Wilamar Farm

More Fence Fun (Not!)

2012-01-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

Our solar electric fence has been a total failure so far. It never worked right from the start and we just thought it was a grounding issue. After trying to work on that and it still didn't work right we just about gave up.

Then after one particularly windy day we noticed the charger unit was showing in the red (not green like it's supposed to) indicating some sort of failure. My husband walked the fence line and found a branch laying across the wire. In spite of removal of the branch the unit still didn't work.

So we turned it off, thinking maybe the charge had run out and it just needed to be recharged. Every time I go out to feed I turn it on, hoping to see the needle jump from the red to the green, but no such luck.

Hubby is out of town for a couple of days so today I decided to walk the fence line and see if there was another branch or something on the line.

Here's what I found.

It's obvious that something got snarled up in the fence and did some damage. The yellow clips along the bottom are the neighbor's wire.

I decided to do a little more investigating and the culprit wasn't hard to find.

If you click on the pictures you will clearly see the barbed wire shred on the side in the above picure and the shoulder rip on this picture.

With my keen powers of observation there's no telling how long it's been like this. At least it was just the horse blanket that got a bit shredded and not the horse.

Painting Started

2012-01-26T19:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon I got the first part of my dental crown. The news was not encouraging. The dentist said he was concerned that the fracture ran from the back of the tooth to the front, rather than from side to side. I got my temporary crown on and he wants to see how it does for the next two weeks before he even orders the new crown. Apparently there is more of a risk for the tooth to totally split and/or the root to get infected which would call for a root canal. I'm going to be very careful for the next few weeks!

So today we went and bought my new fancy ladder. It is absolutely perfect for our tall walls. You can see I got one coat on the first wall. Look how much brighter the room looks already! I'm thinking I will put a second coat on and then do a first coat on the second wall. The next day I will second coat the second wall and first coat the third wall, and so on. Unless I'm feeling unusually energetic. Then I'll do more.

This afternoon our driveway alarm went off and I looked out to see a little van driving up to the house. It was a man from the county assessor's office. Since the house was newly sold he wanted to ask us a few questions. Plus he wanted to measure the play room.

Seems they did not have the accurate measurements/square footage of the house in their county files. How does this happen? The plans have to be approved by the county prior to building, plus an inspector has to come out and check things during the build. I don't get it. According to the county man they have been out to this house a few times in the eleven years that it has been here but somehow they have managed to not have the correct square footage. He said had it not been sold they would be after the last owner for the increased taxes this will no doubt create plus back taxes for the last five years!

I guess the good news for us is that the added assessment will not take affect until January 1, 2013. And since we are new owners we don't have to "worry about back taxes". Regardless, I'm not happy about this latest development. We're pretty much stretched to the limit as it is and knowing there is a good possibility that our house payment will increase by a good amount (albeit one year from now) does not make me happy at all. This definately bears a little research.

Grrrrr!

Hope your day is better.

Best Laid Plans

2012-01-24T19:53:00.001-08:00

We woke up this morning to the wind blowing the snow down. After a while it turned into big pretty flakes that quickly filled everything in. When we walked to check the mail it was quite beautiful. On the way back to the house though, we were walking into the wind and I ended up with a few giant flakes getting sucked up my nose!

How perfect though! I dressed in my painting clothes and had my husband help me bring the big ladder in. I knew the little ladder wouldn't be big enough to reach to top of the wall at the 11 1/2' ceiling.

First problem: there was no way the big ladder would fit throught the door of the bedroom from the hallway. Problem solved: remove the screen from the window and bring it in from the deck! That worked like a charm.

Second problem: turns out the ladder is 12' long. Too big to fit into the room! Looks like I'll be buying an in-between ladder soon. Maybe tomorrow after my dentist appointment to get a new crown. I'm not really looking forward to that.

Anyway, I avoided working on the office and I made a batch of potstickers. Well, Monday was the Chinese New Year after all!

Yum!

Choosing A Paint Color

2012-01-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

My husband is a little antsy to get started on the painting. Correction: He's a little antsy for me to get started on the painting. I didn't want to start on the living room just yet because I've had this image in my head for the second bedroom and I want to do that first.

We finally got all the boxes out of there and the day bed is put together and ready for visitors. The room is lacking a little furniture but at least there's a bed!

My idea was to have one "accent" wall in a textured wallpaper, and paint the other three walls. (Think maybe I've been watching a little too much HGTV and/or DIY TV?)

So the first thing I had to do was figure out what color paint I wanted. We aren't in any hurry to replace the carpet just yet, even though it's a less than pretty piney green w/flecks of yellow low shag. I'm glad to say the bedding I had picked out in Bakersfield for the day bed fits in well with the different shades of green it has in it.

The way I choose my colors is the same way I vote. By process of elimination. The ones I like least are thrown out first. (Side note: Why is it I always feel like I have to vote for the lesser of the evils???)

It's taken 2 1/2 days but I finally picked my color. It's from the "whites and neutrals" and it has the faintest shade of green in it. Once it's on the wall you may think it's just white.

We went to the Bend Lowe's and got a few supplies. I found the wall paper I wanted and ordered it. This will be the second time I've done wallpaper. And this is not a prepasted. I'm a little nervous about it but I'm sure I can do it.

Maybe I can get the three other walls painted before the wall paper gets here. Right now they're a medium gray color.

In case you are wondering why I'm not using the paint sprayer it's because I'm kind of hesitant to use it at this point because of the wood ceilings. I'll see how this room goes first. Maybe I'll use it on another room. But we have vaulted wood ceilings and wood trim everywhere.

The other thing I did was yesterday during the first football game. I took the tractor out and got started on another path. I'd much rather be doing that than painting right now. I sure had fun!

Well I can't say I'm lacking for things to do, that's for sure. It's just what would I prefer to be doing at the moment? For example: my "office" space is still in quite a shambles. I haven't worked on that area since the last time I mentioned it.

Well, little by little we're chipping away at what needs to be done. I like to see the progress!

New Dog Collars

2012-01-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

Our latest big news item: The dogs got fancy new light-up collars!

We figured since we didn't have a fence yet and there's no telling when that might happen we might as well get the dogs these fancy flashy light-up collars. Besides they were on sale!

I had a hard time getting a picture with the collars turned on. With the camera in the regular mode it flashed and you couldn't see the lights. When I turned the flash on the camera off the camera still took in too much light and you couldn't see the collar lights. So this picture was the best I could do where you could still see the flashy lights on their collars. Sorry for the blurriness.

While I was "working" on this post my husband asked if I couldn't take a picture with my I-phone. And while I don't have an unlimited data plan and I have to pay extra for every picture I send I figured it was certainly worth a try and here are the results!

This is the same view as the above picture only with my i-phone. You can see the collar lights in the darkness. (Gus is on the left, Clyde is on the right.)

A "close up" of Gus's collar.
And with the lights on you can kind of still see the lights on their collars!

If you are interested in a collar for your dog I got it from www.keepdoggiesafe.com. Maybe you can even see the collar a little better. The collar has three modes: flashes on and off; steady on; or off. When I let the dogs out tonight I could really see where they were in the darkness. It's kind of cool!

Acorn Squash Soup

2012-01-19T17:54:00.000-08:00

This soup is so delectably rich and delicious, yet it is so simple to make! I threw it together when we had an extra acorn squash that needed to be cooked.

The ingredients are 1 acorn squash, 1 C beef broth, 1 C heavy cream, 2 C milk.

First bake the squash. Cut it in half, clean out the seeds. Lightly oil or spray Pam on the exposed flesh and place face down on a baking sheet. Bake in a 350° oven for about 30 minutes or until the squash is tender.

When the squash is done you can either wrap it up and put it in the fridge to finish later or continue. Scoop out the flesh and place in a large bowl or pot.

Add the broth and blend with stick blender until smooth.
Add the cream and blend until smooth.
Add the milk and blend...

Serve hot or cold (like a vichysoisse).

You could probably do this in a stand blender too if it has a big enough capacity. Notice the only fattening thing is the one cup of cream. There is no added butter or salt and in my opinion no need for it. The cream makes it very filling and rich so you don't need a whole lot. It makes a great appetizer or little snack. If you wanted to lighten it up you could probably substitute the cream with half and half and the milk with low fat milk. But really, why would you?

Enjoy!

Cat & A Cheesecake

2012-01-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know, the cat and the cheesecake don't have anything to do with each other.

I took this picture of Ollie totally relaxed in front of the fire last night.

She was flat on her back and when I took this picture she glared at me like she wanted me to go away and let her bask in the warmth from the fire.

Yesterday I also made this mini cheesecake that we ate tonight.

It turned out better than I expected because I took a recipe and kind of divided it by four to have a small portion. We had one package of cream cheese, just a bit of sour cream, and some oranges and blueberries that had been in the fridge for a while. I wanted to do something with them before they went bad and I'm happy to say it was a success.

I will attempt to recreate this recipe (it made two mini cheesecakes) at a later time which I will record and if it turns out good again I will post it.

Not Much Today

2012-01-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

Didn't do much today but sit around and try to stay warm. It was chilly today! And a little on the dreary side. This is the first sun we saw all day. It was right around 4:30pm so about 2o minutes later it was gone...

I did manage to start straightening up my office area. I have a feeling it's going to be a long and drawn out process. I think I'm a borderline hoarder! My straightening process consists of taking everything out of one box, deciding if I still need it (but of course!!!), and then placing that stuff in new piles.

I did get myself to throw some stuff away so far. Like I said, it will be a long process.

My Loop With Jumps

2012-01-14T15:10:00.000-08:00

I have a couple of jumps on my "loop" now. I was going to do a little video of me on Star jumping them but I think my Nikon Coolpix camera has suffered serious damage from being stored for so long. Plus it had gotten knocked around quite a bit before that, so... Besides that I was going to ride today because it's really pretty out, but it is a little too windy. Anybody who rides knows that windy + horseback riding = not a good idea.

We are going to take the tour first going counter-clockwise. This is the jump I showed when I built it in the shop. It is not permanent so I am able to move it to any location if I decide to. This would also make a good stadium jump if I ever get an arena built. I will eventually!

Next is this tiny jump. And by tiny I mean narrow. It's only about 2 feet wide and about to the top of my knees. These are some railroad ties I found in the brush and dragged out. They may have been part of fence posts at one time?? I am thinking I would like to place a wall of rocks from the rock pile on either side of these. That would make it look more like a "real" jump.

Next up is this simple jump. I made it using scraps from Dakota's plywood walls. Obviously it is also very portable. In fact the wind had pushed it over and I had to pick it up for the picture.

And around the bend starting up hill is a couple of sticks I put together. I can actually just step over this one. I think it's about 8". Truly baby novice size.

At the top of the loop the next one is a little bit more substantial than that last one.

At first I had just piled the "logs" up but the other day I went out and actually tied them together so it looks more like a real jump rather than a pile of brush across the path.

Now we turn around and go clockwise.

Around the corner going down hill and you can barely see the sticks near the bottom.

There they are!

Around the bottom corner and heading uphill again.

The narrow r/r ties and the first jump behind it.

The made jumps will eventually be painted, and the others (r/r ties, logs/branches) will be left natural. I'm trying to make my jumps jumpable from both directions so I have a little more variety.

Chilly Morning

2012-01-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is what the temperature was when I got up at 8:30 this morning. A little chilly.

It was a little foggy but the fog was lifting rapidly.
This was taken just 30 minutes after the above picture.

It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day!

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming!

2012-01-11T20:40:00.000-08:00

I suppose it's a good thing we didn't do the kitchen update after all.

My husband took his truck in yesterday to get some work done on the front end and now they are saying it will be more than the original $500 estimate. Aarrrrgh. He also decided (rightly) that the truck needs a couple of new tires... to the tune of about $260 apiece. More aarrrrgh!!!!

