Have I mentioned WIND lately?

 This is what we woke up to the day before my birthday. It wasn't much and didn't last long.

This is our front yard. The weeds got cleared off when the construction crew was here.

 This was the view from the front room. When the weather is like this, we work on the inside of the house.

 Pa replaced the white ceiling fan with the silver trim with this beauty. I really love it. Got it from Lowe's

 He put the living room fan in his office. So he will be nice and cool in the summer. He tried to  put up a ceiling fan in my craft room but couldn't find the studs so I guess I will have to use a floor fan. YUCK!

 Somewhere in this mess is the counter top he installed in my craft room. I definitely need some shelves above the counter top so I can get some of the stuff off the floor.

 This is looking the other way. Believe it or not, I got the room more organized today. You can at least walk thru the room with out tripping over a rubber stamp or a jar of glitter. I still want shelves tho. I could start my own craft store.

 Here's Pa resting after putting my cd holder half way together. He said it would take two people to hold it to finish putting it together. None of the dogs volunteered. There's Maggie on the look out for burglars. She has suddenly gotten a touch of wanderlust and keeps disappearing so she's ended up in the dog pen a couple of times.

 That cd holder had 101 pieces and it is only about 3 1/2 feet tall! You had to have an engineering degree to put it together. We had to take it apart at least once and start over. This was my birthday present from Pa. He also got me a belt sander for some of my wood finishing projects. That sander can sand all the way to China before you even realize it!

 And here is the finished product. I already have my 250 cd's in it. I had to use one of my old ones to put the rest in so now if we ever get electricity, I can have music.

 We have all sorts of old kitchen implements so I put them on top of  the cabinet on the opposite side of the kitchen from the ones I showed you the other day.

 Here's more. They will only get dusted once a year....maybe

 More!

 I found these spurs in a box and thought they would look nice next to Clint Eastwood. My friend drew this as well as others.

 We bought a pine dresser in Vegas just before we left. It looked pretty beat up and the drawers were cracked so I sanded them down and filled the cracks with wood filler and sanded them again and painted them white. I am going to paint some branches on them and mod podge some birds on the front to kind of gussie it up. I should have sealed the dresser with Kilz first because where I didn't sand the dresser to bare wood, the paint tends to flake off. I put three coats of paint on the darned thing.

 I got the bright idea of just dipping the drawer pulls into the paint and then letting them drip dry. They turned out pretty good and only needed one coat of paint

 We have to wait until the factory rep comes to repair the wall board before the dresser will be put where it is supposed to go.

This is my spice cabinet. I ordered the steps from Amazon.com. This way I have less wasted space in the cabinet. I still didn't have enough room for all my spices so had to order two more for the cabinet on the other side of the stove. I think there were 61 spices in all. I made the labels for the jars. Why do I have so many spices when I hate to cook? Pa bought a lot of them. I basically use cumin, season salt, chili powder, and pepper when I cook. I love all the things you can get to organize your cabinets. There is no place for all those gadgets you use when you cook so I am going to order a pull out drawer to put in one of the cabinets near the stove.
    For my birthday, I went to the store and bought myself a little chocolate cake and got a chocolate meringue pie for Pa. In return he took me on a tour of the town dump. He wanted me to take all the boxes and stuff to the dump but I didn't want to go by myself the first time. If he knows I can do it, he will expect me to be the official dumper from now on. The dump charges you by the pound so it costs us $9.00 but was well worth it. We are accumulating another truck load as we speak.
    It has been windy ever since my last post! We are no closer to moving into the house than we were last week. I have to admit I am getting tired of living in this crappy motor home. I'm tired of moving everything back and forth just to have room to do anything. I have to empty half the fridge to find anything and then repack it. I've tried to be patient but have to admit that I lost it yesterday and yelled a bit. Pa doesn't seem to understand that women are nesters and need to be in their home. Luckily we do get to spend a big part of the day in there thanks to the wood stove but if you want a drink or gotta pee, ya gotta run across the driveway and use the motor home. Pa would not appreciate it one bit if I just walked out the door and squatted. It would also be nice to be able to take more than a two minute shower. Can you tell I am getting antsy? I just want to sleep in my own bed!!!!!! Is that too much to ask? Some good news to report, the solar panels are supposed to arrive on Monday.
    Well, that's about it for now. Until next time!

