Snowed In

Winter weather was out in full force again this weekend.

While on our way up to Rockford to visit my stepson Jack, we got caught in a white out. 

There was a few hours of white knuckled driving. Not fun! 

We intended to take the 6 hour drive back home to Carbondale on Monday,

 but got caught in a blizzard and had to say an extra night.

Despite the crap-tastic weather, we still managed to have a nice visit with Jack and the rest of our family. 

We celebrated my cousin's 21st birthday with a Sunday morning breakfast. 

Instead of taking a picture of my fam, I took snap of this cool sign. 

Sorry family.

I got to see my 92 year old grandmother. (Again, no picture.) 

While I was at her apartment I came across her great collection of icons. This one is my fave.

  Jack has been drawing again and allowed me to share a couple of his faves here.

 

 I was able to work on this red-belied woodpecker. He's just about done.

Now we're home and about to go enjoy a walk in 60 degree weather. Yahoo!  

Hope you have a great week. Ta-Ta for now! 

We bought a fixer - Part 1

 Hi There! How are you? 

Can you believe there are just 12 days until Christmas Eve? Insanity! 

 

So, the day we got back from New Orleans, we closed on our new house.

 And the work began.... You see, this house is a fixer!

The previous owner had not done any yard work in the last 3 years. 

Though you can't see it in these images I grabbed from Google Maps street view, ivy has taken over! 

Everything was overgrown! Weed trees galore. 

Ivy was growing all over the house and had even grown into the window screens and shutters.

 There were burning bushes that were totally obscuring the picture window. 

The house is huge and has good "bones", but it is totally outdated and covered in smelly carpet.

We've got big plans for this front room. Stay tuned.

The guest bath is one of the worst rooms in the house.  Carpet, ancient brown lowboy toilet, and a pink tub. Eww! 

This room is getting an almost total gut job. After first seeing this bathroom I vowed I would never live in this house!

 Matt had to do a lot of convincing for me to agree to put in an offer on this one.

The kitchen is huge and really is in quite good shape. It's just not our style at all!

This room, as it appears here, is already a thing of the past! 

Our roofer removed the entire kitchen and will be reinstalling it in another house. 

(Felt good that it got recycled!) Work on our brand new gourmet kitchen begins in January. Can't wait!

That's all for now. Come back next week for some early reno/demo pics. Ta-Ta!

Weekly iPhoneography

Hi. How are you? 

Daylight Savings is over and the days are getting ever so short. 

The lack of sunlight that winter brings can take a toll on me.  

I'm thankful that these first short days of the season have been bright and sunny. 

This weekend's holiday craft fair didn't go so well, but I did get some quality drawing time in during the show.

I had an exceptionally nice lunch time walkabout at work yesterday. The sky was so blue! 

 

I hope you are having a nice November week! 

Can you believe that next week is Thanksgiving?

Ta-ta for now.