The fence guy came out and gave us some advice about the electric fence. The bad news: We are in a bad area for electric fences. It has to do with the dryness of the area, the rockiness, the climate, etc. It's not impossible but it's not the news I had hoped for. Meanwhile he took the measurements for the area we wanted cyclone fenced and he will be calling us with that estimate.

Tonight we went out to #1: feed, and #2: chop wood for this evening's fire. Hubby went out first to cut the wood and a minute later came back in to let me know the bull was not in his pen.

CRAP!

We both went out to find him. I opened his gate wide and threw a flake of hay in his pen. We found him to the far south west (not far from his pen) and managed to herd him back. I think it helped that it was the normal dinner time.

I found the spot where he escaped from his pen and fixed it. I did see some blood on the ground and after examining him I found a small scrape on Dakota's shoulder. *HUGE SIGH*

So hopefully now things will calm down a bit and the $ bleed will slow down.

I took some comfort tonight in a picture of our old cat, Kneadermeier (about 13?)...

...and our goof ball dog, Clyde.

One day at a time...

Moving Rocks

2012-01-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

We've been working on getting our electric fence to work for a long time now. Every other day my husband has been trying different things and buying different things in an attempt to make the fence work. I've been asking him to call a professional fence guy for a while, but I guess he thought he could do it. He's probably thinking: After all, the neighbors behind us have an electric fence that works. I'm thinking: A local professional would certainly know what he's doing.

I may have mentioned way back when we had stopped by the fence company and left our number. The secretary was supposed to give the owner/worker the number but we never got a call back.

Today when after two hours of more work and no results my husband decided we needed an $80 electric fence checker I just looked at him and kind of pouted a bit. And then he had a moment of brilliance. "You know," he said, "It will probably cost that much to have somebody come out to check it. What do you say to calling someone and having them take a look?"

Being the wise woman I like to think I am I wholeheartedly agreed. And being the wise woman I like to think I am I never said aloud what I was thinking: We could have saved some money, time, and aggravation if we had called sooner!

So he went into town to talk to the fence guy. As we suspected he never got our number. He said he would have remembered it since we have an out-of-state area code (cell number). He'll (hopefully) be coming out some time tomorrow to take a look and maybe fix the electric fence and also give us an estimate to build a chain link fenced area for the dogs.

In preparation for that we decided to move the (killer) rocks along the front of the driveway. In this picture we have cleared the rocks from the area next to that cement curb. Beyond that you can sort of see the curve of that section of driveway where the rocks have been pushed in line with the tree. That's the part where my car got stuck when I didn't turn sharply enough when I came out of the garage!

Next section getting cleared.
Making a nice rock pile. I already have plans for repurposing some of these rocks!
The rocks are mostly gone from where we want to build the chain link fence.
The rock pile.
And the only casualty from the day. I somehow managed to smash a finger and break my nail. Ouch.
Oh well, it's about time for a fill anyhow.

Our Garbage

2012-01-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

We did not sign up for garbage service so we have to deal with our trash ourselves. This is the first time we've ever been without any sort of garbage service so it is a little bit of a learning curve.

We have learned to separate cardboard, glass, tin (and aluminum) cans, magazines, plastic containers, and paper. Here in the laundry room is the bottle container, plastic bags with plastic containers and metal cans.

We've only been to the landfill once so far, which was at the end of November.

All the "recyclables" are unloaded outside the dump in marked bins, so we have learned to load the truck up accordingly. All the household trash goes in the back toward the cab.

The Christmas tree is the last to be loaded, then we tie down and go.
Here are the bins for newspapers, magazines, plastic containers, etc.

After off-loading the recyclables we drive onto the scale to get the starting weight. Then we drive to the various "cells" to off-load miscellaneous trash like a broken Rubbermaid box, giant plastic tarp thing that covered the new guest mattress, and so on.

Final stop is the regular household trash.

The truck gets weighed on the way out and we pay our fee. So far we haven't gone over 300 pounds so our dump fee is only $10.

It amazes me how we have changed our garbage habits. I used to put a new bag in the kitchen trash at least once a day. Now that we are separating everything it's more like once every three or four days. It's not that difficult to put the different things in their place once you get used to it. The only thing we don't bring to the dump is paper trash, like paper towels, trash mail, the rolls inside the toilet paper or paper towels, etc. All that stuff is burnable so we put it in the fireplace to help start the fire. I'm not sure how that will change come summer (maybe chiminea fodder?).

The only thing I'm not doing at the moment is an indoor compost pot (coffee grounds, peels, etc.) Baby steps!

Now that I think we have the hang of it I'm going to get a place outside to store everything until we make our dump run. It is definitely worth it if we only have to go to the dump once every month or so and it's only costing us $10. I can certainly live with that.

Red Sky

2012-01-07T16:46:00.001-08:00

It snowed last night and this morning we woke up to a light one inch of snow covering the area. I had taken a picture because besides the light blanket on the ground there was a fog blanket (or low cloud?) covering the town below. Sadly, I accidentally erased that picture.

Here are a couple of progressive pictures from this evening.

You'll have to take my word for it, it's much prettier in person!

Cat Naps

2012-01-06T17:37:00.000-08:00

What is it about cats that they like to get into boxes and bags?

We decided to work a little on the inside of the house today and try to empty a few more boxes and put some things away in a more permanent place.

Ollie decided to climb into this bedding bag while we were clearing away the rest of the Christmas decorations and rearranging the other boxes.

She had actually been napping before I woke her up with the flashing camera.
Then when it was time for me to take a cat nap she decided to join me.

Costly Day

2012-01-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

Today was not as fun or nice as yesterday.

The weather was nice but it was fairly chilly. It just didn't break the 45° mark.

The first thing we did today was bring my car in to the shop because last week when I was on my way to the dentist I was backing out of the garage. I was in the closest stall to the house which has a very sharp turn. Well, I didn't turn soon enough and ended up on the big rocks lining the driveway. I even got the tractor out and tried to pull my car out but it just wasn't budging. In my attempt to dislodge the car I somehow managed to wedge a 20 pound mini boulder between the right front tire and wheel well.

I called the dentist to reschedule and then I called my husband who was doing something in town. When he got home he went into his first career mode (tow truck driver when he was 19). It took some doing but he eventually got all the rocks out from under the car and got the mini boulder out after taking the whole wheel off! (I thought at the time about taking a picture of when he was working on getting the car unstuck but I didn't think he'd appreciate it!)

It turns out the ABS line got pinched and now was not working. A bunch of lights on the dashboard lit up and we took it to Les Schwab to see what they could do. They ordered a part and it came in so today we brought my car to get repaired. $396 later the car is fixed and all is in order.

This afternoon was the rescheduled dentist appointment. It was just a recheck from the previous appointment about three weeks ago when I had gone in to check on a sore tooth. I needed a filling from last year ground down because my bite was not right and I suspected there was something else going on too. The bite was corrected but it turns out now the tooth is cracked and I will need a crown. That will be $950.

Then this afternoon I saw on my daughter's FB that her car got broken into and her expensive stereo system (with cd/dvd player) was ripped off. At least that's not my cost but it's so irritating just the same. What is wrong with people? I'd like to find that person and rip their head off!

Hope your day was better.

Trail Blazing

2012-01-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

Today it was a balmy 65°. I'm itching to get the trails started so I can put up my jump and make some more. How convenient: my husband was itching to use the tractor!

We started with something simple. A fairly clear area next to the house. (Looking north.)

Looking south. Here our new trail connects with an older trail...
...that was overgrown.
Now at the top of that trail looking back down (looking north).
We curved it around making a new trail again towards the house.
And now back to the starting point.

It's not huge but it is a nice loop. I also found some new materials to build some more jumps! I'm hoping tomorrow will be nice and balmy too.

Bowl Games

2012-01-02T16:32:00.000-08:00

Didn't do much today as we are enjoying the bowl games on tv. Here's my husband "watching" the Oregon Ducks game.

Shhhh!

Christmas Finery And A Pedicure For Gramma!

2011-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

Here is my granddaughter in her new Christmas finery. I think she looks like she fits right in to the neighborhood here in Prineville, where the motto is "Forever Country"!

Close up of her "bling" belt.

And to show you why she deserves a bling belt, here she is painting my toes for me. This is after she gave me a foot massage.

Ta daaa!
Hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve.

See you next year!

First Jump

2011-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I started building my first cross country jump. I had an idea in my head for a simple verticle. It would have two eight foot 2 X 4's, one on top and one on bottom, with big dowels in between. When my husband and I were at the lumber store the other day we couldn't find the dowels but we did find eight foot 2 X 2's. They were probably cheaper than dowels anyway so I got them.

I was going to drill holes through the 2 X 4's. The dowels, or 2 X 2's would go in those holes and be held on with a strip of leftover plywood which I had cut from making Dakota's shed. The hole saw was taking me forever so I ran to the hardware store and got a very expensive "self clearing" aggressive hole saw. It worked a little better. I think that 2 X 4 was very hard. Wil came in then and helped me drill the final four holes on the first 2 X 4. I decided to change the plan a little and just attached the rails with screws through the main cross board (as you can see).

I'll probably set it on a couple of bricks and attach the fence to tree stakes driven into the ground to hold it up. I'll post another picture when that happens so you understand what I'm talking about. Right now the jump is about 26" tall, so when it is set up it will still be less than 30", a very good height for "beginner novice" level, which goes up to 2'11".

Surprise!

2011-12-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening we had a big surprise. Actually my daughter and I were in on the secret and my husband didn't have a clue. Our son drove up from Bakersfield and got here at about 11:30 pm.

As we've discovered is not uncommon, his gps didn't quite get him all the way here. So when he called our daughter to have us come and get him she was quite inventive and said she had to run to the store for "feminine" items. I volunteered to drive her.

Our son was on the right road, he just hadn't come up far enough. We met him a couple hundred yards down the hill whereupon I turned around and he followed us the rest of the way. We had him wait at the top of the driveway.

Our plan was to drive in, say she forgot she had some in her purse (which would explain why we were back so soon). Then when we were settled she would text him, he would come in, trip the alarm on the driveway and then we would get to watch the show. The "show" would be my husband wondering who was driving up our driveway at that time of night, watching him grab his gun and go see what was going on.

Well, sure enough, he didn't disappoint. But when Carli burst out laughing he began to suspect something was up. He went outside and there was Wil getting out of his truck. Later he admitted it was a very good surprise.

He'll be able to stay with us until Saturday night. Carli will be going back with him and hopefully she won't forget to visit the Amtrak station to get a refund on the return ticket!

Bowman Dam And Powder House Cove

2011-12-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

Our drive along the Crooked River took us to the Bowman Dam, at the western side of Prineville Reservoir.

From the top of the dam, looking back the way we came.
The road across the dam.
The dam on the reservoir side.

And we ended our drive at the Powder House Cove. This is looking back towards the dam.

This is the "historical building" which we think is the "Powder House". Not a toilet but most likely where the explosives were stored when the dam was being built. We don't know this for sure but it's not a bad guess.

I took a lot of pictures of it because looking at it made the wheels in my head start spinning. And if you know me...

;-)

Crooked River Drive: Chimney Rock

2011-12-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

Here's some more of those weird rock formations along the Crooked River.

These pictures were taken at the Chimney Rock Recreation Area. One of our favorite camping areas in Kern County, where we used to live, was called Chimney Peak. I just thought that was interesting.

Crooked River Drive

2011-12-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Day we all piled into the car to take a little drive down the Crooked River from Prineville to the Prineville Reservoir. I took a lot of pictures so I'll post them over the next three or four days.

One of the first things we saw was a bald eagle. It's hard to tell in this picture but that's what it was.

There are a lot of interesting rock formations.
There are little caves and covered outcroppings everywhere.
Along the way is the very impressive and huge Quail Valley Ranch.
This is the giant indoor arena where they have Angus cattle auctions.
This is their very impressive barn.
It's bigger than our house and shop put together.

