NYC Trip

There's a hotdog stand on almost every corner.

This picture in Central Park is a little blurry.

Here are all three of us in front of the area called the Sheep Pasture as that is how it was used long ago. Now the fence just keeps people in not sheep.

Lorraine and Nancy before Phantom of the Opera. We all loved this show. The set changes and music were just amazing. It's the longest running show ever on Broadway.

And here's Dan and me before the show too. More pictures to come but that's all for now.

Happy Birthday Ann!

We are looking forward to celebrating with you Ann!!! It looks like we're going to have great weather. I took your birthday cake out of the oven just a few minutes ago. Can't wait to see all of you later this afternoon. Have a wonderful day!

The Pergola is up!!

The pergola went up today. I helped Bruce and Lyle design it as we went along.

Here it is in progress, almost finished.
All done! Lyle and Bruce are finished here the summer and ready to move on to the next project. They are just awesome. The pergola needs about a month to cure before it can be painted and that's okay with me! I painted the ceiling in the last bedroom this afternoon so I've had my fill of painting today anyway. I just downloaded a bunch of NYC pictures. I'll post them later when I have more time to write. I've been enjoying Nate Berkus on Oprah today during my break, almost time to head back down to the cabin.

Summer Vacation in the Big Apple

We are getting ready to go to NYC with Mom and Nancy. The weather looks great, 80-85 and mainly sunny! We are going to pack in a lot of sight-seeing so good weather will help us out. I'll post the highlights in upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, here are some other fav NYC pictures from my files.

This is from April 06, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan.

A view of lower Manhattan from Liberty Island. The last photo is St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The Clusiaus

Shari and the girls were up a week and half ago. Ellen is sporting her new headband here with Shari at a coffeeshop downtown. Everyone was a fan of Magpie's, especially Ellen.

What a great smile on Carly! She's such a sweetie!

Ellen and Carly on the road to Ashby to Murphy's Pub for burgers. We love that place!

Sunday

Joey, Nancy & Sophie up at the prow.

Sarah & Ann looking cool in their shades and a little damp!
It was kind of choppy out there. This picture shows the calm spot which was very isolated.

Joey is a budding fisherman. He was happy just to have a bobber at the end of his line while he worked on the mechanics of reeling. Look at those pesky flies on his leg, everyone I've talked to said they were a huge nuisance over the weekend and not the norm down on the point, thank goodness!!

Sophie with me. Sophie was very brave and had a good time on the bumpy ride!

Back in time....

I just wanted to give you a visual reminder of what the kitchen used to look like. Al finished the crown molding on Thurs. night. It's kind of fun to look back and see the changes. We've or I should say I've spent quite a bit of time down there in the last few days. Mom helped me prime in the second bedroom and did lots of taping too. Today, I put the first coat of yellow paint in the bedroom, touched up the nail holes in the kitchen, transplanted perennials, mowed the lawn and did general clean-up outside. Where was Dan you might ask? He had a baseball game, just got home a few mn ago, lost to Sebeka. To give him a tiny bit of credit he did pick up the groceries I asked for in Battle Lake. Guess he and Greg barely got there before closing. I'm sure he'll tell you the story sometime.
We are going to have some family here on Sunday. Hopefully, the weather will be good. Today was wonderful, very nice and calm. I hope we can take the boat out tomorrow.

New cabin photo's

I moved some indoor/outdoor wicker down and it fits in perfectly. We're not missing it from the deck where I stole it from. Our deck of course! :)
This bedroom required so little work that it has become my favorite room in the cabin. Notice the air-conditioner in the window! The bed frame is our old one that I had upstairs. Drapes have been used for our previous bedroom, living room and now cabin bedroom.
Dan and I painted this door red. Putting it back on it's hinge was the trickiest part. It's a great old heavy door.
Here's a good shot of the red roof on the bunk-house. This room is still full of stuff, someday it will be clean and ready to go.
I love the new brackets in the kitchen but the green towel hides it I see. The open shelves are already crowded with old china, well some is not so old. I painted a blackboard in the upper left hand corner. If I decide I don't like it, I will just paint it green to match the rest. At this point, I plan to keep it. It's kind of the "unexpected" element in the kitchen.
If you want to see any of these pictures close up, just click on them and they'll be nice and large for closer inspection. Mom is coming back to help me paint some red trim inside the windows tomorrow. It's supposed to be nice. Those of you who live in the cities will get the rain and clouds we had all day today. I used the rainy day as an excuse to get our screen porch in order. It looks like a room again.

