the ice that gathers in beautiful formations, and the few ducks that cling to the remaining open water these days.

 

 

The open areas are slowly disappearing though. I'm pretty sure that last year we could still see a small channel of flowing water in front of the cabin, but by New Year's this year, there was no visible channel in this area.

Every day we also walk over to the building site. We are a little nervous about the lack of sunlight in December, as we will be depending on it for our solar powered electricity! So we walk down to the site at various times during the day to see whether or not the sun would be hitting the future solar panels location.

When there is no sun (and that has been a pretty frequent occurrence the last several weeks!) we simply walk down to the site, and look around and think about the house, the river, the beauty of the land.... Sunshine or not, every day we also walk around the property, through the woods, up the roadways, and along the paths.

We see lots of tracks in the snow; fox, deer, wild turkeys, snowshoe hares, but with Jet along we don't see a lot of wildlife.  We do scare up a grouse sometimes, and there are always red squirrels in the cedars, no matter how cold it is! 
 

Rob has been busy with more research the last few weeks. Now is the time to figure out a lot of the details, and we have to make decisions about some of the items we will need this year. The brand of wood boiler, the sizes, style and placement of windows and doors, the final finish for the concrete floor, the type of metal roof, well the list goes on and on. He spent a pretty good amount of time too, working out how he is going to assemble the timbers and raise them.  There's a lot to think about!

I'm glad we were able to spend more time living here first before we jump into building the new house. It gives us time to get a feel for the all of the seasons, and sometimes make adjustments to our plans. This week we noticed that we have lost any of the passive solar gain in the upstairs rooms in the cabin. The snow and ice slid down the roof, then froze again, blocking out most of the sun that used to shine through the windows and warm the rooms. I don't think we will have the same issue in the new house, but it's something to think about.

We also have a solar panel that we are testing, and we have come to realize how often it has to have the snow removed from it! Then of course we are also reminded that we have to think about where the snow falls, where it will slide down the roof and pile up, and where to put it when we shovel or plow. Every season brings a little more knowledge, and something else to consider. In the middle of summer it's too easy to forget about things like snow!

Well, maybe for me - I'm not the one out plowing...

 

As another festive season ends, we are both looking forward to getting back into some kind of routine here in the cabin. We had a lovely couple of weeks; good food, good wine, and a bit of time to relax after the stress of concrete pads, septic systems, well digging etc.  It's time now though to tuck away the Christmas cards, and Christmas bottle stoppers for another year, and get back to work on the house plans!

 

 

Slabs of concrete

When I was looking at the photos I wanted to use in this post, I was surprised to see that there was no snow on the ground when our concrete pads were poured. It seems like we've had snow on the ground for weeks already. But the photos are proof, that while it was pretty darned cold, the snow that had fallen earlier had definitely all melted away.

For two weeks we anxiously followed various weather report web sites, tracking storms and falling temperatures, and worrying that we were a bit too ambitious in thinking that we could get our concrete pads poured before winter arrived. But somehow we lucked out, and a little bit of warmer air arrived just in time for the pour, and lingered long enough to allow the concrete a couple of days to set properly.

I don't think either of us slept well the night before the pour. Rob was out on the highway by 7 a.m. to meet the pumping truck and to help guide him in. The concrete work team arrived shortly after, and because the truck was a bit late, the concrete trucks arrived around the same time. We were excited, but nervous. We were worried that the forms wouldn't hold, and although I was sure that Rob had put all the pipes in the right place, I must admit I was a little worried about the finality of encasing everything in concrete !

The pumping truck was quickly set up and positioned so it could reach both pads, but still allow the concrete trucks to attach themselves to the back of the truck to transfer the concrete.  Then it pumped a nice big blat of concrete on the ground behind the house, in order to clear all the lines, before they started to fill the forms. I of course thought he had forgotten to move the pump and was about to fill the yard with concrete!

The truck driver (wearing the red hoodie) controlled the pump with a remote device that he carried around.  Sometimes I think he was just having fun with the young guys who were hanging onto that pipe as he would jerk it around a lot!

They worked quickly to fill and spread the concrete, taking measurements of the levels all along to make sure everything was where it should be. The heavy flow of concrete did push the forms out a bit, but they held. Whew.

As more and more concrete filled in the forms they worked faster with their rakes. They make it look easy, like some kind of dance. But I tried raking some of the leftover concrete later on, and it's really hard work!

As they moved along the first pour (which was the house pad) one of them fired up the gas powered tamper, but it soon broke down. Rob tried to help fix it, but it looked like it was beyond repair.

Luckily they had brought along the wooden "manual" style tamper, so they had to use it instead. It's really hard work to bend over and use this one, and it doesn't do the same smooth job. But when they used the smoother/finisher it made it all look the same later on. This is going to be our finished floor in most of the rooms, so we want it to look good!

