We have solar!

 In between wind storms, Pa and I managed to get the frame up for the solar panels. It took two or three days because we got tired of having our faces sand blasted. Will this wind ever stop? I am so tired of it. Thank God we can always spend time in the house instead of taking refuge in the motor home.

 This strange bird lives under our storage container with it's friend. It runs out from under the container and grabs some seed and then runs back under. It can fly. It is very nervous and is hard to get a good picture of it. I cropped this and it was taken from a steamy window.

 This picture isn't much better.

 Now the racks are up for the solar panels. Praise God we are making progress.......in between wind storms.

 Today dawned bright and beautiful so we managed to get all the solar panels up and bolted down. Just as we got the last one secured, the wind started up. I made sure to thank God for holding off until we could get it completed. Now all we are waiting for is for Steve's friend to come and hook them up to the batteries and inverter. OHHHHHH we are getting closer and closer!!!! The solar panels are getting their first wind trial. Hopefully they will still be there in the morning.

 OH look! Pa stopped to say hello. Can you believe we actually worked together and didn't kill each other in the process? Miracle of miracles. Hmmmm I believe that is a five finger salute and not a one finger one.
 Here is another picture of our birds. It has a bit of orange on it's chest.

What a cutie. We have some sparrows with more markings than the ones in Vegas. I don't know if this is one of those Junco's or not. Hey, I can recognize eagles and hummingbirds. I haven't seen our resident eagle for the past few days. Of course not, I had my camera with me.
I ordered two kinds of lilac bushes, some peppercini peppers and some heirloom tomato plants and they arrived yesterday. I will let them rest for a couple of days and then put them in pots in the house until the weather warms up. I love lilacs.
During the windy weather I've been unpacking more boxes. I found a box with two porcelain hands in it holding a toilet paper roll so it got installed in the guest bathroom. My great friend in Illinois gave it to me for Christmas one year. I also had a porcelain hand that could  hold  a guest towel and I installed it also. Hope it doesn't creep anyone out. I find hands to be fascinating for some reason. Especially real ones. Years ago at a craft show, some booth was doing wax casting of hands so I drug Pa and my mom in there and we all had our hands cast in wax. Then they poured plaster into the mold and produced our hands. I found them in a box and set them on the night stand in the guest bedroom. I especially love the one of my mom's hand. Anyway, I have just about got my craft room all settled. I put up brackets in the closet to put shelves on at each end and I can put some of the clutter in there. Pa has been so busy with the solar and sorting out his shop, he hasn't done much to his cave so it is still crowded with boxes. I know if I started putting things on shelves, he wouldn't like where they were so I'm leaving it up to him.
The linoleum and living room window are supposed to arrive in Kingman on Tuesday or Wednesday and then the workers are supposed to come and FINALLY FINISH THE HOUSE!!!!! What a happy day that will be. Maybe then we can start to get settled. I told Pa the other day that this is taking so long, the house  no longer feels new. I really like it tho. I rearranged the living room furniture so we could fit the entertainment center in the corner. We may get to watch TV some day. We haven't watched TV for almost 4 months with the exception of the four days we house sat for Daisy Mae.
What will tomorrow bring? Probably more wind! Talk to ya soon!

Morning visitors

 Every morning when we have coffee, we have little visitors having their morning drink. I love birds. Not sure what these are. I looked them up on the web and couldn't find any Northern Arizona birds that look like this. Some have dark grey heads. I put some bird seed in a feeder but they don't know what that is so I sprinkled some on a board and they went right to it.

 I ended up putting the feeder on the board this morning which you can't see here but they thought that was just groovy and started eating out of it.

 Here is another morning visitor. There are two of them actually. I put water out in  a dish for them. One of them stuck his paw in the water and washed his face. Cute. Yeah, I think they are cute now but I will probably shoot them if they get in  my garden. I discovered they ate most of one of the baby juniper trees I transplanted. Tonight I put out some left over lettuce by their water dish so maybe they will eat that instead.

 I found a paint sample at Lowe's called Earthen Rose which I fell in love with. So decided to paint one of the walls in the guest bedroom. It turned out so orange! Pa and I both hated it.Plus it was supposed to cover 400 square feet. Guess what? I had a two by two foot section that was still white because I ran out of paint! Oh well, back to the drawing board.