This part of the ranch is less than two miles from our house as the crow flies over the buttes. If they have another auction I'd sure like to go. Not that I would be able to afford anything but I'd love to see the place and be a looky-loo!

More tomorrow!

Easy Apple Strudel

2011-12-25T18:25:00.000-08:00

I remember my sister and I made a real apple strudel once, long, long ago. I don't remember how she did the dough but I do remember helping her stretch the dough over the kitchen table. Then she filled it and we both carefully rolled it up. When it was done it was delectable!

I've often thought about that time and making a strudel but the thought of making a flaky buttery dough scared me. I don't usually make a very good dough.

So you can imagine how happy I was when I found this recipe. I somehow got hooked up with an online subscription to "Recipe 4 Living" and get occasional emails that have tons of recipes. So here is their simple recipe for apple strudel.

Ingredients

1 egg
1 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 lg. Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. raisins
1/2 of a 17.3-oz. package Pepperidge Farm® Puff Pastry Sheets (1 sheet), thawed
Confectioners' sugar (optional)
1/4 c chopped pecans (*my addition)

Heat the oven to 375°. Beat the egg with the water, set aside.

Roll out the thawed dough into a 12" X 16" rectangle.
Peel and core the apples.
Slice the apples thinly.
Add sugar, flour, cinnamon, raisins, nuts. Toss to coat the apples.

Place the mixture on one half of the rolled out dough, leaving at least a one inch edge.

Roll it up, pinch the edges to seal and place seam down on a cooking sheet.
Make several slits along the top and cover with the egg wash.
Bake in the oven for about 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.
Place on a rack to cool. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar if desired. (Why not?)
Slice and enjoy!

Serve it up warmish or at room temperature with ice cream or slightly sweetened whipped cream, or just plain! Also makes a great breakfast treat.

Enjoy!

(Click here to see the original recipe.)

Making Cookies

2011-12-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

One of my goals while the kids were here was to make cookies with my granddaughter. I figured Russian teacakes would make a good hands on experience. I made the dough and got the small portions ready for her to roll into little balls.

She just doesn't look as excited about the process as I thought she would be.

The cookies are baked and here we are rolling them for the first time in the powdered sugar.

After they cool we roll them in the powdered sugar one more time and then we get to taste.

Still so serious.
How about a smile?
I think most of the pictures were just bad timing. She really did have fun.

Seriously!

Frosty But No Snowman (Just Yet)

2011-12-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

We've been waking up to 20° mornings. The frost has been thick all over everything and it's really quite pretty.

I guess you'll have to take my word for it because apparently I'm not a good frost picture taker.

Even though the temps are low in the morning it has been getting up to about 40 during the day and it isn't too bad unless the wind starts blowing.

I've been looking at the weather reports and it doesn't look like we'll have a white Christmas this year. I'm sure we'll have plenty enough later on though.

Much Better Today

2011-12-21T20:54:00.000-08:00

I remembered there was a simple number calculation on how to tell if your angles were at 90°, but I had to go on-line to fine the exact formula. It's 3-4-5. Measure from the corner of one wall to 3', then from the same corner the other wall to 4'. Then the measurement from the ends should equal 5'.

I did that this morning using both back corners. Sure enough each wall had to be moved just a little. Once we got the walls moved and the brackets tightened (for the umpteenth time) the roof panels were much more correct. We got it to just about a 1 1/2" difference from one side to the other and I said that was about as good as we were going to get it.

So my husband kindly screwed in the panels. It was hard because although the screws were suppose to be self tapping we ended up having to get a seperate bit to drill through the extremely hard metal tubing.

In the end we got it on and it looks half way decent. I don't have a photo but after eating his dinner Dakota was laying in his shed.

About an hour after we finished our new tractor was delivered!
Here she comes!
Here she is!
She's a beauty!
The odometer. It's 00.6. ☺
First time driving it. I'm heading up to get the mail. Sorry, I just had to do it.

And here's the free stuff we got. Two travel mugs, two ball caps, and a pair of work gloves.

Tomorrow we pick up our daughter and granddaughter from the Amtrak bus stop in Bend. Things are looking up!

Shed Roof: Fail

2011-12-20T21:40:00.000-08:00

So how can two people spend three hours trying to figure something out?

We went out at 10:30 to start working on the roof of Dakota's shed. By 1:30 it looked like this:

Sadly, pretty much like it looked yesterday.

Well, my husband, brilliant constructionist that he is, wanted to start screwing the panels on right away. I said no, let's wait and make sure everything will go on correctly.

We put the panels up and no matter how much we pushed and pulled and tugged and turned it was apparent (to me at least) that the building wasn't square. At one point I suggested just to screw the panels on and come back afterwards to trim the ends straight. He didn't want to do that so we continued to try and figure out what was wrong. I figured out that Dakota had actually pushed the building a little and if it had been straight before it certainly wasn't anymore! I tried to explain to my husband that not being square and having the walls off just by a little meant that it would be off a lot further down the line. He sort of understands that but he doesn't have a mathematical, engineering type of mind.

So we finally stopped and went inside. I went on-line to do a little research and I think I know how to correct the problem. Our tractor should be coming tomorrow (hopefully) and we can use it to square the building up. Even if we don't use the tractor and it means we have to take part of it apart again I'm pretty sure we can get it square so the panels will fit on straight.

A few days ago the chainsaw stopped working so we took it in to the chain saw shop. Turns out the engine needs to be rebuilt and they are trying hard to find the parts it needs. We saw a truck on the side of the road with some wood for sale and we ended up buying it. At least now we have a supply of wood for a while.

Let's hope tomorrow goes better.

Time Flies

2011-12-19T19:22:00.001-08:00

We didn't get a whole lot done today.

We did pick up our metal roofing material from the local lumber store and brought it home. We'll put it up on Dakota's shed tomorrow.

Then we went to the Fred Meyer in Redmond to do a "big" grocery shopping. I thought the Roseburg store was big... The Redmond Fred Meyer is at least twice as big.

Fred Meyer is nice because it's one of those super stores that has groceries, furniture, electronics, clothing, office supplies, even jewelry! I got a few clothing items for our granddaughter who will be here on Thursday with our daughter. We're very excited about that!

Our tractor should be delivered on Wednesday so hopefully I'll have some pictures of it then.

We attempted to change out some of the lights on the deck rail but they went out again. Very frustrating. We will give it one more try by putting a new fuse in, putting the lights half way around the deck, then start from another plug on the other side of the deck and meet up at the middle. Maybe that will do the trick.

I suppose we could get more done if we got out of our pj's before 11 am. But when you're retired who cares!

Good Day

2011-12-16T20:09:00.000-08:00

Today was definitely a good shopping day. As promised yesterday we went to the Lowes in Redmond and stocked up on new lights. My husband got new icicle lights for the deck rail (which he hasn't put up yet) and I got new led lights for the tree.

They work great! And if I read the paper in the box correctly you can put 30 strings together. I only needed six. Jemi left a comment yesterday about the led's being bluish (even though they are supposed to be "white") and you can see here she is right. The angel has the "old fashioned" white lights.

Just need to put the ornaments on now.

While we were in Redmond we stopped at the Big R Store and got some fencing supplies. Here is our new solar wire charger. This ought to keep the bull in his own pen.

We'll work on putting that up tomorrow, along with the tree ornaments.

The other exciting thing we did was stop at the Kubota store. We were there for about an hour. We decided to buy a smallish tractor and we will go back tomorrow to do the paperwork! We are going to get a few implements as well. They will need to put it together and then they deliver it with a full tank of diesel and we'll get plenty of time to get the instructions on how to run it.

We could have used it a couple times already and we decided to just go ahead and get it. We had been planning on getting one sooner or later anyway and I guess it just turned out to be sooner!

Lighting Irritations

2011-12-15T18:27:00.000-08:00

I decided that I'd better get going on decorating the tree and house tonight. We found the house icicle style lights and put them up along the deck rail.

I hate it when you have a string of lights and only half the string works.

I finally found the storage box of inside lights and loaded the tree up. I used a couple of leftover lights to decorate the stair rails.

The spindles are wrapped with a string of lights that has a little control box that can change them from steady to different flashing patterns. The wall handrail is an led string.

The boys.
We also found the box with my Christmas Woof N Poofs and I put them up.

The tree was looking pretty good and I knew it would look even better once I got all the bulbs up. Then the lights on the tree suddenly went out. We changed the fuse but it just went out again.

I guess with the outside lights only half working and the inside lights being rather old and not working right we will be heading to town tomorrow to get more, newer, possibly all led lights. Then I get to redo the tree. Ugh.

But I suppose its better to be safe than sorry!

Shed Walls Are Up

2011-12-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

Today we got the walls up on Dakota's shed. First we had to do a bit of leveling.

The back side is up and we're bringing in one of the sides.
All three sides are now up.

The roof has been ordered and should be here on Monday. Now all I have to do is rearrange the temporary fence and put some bedding material over the ground inside. At least Dakota will have a wind break until Monday or Tuesday.

Got Our Tree

2011-12-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

Today we got our Christmas tree. We drove around our town but it seemed like the trees here were all too small and they were too thick, like a sheared Douglas. I don't like those because the ornaments stick out and in my opinion it looks stupid.

I've always preferred the medium thick trees so I can put lights and ornaments inside and all around the tree. Plus I wanted something a little taller than we normally got because we have a vaulted ceiling for the first time ever.

So we ended up driving through Redmond and eventually heading toward Bend. We stopped at one place that had taller trees but the guy must have thought I was a sucker. When I asked about a particular tree he said it was "a lot". He said "a tree like that is going for $100. Twenty. Nine." I swear he kept adding the numbers. I hemmed and hawed and told him I would be back if I couldn't find anything elsewhere.

We drove around a bit, then stopped at a Home Depot for a pottie break and while we were there we looked at the kitchen countertops. I grabbed a few samples and we decided to cut our losses and head for home. On the way home my husband happened to see a tree lot down a side road and we swung in there.

There was a tree right at the gate and we asked the guy how much for something like that. "Oh, I'd take forty for that one." My husband and I looked at each other and we said, "We'll take it!"

So we got it home and it is up though I still have to decorate it. Ollie is enjoying it too. I had to watch her to make sure she didn't try to climb it. I only had to yell at her once.

Ollie isn't the only one enjoying the tree.
Hopefully I can find all my lights and ornaments now!

Priming And Riding

2011-12-10T16:58:00.000-08:00

Today I painted primer on the side of the plywood sheets that go on the outside of Dakota's shed. First I got everything ready and lined all the sheets up. Then I got started.

4/9ths done.
2 more to go!
All done primering. Primering? It only took about an hour.
Hopefully it will dry overnight and I can put the color on tomorrow.

Afterwards I actually went for a ride on Flora! This is the first time I've ridden since we've been here.

Flora was very feisty on the way out. At the end of the property we followed the fence line up towards the road. By the time we got to the top she was huffing and puffing, kind of like I do when I walk up the hill. She decided to take it easy and just walk at that point.

But the rest was mostly even going back towards the house. It felt good to go for a horseback ride again. I can see all the potential for trails and my very own cross country course but I'll definately need something to help clear the rocks and brush. Like a tractor. ☺

More Of Dakota's Shed

2011-12-09T19:56:00.000-08:00

Today we got the plywood sides for Dakota's new run-in shed. I had thought the spaces would be exactly 4' X 8', the size of a sheet of plywood, but they weren't. Together we measured all the spaces. Guess what? They sides were not exactly equal.

I transferred the measurements to each board and cut the boards to size. My husband had to run to the hardware store half way through because the blade I had was old and started bogging down. The new blade made things so much easier! (I hope the measuring worked.)

I did remember to mark each cut board to which space it was to go into.

