Dinner for two...

So... after having dinner for 9 around the table last night, Ben and I are having dinner for two tonight while the kids stay with grandma and grandpa.

Mimosas served with a strawberry salad (look familiar book club? LOL). The salad has fresh strawberries, grilled chicken, feta, croutons and is topped with my "getting to be famous" strawberry mustard vinaigrette.

After dinner we will be finishing and perhaps even assembling the kids rooms! Just some last minute painting (doors) and fixture stuff to do and they will be move in ready! Look for the pics hopefully this weekend!!!

AAAHHH!!!!

No, I don't mean that in the relaxing way! I finally found my ipod shuffle (in the bottom of a tote of BJ's stuff care of Jedi I am sure) and attempted to download a bunch of new stuff onto it. I received itunes from Miss Em for Christmas and was excited to use them... until! I don't know why I find it so stinking hard to sync an ipod but people I am telling you! Two hours of my time... and yes I finally got them on there (or I think I did... I have a shuffle, no screen ergo, no way to really know) but I am emotionally exhausted once again by my technology.

Home...

I live here.... this is what I see when I open my door and walk out on the deck (yes, the one with no railing lol).

Everybody's Doing It...

I think I am one of the last hold outs to put up "look at how much snow we have photos" but this one was pretty good so here's mine....

If you look closely you will see...

Ben's Dodge Ram... Yes, it is a full size, big truck folks!


We got another 5 inches last night which bring our current total to 51". Yes, you read that right. We have 51 inches of snow on the ground currently in Elk Wa.

A River Runs Through It...

A river of snow that is! We were awakened on Christmas morning to a rumble and cracking so loud it was a little scary. We looked out the window just in time to see a river of snow come sliding off our roof that swept the log railing away with it like it was made of toothpicks!

The long awaited Kitchen pictures!

What do you do on the second night in a new house? You rip out the kitchen of course! This is what it looked like in all of it's Marigold colored glory! The cabinets were made of the same wood as the logs... and the counter was faux wood... I basically felt like the bride of Woodywoodpecker!

We painted the cabinets black and put in a speckled gray countertop with a stainless sink and new dishwasher (that didn't leak!).

The Stove had barely been used but was... Marigold so...

I painted it. No, I am not kidding, I painted it with appliance paint! I personally think it turned out great and cost me $6.48!

This is my very large pantry but if you can't see it, it is because it is camophloged with the logs! LOL

Much better! (In my opinion anyway)

I felt like the cabinets up top really boxed off the kitchen from the great room so...

We took the small one down and re-hung it in another part of the kitchen making it more open and adding a whole other section to the kitchen. For those of you who think you recognize the little rolly cart you are not mistaken. It is the same inexpensive rolly cart that I had in the other house but we painted it black too and then used some leftover countertop on it to make the match just right!

I decied to leave the other upper cabinet as the area behind it will eventually be part of the master and it will be a hallway so it will not be blocking anything and will give me more room to hang pictures later. I took the sliding plexy glass doors off and left them open to provide easy access to my dishes and spices (I think it looks great with the all white dishes).

The kitchen is about three times the size of my old one and I love it. It really stands out now as a room of it's own instead of dissapearing into the solid wood vortex! I bought the dishwasher and stovetop on sale at Sears and with all supplies the grand total for this remodel.... $650.00! Not bad eh?

I Got My Wish.... It Shocked Me Anyway!

I spent the morning on the phone trying to figure out where to pay all the bills and getting the addresses changed and all that good stuff that comes on the tail of moving. Most calls were just endless journeys through automated phone systems (which I think are just shy of evil) and digitally voiced prompts. Then it happened. I called the new power company to figure out what the "bill" they sent me was supposed to mean.

They had sent me an application for membership and a "bill" with no amount. My first shock was that a person... a real person.... answered my call and asked how they could help me. I explained what I had received and he told me that up here in Elk the power company is a non-profit and is mutually owned by all the residence. My ten dollar one time fee was to add me to the account that now makes up share holders along with everyone else. Weird but this is not the shocking part I was referring to. Next he explains that the amount wasn't on the bill because you get charged after the usage each month and that the blank was to fill in the number on my meeter.

Here comes the shock, are you ready? You're not really ready, you just think you are LOL! My bill is paid "on the honor system" I am to try to read my meeter about the same time each month and then mail in the new slip with the new reading and the payment for last month. They only check the meeter if a house is sold for legal purposes. I asked if people ever skunk out and he said "Never that I have heard of. Sometimes people have trouble paying but the community usually gets together to help out". Go ahead, read it again... that is really what I just said!
This phone call comes on the tail of me chuckling to myself over the FOUR page spread in the Elk Sentinel (our local paper) with 4X6 photos of each child 9-16 who got their first deer this year (holding up the antlers... with the deer still attached mind you LOL). I feel like I am living on the set of Little House on the Prairie! My friend Leslie is right... I have teleported back to the 1950's and I couldn't be happier!

The top picture is our house from the S. W. and the bottom one is from the East