Lovely Rain

And this guy.

And in the part of Ripley - baby alien slayer - Linda K.

 That stringy thing on the ground - that's what I like to call good knot weed cause dead knot weed is good knot weed.

She's got her tools - I've got mine and all I need is a shovel.

short but sweet weekend

Lazy saturday. Got up to the house around 4 am and woke up 10.30. Tried to start the day off right with mexican eggs. Which is really just scrambled eggs with cheese, red pepper and onion and a dash of chipotle powder. Then we soak a lot of tortilla chips in there before we fry it up. A little fresh cilantro and we got Huevos Mexicanos. I dabbled a little chipotle salsa on top but it really didn't need it.

We spent the rest of saturday in the yard. This patch outside the dining room is unfortunately infested with knot weed as well. We raked out all the leaves so we could see where the baby aliens were.

We also freed up plenty of spring flowers.

We decided to name the 1st batch from the Blue Jay Brewery "Fat Robin Pilsner" in honor of this guy. He just looks like he knows his beer. 

Batch #2 is up and running/fermenting. Drunken Grackle Pils perhaps?

And this is the handsomest man in the world raking.

And that was our weekend. How was yours?

Random Signs of Spring

This will be our first spring in these parts and we really have no idea what our yard will look like, what's growing where and so on. I'm sure we are in store for many surprises - good and bad.

This is good! 

These buds were kitty cats just a week ago and now they are almost blooming. Let's play the ID game everyone! Cause I have no idea! Time to start looking for a plant book - now that we got the bird issue taken care. Wink wink J and thanks again!

This could be bad. But it could also be lovely flowers. Growing in the middle of our construction debris.

This is only good. It's a flower bed that survived the snow plows.

This is AAAAALLLLL bad. These ugly gross baby alien heads are knot weed. The big nasty dirt patch next to the barn is a mine field of these horrid things. If you need to take your aggressions out on anything please come to our house and kick the baby aliens!

This is a great spring sign! Young red winged black birds a plenty!!!!

The boys are taking a break after a job WELL done! The whole bedroom and bathroom are framed out and now you can see the dormer. Smygkök utkik utsmyg vad hette det nu Kajsa...

The ceiling will come down to the top of the small rounded windows which will get real windows which will make the light in this room even more gorgeous.

The closets are built and will create a small hallway in to the bathroom. 

This is an image from this fall that I forgot about. I took it through our bathroom window which has old rippled glass in it. Makes for a lovely distortion doesn't it.

Morning light

The boys have been upstairs for a few days and it's looking amazing. It's so far from being done but I already want to move in!!!

The light is just gorgeous in the mornings and part of the plan is to put windows into the vents as well. 

This is a couple of days ago and I need to get up there tomorrow morning to get an updated snap, cause today the framed out the dormer. It's hard to see but our roof has peaks and ridges going in all sorts of directions and it took some figuring out but we managed to preserve most of them. 

We are not keeping  the sharp peak but are bringing the ceiling down to those new cross beams. It's cheaper and will be much better when it comes to insulating.

This is going to be the bed wall. Good bye little green door. Goodbye beautiful stone work.

This wall will become closets and the wall to the bathroom.

It's a Grackle! A Grackle I tell ya!

Noisy beautiful bullies! Love em so much I want to name my house after them. 

Although I'm crushing hard on the robins right now. I can watch them run for ages. Why do they do that? They've got wings - why do they use their legs like suckers!

"Duh-huh-huh. Are you guys talking about me?"

I mean come on this guy is awesome. He's got a serious penguin thing going on. Runs like one too. 

And lastly some nature porn. 

Moving right along...

These are some pictures Jeff our contractor took on friday.

Jay is laying down a vapor barrier. Before the floor was built on top of the dirt floor with a crawl space underneath. Surprisingly though, things have stayed very dry in the past 100 years. We have some luck I guess.

After the vapor barrier they started laying the beams for the floor.

With insulation this time around....

And then the sub floor.

Last order of business before the weekend was to install the steal beam that is going to make the upstairs floor nice and snug again.

And that is 4 days of work, people. 

This is the foundation in the pastry shop and at first glance there was talk of excavation and relaying the whole thing. But the boys figured out a much smarter (AND CHEAPER!!!!) way to do it.

They've built this half wall and they will pour cement behind it which will tighten up the rock foundation and keep the roots from growing into the house...

Sexy beam.

Starting to frame out the walls. It was fun to see the old siding and the door but it's time to start buttoning things up.

Except for here where we are opening things back up. Gonna need a better door though.

The boys are upstairs today framing out the ceiling in the former GREEEEEEN room.

I'm trying to solve my heroine's problems. My dear Jeanie has all the answers but how did she get them? You'll find out when Transylvania Express comes to a theatre near you. 

Aaaaaand the birds of the day 

are Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal