A Week In The Life: Day 7

Well, this will finish up the series, even though I'm late in posting, at least i finished it. I'm just OCD enough that ending a week long challenge on day 6 would annoy me, even though I'm wrapping up day 7 three days late.

Sunday was my 7th day in this challenge. We were at the cabin, a relaxing, sitting around reading or watching tv type of day. Lunch was stir-fry veggies and dinner was spaghetti with sauce from a jar. so not even our food was blog worthy. but we went down to the "big" city of Sonora (population 4,400) to pick out the towel racks and TP holder for the bathroom addition. Since my day 7 was pretty mundane, I thought now would be a good opportunity to show you how far along we are with the new bathroom addition.

The last time I did an update was in December. Well, that's only partially true. In January, I gave a fun shopping update showing some of the things we were hoping to purchase.

It's finally time to show a we-are-almost-there update.
This is the view from the hallway and kitchen. The door isn't on yet, soon, maybe this week. It doesn't look it, but the flooring is in, but that piece of plywood is there to protect it.

Stepping into the bathroom, you can see the full shower. We just picked out the shower doors on Monday and should be installed within 2 weeks.

Here's what it looks like with the solar tube. The previous photos were taken at night. We are so in love with the solar tube and can't believe how much light it lets in. This photo really doesn't do it justice, but even still, you can tell that it gives a good amount of light, it almost looks like the solar tube is a florescent light.

The vanity mirror and lights.

The vanity.

Sink and faucets.

So we went with blue paint and dark wood. We're excited about the pattern of the swanstone and really happy with our choices and even happier that nothing clashes. You just never know when you're looking at color swatches that are so small.

Once this bathroom is done, our contractor will start working on the new deck. Permits permitting.
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The Boring Life of a Sicko

We've had a deluge of rain for the past 5 days, which is good as long as there isn't any flooding. However, there's been quite a bit of flooding in the Bay Area. There was even a tornado warning in South San Jose. Ok, I can deal with the earthquakes but I'd really rather not have to worry about tornadoes, too. I don't like driving in the rain, but the plus side of that is I've been a sicko since Sunday and didn't leave the house for 4 days. I finally had to go out today, despite the rain, because groceries don't magically appear in my fridge unfortunately. On a normal day I dislike grocery shopping so on a day when the weather is wet and I'm still not quite feeling right, I dread it. But I must admit that getting out of the house was nice because I was getting a bit of the cabin fever so there was a bright side to the re-stocking of our bread, milk and cheese.

On Tuesday, Jimmy and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. 19 on the 19th. It really is hard to believe that we've been married that long. We celebrated by eating Campbell's Chicken Soup and staying in pajamas all day.

We're headed to the hideaway tomorrow. We haven't been since right after Christmas and it'll be a cold snowy wonderland. But before I got sick, we spent some time picking out stuff for the new bathroom. It was a whole lotta fun!

This isn't the vanity we're picking. We were all happy with this choice, but it's going to be flush against one wall. But see how the detailing of the wood on the bottom comes out about 1/2"? That's gonna be a problem if it's against the wall. So hopefully we'll find something very similar to this that's flush. And it won't be a double sink, it'll be a smaller vanity, 36" instead of this pictured 60". And we're picking a different counter, too.

This is the mirror that matches the above vanity. Since we're not getting that vanity, we won't get this exact mirror, but it's the style we're looking for.

We'll also put a little cabinet above the toilet.

Above the mirror we'll put up these light fixtures with...

these bells. I lurve these bells. It's hard to tell in this photo, but there are very very subtle pink, blue and green hues in the glass. It's mostly a honey color with those cool scallops, and the different colors might not even show with the bulb, but I think it's beautiful. Jimmy was the 1st one to notice them and I fell in love with them as soon as he pointed them out.

The vanity counter top will be made of Swanstone and will look like this but in a different color. We picked "Cloud White" which is mostly white with very subtle tan or off-white granite-like marbling throughout.

This is the vanity faucet we picked. We wanted a high faucet head because it bugs both of us when we wash our hands and we hit the back of the sink.

We'll have a full shower in the new bathroom and it'll also be made of Swanstone in the same Cloud White color. We haven't picked shower doors yet.

But we did pick out the shower faucet.Pretty basic.

We'll also add a solar tube in the new bathroom. Basically, it's a small skylight. The new bathroom doesn't have a window so adding this small skylight will bring in a tiny bit of natural light in.