I think I mentioned how my husband wanted the "not home made" look. It's turning out to be rather costly! He insisted on getting the thicker boards (5/8"), the ones with the knotholes filled and sanded, and we had to get primer and paint.

I got all nine sides cut out. Tomorrow I will primer and paint. I'm not sure how fast that's going to go so it may take a couple of days. Also I will order the roof (something to match the house roof, a little fancier than plain galvanized).

Oh well. In my allowing him this it's making him happy which in turn is allowing me to be happy because I still get to build.

It better look good when it's done!

Kitchen Decisions

2011-12-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

Today we informed the kitchen designer that we were going to postpone our remodel plans for the time being.

The best price he could come up with was $19,000, down from his original quote of about $21,000. That was with us doing all the demo and me installing the backsplash tile. If we changed the finish on the quartz countertop from "antiqued" to the natural shiny finish it would have saved an additional $2,500. That meant with the cost of the appliances our costs would still have been about $25,000, or $5,000 over my budget.

The other option would have been to only buy the stove top and hood with the same options as above, bringing the cost to $20,000, which was my original budget to do everything I wanted to do in the kitchen. I didn't feel I would be getting my moneys' worth with that and so today we informed him we would have to wait.

Another thing that bothered me was I didn't feel like the designer was really listening to what we wanted. His ideas were ok, but it seemed like he kept trying to push us in his direction, what he thought would work, not really what we were thinking of.

On our last meeting we got another couple of samples. These were closer to what we had in mind, though I'm still not 100%.

Don't get me wrong, I feel bad about telling him we weren't going to do this right now. He was a really nice guy and he did do a lot of checking on various things. But I would have been really mad at myself if I went ahead with this project and felt I spent too much money.

I found it interesting and highly amusing that neither he nor the countertop or tile people would state a hard and fast price (per square foot, etc) when directly questioned. I think if we had gone in (to the counter top or tile people) on our own without the designer it would have been a different story.

I think what finally made up my mind was watching an HGTV show last night where an entire house was remodeled for $60,000! An ENTIRE HOUSE!!! We weren't even going to be moving any cabinets.

So now we are rethinking how we are going to re-do the kitchen. At this point I almost feel like I could be my own contractor. Meanwhile we will be focusing on other things for the time being.

The Beginning Of Dakota's Shelter

2011-12-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

The other day it got really cold at night. When I went to feed the animals Dakota the bull actually had a small bit of frost on his hair between his horns. It was time to get serious about building him a shelter of some sort.

Bill decided he wanted the pre-fab Powder River shelter, even though it cost a few hundred dollars more than if I had built a shelter from scratch. I guess he erroneously thought the shelter I would have built would look too shabby. I guess he forgot about the tower I built!

We had gone to a farm store in Redmond to check out the pre-fab Powder River 12' X 12' run in shelter. They didn't deliver and that could have posed a problem if we'd have tried hauling the large framework.

We found a store in Prineville that carried the shelter and they also delivered so we ordered it. They delivered it the next day (yesterday).

We got the model they had set up at the store, otherwise they'd have had to order another. All the pieces are in the box. The only thing missing were installation instructions.

But it wasn't too hard to figure out.

But it was definitely a job for two people.

The frame is up now and just waiting for the top and sides.
We'll get to that tomorrow I think.

2011 Christmas Village

2011-12-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

Though things are still in a bit of chaos around here with Christmas fast approaching I thought I'd put out at least part of our Christmas Village.

Look carefully at this picture. Do you see an "extra"? (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

And this one is a little more obvious.

We like to change their positions from time to time and then the next person has fun finding and "rearranging".

Foraging For Wood

2011-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

We went on a little drive to explore the area east of us the other day. We ended up in an area of the Ochoco Forest. We decided to forage for a little wood because we've exhausted our meager supply of almond wood that we had brought up from California. We picked up wood that was in big slash piles.

When we got home my husband cut it into useable chunks.

It was enough to almost fill the wood box by the front door. This will last about three days!

After we got home I looked on line and I'm not sure but I think we're supposed to have a permit even without a chainsaw. The wood gathering time actually just ended November 30th. I guess next year we'll make sure to do it right and get a permit and gather lots of wood before it gets cold.

Meanwhile we do have plenty of downed wood around the property here. The trick is bringing it to the house since we don't have any quads or tractors to haul it just yet.

More Driveway Burning +

2011-12-03T17:20:00.000-08:00

Today was spent doing a little shopping. Before jumping to buy the materials for the bull's shelter I first looked on-line and found some pre-fab metal frames available for purchase. After you buy and set the frames then you slide your plywood sheets into slots in the frames.

There are several companies that make these systems. I was surprised to find one company's prices started at almost $2,000. The other brand (Powder River) didn't have their prices listed on line. We went to the store in Redmond that carries them and took a look.

It will cost almost $1,000 for that frame, then I would have to purchase the roof panels and plywood sheets of my choice. The advantage is the metal frame would probably last much longer than if I just build the shelter out of wood. It would be easily moveable if I decided to rearrange the pens.

The downside is the initial cost. Also they don't deliver and the panels are pretty big. The best idea I had for that would be to set them up in the bed of the pickup and tie them like you would tie a motorcycle.

We did find a company in Prineville that carries Powder River supplies and in fact they had the same frame in their lot, but as luck would have it they were closed today for inventory! We'll check with them again. Who knows, maybe they even deliver!

After we got home we decided to finish clearing the driveway of the weeds. My husband got out his newish toy, the propane torch, and got to work.

So now the place isn't looking quite as neglected as before.

Kitchen Design

2011-12-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

The kitchen designer dude came out with a couple of samples. He brought two different quartz countertop samples and the backsplash sample shown below. His thought was to use the bottom sample of the board for the backsplash.

Here are the two quartz countertop samples. The brownish one is matte and the grayish one is kind of semi-matte.

And here you can see them on the backsplash board.

Our thought was they are both still too dark. We really wanted something lighter colored and you can see, especially in the middle picture, that they aren't much lighter than the current countertop.

The designer's thoughts were he didn't want to go too brownish because then there would be no clear difference between three of the elements in the kitchen. Those elements being the cabinets, backsplash, and countertop. Everything would sort of blend together into one blah mess. He was also against a glass tile backsplash because he thought that it would be too dated: in ten years someone could come in and say, "Oh, this was done about ten years ago." Just like clothes have fashion, so does remodeling!

My thought is so what if I want glass tiles? It's my kitchen and if I get tired of it in ten years then I can redo it then. Regardless we made plans to meet on Monday at the countertop place and then the tile place because none of the choices he brought really excited Bill or me.

Now for the bad news.

I had been hoping to do this for about $20,000 or less. As we started doing our research I realized I would have to scale back on my plans. For example now we are planning on getting a Jennair 30" stove top instead of a Wolf 36". There will be no cabinet shifting or remodeling with the exception of a simple removal of the cabinet over the stove so the ventilation system can be installed.

We are responsible for purchasing the appliances outside of the construction contract. Jennair is having a special now so we can buy an oven, convection/microwave oven, stove top and get a free dishwasher. The appliances cost about $8,000. The designer guy said everything else (tile, countertop, installation, etc) is going to be about $21,000. So obviously that brings the total to approximately $29,000, seriously over my budget.

On Monday I'm going to propose that my husband and I do all the demo (which we've done before) and debris removal, and I will install the backsplash myself. As I told one of my sisters, I've watched enough DIY channel and HGTV so I'm sure I can do it. I don't know how much that will lower the price, but something's gotta give if this project is going to move forward.

HVAC And Other Stuff

2011-12-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, the HVAC guy came today to check out the heating unit. Turns out we weren't crazy after all; the unit had a bad thermostat. He thoroughly checked everything, gave us some advice, fixed what needed fixing, and 1 1/2 hours and less than $100 later we had proper heat!

I didn't do anything in the second guest room so that is still the same.

The weather has been really nice but freezing at night. I'm getting antsy to build a shelter for the bull before it gets really bad. After all, the horses have their snuggly blankets but the bull doesn't.

The first thing I did was make sure the place where I wanted to build the structure wasn't all bedrock. I dug down about 20 inches where two of the corners of the three sided structure will be and it was all dirt. That was good.

Then I went into town to a local lumber company and spoke to one of the clerks there. I told her what I wanted to do and that I basically had my plan made out but I didn't know how to do the roof. I want to make a three sided 12' X 12' single stall with a "shed roof". That is a single plane covering the structure that is higher on one end than the other.

The girl took out a notebook and we started sketching plans and writing down the materials I might need. After we had everything done she gave me the papers and informed me that they do free delivery. Tomorrow I'm going to go over the list and call in my order!

Plumbing

2011-11-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

Today was the day for the plumber to come through and fix all the plumbing issues inside the house. He had come out on Monday and made a check list of what needed to be done. Today he took care of all the leaky faucets, pipes, the outside faucet that wasn't working, new seals on everything, etc etc.

Those were issues mentioned in the inspector's report and now we can check that off. The items have all been fixed and our guests don't have to take a shower in our bathroom any more. They can actually use one of the other two bathrooms.

The second guest room that was full of boxes is now almost cleared out. Just a few more things here and I'll be able to set up the day bed.

Tomorrow we have an HVAC guy coming because although the inspector's report said the heater was working we feel like it's not working as it should.

Friday a designer from a construction/remodeling company will be coming to show us what he's come up with. We had visited the office last week and he came out to take a look and get measurements. I'm excited to see his ideas.

Slowly but surely...!

Lots Of Locks

2011-11-29T17:55:00.000-08:00

Our chore for today was to replace all the locks.

The bank had removed all the original locks and replaced them with cheap locks, but fortunately left the originals in a drawer. One of the requirements on our contract was to have the locks replaced when we moved in. Obviously that's a good idea anyway. Who knows how many old keys are out there?

Yesterday we brought all the good locks to a locksmith to be rekeyed.

These are all the locks we removed.

After a few false starts and a threat to call the locksmith out to finish the installation we finally managed to get all the doors done.

Here's the newly installed lock on the outside of the front door.

And here it is on the inside.

We saved a lot of money by doing it this way. The locksmith told us he charges $55 just to come out to the house. And then buy repurposing the original locks we probably saved several hundred dollars. The locksmith told us these were very expensive door sets. **I just looked them up and while they weren't as costly as he estimated we did save over $1,000 by not buying brand new of this same brand.

I love saving money.

That means I can spend it on something else!

Joining The Smart World

2011-11-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

Today I joined the Smart World.

I always balked at the idea of getting a $400 smart phone on top of the extra cost per month to be able to operate it.

But now that the latest and greatest I-phone is out I was able to pick this cutie up for $.99. Yes, that's right. Ninety-nine cents! It's a 3G, not a 4G which is why it was so inexpensive. Now I just have to learn how to use it.

And because we've had our AT&T plan since it was Cingular we were able update, change, and rearrange so we're only paying $5/month more than we normally pay. I can live with that. Of course I didn't opt for the unlimited plan, but like I said, I can live with that.

My husband's phone was actually still a Cingular phone. So now that has been donated to the recycle box and he has my old phone. Next February we will be eligible for an upgrade so he can then buy a phone of his choice. Just for the record he is not interested in a "smart" phone.

You may have noticed that my phone (for photo-op purposes) is resting against our mixer. That is because one of the things we did today besides getting a new phone was we went to World Market. I'm attempting to make a French loaf to go with...

...the fondue we got. We got two different brands so we can see which we like better.

I hope the dough rises. Does yeast go bad?
Well, even if it doesn't we have a back up plan...

Regis

2011-11-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

Today started out as a laundry and college football day. Often on days like this I don't even bother getting out of my pajamas! We often call those "pajama days".

No worries, though. We did actually get dressed. And while it looked like it might be one of those slothly sofa times when Oregon started walking over Oregon State we thought maybe we'd better do something around the house.

We moved a couple of items out of the garage and into the big shop. And then there were some things that were in the garage that needed to be moved into the house.