 Two coats of white paint later, we are back to the way it originally was. I'm thinking I am  not a bold wall color person. I may try to find a green that goes with my comforter and do one wall with that.

 We are making progress! We moved in the bed for the spare bedroom and I finally got to use the expensive comforter set I purchased years ago. I fell in love with this set and couldn't afford it because it cost $500.00 so over the course of a couple of years, I would stop by the store just go look at it and drool. Then I got the bright idea of looking it up on the internet and found it for $300.00 and snatched it right up. Obviously Pa and I were still working. So it comes UPS and I was so excited, I put it on the bed and fell in love all over again. That night Pa has a fit because it is too heavy and too hot. Soooo off the bed it goes, back into the package and in the closet where it has been for five or six years. Just a hint if you are a guest. Just suck it up and enjoy my beautiful comforter set. You can always shove it to the end of the bed while you are sleeping and then make the bed the next day and I will never know the difference!

 With the exception of a couple boxes and some missing molding, the guest room is ready. You still can't use the bathroom or electricity yet tho.

 Pa and I dug out the roll top oak desk. It was in the semi trailer. He is going to use it for his main desk. I got him a lap top for his birthday so it will fit in the desk just fine. We also found an oak file cabinet that used to belong to his dad. Today we dug out the oak book case. I used to have it in my living room in Vegas. I donated it to Pa's cave. I am hoping with all this nice furniture, he will keep his area cleaner than he did in our former home. He wants saloon doors going into the kitchen from his room. We'll have to check the web and see if we can find some.

 Here is our buffet. It looks so nice in the dining room. My dad made the table lamp out of Iron wood and leaded rock for the shade.

 My mom painted these two saws. They are both farm scenes so I thought they would look nice together. Oh look! There is a bottle of Margaritas sitting on the table!

 My mom also painted this saw with the desert scene. It is hanging in the living room

 I found this 3d wall hanging my Vegas daughter gave me years ago so thought it would look nice next to my swirly sun. I have a thing about sun things. I have three sun faces that I am going to hang on the outside of the house after it gets repainted

Here is a close up of the 3d wall hanging. It is made of plaster of some sort. I really love it.
Pa was going to work on the frame for the solar system but it was so windy. It really makes you tired trying to work in the wind. So instead he crawled under the house to install an electrical outlet. He wasn't looking forward to that but was glad he got it done. Hopefully tomorrow won't be so windy and he can work on the frame. We are supposed to get some rain maybe.
The blasted factory guys haven't showed up yet so I called our salesman and asked for an update. He said he should have a schedule by Wednesday. Our kitchen flooring has come in and a new front room window so hopefully they will start by next weekend.
Ok, you have been updated. We would love to hear from some of you.....hint, hint

Dog tired!

Today was Show Low day. Since Pa and I usually end up in a fight, we decided that we would go shopping in Show Low by ourselves. He went last time so today was my turn. Lordy, I did not want to go. It is about 120 mile round trip and you are exhausted by the time you get there. We went thru the semi trailer yesterday and loaded up the back of my truck with donations to the Humane Society store. We finally got rid of all the gum ball machines we were going to go into business with. Thank you God! The thrift store was glad to get them. So all in all, I went to the thrift store, Big Lots, The Dollar Store, Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, Arizona supply, Ace Hardware, Safeway and the Chinese Buffet. On the way home, I stopped at the post office and then Circle K to get coffee and gas. I left at 8 a.m. and got home at 5 p.m. I still didn't get every thing I wanted, like potting soil, mulch and stuff for my garden and I really didn't care! All I wanted to do was come home and crawl into bed. Luckily I didn't have to cook dinner because I brought Pa some Chinese food.
Pa kept busy making the frame that the solar panels will go in or on, which ever the case might be. Once he gets the frame done and the panels mounted, our friend from Nevada will come and hook up the wires and we will be in business!
Lil Abner came over with one of his sons yesterday. The son is at least 6"6" tall and is as strong as an ox. He helped us get our oak buffet into the house for which I am soooo grateful. It makes the entire house look different. That puppy was so heavy and Pa and I would never  have been able to get it into the house from our storage container.
The salesman for our home told us that someone is supposed to come and completely finish the house for us but we haven't heard a word from anyone yet. Darn it, I want it done! We've been waiting for over two months to get every thing finished.
Tomorrow I am going to put up the shelves in my craft room and maybe paint one wall in the spare bedroom. I'll be sure to take pictures and post them. But for now? I'm going to crawl into bed!