Animal Hero of the Week

I stole this photo from Ellen's blog. Yes, she just created one last week. Anyway, this was one of her side photo's titled "Animal Hero of the Week." Amanda, make sure Joel sees this one. We went out for burgers in Ashby one night and on the way home this turtle was sitting in the middle of the road. Ellen thought it would be a good blogging photo and she was right. Ellen's blog is a family/friends only blog so it's perfect for her and her new digital camera. Joel trained Dan to be the turtle saver that he is. He used to get depressed when he saw dead cats on the side of the road, now turtles have the same effect on him. Have you saved an animal this week?

Dog-sitting

This is Ivy. She is an 8 year old curly coat lab and belongs to Greg and Melissa. We watched her last weekend for the first time while her family was in the cities and she was just perfect. She is used to being inside so Dan let her hang out in the livingroom on Sat and the cats didn't care one bit. That's the part that amazes me. Carly, my four year old neice, scares Maisy to death, but a big black dog, no biggie. Carly and Ellen don't chase or anything. Cats are just strange.

Good-bye Sopranos

Did anyone watch the final Sopranos last night? Dan and I are so bummed that it's over. I guess I'm okay with the open ended way that they closed the show. Dan thought we lost our signal when it went black and tried to turn it back on but I knew that was it. My personal feeling is that they were just going to have a nice family dinner together but that they will live always looking over their shoulders. I was glad they didn't kill Tony or something like that. They did leave it open for a movie if they would ever decide to do that. Great show, we will miss it.

Happy Birthday, Eric!!

Happy Birthday on June 9th, Eric!! Hope you are having a good time out in Denver. Bet you are anxious to get back to all your girls though. Thank you for being such a fun brother-in-law!!! We hope to see all of you very soon! I couldn't resist a couple of extra cute photo's in addition to yours. Love the one of Courtney on the dock what a beach bunny! The last one is adorable too of all three of them.

Beautiful Day!

We finally have another decent day for outdoor work! The last of the shingles are going up right now. Dan's down there hauling shingles up to the guys and painting in-between. I'm heading back down soon and I'll bring my camera so you can see later.
Shari, Ellen and Carly came up on Wed night and we kept pretty busy. Royce was home in Cyrus for a couple of days to drop off taxidermy and he stopped up Thurs. morning for an hour or so to say hello and check out the cabin on his way back to Rock Creek. Fun to see him!Later Shari, the girls and I went to Alex to shop and have lunch. The girls loved Magpie and they both got some cool headband/scarves. They went to Cyrus this morning to spend time at Grandma and Grandpa's.
I've been busy today putting flowers in planters, about a dozen so it's been productive, mainly impatiens & coleus. I have shade so I don't have a lot of options. It's fun work! I'd better get back down to the cabin with some beer for the guys when they quite since it's Friday and to help paint. Heading to Cyrus on Sat morning til Sun morning. My class reunion is on Sat night.

Ahhhh....summer!

It's my first official day of summer vacation and it's promising to be a gorgeous day! I woke up at the crack of dawn (5:20!) and decided to just get up and enjoy an early start to the day. I have so much to do today this allowed me some nice lounging-coffee-Today show time. There are flowers very patiently waiting to be placed in their pots, grass is growing like crazy and the grass growing around my borders is going to seed, very terrible, but I hope to fix that today. Monday was a teacher workday and we could leave early afternoon if we were finished. Well, I'm not totally finished, but Mom had the day off and was willing to help me paint, so I left at lunch and boy did we get a lot of painting done. It felt good to cover up that white primer with the green that I finally picked out. Mom is a great painter and with her encouragement we kept at it longer than I would have done on my own. Later this morning, I'm getting highlights and a cut, a bob I think. Then back home for some planting and yardwork, then back to school to finish up my room, officially check out and then help spread mulch in the school bird sanctuary. Someone is grilling for us afterwards so that will be nice. Then, back down to the cabin to see what Al has been working on in the kitchen and maybe I'll have him put up a couple of window boxes too. Today, the roofers might be able to tackle half the main cabin roof. It's been two weeks of rain preventing them from this! I can't wait to see more of the red shingles up. Dan comes home tonight, can't wait for him to see all the green paint. Have a wonderful day! Laurie

Terrariums

We made terrariums in school this week and it was a very easy & fun project. Kris saves her candle jars/lids and gave them to me to use in school. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them initially but came upon an article in a magazine for this idea. Here are the basic steps:
1. Small pebbles on the bottom for drainage.
2.Charcoal rocks to prevent odors-we skipped this step as it's optional.
3. Good potting soil- then we added about 3 T of water, do not over-water!
4. Stick in a plant-I used ivy which was easy for the kids to poke in.
I had some dried moss that they ripped up and tucked around the plant. I was surprised by how the moisture brought it back to life, it turned nice and green. The students brought in rocks, pinecones, bark and other natural items to add although you can't see them in this photo.
This might be a fun summer project for you!