Got Buried In Snow (with 3 videos)

We didn't get buried, but our house sure did.

Boy oh boy did we ever get hammered in Wisconsin with this last snowstorm! It kind of made up for how mild this winter has been so far for us. 

It all started kind of nice on Tuesday into Wednesday.  It was very pleasant sitting in the She Shed looking out the windows at the snow as it started to fall. We knew we were going to get a lot. But at first, it was kind of floating down like a snow globe outside. Very pleasant.

It was so magical and gentle. It was almost to the point that I didn't mind that we missed out on our escape vacation trip a couple weeks ago. I do like looking out and how soft and white and beautiful it is. All of the sounds are muted and muffled. It's like in the movies.

I made this little video clip:

By dark, it started whipping up a little stronger. We snuggled into the She Shed with a couple good HGTV shows and movies on tv. I made up a hot steamy mug of Tom n' Jerry... which is an eggnog drink with some brandy or rum, plus a little sprinkle of nutmeg on top.

The winds started picking up. It was blowing in from the north and east. We were having a real "nor'easter"! And boy oh boy was it really crazy. The snow was blowing sideways!!! 

Before we headed to bed, I shot this little video clip out of the window from the She Shed. There was no way I was going to go outside in this weather!

Sometime during the night the wind switched and it now came from the South. This was a heavy wet snow and it was just splattering hard against the house. I got up about 1:00 a.m. and took a look outside. Here is the She Shed door leading out to Binney's little potty yard.

For the rest of the night, we could hear the winds howling and blowing. There were sounds of blasting sleet and snow hammering against the house from the south. Fortunately, our power stayed on all night. We snuggled in and slept the rest of the storm away until 6:00 a.m.

The sky was heavy and dark yet and we really couldn't see too well. I opened up the blinds in the bedroom to look out and this is all I could see! The winds that had been blasting across from the north and east blew all the snow down onto the little patio table and in front of the door to Binney's potty yard. Then the wet snow and winds from the south kinda froze it all into place. Look at that!  It almost looks like marshmallow fluff, but it's all firm and almost crusted over. 

Well, this poor little dog really had to go outside to the bathroom. She wouldn't go out the night before at bedtime so she was virtually dancing on her tippy toes to get out the door. I kept filming from the window with the camera while Steve took her down to open the door from the She Shed into the potty yard. 

He figured it would be too deep but she really really had to go. So he tried. Look at her reaction on this video clip!

Yep, that's as far as she made it. One plop in the snow and Steve had to dig her back out to bring her to the other doorway. 

We got up and made some coffee.... then I took a few more pics when it got a bit brighter out. 

When he had opened the door I noticed how much snow was clinging to the door lock and the door knob! This was really a wet heavy snow and it was stuck to everything. 

It was at least a foot deep in front of the doorway and closer to 2 ft deep on the picnic table itself. Look at how it molded and smooth itself out with the blowing winds. 

I looked out of the front windows and these are our stairs that go out to the mailbox and the street. I think we will have to do a little bit of shoveling this morning?

Amazing how much snow piled up on the front porch. Here is our porch swing! So hard to believe that last week we were sitting out here on a beautiful day enjoying the sunshine wearing just our sweatshirts. It was feeling like Spring was on the way. Even our apple trees and lilac trees have little green buds starting on the tips of the branches. All of our snow was gone and we were thinking of doing some yard work!  Mother Nature sure likes playing funny jokes on us. 

Look at the height of the snow on top of our coach lamp out in the potty yard. That is almost all snow, with just a tiny peaked roof on the light fixture itself.  Mother Nature IS amazingly hilarious!. 

The ones on the front of the garage were even more crazy....

 This reminds me of a gnome!

The drifts in front of the garage were two and three feet deep. But the wind whipped through between the garage and the She Shed...   it had literally swept the walkway clear down to the concrete pavers. But the snow then mounded itself up against the side of the garage in a high drifted pile about 3 ft up the siding. 

Steve felt so bad for little Binney that he trudged on through the yard and opened up the fence to get the snow blower into her potty yard. He cleared out a path over to her most favorite spot to go potty. What a guy. 

Since we were snowed in for the day and not going anywhere, I decided to tackle the painting in the bathroom and get a second coat up on the ceiling and work on the walls. I put on some soft music, and sipped my coffee in between sections.  

No rush, and it was transforming the walls and ceiling into something soft and harmonious with the accent wallpaper on one wall.  The wallpaper was put on by Peggy, the previous owner. She had personally ordered it from a place in Italy and begged me not to strip it down.  I am usually not a fan of wallpaper, but this textured thick stuff is soooo pretty! It's embossed and thick and has tiny metallic lines that almost look like embroidery to the surface of each leaf. 