Murphy's Law

I found three more baby trees and transplanted them yesterday. One took almost 30 minutes to dig up and the other two only took a couple of minutes. I thought since it had rained/snowed the day before that the ground would be wet and soft. Obviously, I don't know what I am talking about! The only reason the two were so easy was because they were growing in soft sand.

We've got gas!!!! Propane gas that is. The delivery driver suggested we paint the tank a lighter color because the tank will get hot in the summer and expand. We were kind of happy with the brown color because you can hardly see it since it matches the soil.

See? hardly noticeable!

Now to Murphy's Law. I decided to put the trench in for the electrical wire because Lil Abner said he might need his trencher back soon. I did a fantastic job doing the trench. I even did the one for the water pipe. Unfortunately when I turned the trencher around the trencher caught the side of the building and tore it off! I was horrified and knew that Pa would KILL ME! Well, at least it was the short side and not the entire 8x8 side.

Thank God and Harbor Freight for nail guns. Pa had it fixed in no time at all. Look at that trench, isn't it nice?

After I paint the nail holes, you'd never know...... unless someone talks about it on her blog. Hey, I'm not perfect by any means.
And now to Murphy's Law part two...

I finished trenching the water line and was trying to figure out how to get the trencher on one side of the trench or the other since I was straddling the trench. Lil Abner dug this the other day but with all the wind, it filled back up. I decided to just drive over the trench but unfortunately, the tire got caught in the darned thing and slewed around and knocked the blocks loose in the pump hole. There was cement in the holes and rebar. I broke a lot of the  block. You talk about being horrified. Now I knew that Pa was gona KILL ME!!!!!

Instead of murdering me, we made lemonade out of lemons. Pa had to have a hole in the bottom of the blocks to put the water pipe in so after using a jack to put the blocks back where they had to go, he knocked a big
hole in the block and put a pipe thru it and then we proceeded to lay the pipe in the trench.

He actually told me to use the trencher to fill the trench back up. Are you kidding me? No way was I going near the trencher. I used a shovel and shoveled the dirt back into the trench. Call it penance for my big sins of the day. But believe it or not, Pa wasn't too mad and we actually got a lot done today in getting our water tank ready for the big fill. Tomorrow we are taking the 250 gallon water tote to town to fill up and we will use those gallons to wash out the 4000 gallon water tank and then it will be ready to fill.

I wasn't happy with the way the dresser turned out. It was supposed to look shabby chic but turned out looking more shabby than chic so I repainted it with two more coats of white and then dry brushed some brown across it. Now it has 5 coats of white paint on it. I am so sick of looking at that dresser! I have to wait till we have power to cut out my stencil of leaves and branches to paint on. I'm not in any hurry.

It was a beautiful day today. Had to be in the 70's. That's one thing I love about Northern Arizona. I can actually be outside on a warm day and not die of heat stroke.

Well, I'm glad I'm still alive and kicking. I'm glad Pa didn't KILL ME and bury me under the septic tank.
Talk to ya later!

Wind!

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FLAGSTAFF AZ
1256 PM MST MON MAR 7 2011

...STRONG WINDS OCCURRING ACROSS NORTHERN ARIZONA...

.A COLD FRONT MOVING ACROSS NORTHERN ARIZONA IS CAUSING STRONG AND
GUSTY SOUTHWEST WINDS ACROSS MUCH OF THE REGION. THE STRONGEST
WINDS HAVE BEEN OCCURRING IN THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER VALLEY.
STRONG WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH EARLY THIS EVENING
BEFORE DIMINISHING.

WIND REPORTS THROUGH 1230 PM MST INCLUDE:

SAINT JOHNS ........ 59 MPH.
WINSLOW ............ 58 MPH.
SHOW LOW ........... 56 MPH.

It has been very windy all day. 

I discovered that the dogs all 

had those teeny tiny ticks. We 

got some stuff to squeeze on 

their backs but

it didn't seem to do anything.

 Poor things, especially Jaz 

scratched all night. Today I

 fired up the generator and 

gave every one a hair cut.