Not much new going on

    After a few very windy days, it is calm today. We had a bit of rain and snow last night. My plan yesterday was to sand down a dresser to get ready to paint while Pa went to Show Low to pick up some supplies from Lowe's. Sand was blowing like crazy and since I had lip gloss on, my lips were covered in sand! I ended up staying in the motor home and read an entire book. After Pa got back, he discovered  he forgot to buy some of the things he went to Show Low for! The man had a list and every thing! One item he forgot were the shingles to finish the battery room roof. Soooooo, it looks like another quick trip to Show Low or to just leave the plastic he stapled the the roof until we get around to going to the "big" city again. It really doesn't pay to forget anything on your trip to town because those 120 mile round trips get costly with gas being so expensive. I think it is up to $3.25 a gallon in Saint Johns. What's with that anyway? We have a gas surplus and the gas keeps going up. I'm sure it has a lot to do with all that is going on in the Mid-East. Wouldn't you hate to live there?
    We are expecting our solar panels sometime next week. Pa has to fix the tire to the trencher so he can call the propane company to come out and install our tank and propane lines. We are so close and the closer we get to being able to move in, the slower things seem to move! Pa can't understand why I am getting so antsy. He doesn't realize that women are natural nesters. I don't know what men are natural at, procrastination maybe?
     Anyhow, maybe I will have some pictures to share next post! Stay tuned!

Wind with a chance of rain and snow

I don't know about you but this looks like more than 35 mph wind gusts to me. I got paint on my shirt so had to do a hand wash to get it out. I did pretty good actually. I usually get paint all over me. Today one spot on my shirt and one spot on the dog. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time!

     Due to the forecast of wind and maybe rain and snow, we thought it would behoove us to get the battery room painted. It's made out of chip board or what ever you call it. I could just see it swelling with water and popping apart. I started early and got the whole thing painted before noon. It took exactly a gallon of paint but then Pa wanted to put some trim on so we will have to open the other gallon later. I was waiting for him to caulk the joints but ran out of patience and told him he could do that later and I would repaint over them. He is going to put on a metal roof but in the meantime, he put tar paper on the roof to protect it from the elements.
     I got  a big shock the other day when I got my Verizon bill for the internet. We went over one gigabyte and they charged me an extra $60.00! I thought it would only be $10.00 by reading their booklet but that is only for those little notebooks, not a lap top. So we really have to watch our usage. After we get the house set up, I may get Wild Blue also and after we use up Verizon, switch over. We are committed to 2 years with Verizon, darn!
   I have been busy spraying my Krylon Hammered paint on everything. I am getting tired of cabinet hardware. You don't realize how much you have until you start taking handles and knobs off the cabinets. One of my cans of paint doesn't look right and is leaky so my latest handles will have to be redone after I get a new can of paint.   

 This is a magazine rack I took out of my neighbors trash in Vegas. I have to replace the top but painted the iron and it turned out quite nice. Now to find a nice piece of wood.

 This is a chandelier my dad made for me. It is made out of thin slices of rock and made in the Tiffany style. It's been packed away forever and I wanted to include it in our new house. My dad was very talented, even making his own rock saws.

 This is one of the bathroom lights I painted with the hammered paint. It looks so much better than silver. More rustic

 At a garage sale just before we left Vegas, we bought a bunch of antique pop crates. One of them had all sorts of antique bottles and cans. Notice the Hershey candy bar box? Now who would have kept that for all these years?

   Here is another pop crate full of goodies. I forgot to take a picture of the graniteware coffee pot we got. It is very ornate and pretty.
    Lil Abner helped Pa finish the battery room so the next day, Pa and I moved the 500 pound generator into the battery room. What a job that was! We used two metal poles, two come alongs and a pry bar, not to mention our superior muscles and heaved and hoed and got it into the truck and over to the room. Then we did everything in reverse and unloaded it. Where's Superman when you need him?

    And there it is, in it's final home. Pa took the shipping crate off later in the day. I know it looks small but it really did weigh 500 pounds. Bengay anyone?

Battery/Generator room

 Our batteries arrived Monday. Pa met the truck driver at the entrance to the ranch so he wouldn't have to get lost on our roads. They weigh about 100 pounds each and are very expensive!

 Pa decided he had better get busy and start building the generator room. He is used to working with steel so wasn't sure he could build a room

 While he was doing that, I ran down the road and dug up 4 baby trees. Here are my helpers to plant them. I no sooner got one planted and Harley had to go pee on it. Probably killed it right off!

 Hmmmm, they aren't helping much but at least they are keeping me company.

