Deer Watching On A Late Winter's Day

This morning I had the opportunity to observe some deer who came to the yard in search of food.  The snow is getting pretty deep now, and I'm sure food is getting harder for the deer to find.  I cut up some old squash that wasn't going to make it in our cold storage area, and tossed it out in the yard for the deer to find.  They sure do love pumpkins and squash.   It was fun to watch the deer and their various actions and personalities this morning!  A group of 5 does came to the yard.  Only one doe was brave enough to come so close to the house - the others stood by and watched and patiently waited while she loaded up on food.   Deer are such beautiful animals - that is, if they aren't eating my garden plants!!!  Funny how they are OK in the winter to come into the yard, but in the spring I put up an electric fence to keep them out!  When those beautiful creatures eat my newly sprouted green beans and cabbages, I am not happy with them.  Anyway, here are some photos of their behavior this morning.  It was a nice sunny day, about 22 degrees.

A doe is eating a piece of winter squash just outside the porch area.  You can see another deer further back, cautiously waiting for her buddy to finish.  They like to travel through the untilled garden area and check out if there is anything left to eat.  I think other deer have come by, too, judging by all the snow dug up all over the place. 

Three other deer are waiting for the one doe to join them.   They are too shy to come to the house.  Another doe was waiting in the woods, just outside of the picture area. 

Oh my!  After feasting on squash, the doe decided it was a good time to 'relieve herself' !

The doe finally makes her way back to the others, carefully following the tracks she came into the yard on.   Deer usually follow the same pathways.  Right now the snow is about 12 inches deep all over, and quite a bit deeper in drifted areas or in protected areas in the woods.   The deer know it's always safer to go where they have been before.  If deer could talk, you can almost hear the others saying "It's about time you came back to join us"!

Lots of Work and Lots of Mess - Part 2 (Almost Finished!)

Except for a few minor trim pieces and some new curtains and a new area rug, our bedroom project is finished.  We put everything back in and tonight we will sleep on our new mattress in the newly decorated/remodeled room!   All the furniture is back where it should be and the house is no longer in chaos!  All we need to do yet is buy and install a 14 ft piece of trim across the top of the wainscot, put up some wallpaper border, and a few baseboard pieces.   I will be ordering some new white curtains, too.  This bedroom project was almost a month in the making, but we are pleased with the results.

Now that this is out of the way we can start on maple syrup making next month, and next week I will be starting some seeds for peppers, flowers and some herbs.  It's about 11 weeks away from planting the gardens, but many plants need long germination times so I need to begin very soon.  Also I hope to plant some early things in my greenhouse in early April, so I need to get the seeds going now.   We always have at least one or two projects going!

Before we put things back into the bedroom, I gave the floor a couple coats of floor paint.  Someday we hope to put down laminate flooring, but that's not in the budget yet.

The newly painted floor looks great!

And here is the finished room, except for a few details:

Except for trim around the window and baseboard and across the wainscot, the room is done.   Now I'll be looking for something nice to put on the walls.

Now to get those garden seeds started................................

Lots Of Work and Lots Of Mess - Part 1

We built our house in 2005 (by ourselves with the help of Harold's brother in law Tom) and finished most of the interior, except for our bedroom and part of the dining area and basement stairwell.  So finally after 12 and 1/2 years we decided to get the  bedroom done!  It's always been a matter of time and money (mostly money), but this winter we knew it was 'time to do it'.  So out went all the furniture and everything from the bedroom, scattered all over the house wherever there was room to put things.  Harold put up some scaffolding so he could finish the ceiling in relative comfort without having to go up and down a ladder.  (Scaffolding was on wheels, making for easy moving).  He had to re-do some of the drywall taping, as it had come loose over the years.  Remember, we were living with bare sheetrock walls all this time!  We also learned quite a lot about drywall taping over the years, so we needed to re-do what we had previously done.   This was a real messy job!  Drywall dust all over the house, dried up taping compound.........tracked all over.  We like a nice smooth ceiling and walls - none of that "popcorn stuff"!  So it took Harold many days to gets things smooth.  Then, there was painting the ceiling, painting the walls, putting up wallpaper on two of the walls, and some wainscot panels.   In order to properly put wallpaper on the walls, you need at least 2 or 3 coats of paint, plus wall sizing.   Everything took time!!

 We still have a lot to do yet: put another coat or two of paint on the wainscot panels,  trim around the wainscot panels, trim around the windows and baseboard (painted, of course), new curtains and curtain rods, and paint the floor.  We cannot afford any other kind of flooring at this time, so we will just paint the floor again.   Maybe someday we can put wood or laminate in there.   We also need to finish the closet, put the door back on, and finish the doorway between the bedroom and the bath.

When a person has to finish a room from scratch it takes a while!  We also had to buy a new mattress and box springs.  It had been MANY years since we purchased a mattress and we had sticker shock on the prices of mattresses these days!   I was also horrified to learn that today's mattresses are much deeper in construction, so none of my old sheet sets would fit.   I had to buy all new sheets - deep pocket style - and I got sticker shock from buying those too!  Wow, things are expensive these days!  The frame that we had the old mattress on didn't exactly fit the new mattress either, so Harold had to rebuild the bottom of the bed.  We like the old frame we had because it had storage drawers in it, which came in very handy for linens and such.  So basically everything we had to do in that room was a chore!  That's why I haven't been writing on here for a while.  We've been busy with construction projects!  Here is what we can report so far:

Here is the "before" picture. 

We have furniture pieces all over the place.

 

There are bureau drawers all over the living room. 

Once we got the ceiling painted, I began painting two of the walls a light blue.

Then we began putting up the wallpaper on two of the walls.  I bought this wallpaper several years ago on sale (for $1 a roll!) at a re-store and thought I had enough for all of the walls.   Then I discovered the paper had a 20 inch drop match and so I wouldn't have enough to do all of the walls.  This paper isn't made anymore either.  So, paper on two walls and paint on two walls - good enough for me! The wallpaper was supposed to be pre-pasted, but since it was old I didn't trust it, and used wallpaper paste.   That, too, was a chore!

Then we began putting up the wainscot panels.  We used both adhesive and a staple gun.  The wainscot will have a trim across the top and bottom and sides.  We need to do that yet.

Harold measured carefully and cut out openings for the electrical sockets.

The wainscot panels are up and we put the first coat of paint on this afternoon.  Tomorrow we will paint again, and get the trim painted and put on the next day.

When we get everything done and put back together I will post  a picture of the finished room!  Meanwhile we have moved into the guest room - imagine that - we are "guests" in our own home!  Just tearing up one room of the house can sure create a lot of mess all over.  I will need to wash rugs, floors and do a thorough cleaning when everything is put back into place.   We will probably get all this done just in time to create more mess by putting up sawhorses in the living room and grow lights so I can start plants for the 2018 garden season in a couple weeks!  There's always something to do, ya know?  We are very good at making work for ourselves!