Summer 2015

It's a hot, hazy mid-summer day in Northern New York!  We don't get too many, comparatively speaking, and so we love to hate these days.  The Hubs has been picking away at this and that on The Log House, completing little tasks, but his father is intent on finishing that arctic entry! 

He has started to put the hand-milled boards up on the walls:

 

It's hard to get a good angle for a picture

 

The FIL is itching to get the flooring down in there and for me to decide what I want to do with that end wall and whether to continue the boards all the way around.   Advice?  You know I'm not going to take it, what with being so contrary and all, but I do like to *hear* others' opinions.  Heh.

Since it's summer, and that means hosting many friends and family, not much work on The House gets done, but it's an embarrassment of riches of a kind, so we aren't upset!  We do, however, get the largess of my father's garden.  Which is getting largess-ter each year. 

The Girl wandering the garden looking for something to munch on in early July

Our little spinach thief

With the great blessing of living in the woods all hermit-style comes the trial of limited internet access.   *sigh*   SUCH a first-world problem, eh?   So, that has made my blogging even more haphazard.  And we all know it was straight-up iffy at the best of times.  

So, see you in...  what?  November?    

Heh.   You know I'm only half joking. 

Aaaaaand..... we're in!!



Hey, you guys!!  I've been absent from the blog for a month for the BEST of reasons...  okay, also because I'm lazy and have been without an internet connection...   but the main reason is that we MOVED INTO THE LOG HOUSE!!!  

I KNOW!   EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! 

Thanks to a little push and help from our friends Bert and Lisa and my mother, we moved the big stuff out to the new house the weekend before Christmas.  Despite our herculean effort, though, we left quite a bit of detritus littered about the old house which we are *ahem* still boxing up in drips and drabs.  Yes, I know.  UGH. 

But, I digress.  Once we had that major load of schtuff moved out to the new house, The Hubs and I sort of looked at each other and said, "What the heck? Let's just ...  sleep here." 

And we did.  And there was much rejoicing.

My Pennsylvanian sister Ells arrived a few days before Christmas and helped us decorate.  The new house.  For CHRISTMAS.  It. was. wonderful.  You have not seen a happier girl than this girl right here.    On Christmas day, we hosted my whole family for gifting and eating and more happiness.  The only thing that could have made our full hearts even closer to bursting is if Bob's parents hadn't abandoned us and the cold northern winter for the alligator-infested warmth of Florida --  er, I mean, if Bob's family had also been present.  We can't wait for them to return and for all the cousins to experience the joy of log-a-riffic living this summer. 

 To illustrate said happiness, I submit this photographic evidence:

Cooking for the first time in the new house.  With cheese, appropriately.

Hey, I didn't say it was a full, fancy meal.  What's wrong with grilled cheese?

The dining room... with furniture sort of temporarily scattered about.  But - look - a table cloth!

The Boy and The Girl on Christmas morning.  In the log house.  For Christmas. 

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!   Sorry.  It's still just so awesome.

The stockings were hung by the (unfaced) chimney with care... by an 8 year old whose decorating ideas consist of hanging sparkly clumps of garland on those metal tab things like birds' nests.

Just a gratuitous shot of the interior of the house. 

(This is standing in the dining room, looking through the living room toward the arctic entry/front door.)

Bob and I, finally at home in logs.

Happy

I'm a pretty cranky gal.  I have a glass-half-empty outlook and I'm frankly surprised there's a glass at all most of the time.  And furthermore, get off my lawn!  Which makes it all the more interesting to me that I am positively enamored of the popular Pharrell Williams song "Happy."  I dig it.  I dance around the house to it insisting that the rest of the family join in.  And it really does make me happy. 

Go figure. 

So, to accompany the endless loop in my head, I present:

 

The things that make Log Girl Anne happy

 

• Freshly laundered sheets on the bed
• Making my husband laugh
• Discovering The Girl asleep with her wee copy of  Thoreau's Walden on her chest.  (Which she can't read) 
• Being in my as-yet-unfinished log house and imagining our move in day
• Early morning at The Lake when it is still and quiet
• An American flag flapping on its pole on our front porch
• Delicious words
• A full gas tank

 

This last piece of delight leads me to confess that I have favorite gas stations.  I don't often get to fill up at these pumps, but it surely does make my day when I have that opportunity.  I wrote about the one in Gabriels, NY earlier in the winter.  I filled up yesterday at my other favorite, which I only discovered a month ago (despite driving past it for YEARS).

 

 

 



There's just something about pumping first, paying later, flipping the lever and watching the numbers click around instead of digitally change that makes me... well, happy. 

Look at that old-school beauty.

 

If you're ever driving through Brainardsville, NY, look for my friend.  And pick up some bait and beer while you're at it. 

Fireplace photos

So...  Joe commented on yesterday's post that he hadn't seen a picture of the fireplace and the inside of the chimney.   And I don't know if I've ever posted one.   You should know by now that I'm waaaaay too lazy to go back and look, but I did notice that there are a couple in my Flikr stream.  The inside of the chimney is not yet faced (stay tuned, however, my intrepid log-lovers!), and is currently totally hidden by a mass of construction materials, including some gazillion-foot-long boards that The Husband milled himself.  So, taking a photo right now is not going to help the situation.  Instead, I send you over to espy the photos in Flikr.  Be gone with you!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/athomeinlogs/

Too dark?

