Not so pretty in pink!

There was so much daunting about buying this house. One of them was the massive amount of ugly wallpaper hanging in this house. The previous owners son is a contractor and he did his best to talk me out of even trying to take the wallpaper off. His story was that it took he and a friend over 20 hours to remove the paper in one of the rooms, so I should just give up before I start. He thought I should paint over the paper, wallpaper over the paper or just leave it-none of these were acceptable options! We've going to be in this house for a very long time and this ugly crap has to go!

Streamer in hand, I got started in just about the most hideous room in the house-the room of pink bows. Please note the beautiful valance they left in the window!


Not even close to 20 hours later all the paper is down! While there is still a little glue on the walls that I have to get off and yes I have to patch up a few places (especially from where they cut the paper with a razor along the drywall instead of taking the time to measure-gee thanks), but it's all off!


It's hard not to think there's a special place in hell for people who put wallpaper up, but I guess it's a little early in the removal process to get so melodramatic. I have 2 1/2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a master bedroom left to go. Up next is the downstairs bathroom, which is pretty terrible. As my friend Jean noted, one better not have too much to drink before going in that bathroom due to the severe nausea that it induces! I will be getting started on that shortly!

What's taters?

Waaaay back in May I decided to plant some potatoes. As usual, I really didn't know what I was doing, but like that's ever stopped me! I planted about a quarter pound worth of tiny little fingerling potatoes. They are good little taters and the perfect size since I was planting them in a container so I could move it with us to the new house.

Planting taters, or I'm guessing any root veggie, is freaking nerve wracking! It's not like tomatoes where you can see exactly what's going on. Instead you just plant them, water them and hope that you have some potatoes in the end. At least a month or so later there were an actual plants growing.

Today, 5 months after planting them, I went out in the garden and the potato plants were so obviously dead. But unlike all other plants, it is a great thing when they die-it means it's time to harvest! Being incredibly optimistic, I thought we were going to get a crazy mother load of potatoes-I was thinking at least 15 pounds. Well, not so much, maybe next year! And I'm sure Fang will be as helpful next year as well!


How about 5 pounds, 5 pounds isn't bad right!? It's 5 pounds more than I ever grown before! Realistically, it will take us a while to go through that taters. I have planted more potatoes in the garden, but it seems that the gophers are throughly enjoying them, along with my rutabagas and turnips!

Two weeks later

I can't believe it's been two weeks in the new house! They have flown by and after taking these pictures it's kind of amazing how much we have gotten done! It is very nice to have Keith in my ear saying it's just been two weeks, we can't get everything done in such a short amount of time so we should absolutely make time for fun too-which we have!

Where to start? Well the chickens are very happy! While they have escaped a few times (and gotten in the garden-argh!), I think we fixed the problem and we are getting about 6 eggs a day. One of the best parts of this house-the chickens have their own space and we no longer have 8 chickens and a dog begging for dinner when we eat outside!


But now we have a dog and a cat begging for dinner. Fang 2 is not allowed inside-although that does not stop him from trying-but when we are outside he is always trying to get attention. BJ and Fang 2 still do not get along, but hopefully that will change and no more blood will be shed between them (BJ is just fine, he just needs to get a little tougher or smarter)


The garden-Fang loves to help pick raspberries in our little jungle of berries. We've gotten enough raspberries to make jam and still have a gallon in the freezer. I should probably out there picking right now, but oh well, they'll still be there tomorrow! The rest of the garden is doing well, pretty much everything has sprouted. I tried so hard to take pictures that didn't have weeds in them, but honestly that is just impossible. Weeding sucks and I know I need to do it, but I am in no hurry!




Our little greenhouse is working, well mostly working. The door won't stay on and some wasps built a nest in there this week, but besides that it's great!


We love this this view! We love it even more now that there is not a single bird house in it! And the back yard is no longer divided up into eights by random fences-the yard is getting amazing!


Shall we go inside? There are a lot of random closets in our house and we are using one of them in a way that I am sure was never intended-beer closest!


The rest of the house is coming together. Keith put our bed together a couple days ago and generally it's starting to feel more like home, but still it feels kind of barren at times.


The fun we have had has mostly been huckleberry picking. This can be very tedious, but we have had a couple beautiful days and found an amazing spot (which we will be keeping mostly secret). We've gotten enough to make jam and have some in the freezer, but I don't think they are going to last long! We've already have huckleberry pancakes twice and huckleberry waffles this morning and they are amazing!

We have the guest bed put together, so when are you coming to visit?

Movin' on up!

This is all still kind of surreal. We finally got pretty much everything moved into our new house (OUR new house!) on Thursday. Friday morning we left the chaos to go to a great wedding on the coast where we got a chance to just enjoy ourselves for a couple days. Now we're back and things are starting to take shape, but still I can't really believe it. Remember that scene from Doctor Zhivago where Yuri comes home from war and the posh mansion in Moscow where he has lived with his small family has been divided up into tenements for dozens of people? I keep expecting to walk into our house to find a stern comrade and I know exactly what she's going to say and just hope I'll be as graceful as Yuri (yes, I realize this is a crazy line of thinking).

But I digress. We're here! And BJ is so completely confused-mostly by the upstairs. He keeps getting lost and can't find his way down. I think what is really confusing is that he can see us downstairs but he can't just jump down-I hope this all will be worked out soon!