The new paint is such a pretty green and I find the color soothing and almost reflective. It doesn't soak in the daylight, it kind of reflects it outwards and looks softer and lighter during the day. At night it seems to give a hush and a peaceful feeling to the room, that we noticed the effect in the kitchen. Now when I relax and take a bath in my tub, it will be soothing and peaceful and relaxing. 

Steve helped with the brush cutting in on the high spots and I finished rolling all of the walls. Made it right to the bottom of the can with none left over. I was worried we'd have to wait a couple days for the snow to subside before we could buy another can of paint. Soon we were putting back the little pieces here and there like the mirror and robe hook and pictures. We were done!

Now to take a wonderful hot soaking bath

 in my bubbles

 looking out over the

snowy terrain outside. 

Since it was a "Snow Day", the grandkids were out of school. The highways and streets were finally cleaned up. Towards later afternoon, we went and grabbed three of the grandkids because we needed to babysit them for the evening anyhow. Their parents had to travel to Oshkosh, and the roads were clear enough to go. 

We took a little detour to the grocery store to stock up on good things. They decided they needed garlic breadsticks and meatball subs and spaghetti for supper. They couldn't decide on which flavor of ice cream to get for dessert. So we bought two. Why not? 

A little unicorn headed girl

 got piled up with everything 

because she wanted to "help"... Lol

Clayton had already done the snow shoveling at his house and then decided to help clear off Grandpa's gas grill at our house. Yes, that is one big hunk of snow that solidified over the top of the grill. He actually picked it up twice and had to grab it again to pose for a picture. That shows how dense and thick this snowfall was.  That also means it was a lot harder and heavier to shovel.

Kids helped to make supper and we had a lot of giggles and silliness around the table. What a great way to finish up a "Snow Day"?

It was time to bake up some cookies, and all three took turns with parts of the recipe. Our granddaughter Whitney showed us the special technique of how to crack an egg. Clayton is using it in this photo below. It works so well and doesn't leave any pieces of shell behind.

Here's a video that the grandkids made on another day of how Whitney's Way works to crack an egg:

The house smelled so good with the aroma of baking cookies. The girls were counting them up and figuring out how many were going to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and how many were going to go back home with them. We doubled the batch so we had 4 dozen pretty big cookies. 

Yummmmm 

(the white chips get browned on top and taste almost like toasted marshmallows!)

The recipe is from my friend Hilary who lives out in New York. It works flawlessly every time and you have to use shortening, not butter. We substitute the dark chocolate chips with the white ones and we omit the nuts. The recipe is foolproof and they come out perfect and light brown when baked on parchment paper. 

The "Snow Day" was over, babysitting was done, and it was time for us to crawl in bed. The roads were cleared and the snow was taken care of. Time to get back to normal. This morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine streaming in. What a change from looking out of the very same window the morning before????

Notice that Binney now has a nice area all snowblowed out to do her business, and she does not have to get dumped into a puffy deep pile of snow any longer.

We left the snow on the picnic table on the patio. I think it looks kind of cool. We'll see how long it lasts. I'm sure it's very heavy. 

This morning the snow is all sparkly and beautiful like crystals or diamonds. It's kind of hard to capture in a photograph, but I think you can see it. More magic of Mother Nature.

And guess what? 

The weatherman just announced 

that we have 

MORE 

snow coming tonight!!! 

Snow Snow and More Snow and Oral Surgery

I guess that I really jinxed it when I wrote my last blog about how little snow we had. Remember that little last snow bank in our yard? 

Oh well...

This is what we are in for.... 

It's time to pay the piper. We got round one last night. It was only a few inches but a lot of blowing around. Right now we are in the middle of round two and the winds have really kicked up to 40 mph. We are going to expect another 4 to 6 inches today. Then round three is coming in overnight. They said in total we should have 12 to 14 in. I don't mind the snow so much, but it's the blowing that is awful! It blows into huge drifts which can make travel dangerous. It also blows over trees and branches on to the power lines that cause outages. Then the temperature is going to drop to below zero tomorrow night. That's fun. Then everything freezes solid and makes it difficult to snow blow or shovel. Especially the pile that the plow keeps putting at the end of the driveway!

~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday was an adventure. But it was all made better by getting to see this beautiful friendly doggie face at my dentist office! Meet George. He is a 1-year-old Irish wolfhound that is learning to be a good boy. He's behind the desk in the receptionist area. Quite a gentle giant. He is standing on the floor next to that chair with his head leaning up over the counter to get a sniff of my hand. Yes, he's that big already!

The rest of my dentist visit was not as much fun. I know I've been having trouble with some gums located underneath a bridge that I had put in over 10 years ago. They needed some serious attention. Since I was going in for my cleaning I asked if they should get looked at by the dentist. The hygienist rescheduled me for another appointment to come back in the afternoon because other people were all canceling their appointments due to the impending storm. No waiting!