Ok, more like a buzz cut. Pa

 said if you put oil on a tick,

 it can't breathe so it will

 disengage and fall off.

 I got the great idea to drench

Jaz in coconut oil. Then I was

 concerned she would get it 

all over the house so we made

 a mad dash for the motor home.

 Just as we got out side,

a sand storm came up and poor

 Jaz was not only covered in 

coconut oil but she was covered

 in sand! What a mess! She got

 another bath today.

Tomorrow I am going to town to 

do laundry and will stop by the 

feed store to get some strong tick

 shampoo and what ever the feed 

store owner 

recommends. We have to get a 

handle on these little buggers!

 The dogs are miserable. 

Luckily their blood is warmer 

than ours so the ticks

aren't the least bit interested in us.

 We hadn't given ticks much thought 

with it being winter and all. 

I thought they would be a summer

threat....WRONG!

Pa cut some wood today so we 

piled it in the house so we

 would have some in stock. 

Looking at the weather report, 

it is supposed to be in the 40's 

tomorrow for a high and by

 Thursday it will be 71! What 

a difference.

The propane guys didn't

 show up but you can't expect

 them to work in 60 mph winds.

 They aren't like the post office,

 "neither rain nor snow nor sleet

shall keep us from our 

appointed task" Didn't that used

 to be the post office's motto? 

Anyway, I thought for sure our

 motorhome was going to blow over

today, it was rocking so hard.

Like I said, my goal tomorrow 

is to get laundry done. I am really 

looking forward to the day when I can

 do laundry at home!

Talk to ya later! 

Progress again

We had a bit of snow a week ago Sunday. There really wasn't very much and it only stayed for a few hours.

 see? Not much at all

 It was cold tho, about 28 degrees

 Today the factory rep came out and started on the entry way rug. It was a total mess and wasn't even connected to anything. His name is Dave.

 Hmmmmm, it doesn't look like he is working too hard, sweeping with one hand. You wouldn't believe all the dust under the outdoor carpet.

 Tilly found it all to be very interesting.

 This is Bob. He was caulking around all the cabinets. When they delivered the house, all the bumps on our dirt roads, loosened the caulking. When the guys were done with those two things, they got a list and we went all around the house listing what else needs to be done. They will submit that to our salesman with their costs and hopefully he will ok it and they can come out and finish everything. They will have to tear out the kitchen linoleum and replace it which means we will have to empty the kitchen so they can work! If we had only known they were going to replace the floor, we wouldn't have moved anything in. Oh well.......

 Pa suddenly got inspired to work on the kitchen table. He put it together and I tiled it yesterday. I'm letting it dry for two days before I grout it. That sucker weighs a ton but it will be pretty. I want to get some oak trim for the sides of the table

This is our front entry way with the carpet all finished. It looks so nice. Notice the pallet we are using for a front step? One of these days we will replace it with a real step. One of the dogs won't use it unless we have a piece of cardboard on top of it. He thinks he will fall thru the cracks.
Our solar panels arrived this week so now Pa has to make something to hold the racks for the solar panels. He got the pipe to do that but will have to sink them in cement. The propane guys came out and looked around to see what they would need to put in our tank and the pipe lines. They are supposed to be back Monday to do that. So we are slowly making progress. Other than that, not much else going on. I am waiting to put shelves up in my craft room so I can organize that.
We discovered that Jaz one of our mini schnauzers has teeny tiny ticks in her ears. I've been scraping them out but we are going to town tomorrow to get water and will stop at the store and get some tick stuff to put on her. We will do all the dogs. I thought I saw some on Maggie's nose. Poor Jaz scratches and scratches so I know she is miserable. I finally bit the bullet and washed all four dogs in our tiny bath tub in the motor home. They loved getting clean and didn't fuss at all. Now I need to clip their nails. Never a dull moment around here!
The weather has been so beautiful this past week in spite of the wind. It was in the high 50's and low 60's and in the 30's at night. The wind is reeking havoc on my hair. I curl it every morning and being outside for five minutes makes it look like a hay stack. I need a different hair do. It is too short to put in a pony tail. Maybe I will just borrow one of Pa's many baseball caps and start wearing one of those all the time. Baseball caps do not make me look cute like they do on some women.
That's about it for now! Hopefully, I will have more news next week.