It's a school vacation week in these here parts, and I finally got off my duff today and went up to The Log House and painted the dining room.  Which Bob and John promptly declared "too dark!"

But first let me set the stage:
The Girl had a friend over this morning, so after a game of Heroica, Bob and The Boy went up to The Lake to work on the new sugar house.  Because you know what it's almost time for?   Mmmmm....  I can almost smell the sweet steam.   But I digress.

The girls and I made brownies and they played some weird scenario where they found a baby in the woods and had to name him/her...or something. I couldn't follow the thread of their imagining.  So after we ran the friend home, The Girl and I went up to The Lake to join the boys, who were finishing up the siding on the back of the new sugar house.

We trooped up to The Logalicious House and Bob and John commenced working on the flooring for the upstairs bathroom.

(photography by The Girl, age 6.)


Since I'm of no use when it comes to measuring, cutting and fitting linoleum, I busted out the paint for the dining room and got to work.  We had originally intended to have a light blue on the top half and a darker blue below the chair rail... until Bob offered to put wainscoting on the lower part as we stood there pondering, and I changed my mind again and decided to use the darker blue on all the rest.   This house is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of ideas.  No plan is safe until it's actually accomplished!

You get the rare sight of me painting the wall because both The Boy and The Girl picked up the camera and started snapping away.  I see a new era in this blog arising before our eyes!  

Ahem.  Yes, anyway, both kids also pitched in to help paint:

So from what little bit you can see in the photos, what do you think?   Do you agree with Bob and John?  Is it too dark?  I like it, so it doesn't matter what y'all think, but it's good to have feedback nonetheless.  I'll take some more pictures once the second coat is on and maybe you can get a better idea....

Hopefully, the upstairs bathroom will have some more photo-worthy progress soon, so I can update you on that.  I would like to have a good chunk of the remaining work done before the kitchen cabinets are installed, because that feels like a final step to me.  I know there will be details and trim work left to do for ages even after we move in, but that can't be helped.  It's been a nearly 8-year journey now and I am NOT WAITING FOR TRIM before I move into this house!!  

Pardon the shouting.  Perhaps I should go lie down.  It'll pass, I'm sure.

 

A new year

If I was a good blogger, I would have posted my top ten for twenty-ten something-or-other, wished you all a happy new year, and not have waited a full week into 2011 to do any of that. 

Well, I don't think anyone's deluded into thinking I'm a proper blogger, so let's just forge ahead, shall we?

Good.

This year, my logariffic resolution is to be more deliberate in my log blogging.   So far?  Fail.   Epic Fail.   Ah well.  Good thing I'm not responsible for actually building the house, eh? 

But, I can show you something a little squeal-worthy.  Not stairs-squeally, but quite a good squeak at least.  I feel the need to develop a rating system. 

SQUEEEEEEEEEEAL!     Like stairs.  Or kitchen cupboards!

Squeal!!!!

Squeak!

Wow! 

Yes! 

Meh.    Like me sweeping up the sawdust or picking up dropped nails.   Oooh. 





So, lookit what I discovered today that my handy-dandy Husband  (you parents of toddlers will know just how to say that) had accomplished:

That's a downstairs closet wired for lights, baby! 

{squeak!}



Word Nerd visual delight

Word Tree!

Make your own word cloud from a book passage, blog, poetry, etc at Wordle.net!    Here's mine from some recent blog posts!

Hidden progress

Not a lot of blog-worthy progress on the house this summer, eh? Lots of great North Country activities to report, but not many new pix on the house. The Husband has been working for clients on The Lake on our non-rainy days and makin' a livin'. Keeps the visible progress to a minimum. {sigh} Except that The Husband and his father have been steadily milling boards for the house. Totally necessary, but totally un-sexy, blog-wise. We need boards for floors, ceilings, trim.... but it looks the same after the first few pics of Bob and his father standing at the sawmill....

hey look, a board!

ooh, another board.

wow. a. board.

yeee.

So, I'm distracting you all with tales of blueberries and such, hoping for some blog-worthy progress to show soon. One day you'll check in expecting some fascinating tale of ....oh, I don't know... mowing my lawn, and KA-POW! You'll get a staircase or something.

Please.

Something!

Inaugural

Post, that is... not that of the US President. Because, at this stage of my life, the micro is all-consuming and the macro barely registers on my radar. So, the details of my life (mainly the progress on our house build) take priority in my own self-aggrandizing way.

So I bravely enter the world of blogging - the public diary, the catharsis on [virtual] paper, the eg0-centric certainty that everyone is dying to hear one's take on the minutae of daily life, the... the.... excuse to use all the big words that don't get enough airing.

Stay tuned for next time.... in which our heroine explains the mania for logs that has overtaken her once sane and peaceful family.