You know you live in the country when...

This morning I opened the front door to look up and down the street. Since the garbage wasn't picked up yesterday and I don't know how holiday schedules work with them, I was checking to see if anyone had their cans at the curb. It was about 6am or so. As I looked directly across the street, I saw a chicken running up the sidewalk.

And THAT is how you know you live in the country!!

First snow day!

We had some snow on Thursday night. It wasn't a lot but it was still pretty to see coming down. I took this photo of my backyard

From Little Nest

Now you can see how little my yard is!

I drive through farmland on my way to work. I took a few photos of the landscape on my drive. If I had not been moving at the time, I think they would have been much better. Something tells me that the traffic behind me would not have been amused!

From Little Nest

From Little Nest

It snowed again yesterday off and on but there was no accumulation. I do love snow and they are predicting much more this year than we have had in the past few years. I say "Let it snow!!"

There's a mouse in my house!

Most times, for me, the benefits of being single outweigh the negatives. This is not one of those times. I desperately want someone else to take care of this problem! Yesterday when putting away my little George Foreman grill, I discovered something on the shelf that had not been there when I took it out the night before...mouse droppings. In that cabinet, I also have a basket in which I keep things like packages of salad dressing, cocoa mix, marinades, etc. There were little slivers of paper with foil on one side. My mouse apparently craves chocolate. The only packages torn open were two of instant cocoa mix. I cleaned up the mess, took all of my packaged goods out of the cabinet and found new homes for them in upper cabinets. Gracie started sitting at the cabinet door watching and sticking a paw up occasionally between the cabinet bottom and the toe kick. I couldn't decide if I should open the cabinet door and let her handle the problem or not. My kind of luck she would torture the mouse and then bring it up to my bedroom and place it on the bed as an offering. Eeeewwwuuueee!

I am shopping for little mousetraps this afternoon. I don't like the idea of doing this but I am not going to share my home with mice. The next icky thing will be actually catching the mouse and then the disposal. I think I need to have my brother on standby. (This will probably cost me a case of beer!)

A little glimpse of my town

I walked over to vote on Tuesday. Since I had my camera in my bag, I took a few shots along the way. We have little alley ways behind the houses. They are very narrow and I am sure were better suited to horse and buggy than pickup trucks and SUVs. I want to learn more of the history of the town and more about the buildings. I love how Federal period houses stand next to log houses. I love that there are stone homes from the late 1700s standing next to farm style twin houses that were built in the early 1900s. I am CRAZY about the barns and sheds all along the alleys.

Next time I am out and about, I will take more pictures because there is SO much more to see!

Back to Lowes

It was crazy windy here yesterday and I made another discovery. I need weather stripping at exterior doors. There was no apparent air movement around my windows (thank goodness) but there was a steady stream of air coming in around the latch side of the front door. That's a pretty simple fix so I know at least one place I will be shopping on Saturday.

I have gotten so much mail since I moved into the house! Coupons, advertisements for everything I could possibly need for a house, refinance offers, etc. And the phone calls! I get calls every day from some mortgage company or the other that wants to help me lower my mortgage payments or from companies that want to sell me insurance to pay off my mortgage in the event that something catastrophic occurs to me. I just keep the answering machine on all the time and scan my calls. Guess I need to re-register on the "Do Not Call" list!

Baseboard heat

Now that it has gotten to the point where the smoke alarms don't go off every time the heat turns on downstairs, I have learned that I dislike baseboard electric heat for another reason.

Heat on the first floor (where it actually is cold) is rising up the stairwells and heating the rest of the house. Downstairs it continues to be chilly.

I can close the door to the studio so it would not go to the third floor but I am in a quandary as to how to keep some of the heat on the first floor. I HATE the look of ceiling fans but with a 12' ceiling, maybe it wouldn't be too bad if I had one in the living room. At least it would be pushing the heat back to the floor as it circulated up the walls and across the ceiling. Or maybe I could have a small ceiling fan installed at the top of the first stairway...

Anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions?

Home Dec Sewing

Back in the day, I used to do a lot of clothes sewing and home dec sewing. Now that I quilt, it is just about all that I want to do.

I needed pillows for the wicker chairs on my front porch so I decided to make slipcovers for a couple of old pillows that I wasn't using any longer. I found the absolute perfect fabric at Joann's. It has several shades of red and yellow and somewhere in the mix, the exact color that matches my house siding AND the exact color that matches the trim are found.

From Front Porch

(Doesn't my wicker chair look sad? I need to get some spray paint!)

I looked at a couple of pillow cover tutorials but none had the crisp edging all around the pillow that I was looking for so I kind of "winged" it. Since I really like how they look, I am going to make covers for several pillows on my couch that need a little freshening.