 There is my row of baby trees. I sure hope they live. I need to get six more to plant on the other side. The ground is so hard where I dug them up but this is the right time of the year since the sap isn't running. I got as much of the roots as I could.

 Another view.

 Lil Abner came over to lend a hand to help Pa build the generator room. He's had more experience. Sometimes I think they do more talking than building but they had a great time. It seems what one doesn't know, the other one does so they make a great pair.

 Trying to make sure the wall is straight.

 Oh! the sides are going up! Wonder who is going to paint the darned thing. One guess....ME. Pa hates to paint.

 Gotta be just perfect

 Look at that concentration

This is my new best friend. Rustoleum Hammered paint. I am painting all the lighting  fixtures in our house. They are currently silver and too modern looking for us. This is much more our style. The only thing I don't think I can do is the fan in the living room. I may get paint inside the motor. We will move it to another room and replace it with something else. I'm hoping I can get the bathroom lights off by myself so I don't bother Pa while he is in a building mood. I did manage to get the one hanging over the dining room table disconnected and taken down all by myself!
Going to Springerville tomorrow to get some wood. I may actually get to start tiling my kitchen table by this weekend!
OH, BY THE WAY...... JUST BECAUSE I AM BLOGGING NOW IS NO REASON NOT TO EMAIL ME ONCE IN A WHILE. I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING ALSO. So, keep in touch, OK?

Getting Organized.......Kinda

Last night's sunset, for your viewing pleasure. It was awesome.

Up and at it early this morning. Made it to Mom's Laundry by 8. It seems no one in Saint Johns gets up early so I had the laundromat to myself for a while. One guy came in from Concho and was quite chatty. Had 5 loads to wash and 2 to dry. I did stop at the market first and got me some coffee and biscuits and gravy and ham. Gotta keep my strength up for the day ahead. Then off to get a couple of barrels of water, back to the grocery store to pick up a few things, across the street to Family Dollar to get Pa some Sprite for his afternoon toddy, then to the post office, the library, and then Circle K to get some ice and a bottle of water for the trip home. I met Lil Abner at the ice plant where we get our water. Sure glad I got there first because  he had the water truck which holds 1600 gallons of water and I just had two 50 gallon barrels to fill. When I got home, Pa had a fire going in the wood stove. It looked so inviting, I decided to grab a book, pull up my chair and spend the day reading since it was snowing outside. 

 Ok, how can you relax when staring at this mess? The picture below is my craft room. I can't do much yet because we need something to hold up the counter top that will act as my work space and I don't have any shelves to put all my craft stuff on. Sooooo, forget about this room.

 This is the guest bedroom. Most of the boxes need to go to the craft room but you've heard that story. Plus we need to dig out the king sized bed out of the 48 ft semi trailer. It's about half way down and it may take a few months before we get that far.

 Oh look, there is one section of my counter top in the craft room. Won't it look nice when it gets put all together?

 Here's Pa's room which used to be the den. Now it will be Pa's cave, a room he can call his own. Too bad it is right next to the living room. He isn't the neatest person in the world. We need to dig out the roll top desk and his lawyer's bookcases before we can start to organize this room. Guess where they are? In the semi trailer. The book cases are close to the back but the desk is somewhere near the back.

 This is our bedroom before I gave up the idea of reading and decided to organize. Pa and I put the bed together as far as we could with no way to air up the bed as yet. We have one of those Select Comfort beds. It is really comfortable and we love it but you have to get over the fact that you spent 2 grand on two bags of air.

 This is the kitchen. What a mess. I managed to empty all the boxes except the ones I shoved into the pantry. I need to order some organizers from OrganizeIt but the spice shelves won't be in till the end of February. When we first saw this house, we were in awe with all the storage space. Guess what? There is not enough storage space. We need more cabinets and shelves. We bought some boards to make additional shelves but haven't gotten around to it yet. There is a screen door across the doorway. We use it to lock the dogs in the kitchen when we have to go somewhere. We lock the doggie door also. At least they have more room than in the motor home.

 Here's our bedroom minus most of the boxes. We discovered I couldn't open the bottom drawer to my dresser so we switched places and mine is where Pa's used to be.

   Finally, I decided I had done enough and plopped into my recliner, put my feet up, grabbed my book and looked at the clock and it was 5 pm already! The dogs hadn't been fed, Pa hadn't been fed and I was getting a might hungry myself. We all migrated back to the motor home where I fixed dinner for the dogs and us. Then dishes had to be done. Now it is my relaxing time, after my shower, that is!