On second thought, waiting would have been nice. Like waiting forever and not having this done? Lol. 

But seriously, I suddenly had oral surgery performed on six areas of gums above my teeth that were being affected. I had the bridge work corrected and ground down smoother to stop irritating the area. I also had a piece of cadaver bone mounted in to reinforce another area. Then I had dissolving mesh put in and sutured down to help the gums reattach back to the teeth. Sounds crazy hey? Also expensive.

With no dental insurance, our dentist kindly gives us a cash discount. So once we were done, we trekked on over to the credit union and performed a robbery to bring back a hefty amount of cash. Ugh.

Amazingly, I am not having any pain at all today. There is some swelling to be expected. But not nearly any of the dangerous pains that I was given as precaution and possibility of pain medication needed.

~~~~~~~

The other thing we took care of yesterday was voting. We had a state judicial race primary election in Wisconsin that was quite important. We were going to vote absentee if we were gone on our vacation. But since we were in town we were able to just go in person and do it the original way. 

Also on Monday we finished up the painting in the kitchen. I got this little section of wall completed with taping off and then two coats of green. 

Steve took care of unhooking our modem and router that are usually hidden up on top of the refrigerator. Then we moved that out, so we could get painting done behind there as well. 

And here it is now, all done and everything moved back into place.

I'm really glad we went with this soft sage mossy green. It sure looks a lot better than that previous beige/rose/mauve color. I think that color sucked in the light whereas this new one reflects it outwards. 

I put everything back in our little kitchen table area, including my hand blown glass paperweights and the cuckoo clock and my little 12-month quilted stitching hanging from my friend Patti.

Steve got the refrigerator back into place and put our modem and router set up behind my big platter from the kids. Everything is now back to normal. 

Well, it's Wednesday morning. Since this storm is going to keep us trapped in the house for a couple days, Steve decided that we should start painting over that same beige/rose/mauve color in our bathroom. So we started on the walls and I just rolled half the ceiling before taking a break. We might run out of paint so maybe I can only get one coat done. We will have to wait for the storms to subside for a couple days before we can go back and get some more.

Not about to risk going out in a blizzard 

just to get more paint! 

What Are We Doing Now?

All right, what is that Pfundtner Guy up to now???

It was such a beautiful day that he decided that we needed to haul sheets of drywall on the flat trailer. It's unusual to be able to do this in the middle of winter without getting them all full of road slush and salt. But because all of our snow melted, and it's a sunshiny day, we were able to haul back 12 sheets of drywall with no problems whatsoever. Of course, he also added four big rolls of insulation into the back of the Saturn at the same time. 

Want to hear something strange? The last four times we have taken this trailer out to haul things, somebody has hit it! Twice it's been hit in the parking lot --- when it's empty, just sitting there attached to our Saturn --- where it's been parked legally on two long parking spaces end to end. People drive around the rows of parked cars, looking for a spot to cut through and don't see the trailer there and they just hit it. Always in a rush. One guy even hit it so hard he dragged it a couple feet to the side. We came out and couldn't figure out why our trailer was moved over. Till we saw the skid marks and realized the tail light was broken right off from where he hit it!

Twice now we have been waiting at stop lights where people have been stopped behind us. They see us and pull up and are stopped too. But then the light turns green and they jump it and get anxious and they drive right into our trailer before we can even pull forward! This happened once before--  and now AGAIN today! The gal behind us knew the trailer was there. She saw it when she pulled up and stopped behind us to wait for the light. But as soon as the light turned green she evidently forgot there was a length of a trailer between us? She drove her front bumper right into this little metal tab sticking out the back of our trailer. 

That little metal tab is for the cross bracket when we put the ramps on the trailer if we're hauling something on wheels. This crazy lady pulled right up and banged into it. She didn't get out or say she was sorry or anything... she just drove away? Plus she must have just bought the vehicle, because it still had dealer plates on it.   Car dealers are closed in Wisconsin on Sundays, so it's not like she was out for a test drive.

And the last guy that hit it had a big fancy pickup truck. We got out that time and he shrugged his shoulders and said "no harm no foul no big deal let it go". And he left!  Who knows? It's just every single time we take this trailer out and somebody hits it!  Jinxed?

So what did Steve need all of this insulation and drywall for? He decided that he was going to do another section of the garage because the temperatures were up in the 40s today. He has already insulated and drywalled over the entire ceiling of all four stalls worth of the garage. Then he has about 1/3 of the walls done with insulation and drywall. We did that last fall and reorganized a bunch of our gardening tools and his workshop area. So now he wants to get the two walls done on either side of where we park our vehicles.

Right away, he jumped to it and got the insulation all stapled up into place. Then he started lifting up the sheets of drywall before I even knew what he was doing out there. So he got a lot done and there's still more to go. But soon he will have the entire garage insulated and drywalled!

