Spazzy

Spazzy likes laying on his back in the sun on the upstairs landing. It's tough to be a farmhouse cat.

Stuff we've found around the house

Given that we've named our house after an owl, I'd say that these were a pretty cool find. At first we thought they had something to do with old-timey electricity because of this one in our bedroom:

Turns out this was just covering an enormous hole in our wall and our new theory is that these owls are coasters.

Kitchen cabinets are lined with awesome recipes and instructions on "how to build a better taco."

And then there is this, about which I have nothing to say:

New feeder visitors - tufted titmouse, cardinal and a fiesty purple finch. We also had a red-tailed hawk in the backyard but he (un)fortunately didn't visit the feeder.

We're up to almost 20 gallons of maple sap.

La la la...

Most of the bedroom work remaining involves windows. They are mostly the original windows with the wavy glass and sash cord pulleys. They are in pretty bad shape (but we are sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring them at the moment). When the weather turns warmer it will be lots of fun learning window anatomy making them all functional again.

Hoping that problems look...smaller...through a macro lens, here are some attempts to make the ickiness look less intimidating.

An entomologist would have a blast with our window ecology. Tons of fun stuff making a home in the large space between our inner windows and the storm windows (including 27 species of wasps currently not pictured because their nests alone scare the crap out of me).

Given all the carcuses we've seen, I theorize every lady bug in the world comes to Indiana to die.

Even Bob Cratchit would complain...

Yeah. So we didn't move into our bedroom. But we learned a very important lesson: when you are miserly with your propane and it is only 56 degrees in your house, paint won't dry.

When we moved the ladder into the bedroom to start removing the painter's tape (an invention I am skeptical of) we also removed chunks of our lovely floor paint. :( So we moved our space heater into the bedroom and are giving the paint some more time to dry. Fingers crossed.

Here are some side-by-side photos of the progress. Still much to do but more on that later. Tonight we enjoy the small victories.

Moving into our bedroom tonight...

The last night of camping has arrived! We are moving our bed, dresser, hope chest (and area rug) into our bedroom tonight! I'm going to take some photos during the day so it looks more like a room and less like a hazy coffee shop on open mic night.

In the meantime, proof that a red-bellied woodpecker is, in fact, appropriately named.

The moody orange room

Sugary goodness!

The maple sap is starting to flow!

The Geography of Bliss.

We've been painting our bedroom...here is a preview:


This is what happens when you live in a drafty old house and select a paint color during the coldest week in Indiana ever. After 10 years of apartment white, orange seems a bit rebellious and we love it!!

Also high on the bliss scale (for us and the kitties) - full birdfeeders!



We met our neighborhood screech owl last night as we were out viewing the various wildlife tracks in our newly fallen snow. He sat placidly in a tree consenting to our flashlights shining in his face, but as soon as we turned them off he flew away so sliently it was nearly magic.

Had a blissful dinner at a DC institution this week. Five Guys just like it should be...red and white tiles, buckets of peanuts, and copies on the wall of every Washingtonian mention of the establishment in the last 10 years. I'm glad to be in Indiana, but it's nice to have this close by too.


Morning bird list:
junco
blue jay
chickadee
mourning dove
white-breated nuthatch
downey woodpecker
red-bellied woodpecker
song sparrow (so early!)
goldfinch
house finch
house sparrow
starling
house wren