Christmas decor idea

This is a pretty and simple way to recycle Christmas cards. You could use vintage or current cards. I always hang onto a few every year and like to find ways to use them. I don't know what I will do for Christmas cards this year. Last year I cut out old recipes and put them into little folders. I'm not doing anything like that this year. I'm waiting for a creative urge or idea to happen.

Thanksgiving Break

Tuesday is my last day of school before Thanksgiving break-yes that's TOMORROW!!! Normally, we have school on Wed but got it off for our conference comp. day this year. I'm sure the kids are looking forward to it but not as much as the teachers in my school!! It's been a busy two weeks with the end of the first quarter and then conferences and all the preparations they require.

On Thursday morning we are heading down to Sioux Falls as Tim and Deb are hosting the Smith family this year. We're spending the night at a local Marriott and heading back home on Friday. I told Deb that I would try to come up with a Christmas craft and I'm going to start looking very hard!

Fall Images

I've never seen a gourd decorated in this manner and thought it was very pretty. You could hang it anywhere.
This picture just gives me a warm and happy feeling. I'd like to add crackers to that plate, walnuts too and a little glass of red wine. I have been loving this beautiful fall weather and hope it lasts for a good long time to make up for October.

craft ideas!

I won't be making this but saved a picture of it just in case. It's in my favorite Waverly vintage rose material. Shari has this apron pattern, I believe.
I'm into super easy craft ideas at the moment. I thought this was a cute way to store extra ribbon-wrapped around clothesline pins.
This is a fun and easy way to use some of your paper scraps. It makes a cheap notebook special & sweet!
I thought these little gift tags were very cute. I like the use of yellowed paper for the pots. Who knows if I will ever make them but maybe you will!

Upstairs Bedroom

I am heading up here in a few minutes to finish painting. Can you tell it's a very pale shade of blue? It's hard for me to see it as I'm painting it. I am itching to decorate this room, so I guess I'd better paint it. I'll post an after in the next week I hope. We have conferences again on Monday night, looking forward to being done with that.

Warren, Ann & Andrew came over for dinner last night. It's fun to be able to entertain again-slowly returning back to normalcy.

The Bathroom

Everything is ready to go here!

I wasn't sure how I was going to address the privacy issue and still let in natural light. I decided I would try hanging up some tea towels that I would cut and sew. Instead, I found these at K-mar from their new Country Living line. They look just like the old embroidered towels and are all ready to use. They had a lot of cute stuff in that line. I bought some big wonderfully soft white towels for 7.99 there too. Cute vintage bathrugs, but none matched my decor. Check it out next time you're near a K-mart.
The lights and mirrors are from Home Depot. I'm very happy with the results here and didn't have to spend a lot of cash either.

The faucets also came from HD's Price Pfister line.

Here's an angle in our shower that you haven't seen yet. We're getting another (longer) arm for the shower head.

Progress!!

Even thought I said I wasn't going to decorate for fall!

Most of the paneling is primed.

Had to hang out clothes today because the dryer wasn't vented. Dan chose to drive to the laundromat with his items.

The little sink from the old pantry bathroom fits in here nicely.

We washed clothes in here for the first time today. The washer isn't leveled right so it shook pretty hard, then discovered that the venting isn't quite finished. Hopefully, next weekend, the bugs will all be worked out in here.

Miscellaneous pictures

This is my favorite room in the remodel. I spend a lot of time here in front of the fireplace correcting papers, reading or just warming up!

The sunset tonight was spectacular!

The new blog header is from tonight's sunset too.

Here's a close-up of the juniper greens and berries. It works very nicely with the red in the dogwood. It was a good afternoon to collect greens and decorate. I had grades to enter which I did right away this morning, just to get it out of my mind. The painting and priming on my list will just have to wait for another day.

Dan and I closed up the cabin today. The plastic is over the doors and we raked in grass seed over the damaged area. We'll have to wait and see what happens next spring. It's nice to have that all done even if it is sad to officially close the season.

Outdoor Decorating

I went out for a walk with my little red wheelbarrow and collected evergreens on my own property, bittersweet way down on the point, and balsam, juniper and dogwood down the road.

With my harvest, I was able to make this hanging basket...

the window box-that will soon have lights....

and this planter, that is my favorite.

I still need to decorate the stone planters and a big planter in front of the garage. On Saturday, I hung the lights on the pergola. The electrician will be finishing the exterior outlets this week, so we will be ready to light up this holiday season.

Bathroom Update

The bathroom is almost finished! The plumber and electrician are coming this week to wrap things up! Dan did the laundry for what may be the last time down in our basement.

These hooks are positioned above the bench in the shower.

Should be handy for towels.

Nothing happening at the house

Big Kitty is just fine with that!

It's been over a week since anyone has been here to do anything in the house. There are still a lot of loose ends however, such as the fact that there is no toilet or shower in the bath, no electric units in the boxes and more.... I've been keeping busy turning the upstairs storage room into a usable craft area. The new closet is actually storing my clothes in an organized manner so there is some progress going on. We're looking forward to getting the washer and dryer upstairs, hopefully in November?!??

It's the last quarter at school and I have been super busy every evening scheduling conferences, grading, posting grades, new seating charts, reading comments for 6th graders I will not conference with. It's a little overwhelming but I'm just doing as much as I can and will have a glass of wine tonight when I'm finished. Tomorrow is book club for the first time in about 5 months. We're reorganizing. I'd better get back to posting some grades.

One more thing, my coworker figured out that if we counted all the papers we have for both grades in reading, spelling, language & social studies, it would be about 1,000 per week!! Yikes-no wonder I have cut down on them. That is just plain crazy.

Good Bye October!!

Or should I say, "Good Riddance!" You really let us down this year. Nothing like this picture shot a few years back, just gray skies and rain and a blast of snow at end as icing on the cake. Today, the morning is full of sunshine and blue skies so November is off to a great start.

Halloween

Hope you had a nice Halloween! My parents came up for dinner last night, actually Mom brought dinner-chicken pot pie. It was yummy! Dad's birthday was on Friday and since it's been so wet, he had time to come over. Hopefully, things will dry out this week so they can get the corn and beans out soon. Mom has been here during the remodel but Dad hasn't so he was able to see everything that's been going on around here in the last couple of months.

My party at school was nice and calm. Since the kids didn't bring board games they decided to spend the hour eating and watching "The Bad Beginning" which we are also reading as a novel unit. They are loving the book and the movie.

snow?

Did you get snow where you live? On Friday, a para asked me if I'd looked outside lately. I stuck my head out the door and saw what appeared to be a blizzard blowing across the plains of Barrett. I crawled back into my white cave, happy- just for the day, to be in a windowless room.

Saturday was much nicer and with the melting snow and sunshine seemed very spring-like. Only in Minnesota!

Rip-rap

Dan has been after me to post these pictures that he took of the new rip rap down at the cabin. The north winds have been pounding our shoreline and the rocks that were there, weren't big enough to stay in place. If this doesn't take care of things, I don't know what would. So, our shoreline looks more like Lake Superior now. We'll need to put some grass seed down this fall or early next spring. Fall would be the best, I know.
I'm glad I was at school when they did this. It would have been stressful for me to watch.

Boulders in the front, smaller rocks in the back.