June 27th, 2007
Take a peek at our new house! Here is the “bay” in the living room. There are 7 of these windows: 2 on the sides, 2 forming the angles and 3 in the middle. In the close-up shot you can see what inspired my blog banner graphic. I really like how the windows have that [...]
June 26th, 2007
After two years of talking, waiting, wishing, giving up, renewing hope, looking elsewhere, reconsidering, contemplating, negotiating, and finally signing the papers, the bungalow became ours as of yesterday at around noon! Everything went smoothly, and
the PO (I get to call him the Previous Owner now and not The Neighbor — woo hoo!) seemed to [...]
June 24th, 2007
Ours keeps going and going! The prairie will be in full bloom very soon. Right now the Sand coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) is in bloom and the Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is starting to open. It’s very fragrant right now in our backyard, but not overpowering. Here you see Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) in the foreground. [...]
June 23rd, 2007
…when the POD has finally been taken away! The storage pod arrived on the (former) lawn of the bungalow 161 days ago, January 13th. I know this because I was away for the weekend with a couple of girlfriends. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came home from that weekend because it meant that [...]
June 23rd, 2007
As I’ve mentioned, over the past 6-9 months we’ve slowly been doing a number of things to get ready for the sale of the ranch. I had been saying every year for about the past 12 or so years that we must replace the porch and deck — the wood had been splitting and it [...]
June 20th, 2007
I wish I had taken the time long ago just to do some of those little things that you look at every day and think you should do something about “one day”.
In the kitchen of our current house we have cabinets that used to house a double oven (way before my time). Pete converted [...]
June 16th, 2007
Continuing with the staging of our current house, I knew I had to at least paint the ceiling in the living room. Why? Well, I had painted it red. Not cherry or fire engine red. It was a warm red, kind of brick-ish. The walls were red too. Yes, all FOUR walls plus the ceiling. [...]
June 14th, 2007
Another staging project for the sale of our current house was the living room. In the dining room, which opened into the living room, Pete had stained the floor a cherry stain, like the woodwork, and it had a glossy finish to it. When I moved in, the living room was covered in white wall-to-wall [...]
June 12th, 2007
Okay, yes I love watching HGTV from time to time. Pete will disagree with me here, but I usually watch it in chunks—I get a big dose of it and then I don’t watch it again for a long time. He always rolls his eyes when I turn it on. But I’ve gotten some great [...]
June 10th, 2007
It’s been a hectic week, but I really don’t want to get into that right now. What I do want to know is this: Why, oh why is it that when we’re getting ready to move on from our current house the clematis bloomed more than ever before?
Or why did we have this abundance [...]
June 4th, 2007
Here in Chicago we’ve heard nothing in the news besides “It’s Cicada Mania!” or “Cooking with Cicadas: High in Protein and Yummy too! (They taste like chicken!)”. Okay, I made up the part about the chicken. But I had visions of not being able to step outside without having to dodge flying cicadas or wade [...]