 

Once they finished the house pad pour they moved on to the workshop. They would periodically check the house pad concrete by lightly putting their foot on it to see if it was set enough for smoothing/polishing. Despite the slight bows in the forms, and the broken tamper, things seemed to be going pretty well. It was still colder out than promised, and I headed back to the house to warm up and add a few more layers on.  I came back a short while later to watch the work on the workshop. Unfortunately, that's when we ran out of concrete.  Ordering concrete is a bit tricky as whatever you order, you pay for, and it's yours. They don't take back unused concrete in the concrete trucks. So you sort of want to get the amount right! It's a bit difficult to guess how much you are short by, in the middle of a pour.  We weren't short by much, but it was enough that we had to wait a while for more to be delivered.

 

When it arrived it was a bit different consistency, so hopefully this doesn't affect the floor in the workshop. There was also more than we needed. If we had known, we would have set up some concrete forms elsewhere around the house pad, for things like the pads for our future propane tanks. We will need front steps too, but couldn't prepare for that as there will be more fill added before we can build those. So, we looked around, spied our new rock wall, and opted to pour the remaining concrete around the rocks.  Hopefully the concrete will help the rocks to stay in place a bit better as we did have concerns that they would move out. Here Rob gets to try his hand at pumping concrete! It's not easy to hang on to, and I was worried he would go out over the rocks.

Once the pour was complete, we were probably all relieved. We watched the pumping truck fold up and prepare to leave. They insert a big ball in the end of the pump and it sucks it up and this cleans out the entire arm. Everything gets hosed down as well to ensure there is no remaining concrete anywhere. As they pointed out - tomorrow will be too late - it will have set everywhere! The concrete that is in the pump ALSO gets dumped, but we had them put it in an area that needed some fill.  I guess it is fairly organic at least... Later on when it was still soft, Rob went back out with the tractor and scooped up and broke up the concrete where it had been dumped, leaving most of the concrete around the rocks though.

As the concrete firmed up slowly, they were able to start the smoothing process. They kicked off their big boots, replaced them with clean sneakers and fired up the smoothing machines. Then they walked these machines all around the pad. Waited half an hour, did it again, waited half an hour, did it again....They make this part look easy too, but it isn't.

While they smoothed the surface, we walked around and admired their work, the sun broke out, and the air began to warm up a bit at last.  It was really amazing to see our house floors begin to take shape! Rob had worked hard the last few weeks to get ready for this part.

 

I loved the patterns in the concrete, but after each smoothing session they slowly disappeared. After a long day, the concrete team  gave the pads one last polish, and then cleaned everything up and went home. Rob and I went home too, but couldn't resist going out for one more look before it got dark.

It was pretty amazing to be able to stand on the concrete, and now be at the finished height of our new floors.  Suddenly I could imagine that I was in the kitchen, the dining room.....

We went to sleep that night feeling pretty relieved that this part was done. Somehow, I thought that would be it for this year. Of course I forgot all about the fact that the concrete has to have lines cut into it, which Rob did the next day. And I forgot about the curing, and that it's best if the concrete stays wet and warm. So we had to keep checking the weather forecast, and when we heard it was going to get cold, Rob covered it with straw and plastic.  Rob had read that if we just put plastic down directly on the concrete, it might affect our acid stain finish when we apply it next year. I have visions of the straw leaving marks too, but that would be kind of cool maybe!

We had a couple of extra bales of straw so left them there for now, but I can use them for mulch next spring.

And THEN I thought that was it for this year, but of course - it isn't! Rob has been busy ever since, catching up on all the things that didn't get done in the fall - servicing the tractor, preparing for winter, and working on the next stage of the house plans. As well, he decided to try rigging up a small insulated room on the porch so that he can work on some of the smaller timbers if it's warm enough during the winter. 

We took one afternoon off though to clear a new walking path.  It's our goal to have a few loops through the woods, and I had hoped that I could simply trim some branches to clear the way, but the recent storms have dropped a lot of large trees in the areas we want to walk. With the help of the tractor we were able to clear one path for now, and it's lovely. It leads to a different area of the river. 
We climbed up through the woods on another path that we would like to clear and were stunned to see how many trees came down in the last wind storm. We will have to leave that area for another time, it's going to take a bit of work!

As always, we had plans to get a few more things done outside. But the temperatures kept dropping, and then the snow arrived.

 

Now it's time to get ourselves sorted out a bit here in the cabin. We've had to bring in anything that will be adversely affected by the cold temperatures, and are still trying to sort out our collection of hats, mitts, scarves and winter coats.  Every time Rob plows, or we walk the dog, we have a new collection of things that are wet and need to put somewhere to dry. On the plus side, it adds a bit of much needed moisture to the air !

Christmas is fast approaching, and I think we are both looking forward to some quiet nights by the fire, playing our favourite Christmas tunes, and curling up with a good book. We have a lot of research to do over the next few months, but I think we could both use the next couple of weeks to relax a bit.  I've stocked up on some books from the local library, and some new fabric paints just arrived in the mail.  And if you had told me 2 years ago, that two weeks before Christmas I would even be thinking about reading and painting, I would have not have believed it!!  What a lovely change this has been for us....

Oh, and Jet says don't forget we have to go play in the snow too.....

 Although even Jet has been lying closer to the wood stove the last few nights!