Construction Fatigue

After a vacation, we came back to our mostly-done house and proceeded to...go back to regular jobs, school, everyday life like other people. 

We had been working to get through construction fatigue for a long time, but we finally succumbed. 

When a fellow told me long ago "don't move in until every last thing is done or you will have bare bulbs for years," he was right. You shouldn't move in until it is all done, and I am proud to say that the only bare bulbs are in the attic and the crawl space where they ought to be. But, other things were left undone. Trim, for instance. Drawers and closet doors. At first, this was partly because lumber went up in price. That alone probably slipped us from barely hanging on to the project, to letting go of all construction.

When we got back from our little vacation, our "volun-told" builders plunged back into their schoolwork with a dedication I'd never seen before. You couldn't budge them until they graduated (and they got jobs that were NOT in construction). 

I never wanted to pick up a paintbrush again, and my husband had one big bad work deadline after another, with other non-house things that needed to be done in-between. 

Now that we had a solid roof over our heads, and a floor that did not bounce on wheels, and running water, we all wanted to do the things that we had put off during construction. Go to the events that we couldn't go to because "it was the weekend and we needed to be working."  Go on trips, have tea parties, play in the river on a Saturday, and tackle lists of personal goals and enterprises.

We did all the home-y things, such as baking,

preserving,

enjoying holidays,

 filling our stove to capacity.

We spent the weekends exploring, 

hiking, 

  

and enjoying the flavor of our area. 

Personal projects and hobbies could now be pursued by construction-worn kids who had lived through the world's longest shop class. 

Exercising in the snow is preferable to shoveling it off of construction materials. 

Who cares if there are no drawers in the kitchen, when you can obviously still make feasts in the space?

It was faster to build lego houses, and plant gardens, than to think about how the kitchen backsplash is going to work out. 

But not all construction was halted that winter of freedom. Shelves in the closet were a happy thought indeed, once they had been found, purchased, cut, and installed (the cost and installation of which was not quite a happy one for the builders, but they soon saw the value of my logic when they had a place to put their hats). And the attic access needed to be finished up so that no heat left the building out thataway.

We also took one more step to make sure there were no bare bulbs in the house. 

 But then, back to other things...

... such as enjoying spring... time to go see the migrating birds!

That long-awaited plan to float the river? Check.

No longer snowed in, we could go visiting. (No, it's not Italy. It's Oregon.)

During any one of these weeks (cough- months)  I could have gathered up the paint supplies and finished the doors. Plans were always in the back (the very far recesses) of my mind as to how to stain the stair treads now that we were moved in and using the second floor constantly. But life goes on without these luxuries, and no one seemed to notice the lack. As spring turned into summer, we were drawn out-of-doors to other projects which I will post about next time. 

I think I have more pictures of clouds in my photo account than I do people.

I'd rather watch this kind of Painting any day!

Oregon Road Trip

 We took a much-needed vacation after the occupancy inspection, and explored a corner of Oregon unfamiliar to us. We explored just a little bit of the Elkhorn, Wallowa, and Blue mountain areas. 

Cows out in the middle of nowhere. I think they were social distancing. 

Sumpter, Oregon had some interesting history, including this gigantic dredge. 

It is as big as a hotel!

This thing was worked constantly around the clock. Can you imagine the noise echoing through the hills? It dug up more than $4 million dollars of gold. The dredge started in the Powder River, but machinery this big could dig its own river channel, so it was always making its own place to float in. It was helpful to see this first before going down river, because it explained the strange heaps of rock everywhere!

After so much construction experience, the inside of this monster was very interesting to look at. 

As if we were visiting a foreign country, we came across mysterious road signs. I still don't know what this means. 

Part of the Lostine River 

Wallowa Mountains. 

The Lostine River

Wallowa Lake

Such a beautiful part of Oregon! We wish we could have stayed much longer. 

On the way home we saw interesting geology near Monument.

It wasn't all bleak!

I often say that other places "look like Oregon" but at this point, Oregon was looking like Texas where temperatures were concerned. It wasn't long before a river was found, and then plunged into by the travelers!