And so today we got a few more boxes unpacked and a few more things put away. I also managed to do quite a bit of laundry.

When we started moving about we looked out the window and saw this stately creature resting.

They do blend in quite well, don't they. Take a closer look at his head.
He finally got up and moved down the road.

Could this be next years' venison roast, chops, jerky, etc? Or a pet? I shall call him "Regis"!

A Change From The Boxes

2011-11-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! We did. The only thing I forgot to do was make the rolls (the Pillsbury tube kind) so I made them this morning and had one with an egg. They sure are hard to beat.

Today we decided to take a break from the boxes and do some other work.

My husband got out his new torch and started clearing the driveway of tumbleweeds.

It took a lot longer than I thought, but he got most of it done.

While he was doing that I was putting some shelves together. These were the shelves that used to hold all the boxes of tiles I used for mosaic-ing.

I was done with my chore a lot sooner than he was done with his.
Now they are ready to be put to good use!

The Rest Of The New House

2011-11-24T05:35:00.000-08:00

This is from the far end of the play room that is over the garage. There is lots of room for a pool table, shuffle board, etc. Of course we don't have those things so the room may be empty for a while. Right now the only thing up there is the treadmill.

There is a full bar with sink and microwave. I already have a little fridge that should fit. I need to clean it first. I also would (eventually) like to set up another little sitting area that has a fold out sofa in case we are overrun with guests. That would be fun!

The deck looking west.
Deck looking north.
Deck looking east.

The garage. The door in the middle leads to the house. The little door next to it leads to a small storage area. Then the double doors lead to an area behind the garage that could be a huge storage area or even a work area.

There are two double doors leading to that area behind the garage.

This is the area I was talking about. Notice the electrical outlets a couple feet above ground level. This is what leads me to believe it was intended as a work area. The room in the back has the water heater, hvac, etc.

Here's a view of the house and shop. If you look between the buildings you can see a tie rack.

This is the ginormous shop. The appraisal papers said it was 2400 square feet. I'll have to find something to fill it with!

This is that area between the houses I mentioned. There is a one foot pit with a stone foundation. I don't know what the original intention of this was but I plan on building a tack room on there.

So that is the house.

We continue to make slow and steady progress on the boxes. Even if some of them are just shifted to other rooms, at least they are closer to where they are supposed to be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

I hope they taste as good as they look.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

More New House...

2011-11-23T06:22:00.000-08:00

The guest bathroom. Tub and toilet behind the wall.

Guest bathroom. You can see the first guest bedroom connecting door in the mirror.

Now in the guest bedroom looking at the closet and through the pocket door into the bathroom.

The guest bedroom opposite the closet. The shop is seen through the window in the background.

The hall from the master bedroom door. To the left is the linen closet, straight ahead is the first guest bedroom we just looked at.

Master bedroom.
Other side of the master bedroom looking at the master bathroom door.

Master bathroom. Double sinks, humongous soaking tub behind, and shower next to that.

The master throne. (The wall on the right is the wall on the left in the above photo.)

On through to granddaughter's room. Just kidding! Our walk-in closet. I don't think we have enough clothes to fill this up!

Now back to the laundry room. You can see the entry porch through the window. The door on the right leads to the garage.

The other side of the laundry room. Nice clothes folding area. One odd thing I noticed after we moved in... The wash machine goes in this corner so obviously there are no cabinet doors. The odd thing is when you open the middle cabinet it does not open to that entire corner cabinet. Maybe there is a secret passage door to a hidden treasure?? Haven't found it yet...

Up the stairs to the office area, another bathroom, and play area.
My "office area". At least this is where I have my desk now.
And on the other side is the upstairs bathroom.

As you can see in the above photo there are some little things that need fixing (the faucet handle isn't secure). I'm also not crazy about the eggplant or maroon or whatever it is color on the walls.

All in good time...

Photos Of Our New House

2011-11-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

This will be a series of photos of our new house. There were so many and I just HAD to post most of them so this has turned into a three day post!

Here is the "garage/entry" side of the house. The play room is above the garage. The windows on the first floor are where the kitchen sink is. The entry door is in that corner under the overhang. BTW for some reason I didn't get my own shot of this angle. This photo is taken from the internet from the FIZBER.com site.

Entry door.
Inside the entry looking out.
Kitchen.
The windows over the sink.
Pantry. We've never had a real pantry before!
Dining area.
Kitchen from the dining area.

Living room from the dining area. The stairs go to the play room, office area, and a bathroom. At the base of the stairs is a closet and a door to the laundry room and garage. The hall goes to the bedrooms and other bathrooms.

View just opposite from the above photo...looking back at the dining area. Living room to the left, kitchen to the right, corner of the pantry sticking out at extreme right. If you were to follow that wall you'd be looking at the entry door.

The photo tour will continue with 15 more photos tomorrow!

To Answer A Couple Of Questions...

2011-11-21T18:41:00.000-08:00

Originally I was going to post the pictures of the house tonight. But then some questions were asked and I want to at least get those questions answered before I post the bazillion pictures.

Carol asked if I was planning on getting more animals. It is my hope to be able to get a couple of cows. Also I really wanted to look into getting some more sheep, this time dairy sheep in particular. At this time I'm not looking to get a large herd of 20 cows or big flock of 40 sheep.

I would like to start off with one or two cows. As for the sheep they will definately have to wait until the spring or even summer because the fences here are not suitable for sheep right now. I am hoping to start with three to five ewes, similar to what I was used to handling in Bakersfield.

I most definately will have chickens again, but those will also have to wait until the spring when I can build a suitable enclosure for them.

This brings me to a question from Patti regarding other wild creatures.

The neighbors behind us visited my husband while I was enroute from California with the bull. They told him of a collared wolf sighting not long ago. The wolf was not a loose pet, but had a tracking collar placed by Fish and Game or whichever organization does that sort of thing. The neighbor said his son had seen the wolf on the north boundry of our property. He had scoffed at his son until it was confirmed in the paper just a few days later.

Otherwise there is literature that says coyotes abound and there are possibly rattlesnakes in the area, though we haven't seen evidence of either. Yet. And hopefully won't.

The only wildlife we've seen on our property are rabbits and mule deer.

This is a large herd that crossed the property last week.
There were about nine does, all very healthy looking.

Two days ago we saw two bucks, one a spike, and the other was a decent four point.

Another question asked was how the animals were taking the quick change in the weather, from the upper 80's in Bakersfield to the sudden freezing nights (and the snow) here.

I got the horses blankets so they are nice and toasty warm. They had started growing winter coats but probably still not enough for here. I'm sure they appreciate their blankets.

The bull on the other hand has been on his own. The Dexters are a hardy breed and regularly have babies in the snow. I've been keeping an eye on Dakota to make sure he isn't suffering and it is surprising how fast his hair has grown! If it looks like it's getting to be awful weather then I will build him a quick three sided structure and stuff it with straw for him.

And here we are with some sort of skeleton. We were walking the property line when we found this. Our guess is it's a road-killed young deer.

So there you have it. If you have any other questions let me know and I'll try and answer them.

Tomorrow I'll start the series of photos of the house.

Crochet Projects

2011-11-19T17:23:00.000-08:00

During the past year I haven't been totally doing nothing. At first I didn't want to do any extra projects because that would mean just that much more stuff to pack and move when the time came. But I was itching to do some crochet and it suddenly occurred to me that I could crochet some afghans and give them as gifts!

The first one I made was a simple basketweave stitch. I used a variegated yarn to add a little interest. I have a tendency to make the stitches larger than the pattern calls for so you can see on the completed blanket there is a color change where I had to buy extra yarn in order to make the blanket as big as I wanted. Once it's folded nicely on the sofa you don't really notice anyway.

Here you can see the basketweave pattern better. This stitch makes for a really heavy, thick, warm afghan. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

The instructions called for a simple border you can see here.

The second afghan I made using the open/closed heart pattern. I had made this pattern once before as a baby blanket for my granddaughter. The difference this time was I added a couple of extra rows to make an adult sized afghan. This yarn was a no dye lot yarn so I didn't need to worry so much about matching color lots.

A closeup of the border.

The first blanket I gave to my sister in law for being such a good sister in law and taking care of the dogs and putting up with me while my husband was in the hospital. The second blanket I gave to our friends in Roseburg who frequently fed us and gave us a lot of moral support while we were still looking for a house in that area and also for just being great friends!

Yesterday I unpacked a box with a lot of my "crafts" stuff and I started getting the itch again. It'll have to wait until the rest of the boxes are unpacked and put away. *sigh*

First Snow

2011-11-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

We woke up this morning to 27º and two inches of snow on the ground!

The dogs exploring. I think they liked it.

As for the bull (on the left) and the horses (on the right) I'm not too sure they are liking the cold white stuff.

The house from the side/front (it's kind of an odd configuration). I think I'll just call it the garage side.

And this view we'll call the deck side.
And looking down the driveway towards the street.

As beautiful as it is it brings some problems we are not really prepared for. This is the first time we've ever owned a home on it's own well. There is a faucet at the animal pens but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. (There are no such problems with the house itself!) We will need to learn how to properly take care of the well.

We were told the former owner had something to do with reining horses so the pens are actually set up for horses. There is a hot wire running along the top of the fence line but it isn't connected to any power source at this time. The fence is a three wire fence (straight wire, not barbed).

Dakota, the bull, quickly figured out how to crawl under the fence so he could "help" the horses finish their meals. So now until we get the e-fence figured out we've had to contain him in an area surrounded by about four cattle panels tied together.

With the freezing weather I have to break the ice on top of their waters. We have to hook the hose up to an outlet inside the garage that gives off hot water to melt the ice in the hose. I think until we get the electrical part figured out I might run a long extension cord to the shop and put a water heater in the waterers. We have a call in to a fence specialist and I hope he'll be calling us soon.

Meanwhile we are making progress on the boxes, little by little. It's a good thing we don't have to worry about any deadlines to get stuff put away!

Moving

2011-11-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

Our furniture that was in storage was delivered the other day. Because of the configuration of the driveway the moving van driver said we would have to do a shuttle. That meant instead of driving the van to the house he would be parked in the grocery store parking lot about five miles down the road. We rented a large U-Haul, then two local guys and the driver unloaded the moving van and reloaded that stuff into the U-Haul, then drove to the house and unloaded the U-Haul into the house. It took two loads of a 26' van.

Here's the first load coming down the driveway.

The two local mover helpers are in the truck behind the U-Haul.

Here's Bill supervising the movers while they get ready to hump the oak roll top desk to the nook up the stairs.

After a couple of false starts they got it figured out and made it up.

Besides the gun safe the desk was probably the toughest thing they had to move.
This is what the kitchen looks like right now.
Boxes of stuff everywhere.
Seriously... I had no idea we had so much ~~crap~~ STUFF.
One of the bedrooms is totally full of boxes. HELP!!
I guess we have our work cut out for us!

And I do realize I'm kind of doing this out of order, but I promise I'll show the pictures I took of the empty house when we first looked at it.

Home At Last

2011-11-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

It's a little surprising to see my last post was way back in June. But there was a good reason for that. While I have mentioned the difficulty in finding our perfect place what I did not share at the time was that my husband was very sick.

Our family and close friends knew what was happening but it was all a little overwhelming for me and I felt I didn't need the added pressure of reporting everything on this blog. To make a long story short after months of increasing discomfort it was determined that my husband had a tumor on his pancreas. We conferred with a surgical oncologist in Eugene and surgery was scheduled for early June.

He underwent a difficult surgery called "the Whipple procedure" which was successful and fortunately they found that the tumor was encapsulated. (Just for clarification it was NOT pancreatic cancer.) Unfortunately the recovery for the Whipple is very difficult. He ended up having to have a second surgery about two weeks later to correct a kink in his intestines near where the food tube was connected. That went well but recovery was long and difficult. All in all he was in the hospital for 27 days.

