Gone to ruin

I love old houses.  Everything about an old house just appeals to me.  If only walls could talk.  For the past 13 years I've driven by this house.  Long before I ever moved to the sticks and it has always held a certain appeal for me.  It has long ago been abandoned and just gone to ruin.  Most windows are broken out of it with curtains hanging out.  The front porch is no longer accessible as it has pretty much fallen off, but still I love this house.

I finally got up the nerve to go look at it.  I asked my stepfather to go along with me.  I wasn't about to go on someone's property in the sticks without someone with me. 

There is a creek running under the house, which was pretty common back in the day.  The back porch was in better shape than the front, but you still had to choose your boards wisely and step at your own risk.  I ventured in the back door.  Can I say holy moly.  There was garbage just piled in there.  It looked like the trash had been ransacked.  Can I say shoes!  This house was filled with tons for shoes.  I really wanted to go upstairs but I was a little chicken. 

I loved the back screen door and the molding.

We explored the rest of the buildings and barns on the property.  Nothing worth salvaging at all.  Maybe the tractor that was getting sucked into the mud, but that was about it.  The one barn that was built over the creek had collapsed which definately made me not want to go the second story of the house.  All in all it was a nice adventure.  If only I could pick it up and move it.

Puppy Love

How can you resist this?  This is our new addition we added to the family a couple of days before Christmas.  She was my Christmas present.  I would have gladly returned my new Kitchenaid mixer to get her. 

We went exploring one Saturday and ended up at a pet store.  I'm a such a sucker.  Low and behold they had a cairn terrier there.  We got her out and played with her but didn't take her home.  A week later I made a long detour and ended up back there.  I played with her but still didn't take her home.  I just couldn't bring myself to buy from a pet store.  We did it once and ended up with poor Grover.  He's a good dog but he has his issues.  So the next Sunday I happened to be reading the local newspapers online classified ads and there it was.  We had just gotten hammered with a boat load of snow and hubby was out clearing our driveway.  He said give her a call.

I went back out a couple of minutes later and said she had a brindle female and that I asked the lady to hold her.  His response "when do you want to go?", "um, whenever you're ready".  We loaded up the kids and off we went and came home with her.  Her name is Zoe.  Since we had Oscar and Grover we had to keep up with the seasame street theme.  

We all absolutely love her.  The kids fight over who gets to let her out of her crate.  The other two dogs are getting plenty of excercise with her chasing and playing with them.   She is a digger can't wait to see what the backyard will look like this summer.  All she has ever had outside is snow since we have brought her home.  She loves it.

Happy and madly in puppy love.

Shannon

The Weekend

I dropped the kids off at mom's on Friday night.  They had a movie night with popcorn and root beer floats. I came home and started priming the rest of the upper cabinets on one wall.  Then I went and got hubby and me our favorite chinese food.  Saturday I painted more of the cabinets after I took a break and went to a couple of  flea markets.  Came home empty handed.  Saturday night hubby and I enjoyed a nice meal at the Log Cabin.  Sunday morning I picked the kids up.  They were good on Sunday, no fighting.  I let them go outside for awhile since it was fairly nice.  You would have thought the kids won the lottery.  They were yelling and running around like crazy.  Up until Logan got hit in the face by the teeter totter swing.  Agh!  Took forever to get the blood to stop running down his face. 

Back to the cabinets, I absolutely love the way they look.  I ordered some cup pulls in satin nickel off of ebay and it just looks fabulous.  Can't wait to finish and see what the island and the new lights all tied in together will look like.

Here is a before picture. 

Here is the window that is so bright now with a little bit of white paint.

I have never liked the kitchen since we moved in.  It just didn't give me the feel I was looking for.  The cabinets were not stained the proper color nor the trim.  But realizing we get no direct sunlight in the house it is rather dark.  And as hubby says painting is cheaper than skylights.

What I love to do with my time

I love anything old.  Maybe having been raised by my grandparents I appreciate the age, the simplicity and the history.  I am actually changing the great room to reflect this.

I love to garden.  I don't always know what I am planting and I sometimes mistake a sprouting plant for a weed but I still love to get my hands dirty.  I don't think I am quite happy with my garden and feel it needs something but that will just have to wait until I see things go green again and mountains of snow to melt. 

I love to read.  I can read pretty much anything as long as it will hold my attention.  I can't take a bath or excercise with out one. Nothing like getting lost in a good book on a cold day curled on the couch.

I love to paint.  I am always painting something.  I have painted our whole house for the 2nd time in 5 years.  The great room is getting ready to get painted again.  I may need help with a wall color.

I love thrift shops and flea markets.  I might go north this weekend to a town I haven't gone and browsed in awhile.  And since I don't have the kids it's a perfect outing.

A Little About Me

How did my husband and I end up in the country?  I was raised by my grandparents on the water near Annapolis.  I always figured I would continue to live in the area, but life has a way of changing when you least expect it.  My husband and I starting dating in 2000 and then in 2002 we decided to get married.  We were looking to get out of a suburban D.C. neighborhood and go someplace a little less hectic.  During that time is when the housing boom was going on and every house we looked at was either out of our price range or in the midst of a bidding war.  So that pushed us farther out.  Before we new it we found ourselves buying a 100 year old victorian style house.  How I loved that house.  After living there for awhile we realized we could not raise our future kids there.  We lived on a main road with the only passing zone for 20 miles.  I wouldn't have been bad but the house was 20ft from the road. 

In the spring of 2005 we broke ground for a simple one story with an unfinished basement.  I would not recommend building a house and selling a house all while being several months pregnant with a 9 month old.  Needless to say the house never felt the way I wanted it to feel in the inside.  I am in the midst of re-doing our great room which consists of the kitchen, living room and dinning area.  Stay tuned for picture's. 

I have two children.  Autumn is 5 and Logan is 4.  The are pretty much inseperable, but boy do they have the whole love/hate relationship down to a "T".  Autumn absolutely loves going to school which I am so glad about.  I despised school even in elementary school.  Logan goes to a special school to get speech therapy and comprehension attention.  He was born 5 weeks earlier but had contracted a viral infection in utero which caused him to not thrive or develop properly in the womb. After a stay in the NICU he was sent home at 4 wks old not even weighing 4 lbs.  It was later determined that he had moderate to severe hearing loss.  He wears hearing aids and seems to be getting along fine.  He just needs special attention to speech and lip reading. 

We have increased our 4 legged population.  We now have 3 Cairn Terriers (Oscar, Gover and the new girl Zoe) and one cat (Sully). 

So now you know a little about me. 

Beginning

Well I've decided to try blogging again. Tried it awhile ago but I just never got into it. So here we go.