Thursday, October 22, 2009

October Madness

What a fast month this has been.  Almost over and barely begun.  It didn't help that I sat out several weeks with my first ever case of bronchitis.  I suppose that's still better that than H1N1.


We carved jack o lantern's last weekend.  Zoe insisted that hers be a Happy jack o lantern.  None of this scary stuff

Eddie's we made as a scary spider and mine was just confused.

Eddie took one look inside a pumpkin and had absolutely no interest in the project.  Zoe was ok once I gave her a spoon to get the innerds out  She wasn't going to do what Nana did and pull that stuff out with her bare hands.

No Way.


Guess they wonder why all of Nana's projects are so yuckky.  But they loved the results.




If you look very carefully at the background of the spinning Zoe you can see the wooded over window we removed from the kitchen this summer.  Next year's kitchen remodel will be moving a bunch of things around in this room.

This Old House End of Season

Lenny has pitched his tent, well actually filed his tools into his tool trailer and cleared my driveway for the winter.  The change in my house from spring to fall is incredible, almost as beautiful as the changing leaves.


I love the new side entry porch, and nice deep steps, and new lighting.  (See the $$$s flying away??).  Also the new slider on the back deck and the siding of course.  Can't you just see this house with indigo shutters next year?  And a roof to match the porch roof.

What I have noticed as autumn deepens is how much warmer the house is.  I have two drafty outside doors left but everything else is "green" or in my case wheat. (Golden?)  :)

He left me with all the "owner" tasks to do -- most of which will have to wait for spring.  The pressure treated wood of the new railing is not cured enough for me to paint, stain or whatever I'm going to do.  I can't move the plants back in because, again, we're having frosts. We're having frosts at night!   In fact the high today was 36 degrees.  BrrRR. 


The one thing I HAVE to get done before we close the doors and settle in for winter is the front porch deck.  Angie and I started the sanding,  optimistically I really expected the weather to hold a little longer, and I can't leave that floor bare through the winter.  So, optimistically she says, I plan on finishing the porch deck this weekend.  Along with babysitting the twins while Angie runs down and closes up her camp.

Like the swallows to Capistrano (you can move a California girl to the snowbelt but she still remembers) Lenny will be back in the spring.  Next year's big project is the driveway, garage floor, and some mega drainage issues for the backyard.  For him anyway.  I'll still be playing catch up on the painting and staining.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Shuffle off to Buffalo

My brother and sister-in-law invited me to join them for their leaf-peeping vacation, after I checked finances I decided to join them for the Niagara Falls part of their vacation.  I haven't been to the Falls in maybe 20 years and a lot sure has changed in that time, OK, maybe not the Falls themselves but I know there was no casino there before.
The leaves here had just started changing, and Buffalo was a few days behind but to someone who lives in SoCal it was gorgeous.


In Canada we took the Maid of the Mist, and went down into the Journey Behind the Falls.  It is hard to imagine that much water volume even for me who lives in this rainy region, to someone from desert dry southern California it must have been overwhelming.
We also went to the Butterfly Conservatory and Niagara on the Lake.



Just for giggles, since none of us is a gambler, we went to the Seneca Casino for dinner, ate in the 3 Sisters Cafe.  It was a very nice experience, much nicer than I expected, since I didn't really know what to expect.

The Casino allows smoking and I was concerned we would have to deal with smokers while eating too, but that wasn't the case.


We had time to view the Falls at night since the Falls were maybe 2 minutes walk from our hotel and a quick stop in Lockport to ride a canal boat on the Erie Canal.  I think we managed to put a lot of "tourist-y" stuff in two days.  Along with some shopping!!