During that time I was staying with my sister in law in who lives just outside of Eugene. The hospital is in Springfield, about 30 minutes away. She graciously allowed me to stay with her during this difficult time and took care of our dogs while I was at the hospital with my husband. The cats were still at the rental in Roseburg and I would drive back to fill their bowls, clean their litter box, and check the mail about every four days.

Finally my husband was released from the hospital with a good prognosis. It was a slow growing tumor which may or may not return. However even if it does he'll probably die of old age before he starts having those same symptoms.

After we got back to Roseburg we resumed our search for our "perfect place". Since we were having a very difficult time finding what we were looking for (I wanted 20+ acres, he had to have a nice house he wouldn't be embarrassed to have friends come visit) I decided I would lower my expectations and we started looking at properties with 15 acres, then 10 acres, and then five acres.

It seemed we always came up against the same old, same old for Douglas County. For our price range either the house was good and the property was not suitable for what I wanted, or the property was great and the house was unliveable. There were nice suitable places that met both our requirements but they were asking too much because everything was being listed as "vineyard potential". It was getting frustrating.

Then just a few weeks after being released from the hospital for the Whipple, my husband suffered an appendicitis attack and had to have yet another operation to remove his perforated appendix! I guess when it rains it pours!

Since things weren't looking too good for us property wise in Douglas County we decided to expand our search to Central Oregon. His mom has a summer home outside of Bend and one set of his grandparents lived in Bend for a while. So my husband was familiar with that area and has always liked that high desert area. Just prior to a visit to his mom I looked on Realtor.com for homes with acreage in that area and found a place in Prineville.

We made an appointment to see the house, which was a bank owned, and we were immediately impressed and felt like "this is it!!!". The house is a great custom built home on 52 acres outside of Prineville. It has been a little neglected and does need some work but it is in terrific shape for a bank owned. When we returned to Roseburg we had the agent we've been working with write up an offer.

After a little back and forth action we got the house. We certainly had a different experience than we expected from hearing about bank owned properties. Everything went very quickly and relatively smoothly. I think from the day we made our offer to the day of closure was less than two months!

This is downtown Prineville from the Ochoco (OH chuh ko) Viewpoint (looking east).

Basically the same view but backed out a bit. The road you see at the bottom is the main road that comes in to town after dropping off a bluff. I'll get better pictures to show this later...

We've owned this house for two weeks now! I find it highly amusing that my last post, about Smith Rock State Park, is a location just 3o minutes from our new home!

I'm looking forward to sharing more about our new house, but that will have to wait until another day. So until then!

Smith Rock State Park

2011-06-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

We went to Smith Rock State Park today. It is a rustically beautiful park just outside of Terrebonne, OR. There is no camping allowed as it is a day park only ($5.00 fee). There are some equestrian accessible trails and dogs are allowed, on leash only, please.

The Crooked River runs through the area. We saw geese, ducks, and snakes. We went what I can only guess is early in the season and even though school is just out there were quite a few people there.

Surprisingly, to me anyway, the park allows cliff climbing and there were people doing just that. There was even a group of young teens or pre-teens getting ready to go on a climb.

We went to the farthest parking lot and this was the scene.

My husband got brave and stepped out onto the edge. My hands got sweaty just watching him so I stayed back, held the dogs' leashes and took a few pictures. After a few minutes I yelled at him to get back because I was just getting too nervous!

Check out the little guy that kept him company on the edge (right behind his right leg).
This is looking down!
On the way down to the river we passed this tree with "flowers".

These "caves" were all over the cliff sides. This one just happened to be next to the trail.

Notice the "balancing" rock in the middle.

And look in the middle of this picture.

A climber. We saw three groups of climbers today!

We just went on a small hike today. Obviously much easier going down than coming back up!

Sure glad we didn't have to go up on the cliff face!

Nothing Happening

2011-04-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

Just to let you all know, I probably won't be posting anything much. Nothing much has been happening and I don't want to post frivolous entries just for the sake of posting something.

So far this adventure has been like a roller coaster of emotions. Excited, anxious, disappointed, hopeful, irritated, and on and on.

So the short of it is don't expect to see much here until we get an accepted offer on something or we decide to try another area.

Kinda how I'm feeling right now:

☹☁☂☔

I know it will get better eventually. It's the "unknown" and the "waiting until" that is particularly difficult.

Back To Looking

2011-04-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

This week was a busy week with the property. We finally got some of the answers we were looking for as to some of the more detailed construction costs, like pulling the electrical lines to the house site and developing the spring. The news was not good.

The spring is not where we thought it was. Originally we thought it was in the middle of the pasture above the house pad site. That would have made it a simple thing to dig it out a bit, put a box around it and have it drain into a holding tank, which then could have gravity fed to the house.

We found out the spring was at the bottom of the hill at the opposite corner from the house site. That means the spring would have to be developed at the bottom of the hill. One holding tank would be at the spring site with a pump to pump it up to another holding tank at the top of the hill. Then there would be water in case of a power outage as the top tank would be able to gravity feed to the house. We would have to trench and pipe all these lines from the bottom tank to the top tank to the house. More $$$ that we had not expected.

Now for the power issue. It was 900 feet from the power line to the house site. That was going to cost about $10,000. The spring site was about another 900 feet away. Since a pump would be required the most logical thing to do there would be to run a separate line to the spring, which would also entail a separate meter. I'm not sure how far the existing line was from the spring site but it was at least 500 feet. So it turns out that there would not just be one line and meter, but everything power-related was basically going to be double what we were expecting.

Then it turns out to get the road right would take at least $10,000. Though it's partially rocked right now it is inadequate. Add to that the other costs, like the garage (which is required by the bank to get the loan), the septic system, the pad prep, propane, yada yada.

The contractor said his figures were showing the construction costs to be at least $85,000. These were the bare bones figures. He kept subtly trying to tell us the total construction costs were probably not working out to be equitable to the property and house. We could only see the costs going up. And besides that we did not have any extra cash to cover costs involved in case the appraisal came in lower than actual costs. (The bank will not loan anything over the actual appraisal.)

Long story short, we withdrew our offer. ☹

But that just means something better will come along, right?

Hail

2011-04-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Friday was the first nice day we've had in a while. Then Saturday the temperature dropped and it got rainy again. We also had a little surprise. Saturday afternoon we got quite a little hail storm. It hailed for at least 10 minutes.

This is the front porch right after the hail started up.

Here is the same view just a few minutes later!
Of course we had to let the dogs experience the hail. Gus wasn't too thrilled.
Notice the hail bouncing off his back!

Clyde is slowly but surely getting acclimated to the weather here. He doesn't seem too bothered by the hail.

I was trying to get a shot of the hail bouncing off his back too. That's why he's looking at me like "why do you keep sending me out?"

The front yard. It almost looks like sticking snow!

Today the sun is shining brightly, but the temperature is still kind of low. I think warmer weather is supposed to be on the way. In about another week or so?

Sunday

2011-03-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday we had breakfast with friends and then took a drive towards Eugene. I find it surprising that these daffodils seem to be just growing willy-nilly alongside the freeway, like some Johnny ~~Appleseed~~ Daffodil sprinkled the bulbs about.

Sorry about the quality of these photos. I did what I was told is a "no no" in my photography class: I took photos through the window of a moving vehicle.

But take my word for it, these are some sort of daffodils just growing wild on the side of I-5.

After showing me the tiny house where he used to live in Marcola when he was about 18, my husband and I then went to his sister's house and we had a nice visit with her and her son and daughter-in-law. We are sort of parallelling their lives right now in that they are living in a rental after having sold their home. Like us, they just purchased a lot, and where we are having a manufactured home put on our lot, they are building a "real" house.

As we left to go on our way back home we saw a couple of deer in the yard.

As I've told a few people we seem to be "moving at the speed of Oregon". Our contractor was to call the sellers to get permission to get his excavator on the property to check the spring. I think he was going to do that today, a relatively dry day, as he was concerned about making tracks through the hay meadow.

I'll be happy when escrow closes and we can actually start on the construction. And then I'm sure I won't be able to wait until it's all done and we are moved in...

Cat In The Box

2011-03-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

Clyde occasionally gets fixated on Ollie for some reason. Earlier today I cleared out a box that had a bunch of older bills and miscellaneous papers and I left the box on the floor. Ollie thought it would be a good place to park her big behind in.

Maybe Clyde can't figure out what she is doing in the box.

She seems to be aware of his presence and is mildly annoyed.
Now she is just pretending he isn't there at all.
Silly creatures!

In other news we had a big storm come through here last week. It knocked out the power in a bunch of areas, including ours. We weren't as lucky as some, and were luckier than others. Our power was out from about 3:30 in the afternoon until 8:15 the next morning.

The bad news for us is that our big tv appears to be fried now. It just won't turn on. We've managed to attach the cable to our little 16" tv and that's what we're watching now. How I miss our big tv. :-(

****************************************************************

We got a cost estimate from the bank for the property and construction loan.

Yikes! If the construction costs are as high as they are estimating (and she did say they are estimating on the high side), then we will NOT be able to move forward.

As it is written now it will take every single bit of cash we have. That wouldn't be so bad except then they want an additional four months worth of "reserves" in the bank. That basically means four months worth of mortgage payments. Which will not be there after the 20% down payment and closing costs.

We met with the transport guy yesterday. We figured it would cost a little bit extra to get the house parts up to the property because of the bit of hill they would have to travel. Fortunately it was not as much as we had anticipated.

Today we met the contractor at the site. Though specific costs were not discussed I felt a little better about everything. I had the impression that the construction cost estimates that the bank had were very much on the high side.

I am praying every day that if this was meant to be then God will provide the means for us to make it happen. I also ask that if it's not to be then we will know and it will just fall apart. So far it seems to be happening.

Though it is hard to let go of control I am leaving it in His hands; like the Carrie Underwood song says, "Jesus, take the wheel!"

Offer Accepted!

2011-03-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

We got the call around noon today. The sellers accepted our counter to their counter.

Yay!

We have 20 days to do our "due diligence". That means we will ensure that the building permits are current and the septic approval is confirmed. We are going to have an expert check out the spring and maybe even check on the possibility of digging a well.

If we can get all our questions answered then we will get our financing in order and begin construction.

Last week I sold my cows in California. How ironic. I didn't know how much longer it would take before we would be able to get a place here and I got the impression that the lady who was taking care of my cows was getting tired of it. She and her brother sold their business and even though I was reimbursing her for the costs associated with keeping the cows it felt like she didn't want to do it anymore.

That's okay, I can't blame her. She was kind of pushed into it by her brother anyway and I really thought we would have the cows here by now too. The cost of hay is rising sharply there and I figured it would be easy for me to get new cows and I would save a bit in the meantime. I didn't get a real good price on them, but whatever.

That seems to be my motto: Buy high, sell low. LOL!

I still have the horse and pony and the bull. I'm looking forward to the day when I'll have them all together again. I'm sure my sister (who is taking care of the bull for me) is too!

At least now I'll have more blog fodder as things progress!

Daylight Savings Time

2011-03-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Last night was when we turned our clocks forward one hour for Daylight Savings Time. So if you haven't changed your clock make sure to do so, unless you live in a state where it doesn't apply (like AZ).

When we turn our clocks forward that always means spring is not far away. Here are some of the flowers in our front yard.

Rosemary.

??
We received a counter offer for the property in Yoncalla and we'll be making a counter-counter offer on Monday. I hope this doesn't go back and forth too much.

We Bought A House

2011-03-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

We've been having a tough time finding the property we want with a home that is acceptable so we started looking at bare land to place a manufactured home. Of course the next logical step was to look at manufactured homes.

Originally we had been thinking of a Palm Harbor home. Our friends here have a really nice one and there was a similar, but a bit smaller, model on the lot. We were calling it the "baby" version of our friends' home.