So far, this has been the funnest part of the remodel. It's so cool to be able to design everything ourselves. I'm surprised at how easy it is. It's fun to go out with Jimmy shopping for this stuff and amazingly agreeing on everything and surprisingly not even coming close to any...um...creative arguments. lol.

In other boring news, I gave in and read the 1st Twilight book. I give it an "eh." But I'm intrigued enough to want to see the 1st movie before wasting spending several hours reading the next saga. Mostly, I want to see how the movie translates how Edward is effected in the sunlight.

I hope you read all that right before bedtime. I'm sure it will help you fall asleep.
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Christmas Lights at the Hideaway

we're back in the bay area for a while. it'll actually be good to stay local for a couple of weeks hopefully.

I'm kinda at a loss on what to write today, but if I can write something for 2 more days, then I'll have blogged every single day this month. That will be my 1st time in the 4 1/2 years that I've been blogging. Wow, I can't believe I've been blogging that long already. Time flies.

Anyhoo...I thought I'd share some of the pics of our neighbors lights at the hideaway. Which one do you prefer?
the crisp, not blurry one?

or the blurry one?
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Challenge Complete!

Well, I officially blogged every day from Dec. 1-25th so I'm off the hook on my commitment, but since I've gotten into the routine of posting every day, I might as well try to continue till the 31st.

Don't you think that December 26th is one of the slowest days in the whole year? After a whole month of rush rush rushing till the excitement of Christmas day, then suddenly blammo - nothing to do.

Anyhoo...we are back to the hideway tomorrow-Sunday. Construction finally started on the 2nd bathroom. Steve and Max slept in a room that was torn apart, but thankfully the contractor is a perfectionist and tidied everything up nicely.

I can't remember if I've already shared the floor plans of the construction.

I'm pretty open about my information, but it's kinda weird putting these floor plans on my blog for anyone to see. I was gonna put the whole house on here, but decided against it at the last minute. But I know a few friends and family members lurk here, and this visual will help them figure out the layout. The solid black walls will be new construction.

Here's a view looking into the back bedroom from the hallway. You can see the construction of the 2nd bathroom. When all is said and done, the doorway will be gone because a stairway will go up on the left to the 2nd floor just on the other side of it, creating a small hallway.

Here's another view of the bathroom. I'm standing where the stairs will be. The door you see on the right will be gone because that's where the small hallway will start.

A long view of the bathroom. We had to move the window over to put in that wall. The ceiling light will have to move over, too.

That wall with the window will be torn down. If you look through the window, you'll see a back room with a water heater in it. That's currently the mud room. The new bedroom will extend back to those other windows. The room will be long and skinny and probably quite a bit smaller than what it was, but we're willing to sacrifice that space for another bathroom.

It might seem odd to put a bathroom right next to the other one. We considered putting a bathroom upstairs, but aside from sleeping, no one ever stays up there. We considered making the bathroom private for the back bedroom. But when we have people over, sometimes there's quite a few of us, and having both bathrooms available to everyone without worrying about privacy seemed more ideal.

We'll also remodel the current bathroom. It's got pink linoleum-like wainscoting from the 60s. I've lived with that for 10 years and I'm so ready for it to be gone. But we'll finish the new bath before starting it so we'll always have one to use during construction.

It's good to see construction going again. Unfortunately we lost the whole summer. We're patient and know it will take a long time because or contractor works alone and is extremely precise, but seeing stuff happening certainly feels good.
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That good kind of fall on your face tired {Daily December 23}

Whenever Steve's family comes up to visit, we're guaranteed an active time. It's great, because we're pretty sedentary, but we love doing stuff and being w/ the fam. Today we went sledding at Pinecrest Lake. It's the same lake we go to with them in the summer when we're in the boat, but it gets drained in the winter.

The boat launch makes a great slope for sledding.Steve and Middle J take a ride down the hill.

And Max, their mom, sleds down with Big Brother R.

The first 1/2 hr, Youngest D at 4 years old wouldn't even consider going on a sled. But once he took his 1st ride with dad, you couldn't get him off the hill. He even went down the sled by himself several times. Unfortunately, my camera battery died. boo on me for not recharging my battery. I know better.

We were there 3 hours and on the 1/2 hr ride home, all 3 boys passed out in the car, exhausted by all the fun and activity. We couldn't believe it was only 3:30 when we had to wake them up when we got home. It felt like 7pm. But they were hungry and cold! So we had some snacks and hot chocolate, stoked the fire then ordered pizza for dinner.