The house already looks very different from this right now and I will post updates at some point (like after we get the internet at the new house!). Right now there are mostly just piles of random stuff on the floors with no semblance of organization.



Over the week last week I just did a bunch of small trips with our pickup and on Thursday we had a ton of help from friends and I feel like I just directed and did very little of the heavy lifting-it was great! We brewed a beer for the occasion: Movin' on up. It's our best version of a pale ale yet!


Oh and I have to introduce Fang 2. He's about 16 yrs old and came with the house. So far BJ and Fang do NOT get along, but hopefully BJ just learns to stay away and things will mellow out between them. All the really matters is that he obviously loves me ;)


I am at the old double wide for the afternoon cleaning the last of our random stuff out before I have to clean it top t bottom-at least we're leaving it nicer than when we moved in-and hopefully I will never have to come back here!

Right now the one of the main things I love about the new house is that with all the windows I don't need to turn a light on anywhere until about 7:30 pm-it's just awesome!

Homeowners!

Finally, finally, finally! We own the house on Stockton Rd...but we sadly, we still don't live there. After a week of appointments and signing a massive mountain of papers, it's all official. We aren't moving in until August 11th (ish), but we can be in the yard as much as we want as of last Friday-so if you're looking for me, I'm probably there!

Sunday Keith and I went over to the house with a weed wacker, a rototiller, and every other piece of garden equipment we could think to bring. We got a beautiful day to enjoy our future view!

The garden space can only be described as a hot mess! With weeds just about as tall am me, we were in for a ton of work ahead of us. With the magic of big tools the garden was transformed in no time (or about 6 hours).

The hot mess:



Look! We can see the ground!



We got a little further than we expected and I even got to plant a few seeds and BJ was there to help.


I was there again today working and will be there again tomorrow and the next day....

And in chicken news: We are getting about 3 eggs a day now! We've only gotten one regular sized egg so far, but the tiny eggs are still edible and delicious!

So when are you coming to visit!?!?

The first egg!

I just came running and screaming into the house-I just could not believe my eyes! There were two very small brown eggs in the coop!

This is not supposed to happen yet! Everything we've read has said that chickens will start laying eggs between 20-24 weeks old. Ours are exactly 15 weeks old. I am really hoping that this means that we have a few over-achievers in our group!


Which chick laid these eggs? We have no idea. Will this mean that we'll be getting eggs regularly now-I really hope so! These are very small eggs, which is normal since it they're just starting out. In the pic below the small, light brown egg was laid by one of our hens and the large speckled brown one was from the grocery store-hopefully ours will get that big eventually!


We took one egg and left the other-so they keep laying in the same place. But now I'm wondering if we should take a look under the deck, since that is where they spend most of their time during the day-I'll have to check it out!

BJ, I promise we will never do this to you again

or How we rafted the Grande Ronde river in 3 days.

So, right now the Grande Ronde is flowing crazy high-10,000 cfs (Cfs is the measurement by which water flow is determined. It literally means "cubic feet per second" and for the Grande Ronde that is HIGH!) and there really isn't a choice but to run down it in a raft-or a cataraft  that we borrowed from some friends. We borrowed pretty much everything for this trip. One thing we will not take on this trip ever again-BJ. Nope, we will never do that again!

At this flow, no way does it actually take 3 days to raft down this river! Maybe 8 hours-tops. But, so what! Keith had three days off in a row! That never happens and to be honest I really didn't feel like backpacking for a few days so I suggested a river trip.

We got started super late on Sunday evening. We didn't take off from the take out in Minam until about 7 pm. At least it was still light out! But around here, as soon as the sun goes down the temperature drops from about 80 to the 40s. This isn't too bad but the water is only about 50 degrees-pretty cold! Especially when you're in the front of a boat getting hit by big waves and rapids, like I was. Needless to say we had not been on the water very long before I begged to stop and camp for the night. At least it was a pretty nice place to camp.

When we decided to stop for the night, we noticed a little boat doing fishing around in the big weeds on the other side of the river-we had no idea what was going on. A couple minutes later a (kind of odd) kid walked up to us and explained what was going on. He was in a drift boat that had been taking on water and flipped in the rapids that we had just gone through. What!?! The boat had just been fished out and everyone was OK. This better not happen to us!

The first day was short but full of the biggest rapids we would see the whole trip. And BJ wanted OUT of the boat NOW!!! He had two speeds on the boat-velcroed to my lap or desperately trying to escape the whole situation-into the water. I had a Mama-death grip on him most of the time-he hated me and the whole trip. But only until we got on land-then everything was just fine!



The second day was very relaxed. There is only so much river and we were going a little too fast. We had an about 2 hour reading/nap break at about 11am. At about 3pm we found the best camp site ever. It was so incredibly peaceful and quiet that it seemed a little magical. More hours spent reading and napping-we were all in a little slice of heaven!

The third day was short and beautiful-as all the other day had been!


We only had one slight accident that last day. During a particularly still part of the river, I was going to paddle a little bit. Keith and I were switching places so I could sit where the oars were. During this switch, BJ freaked out a little (a lot!) and some how just slip off the boat and into the river. He was fine, but freezing and not happy at all!


We will absolutely be doing this again! But next time there will be no dogs allowed. If anyone would like to join us next year we would love it. May or June would be the best time to raft the river-even though this year we could even do it in July!