The problem now is that Palm Harbor is apparently having financial difficulties (they filed for Chapter 11). In the last couple of weeks they've gone through a "reorganization". Several lots have been closed and they were having big discounts on the homes that were on those lots. The original salesman we first talked to was no longer working there.

We were still thinking about getting the baby house and when we went to go talk to a salesman we discovered the lot was closed with a sign on the door. It said "Closed for spring break. Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for a personal appointment." Then our friends had a small repair done on their home and remarked that the repairman seemed concerned for his job.

We decided to go check out another place in Sutherlin we had passed numerous times. It was a Crown Homes lot and we found out they sell Karsten brand homes. The salesman was very nice and not pushy at all. The salesman from the other company was what I would call a "typical" salesman, kind of pushy, and not really answering our questions. But enough about him.

The Crown salesman took us through some of the homes on his lot and we finally went through the one we both decided was "the one".

It had a nice open floorplan with a big kitchen that opened to the living room. There were a lot of windows and the house was nice and bright and airy.

This is the back and side. We like the porch and thought it might be nice to expand it to the back side. That would be a good spot for a bbq and outdoor table set.

So here's the tour of the model.

This is the formal living room for which I see no particular purpose, but whatever. I suppose it could be used as a game room or office. This is to the immediate right after walking through the front door.

Through the entry and then to the left is the dining area.
Directly opposite the dining area is the kitchen. It's nice and big.
This is the other side of the kitchen from the back corner of the living room.
Turning 45º is the living room, or family room, with a fireplace in the corner.

Here's the view from that same corner but between the kitchen and living looking straight at the dining area.

I'll skip the guest bathroom and the two other bedrooms, since they are just regular rooms like what you'd expect.

Here's the master bedroom from the hall door.

Here's the master bathroom. It has a big tub for me in the corner, and two sinks and cabinetry on either side. I like having a his and hers sink.

Then there's the toilet of course. If you look in the mirror you can see a separate shower opposite the toilet.

Click here to see the floorplan.

This particular home was just sold at a discount on account that it was a "floor model" but even buying a brand new one was within our budget. We thought when the time came this was the house we'd get.

As it turned out there was another house, same floor plan, with some more upgrades, that was on another lot in White City, just outside of Medford. The store owner had bought it from another lot that closed and he was willing to sell it at a steep discount also, since it was already a couple of years old.

We took a drive to White City to take a look. It's not totally together, though the roof is closed up. They are also using it to store extra furniture from models that have sold. After walking through we could still get a good idea of what it would look like. The owner said we could have it for $98,000 and that was a deal we felt we could not pass up!

It has a lot of upgrades, even more so than the house in Sutherlin. The only thing this one does not have that the other one had was a solar tube in the master bedroom closet, and a skylight in the master bedroom. We only had to put $500 down to hold it, which we did today.

Once we find a property then we can start talking with the contractor to check on costs to perhaps add the skylight, which we liked, and the solar tube in the closet, which is a nice feature. There were a few other extras we would look into also, like extending the porch around to three sides, adding a garage, etc.

And speaking of property, we went to look at the property I mentioned yesterday. Very deceiving. The listing describes the topography as "level, sloped, steep, gen-slp [gentle slope]" and the lot description is "mrchtim [merchandisable timber], pasture, secluded, rprotim [reproduction timber]." I would call that a creative description. The only thing that was truly accurate in my opinion was "steep". It certainly would not serve our purposes.

And so, we decided to make an offer on the Yoncalla property. Our realtor is going to write it up tonight or tomorrow and we'll see what happens!

A Possibility

2011-03-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

Last week we drove to a property near Yoncalla to have a look-see. I had seen it on the internet before and when we finally were able to track an address down we actually went out twice and still couldn't find it. Then we got more detailed directions from the realtor and we headed out again.

It was funny because the pictures all show this huge meadow and the road to the property is down a road through a narrow canyon in a dense forest. The property is literally at the end of the road. Our problem on the prior searches was we didn't go far enough. We got to the "end of the road" and turned around.

Last week when we went looking "one more time" we followed the agents' instructions and went on through. We continued through the dense forest and suddenly broke out into a small valley.

Looking at the aerial below you can see the dirt road we came out on at the very top right. I'm still not adept at scanning with this computer so the photo isn't really oriented right, but you can see that north is pointing to the right.

There are several options on the property for sale in this valley, all being sold by one owner. They have about 160 acres for sale, available all together with a house for about $999,000. Another option is the house + 79 acres in the $650,000 range. A third option is the 80 acres to the north of the house for $400,000. And the final two options are the 80 acres split into 40. The western 40 is listed at $179,000 and the eastern 40 is listed at $259,900.

Oddly enough, about six months ago these last two were listed at $200,000 each. Apparently the owner is feeling the market out to see what will happen.

We are interested in the eastern 40 section. And I think looking at the photos you will see why. (It's the portion outlined in red in the aerial photo above.)

The east side is bordered by BLM (on the left in this photo) so at least we know that will never be logged.

The property is either currently or formerly a grass hay meadow. That would be good for me. Since I don't have a lot of animals to feed I could set aside just a few acres and grow my own hay. I'll just need to learn how to do that.

This is looking north from near the middle.

This picture is from the south east corner looking to the north west corner of the lot. You can see the tree bunch in the middle. I call it the "swirl" and if you look at the aerial you will understand why.

Driving back through a portion of Yoncalla is this interesting sight. Someone actually has a camel!

We are planning on looking at a property just to the south of Roseburg, hopefully tomorrow or at least some time this week. If that property doesn't pan out then we will most likely start making plans to make an offer on this property. One thing for sure is we won't be offering anything near what they're asking now. We know they haven't made any improvements since it was for sale before so it will be much closer to the original $200,000 mark.

Crocheted Afghan

2011-02-26T18:14:00.000-08:00

During the times I am sitting around the house doing nothing I thought I should be a little more productive. So I went to the Paton's yarn web site (www.patonsyarns.com) and looked up some patterns. The patterns are free to members and membership is free too.

I wanted to do something simple and chose this "Popcorn And Lace Afghan". I ended up using about twice the amount of yarn that's called for in the pattern, but then again I never check the tension and I just make it until it's as long as I want it to be.

You can see I made it big enough to cover the length of the sofa. Notice the lump on the top. That's Ollie. I wanted a picture of the afghan and spread it out over top of her. It didn't bother her at all.

Here you can see a little more of the detail.
Now that that's done I guess I'll have to find another pattern to do.

Dirty Dogs = Dirty Tub

2011-02-22T09:40:00.000-08:00

I haven't given the dogs a proper soapy sudsy bath since we've been here. We have hosed the mud off their legs and rubbed them with a towel but that's just not the same. I decided to give them a real bath after we got back from our walk at the BLM's North Bank Ranch.

I went with the hardest to wash first, which was Gus. It was really bad. I cleaned it out before I gave Clyde his bath. To be honest by the time I finished with Clyde my back was kind of sore and I decided to clean the tub later.

That's when I realized I could take a picture and at least I'd have a little bit of blog fodder for those in my family that start writing nasty emails when I haven't posted for more than two or three days! (Just kidding!)

So here is the tub after washing Clyde. I realize it's a little hard to see but in real life it's pretty bad.

Now imagine it about three times worse than this. That's what it looked like with Gus, the Golden Retriever.

I used my scrubbie on them and consequently it's become a "dogs only" scrubbie.

In the house search front we have a meeting tomorrow morning with our realtor. I'm beginning to reevaluate my wants list. I'm thinking maybe I won't get the property I want and I'll just have to make do with something smaller, acreage wise. We'll see what she has to say tomorrow.

Vanbushome

2011-02-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we took a little drive to the coast and saw this decidedly unique bus in the parking lot at the Winchester Bay docks. Somebody took a VW van and stuck it on top of an old school bus and turned it into a motor home.

Notice the smoke stack by the driver's side of the van.

Is it a vanbushome or maybe even The Magic Bus?

Day After Valentine's

2011-02-15T08:32:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a nice Valentine's Day.

Not much is going on right now besides the fact that the dogs have cost us a lot of money this last month and a half.

First off was when Chester bloated on New Year's Eve and had to go to the emergency vet after hours. He spent the weekend there and came home on Monday. Then he bloated again a week ago, again on the weekend necessitating a visit to the emergency vet. As you probably know he didn't make it that time.

Then the next Monday we had to bring Gus in because his ears got dirty. I had noticed it the week earlier and was cleaning them every other day, but it was too much and they ended up getting infected. Plus while he was in we decided to go ahead and start him on a heart worm preventative. That requires a blood test so that was added on top of the other medications he had to take. His ears are good now but he still has to finish his antiobiotics.

Clyde went in on the 10th with the idea that we would have him take the blood test and get him started on the heart worm stuff too. As it turned out he was due for his shots the following week (this week). I figured we may as well go ahead and do it then so I wouldn't have to make yet another trip to the vet. I did tell the doctor that he reacted badly to his puppy shots so we always just did a titer test to make sure he was still covered for those (not including rabies). He said studies have shown that dogs that react to the DHLPP are actually reacting to the L portion. The L is for leptovirus which is not uncommon in more rural areas. He said he could give Clyde a steroid shot to help counter act any reaction. I decided to go ahead and try it.

We got home and about 20 minutes later he started shaking his head and rubbing his face on the floor. I could see his face was starting to swell up and he was developing hives in a few spots on his body. I called the office and said I was going to bring him back in (I didn't have any Benedryl at home). The doctor was waiting for us and gave Clyde an injectable Benedryl shot.

We'd been home for several hours when it became apparent that the Benedryl was wearing off. He started shaking his head again and was showing signs of the other symptoms too. I ran to the store to get some Benedryl liquid capsules and shoved a few down his throat. So of course two minutes later he threw up. By this time the office had been closed for about an hour so that meant another emergency call. Back to the office, another shot or two (my husband took him in this time) and back home. Around 9:30 pm the shots must have started wearing off again so I kept my fingers crossed as I shoved a couple more Benedryl down his throat. This time they stayed down and did the trick. The next morning all was well, even the facial/lip swelling was gone. I think we'll stick with the titer tests from now on.

In the house news my husband and I decided to let the Hogan Road house go. Much as we liked the house and the property it was a nightmare trying to work with that agent. I think much of the problem was that the owner is pretty much giving the agent carte blanche to do what he wants. I suspect they are partners in the logging aspect and the agent's focus is definately not on selling the house right now.

There were two main problems for us. One was that the owner was insisting on carrying the paper. Our realtor said that typically means the rate on owner carried loans are one percent over what a bank would charge. Plus we'd have to come up with a large down payment. In this case originally they wanted $100K, which I told our realtor we couldn't do. Then she asked if we could do $50K. We could, but we weren't happy about that. We only wanted to pay 10% down so we'd have more cash to do the remodeling, and possibly buy a tractor with any leftover.

The second issue was the agent refused to move the easement. He kept insisting that the place where the other gate was along the road was too steep and would cost too much. In my interpretation that means they would have to ask less for that part of the property to make it more attractive so a buyer could put a road in. I can't help wondering why someone would put a gate in if it were not usable? I know for a fact that a gate costs more than a fence. So for us the deal killer was the easement issue. Who knows what kind of neighbor we might have gotten? They would be using that easement that runs through the middle of our property. What if they had tons of kids riding quads up and down? Would we have any say about that? After all, it would be an "easement", they would be legally allowed to use that road. Sorry, but NO!

Our realtor was very understanding and she actually felt the same way. The owner's agent was difficult to work with and they were in the same realty office! She told me not to get discouraged because that means something better will come along.

So that's it for now.

See You At The Rainbow Bridge

2011-02-08T17:41:00.000-08:00

Chester, our Chesapeake Bay Retriever, passed away early Sunday. Without going into a lot of painful details, basically he bloated again and didn't make it through the night. The vet said she had left him at 12:30 Sunday morning and when she returned at around 8:30am he was gone. She assured me he had not been in any pain.