~~~~~~~~~~

While he was doing that, I was taking care of my own thing. Remember in my last blog I had a couple little cans of sample paint trying to decide what to do in our kitchen. I finally made my decision and went with the Misty Meadow. 

This was going to be a complete change from the beige mauve color that is there from the previous owners. It's kind of "blah" and I wanted something fresh and clean.  I started taping off around sections of cabinets and along the edge of the countertop to start in one small section of the kitchen. Just to see what it looked like.  

(this is my wine rack and coffee bar

made from a repurposed old cabinet

turned sideways and a countertop added)

Since I had the trim paint out, I touched up some of the areas around the windows where they meet at the southeast corner of our kitchen. That was an area that needed touch-up for quite some time. 

While I was at it, I added a new coat of paint to the windowsill ledges. This is where I line up all of my little blown glass paperweights.  The sun was out and it felt so good to paint with the sunshine streaming in the windows. 

Now the paint was dry over in that test section. It looked pretty darn good! I gave it a second coat and decided to plow on and keep going. Steve was gone with his brother Pete to help their father with a project.  I could do this on my own. Time for a change! 

I taped around some more of the white bead board and trim. I also laid down some drop cloths--- really old towels to protect the hardwood floors. Bit by bit I went around the room, and when Steve got back, he did some of the cutting in along the top for me. He is color blind so it's really hard to see the difference between the brownish mauve and the soft mossy green. So to him it kind of looks like the same color no matter what. LOL

Steve had to pull the cabinet the big pantry cabinet away from the wall so I could get behind that section too. It wouldn't do any good to paint around and not that part of the wall in case someday we ever removed the cabinet?? 

It's pretty heavy, it serves as a pantry to hold all of our additional canned goods, all of our extra appliances that I don't like cluttering up the countertop, and then big serving trays and platters etc. It was a huge old wooden cabinet we bought from somebody off Facebook Marketplace two years ago. We dressed it up with beadboard on the sides and new handles on the front. Now it serves as our pantry.

Here is the blog post about that:  

http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2021/07/beadboard-cabinet-pantry-space.html

While I was waiting for that coat to dry, I didn't feel like getting any supper cooking. I had painting supplies all over the island and didn't feel like cooking. We are lucky to have a new Mexican restaurant in our small town.  https://www.losmagueyesgb.com/

Their food is really good! Plus they happened to have a coupon in the local paper $5 off a $40 meal. Of course, to reach $40 we just have to each order a great big Margarita to get started along with our chips and salsa.

Our food came and it was delicious. Steve ordered a chicken chimichanga that was absolutely great and packed full of chicken.  I ordered the shrimp quesadilla and guacamole salad. There was more shrimp than anything inside the quesadilla and very few tomatoes or onions. They were grilled perfectly and soft and tender.

Plus, they LISTENED when I said no cheese. We've been to other Mexican restaurants that put it on or add a cheese sauce, no matter what, and shrug their shoulders when they give it to you. Even when I complain and try to send it back. I just can't handle digesting cheese anymore. That's a bugger when you're from Wisconsin and you can't eat cheese?

We got back to the house and I rolled the second coat of paint before we settled in to watch some TV for the evening. I couldn't wait until this morning when the sun shone in to see how nice it looked...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Got up this morning and it looked absolutely wonderful. I touched up a little bit here and there. I was able to put everything back into place including all of my little blown glass paperweights

Steve helped me push the pantry cabinet back into place and now this whole section of the kitchen is done.  I really like how it turned out.

Maybe tomorrow we will roll out the refrigerator and do that section of wall behind there? Or maybe we'll take a break. Who knows?

~~~~~~~~~

As for our goofy Wisconsin weather, it's been up to 45 again today. This is the very last snow bank left in our yard. We have absolutely no other snow at all.  We saw a bit in the woods, on the north sides under the pine trees, but that is about it.  We should be about 2 feet deep in snow by this time of year! 

But never fear, we do have some snow forecast for the next 7 days! 

On and off, 

maybe snow 

maybe rain 

maybe sleet 

maybe who knows what. 

But since it was so nice out we did get little Binney out for a walk about the block and stretched our legs. She said no more, she is still in Hibernation Mode.  When spring actually does come, then she will walk again.  

And to continue from my last blog, we are happy to report that after a couple nights on our new Nectar mattress, we are really pleased with it. We filled out the warranty card and registered it and decided we will keep it. There is a trial period that you can actually return it free of charge and they will ship it back for free!