Max and Steve have always been very generous with their cooking whenever they come up to visit. They do 99.9% of the cooking. So tonight, I wanted to share one of my recipes that my mom passed down to me, fried wontons. Would you believe that Big Brother R wanted to help make them? Freakin' awesome I tell ya!

A couple hours after dinner, I overheard R whispering into his dads ear, "What's for dessert?" So I asked him, "Do you like chocolate covered pretzels?" He smiled and answered "Yes!" So, you guessed it...we made my famous Pretzel Kisses and his 2 younger brothers were so excited to help, too! I can't tell you how much I love seeing the grins on those boys. And then to have them want to do stuff that I like doing? You know that heart of mine? It grew three sizes larger. Altho, I hope it wasn't 2 sizes too small to start with!
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Winter Blessings {Daily December 22}

I ended last nights post by hoping that the gentle snowfall would last throughtout the night. We woke up to 2" of fresh snow. I think the following photos will show whether or not the boys thought it was a winter wonderland or not.




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Home Full of Family {Daily December 21}

We're at the hideaway and Steve's family arrived just moments ago. Boys were sleepy from their 7 hour drive so are already on couches in the living room in dreamland. They have the toastiest room in the house, right next to the fireplace.
When we got here, it was raining. But now gentle snowflakes are falling from the sky. Hopefully it will continue through the night and the boys will wake up to a white winter wonderland.

photo from Thanksgiving of youngest nephews with their cousin, oldest nephew.
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21Nov "Today I am Thankful For"

...naps in the car after a night of not enough sleep
...my niece's first bday
...a warm fire in the fireplace
...oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
...completion of the plumbing project at the hideaway: new tankless water heaters.
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The Chores (the stores) Fresh Air (Time Square)

Name the 70s sitcom that theme song/verse above is from...(oh, i just looked it up and it ran from 1965-1971, so its barely a 70s sitcom..oops!)

When we go to the hideaway, our lives take a complete 180 from our "city life". I hesitate to call our city life a "city life" because we're homebodies and barely even go out for dinner. And the city we live in doesn't feel like a big city even though it's the biggest city in the Bay Area. Yup, bigger than San Francisco and Oakland. But not nearly as urban. My city feels like a stereotypical suburban neighborhood with the white picket fence and everything.

On the flip side, our hideway is nestled in a remote town in the Sierra Nevada mountains. On a good day, it takes us 2 1/2 hours to drive the 140 miles. The little town has less than 1500 residents. Two-thirds of them are part-timers like us.

Most of the time we go up, we lounge around and let the laziness take over. There's something about the fresh air and the higher altitude that makes you chill out. But there are certain chores that we'd never have to consider in the city.

Like when our dogwood tree started acting unhealthy. Can a tree act unhealthy? Well, it was showing signs of not being as happy as the other dogwood trees in the neighborhood. For the past couple of years, the blooms in the spring were weak and shriveled. And the fall colors weren't nearly as vibrant and it was losing its leaves too soon.We knew that one of the main limbs had issues even before we bought the hideway 10 years ago. It broke my heart to even think about trimming that beautiful dogwood tree, and in our eyes it still looked very healthy and happy. Until the aformentioned acting unhealthy and giving us obvious signs of distress. So we consulted our neighbor who knows just about everything regarding life in the rural community, and he gave us some tips.

So on Saturday, we decided to perform our first tree limb amputation.In the background, you'll notice our watchful neighbor, the one who gave us the tips and loaned us the pole saw. He also recommended that I video tape the scene just in case we had an opportunity to send a mishap to America's Funniest Videos.

Once all the higher branches were removed, Jimmy concentrated on sawing off the main limb without harming the others. We think we were successful and can only hope that the tree will be happier and we didn't put her into even more stress.

A look at the carnage on the driveway. A small cedar tree also had to go. Too bad it wasn't closer to Christmas because it would have been a beautiful tree in someones home.

You might notice the replacement car of the volvo wagon in the garage. It's a 2004 Volvo S4. Not quite the dream car, but perfectly suitable for our needs right now and for the next few years.

In the city, we would have had to pay to haul away the debris. But that's not how it's done in the country. In the country, you build up slash piles and burn them. Wonderful neighbor took most of the slash and will burn it for us, but we took some of the debris and the collection of weeds and burned them in the side yard. And by we, I mean...well, you know what I really mean. But I did really help cut up the slash into smaller, more manageable pieces.

And thanks to the Rhino, even after dark, Jimmy was able to finish burning his pile of weeds.We're constantly amazed at how useful that Rhino is. Don't think we'd get as much use out of the Rhino in our city life.
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It's not all fun and games

Sure, we bought the Rhino mostly to enjoy exploring parts of the country we can't see in the car. But last weekend it was used as a workhorse, as it will much of the winter.

