December 2nd Already?!

Oi vey. December 2nd already? C'mon, you gotta be kidding!

We finally got a sizable enough dusting day-before-yesterday to make the ground white, and then yesterday and last night (and it's still snowing now) another fluffy inch came down. So, at least it looks like wintertime now, and that's a fun thing!

(Update: guess we got closer to 2"!)

It's been nine years ago Monday and yesterday (November 30th & December 1st) that Tom and I moved our life from Minneapolis to northeastern Minnesota! And, wow: we sure have packed a LOT into those 9 years!

We'd purchased our first little house, a fixer-upper (more fixer than upper, we realized once we began working on it), in 1999 or '98 (my memory is failing me regarding the exact date), and we made the 6-hour (one way) drive nearly every single weekend for a year, getting it up to the livable point we wanted before we moved in.

Then, with my folks' help and old friends from the Cities (who now live in Sedona - the ones with whom Tom was staying when he had his accident), we cleared out of our tiny but sweet little apartment in Linden Hills and headed north. November 30th was the first night in our new home. I'll have to try to root out some pictures from then to scan & post.

I do have this shot of what our little Hastings-on-the-Lake looked like when we bought it, though.


OBVIOUSLY, we were looking at it through rose-colored glasses! :) Fortunately, we saw the potential in the little structure (it was about 800-900 square feet), and this is what it looked like when we sold it six years later:


I know that both of us miss certain aspects of that little acreage (Tom, more than I). Life was simpler then. (Not "better", just simpler.)

Monday Morning

Well, so much for regular (daily?!) updates . . . but I'm gonna keep trying for 'em!

We celebrated the two year anniversary last week of selling our sweet little Hastings-on-the-Lake house and moving up here (ready or NOT!). That was such a comfortable little place, and suited us well. Of course, we don't regret the move for a second, but we can appreciate what that place meant to us. Besides, after all, it was our first house!

This is what we left on the day we handed the keys over:

And this is what we moved in to:

Good gawd. And, to think that we didn't have a shower for another 5 months yet . . . !

Last Friday marked another anniversary, but a sad one: the passing of Tom's dad, Ernie. Time's a funny thing: it seems soooooo much longer than only 1 year ago. This flower arrangement was one of the neatest gestures.


Ernie was the manager of the municipal liquor store his whole life and still poked his head in nearly every day to make sure everything was "as it should be". Anyway, he garnered the nickname of 'Soup' both for his last name (it was Tom's nickname at one point, too) and because of his "last call" warning to anyone who drank too much at the bar, "Buddy, time to GO HOME and have some soup!" (At least, I THINK that's how the story went. Tom? J?)

Okay, I'll come back to this if/when I need a break later today. I've gotta get some bill paying and budgeting done . . . and then onto more (yes, more) canning!

It's The Little Things . . . .

It's frequently been said that "it's the little things that matter", and I couldn't agree more.

A few days ago, Tom brought a load of construction materials home from town that a friend wanted to get rid of. "One man's trash" and all that rot. Among the sheets of insulation were some small pieces of solid cutting board counter tops. Tom said that he thought he'd use them to build tables. I took one look at them and said, "Nuh-uh! I want those in the KITCHEN!"

The countertop at Hastings-on-the-Lake was a butcher block that we installed. The countertops here at Swamp River Ridge will be, too . . . once we install cabinets. But, until then, I could NOT resist the opportunity to have my most-used counter space replaced by chop-anywhere-you-want butcher block countertop!

So, on Thursday we did some measuring, and Tom cut and removed the section of plywood countertop that was to go . . . .


Next, after cutting the two sections to fit (out in the garage), he brought them inside for the install.


Voila! A brand-new butcherblock countertop that I'm LOVIN'!!!! And thanks, L & K, for your "throw aways"!