2015 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

Here are a very few photos of the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this morning. Quilts were hung all over the town, from porches, balconies, and buildings.

 There were 1,400 quilts on display. I only saw a small portion of them, I'm sure!

 The town was teeming with people. You could hear a low hum of many hundreds (maybe thousands) of voices. I didn't snap too many photos because it was hard to get close to some of the quilts. There were so many beautiful and intricate quilts.  I liked the one above, with the scalloped edges.

 Here is one in bright, new colors.

 The quilt on the left (the large nine-patch) is very do-able, and a good way to use up a stash of fabrics.

 This quilt was very detailed, richly embroidered, with lots of jewels sewn on too!

 This Oregon Trail quilt is so charming! Click to see larger photo.

 The colors really pop on this quilt. It was interesting to pause and study it, to note how the pattern takes your eyes traveling in one direction, then in another.

 This is a striking quilt.

I'm not really enthralled with modern quilts, but there is a lot to learn from them, from the different ways to use scraps, to simplified construction and new ways of quilting. I liked the colors on this one, and I think if the stripes were continued all the way across the quilt, it would make a sweet, homey quilt to put on a twin bed.

I wonder if planning and making quilts like these take as much time and patience as building a house?

2013 Christmas Tree Inspiration and What It Did

After our trips to the hardware store to see their Christmas trees, I was eager to try out some things on my own. 

My mother said I could decorate her tree, so some of our Interns and I gave it a try. 

She had all the ornaments sorted by color, in boxes, and gave us permission to do it up how we liked it, and then left to run some errands. 

That may or may not have been a wise idea. 

As I looked over the choices of ornaments. I realized that, silly as it sounds, I needed more ideas! 

So, after all these posts I had done on Christmas trees on my own blog, I ended up on the Internet looking for yet another tree to inspire me. 

And this is what I found. I liked the way this lady had colors in her house decor that were the same as the tree--either the tree pulled the house colors together, or vice-versa. Well, there was something candy-jar exciting about the whole thing.

My Interns were a bit skeptical.

I looked around at the light pink walls, the white trim and furniture, the sea-foam green cushions on the couch, the coral pink throw, the bird cage collection and the silver accessories, and decided I would do ALL the colors. 

Fortunately, I remembered once in a while to take pictures of the decorating process:

First I added globe-lights to the already pre-lit tree. They gave an extra dimension to the lights. Then I put on iridescent white garlands. Then the interns started loading the tree with Christmas balls. Here, we have dark pink, sparkly white and really light sea-foam green balls. If we left the tree at this point, it would have been fine. 

I wanted to really cram it full of ornaments, though. 

After more balls, we put in little white sleds, sparkly white poinsettias, and birds. Some single ornaments went on too, including a glittery pine cone. 

If we had left it alone here it would have been fine.

Then I really went to town and started adding giant candy. One of my helpers started to get nervous and to object strongly-- it was too over-the-top! It was getting  a bit cluttered, so I edited it. We retained the blue birds, the pink birds, the words, and the pink and white icicles, though.

And here is the final result. My mother really was surprised, but it turns out, she likes it!

I noticed that we ended up with a bird theme going on, which wasn't planned, but it was too hard to resist all those sparkly cute birds. (Interestingly, the lady whose tree I used for inspiration recently posted another tree, which also has a bird theme!) 

I really wanted to try putting something large and unexpected in the tree, though. Just to see what it was like.  I looked around wondering what to do.  I was still nervous about putting heavy things in the tree, wired or not. 

 I remembered the little birdhouses in one of the hardware store trees. Maybe we needed some houses for all those little birds to live in.

So far, the only new items purchased for this tree were the poinsettias for the top. I thought instead of buying more items, I would make my own light-weight birdhouses out of card stock. 

And here they are. Quite unexpected.

I'm not sure I like it. 

But it was fun to make all those birdhouses!

Here are some close-ups of the other ornaments:

Chandelier

One of the birds

One of the poinsettias

One of the birdhouses. I did several different shapes, just freehand. This was the easiest one to do.