Jimmy cut a bunch of wood from the trees we had to cut down last fall. Hurray for firewood, just in time for the cold weather.

He cut the wood and hauled it to the deck, where it'll be stored during winter for easy access.

We got our first bit of snow that weekend. We'll certainly put that freshly cut wood to good use this winter!
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Boating on Beardsley

short little video when Drew and Sly were visiting and we took the boat out on the lake.
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two weeks

In the past 2 weeks since my last post, I've been home for 3 days. well, i suppose "home" is relative...because I really should refer to our hideaway as home, too. But I guess since our regular day to day activities happen at our home in the Bay Area, I always refer to that as home. What I'm trying to say is that we're not on our regularily scheduled program. Summer is suppose to be like that, isn't it?

Since I last wrote, I quietly celebrated my birthday, we celebrated my MIL's birthday, drove up and down California to hang out with my BFF and her kiddos for 3 days, nearly finished another quilt...ran out of thread...so I'll finish it this weekend, took a ride in the Rhino in the forest, fretted about a forest fire that's only about 7 miles from the hideaway (thankfully, because of the direction it's moving and ridges and road breaks, no threat to the community), took our little teeny tiny boat out on the SF Bay for the first time, and spent some quality time w/ the parentals. Tomorrow, we'll head out on the Rhino again with the neighbors, perhaps get some birds-eye views of the fire. I've also tended a farm, ran a restaurant and created a comfy home for my pet - all facebook games that I'm addicted to. Care to join me? Then please, jump on that FB bandwagon and play with me! I guarantee that you'll waste valuable hours.

I'll post more details of our summer events soon!

photo of the fire that started Sunday afternoon.
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Enjoying summertime

Last year I commented that summer just might be my favorite time of the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the excessive heat, in fact, anything above 80 is practically sweltering to me, but summer is when we really get to enjoy our friends and family and all the outdoor activities available to us near our hideaway.

Last Friday, we headed out in our Rhino with the neighbors.

That little atv has proven to be worth every penny because we can to enjoy so much more of the forest and the views it offers. It really gives us so much more respect for our surroundings.Since we were at such a high elevation, over 8500 feet, the spring flowers were still in bloom and so amazing.

We rode to "The Top of the World". Not sure if that's an official name, but it sure felt like it. That's our neighbor who was a forest service fire fighter.

Jimmy's enjoying the views.

I'm enjoying the ride through a meadow.

When we got down to Herring Creek at 7300 feet elevation, our ride was almost over, so we hopped off our 'bikes' and enjoyed the sound of the the creek and the shade of the trees.


We were expecting other friends to arrive that evening for the weekend. When we got back to the hideaway, there was no time to make dinner, so we ordered pizza from Pie in the Sky and ate on the deck then made smores for dessert.

Drew, Jimmy and Sly have been friends since before high school. A couple of years ago, Jimmy and I spent a weekend with Drew at his family's hideaway near Clearlake. Drew and Sly had just spent the week there on vacation and happily, they agreed on coming to visit us at our hideaway for a couple of days. Friends that last a lifetime: Jimmy, Sly and Drew.

The next morning, we took the boat out on Beardsley Reservoir.

The lake was very full, nearly up to it's high mark, which made us very happy! Good snowfall this past winter.Our 'secret' waterfall from Cow Creek was flowing nicely. It's in a little cove and kind of hidden.

This was the 1st time anyone has fished with us. The lakes and rivers near our hideaway are supposedly great for fishing, but we've never had the chance to test it. Unfortunately, the fish weren't biting for Drew that afternoon.

They boys went out for a while on their own to check out the dam. I enjoyed my time on the shore relaxing, reading my magazine, enjoying the views and soaking in the warm sun. But within 15 minutes of my solitude, the weather changed and I could see a thunderstorm heading in. The boys came back, we quickly packed up, and as we rode in the boat back to the launch ramp, we got pelted by the rain and wind. It only lasted about 10 minutes, so by the time we hitched the boat back onto the car, the sun was out again. We actually enjoy the summer thunder storms, but if lightning had accompanied the storm, we didn't want to be on the water. Luckily it didn't.

Before heading back to the hideaway for grilled burgers, asparagus, corn and more smores, we went up to Clark Fork River to enjoy the view of the waterfall. After dinner, we chatted and laughed on the deck with our little campfire till bedtime.

Good times. Good friends. Good summer.
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