We'll see you later, buddy!

December 17, 1998 to February 6, 2011

Closer Look, Part Four

2011-02-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to feel like a hawker on an infomercial. But wait...there's still more!!!

I think this will be the final post of this series. For now anyway.

Here is one more look at the garage section.

A toilet/sink bathroom inside the garage.

There's a basement! You get to it from the garage. The stairs are L shaped.

Here's from the bottom of the L.

And here's looking back at the bottom of the L. Obviously not a full size basement but still lots of space for extra storage, canned goods...wine cellar!

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of the other room in the garage. It is also a storage and/or work room. It is the same size and sits directly above the basement. There were just a couple of shelves in there which leads me to believe it was more of a work room.

But wait...there's more!!!

Remember there's an upstairs over the garage? These stairs (again in the L shape) lead to that upstairs area.

This is a nice sized living area with that bar. There is a small sink back there.
Theee are two bedrooms off the wall next to the bar area.

Closer look at the bar area. That cupboard to the right is actually a giant storage area over the stairs. You can literally comfortably climb inside there.

Another look at the "living" room.

I can see a pool table, fussball game, pinball machine, or whatever up here! Or just a simple living room for a guest apartment, so long as they don't mind going to the bathroom in the garage and taking a cat bath out of the sink!

After the second look at the house my husband and I took a stroll on the property without either of the agents. This is the pond that will be going to the split off side. It's about a third of an acre. All the green trees you see here will be logged.

Heading back to "our" side.

These next two are from the top of a knoll looking towards the main road.

And that is it.

The house has a few issues that need addressing, but I'd just as soon leave everything as is so we can make the corrections as we prefer. Then there is a huge issue of an easement the owner's agent was telling us about. He wants to make a continuation of the logging road that runs along the top fence line, through the middle of the 85 acres towards the bottom 200 acres. This is for the logging that will be done on that property as well as to get into that property once the logging is done and that property is sold again.

I've asked our agent if it would be possible to make a contingency that the easement could be used for the logging and showing of the property while it is for sale. But then once that property sells it would be encumbent upon the new owner to build his own road from the street and the easement would be closed. I don't think that's unreasonable at all. That way the current owner doesn't have to make what they are calling an expensive road in, and the new owner would have to pay for it.

In one way I just don't get it because they are saying the area where the other gate is off the road is too steep for the logging trucks and it would cost much too much to build a road in for them. Yet they are going to build this long road all the way around to get in. Wouldn't it be just about the same to build a much shorter road even if they did have to build it up a bit more to fill in? Well, I'm not an engineer, so what do I know?

Another frustration for us is the other agent is so casual about the whole thing. The owner, who lives out of the area, has given the agent full rein to deal with the property as he wants. You can imagine we would like to get negotiations started yet the agent is being hard to get a hold of and he's very wishy washy on final plans. Hey, he's the one who told our realtor about his client's plan to split and sell that property in the first place.

We still drive around looking and waiting for anything new to come up on the market. And if our realtor hears about something not quite on the market yet she'll let us know so we can do a drive by to see if it's something we want to pursue.

Meanwhile we wait...

Closer Look, Part Three

2011-02-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Continuing from yesterday...

This is the masterbedroom. It is on the opposite end of the house on the front. The sliding door leads out to the front deck and you can probably see a part of a hot tub in the deck. We didn't look at it so I have no idea what kind of condition it is in.

Here's a look from inside the bedroom. Directly to my right and behind me is the sliding door (just so you can get a perspective of where the photo is taken from). The bedroom entrance door is to the left, there's a full length mirror on the wall, and the entry to the closets and bathroom are right next to that.

The rather large closet.
We've never had a closet this big before!
This is from the closet looking into the master bathroom.
The master bath toilet! There is only one sink, but I could live with that. For a while.

Now here's that crazy shower I previously mentioned! It looks like there are two shower heads, one built in and one hand held, as well as a spout. This would work really well for washing the dogs!

Notice the floor to ceiling windows!
Here's from outside looking in.
I guess you could put potted ferns and stuff all in the outer edge where the rocks are.
For some reason this shower just totally intrigues me!

This is the view from inside the master bedroom looking into the hall. There are a few dry rot issues we noticed in the hall (notice at the bottom of the corner).

So that's it for the back part of the house. More tomorrow!

Closer Look, Part Two

2011-02-05T07:12:00.000-08:00

I finally figured out how to use the scanner with my laptop, and I was able to download the plat maps. Remember you can click on the image to enlarge.

This is the aerial showing the boundaries of the property (in red) and the proposed division through the top third of the property. The yellow line that goes from almost corner to corner is the road.

Here is the black and white map.

Now for more of the house. This is the living room from the door going into the garage. The big windows are the front of the house. Behind the fireplace is the front door.

A closer look at the fireplace. The wood burning stove is right next to it. Very odd. I think if we get this place we will resurface the fireplace (which wasn't done very well to begin with) and put in a nice Lopi insert. I hate that we left ours in the old house. Also this particular picture shows the truest color of the carpet. Lovely, eh?

The kitchen from the dining area.

Kitchen from next to the wood burning stove. I've been doing lots of remodeling in my head!

The front door entry. Notice that lamp I mentioned before. Those shelves are not built in and could be removed.

Looking down the hall from between the kitchen and entry, basically from next to the wood stove. The doors on the left are to a linen closet. The door straight ahead to the right is the master bedroom. See that weird little thing in the corner? I think it might just be for circulating air. The agent said the former owner was a heavy smoker. The door on the left is to the washer and dryer. There is a bedroom around the corner to the right. Around the corner to the left (basically make a u-turn there) is another bedroom and straight left is the main bathroom.

The main bathroom. I think the tile around the tub is just a plastic surround. The wall on the right separates the tub from the toilet.

The toilet.
Tomorrow you get to see the master bedroom and that crazy shower!

Closer Look, Part One

2011-02-04T07:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went to take a closer look at the property we are really interested in. This is the one that was originally listed at $595,000 and it had 285 acres, a house, feeder barn, pond, and according to the flyer "850 mbf".

I didn't know what that meant when I first saw the property on line. It didn't matter anyway since it was well over our price point.

I have since learned that it means 850 million board feet of timber. The person that bought it is the owner of a private timber company and he bought it specifically to log it. His plan is to clear cut the southern part, selective cut near the house. The property was going to be split so the house, on the northern part, would have 85 acres. After logging it was to be sold.

Our realtor found out about the planned split and that's how we got started with this place. When we first went out to see it the power was turned off and we did a quick tour of the house. We liked what we saw at that time.

So now that escrow has closed with the timber company owner we were able to go out to the house again with his agent (and ours) and take a closer look. I took about 60 pictures and picked out about 45 to post so this look will be spread out over four days. (Remember you can click on each picture to enlarge.)

The driveway entrance from the street.

Halfway into the driveway looking towards the house. This is a long open sided shed. It could be covered parking for extra vehicles or converted to a barn or big storage shed.

Another view of the car port. The house is in the background.

These are two small sheds. You can see them in the above photo on the right, below the car port. The one on the right is set up to possibly be a greenhouse of sorts.

This is the view looking back from the end of the carport to the street. The loggers were already in action and you can see the beginning of a road they are putting in. In starts right at the gate and goes up and around to the top fence.

The driveway comes in and makes a loop around the car port. This is the house from the bottom part of the loop. The front door is in the middle on the deck.

And here's the house from the top of the loop. This is actually the back of the house.

Here's a better look at this part of the back of the house. The slider goes into the dining area. The window next to it is where the main sink is. You can see here the garage door is open and the little door next to it also goes into the garage.

The house from the "back yard area".
And just panning a bit to the right is the car port.
The front door.

The view from the front door. The oaks will still be there, but the green trees in the far background will be gone. The former owner liked to target shoot as you can see his targets set up in the front.

More tomorrow.

Ground Hog Day

2011-02-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

This morning at 8 am it was just under 30º.

We don't have any snow but the lawns and cars are all frosty.

It looks like we're going to have an early spring this year, according to Punxatawney Phil. I'm sure our neighbors on the east coast are happy to hear that!

Happy Ground Hog Day!

Icky Ticky

2011-01-31T18:12:00.000-08:00

We found a tick on Gus.

I'm guessing he picked it up from the last time we went for a walk at the North Bank Ranch. I first noticed it as a swelling above his left eye. Upon closer examination I found what looked like a wart.

I know it sounds kind of silly but there are warts that will grow really fast and I thought that's what it was. But in the back of my mind there was a suspicion...

I even went so far as to Google warts and found something that sounded like what Gus's new addition looked like.

But a few days later the swelling over his eye didn't go away (which I thought might have been from the dogs playing together in a rough manner like they sometimes do). At least the "wart" seemed to have stopped growing.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place: I put my reading glasses on, got a flashlight and took a good look at the thing. That's when I noticed the little black strings at the skin line. And then the little black strings moved!

AAACCKK! A tick! Another Google search and I found a site that showed how to remove ticks from dogs using a special tool. You can use tweezers if you don't have the tick removal tool. The thing about the site was the tick it showed looked exactly like the one over Gus's eye.

So lacking the special tick removal tool I got my tweezers and tried to carefully remove the tick.

As you can see I was successful.

It left a nice little hole over Gus's eye.

Lacking any rubbing alcohol I swabbed the hole with my Sea Breeze cleanser.

I am happy to say that today except for the little hole left behind the swelling is all down and everything is back to normal.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in that special tick removal tool.

Oysters Casino

2011-01-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

Here is one of the things we've done with the extremely fresh (just harvested) oysters we got from Winchester Bay the other day.

We made Tyler Florence's Oysters Casino. You can click on the link for the recipe.

First of all it was really easy.

Second of all it was really delicious!!

Crabbing

2011-01-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today we took a little trip to the coast to try our hand at catching crabs.

It was a little colder than we expected. It didn't seem to bother the numerous surf scoter ducks.

Pulling up the crab rings.

Too small.

It's not a lot of fun when it's barely 40º and the wind is blowing. I had to do something so I got a couple more pictures of the sea ducks.

We had two crab rings. One has a bait basket that locks the bait in a cage. The other ring just has the bait pinned to the ring.

We discovered this fellow was having an easy lunch with the unprotected bait. (Look at the middle of the picture. It's a seal.)

More sea ducks under the pier.
Sea gull.
Coast Guard chopper buzzing around.

Well, the crabbing didn't go so well. We got a total of three, so we didn't get totally skunked, but they were too small and we had to throw them back.

So to make up for it we stopped at the oyster place and got a few fresh oysters! Can you say Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Casino, Fried Oysters, and Tina's Favorite Oysters? YUMMY!

No Nukes Allowed!

2011-01-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

I guess that means I can't bring my dirty bomb with me to Eugene...

Outside Of Our Rental

2011-01-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures of the outside of the house we are renting. This is looking at the house from the street towards the east.

The front door.
Gate to the back yard.

From the corner of the garage looking out the back yard (to the south-east).

From the back corner looking at the house. That is a shed on the right that we don't use.

The shed with an additional little section fenced off behind it (that we don't use) and the back neighbor's yard comes slightly into our yard (the wooden fence part).

The only bad thing that I can say about the yard is that #1: it doesn't drain very well, so when it rains it's like a big pond and the dogs are running in about an inch of water. And #2: the grass is clumpy, not even, which makes it harder to get a good scoop on the poop.

Our latest info on the property we want is that the new owners are from out of town. They are coming in at the end of this week to sign the papers for their closing. Then hopefully they will come to a decision on an asking price for the divided section they want to sell and we will be able to start with our negotiations.

Meanwhile we are going to look at another place today that is new on the market. This will be something we'll keep in mind if we like it well enough and the other place totally falls through.