New Year - and New Energy to Get Back to Blogging!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

It's a new year and time to look forward. I know that I've been slack on the blog ever since we kind of wound up our fall camping in November. We've kinda been thru "some stuff" and it's time to get back on track.

We spent New Years Eve sitting by our fireplace and watching some traveling YouTubes.  Sipping on mugs of Tom and Jerry's is a peaceful way to pass the evening. For those who don't know, Tom and Jerry is a eggnog type batter hot drink that you top off with a sprinkling of nutmeg and add a shot of brandy if you wish!

We kind of dozed off before midnight, but I woke up again about 10 minutes to midnight. I was able to roll over a snoozing Steve during the countdown of the last few seconds. One good "smack" at midnight and it was time to go back to sleep.

We woke up to some beautiful snowflakes floating down. It was absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to try to insert a little video clip here : 

We had some unusually warm weather last week which melted all the snow that we had on the ground. It's nice to see things covered again with fresh white new snow. Covers up all the dreary browns and grays.

I left off on my last blog with a couple links of our fall camping. We had finished our big US2 trip by heading east across the rest of the Upper Peninsula and then looping down around Lake Michigan. We added some leveling jacks down in White Pigeon Michigan at Bigfoot. 

 After we arrived home, there was still some nice weather to continue some camping in and around the North woods of Wisconsin. Here is one of our last trips out:

And the very last camping trip of the season was in mid November! 

It was at Morgan Park on Timm's Lake in Marinette County. I'm still working on the YouTube for that....

If you are interested in any of my YouTubes, I had started a new channel this year that's dedicated just to our traveling. It's called RVing: What-A-View on YouTube and here is the link if you care to like and subscribe:

RVing: What-A-View @What-A-View-ml2uq

Don't worry, it's non monetized and non-sponsored. Just like my regular old YouTube channel of KarenInTheWoods where I put everything else for the last 17 years: 

https://youtube.com/@kareninthewoods111?si=oyWVpSilY-LtyQnv

I did add a video on that older channel recently of the two of us decorating the exterior of the house. It's in fast forward motion and kind of funny....

But we got it done and it lit up that night. I think it's just beautiful. 

Perfect to get in the mood for the holiday season.

Inside of the house, we had some grandkids come over on Black Friday while their parents were busy doing other Christmasy things. They took care of hauling in all of our boxes and totes from the garage and decorating our home. Full of squeals of delight and of course extra sugar and pizza, they put out all of the decorations. It's cute to hear them remember and reminisce over each one. Building their memories to carry on to their families someday.  I cherish these times when they come over to visit with us. It's great to have them at this age where they still want to do stuff with Grandma and Grandpa. Awwwww.

As we got closer to Christmas, we had our traditional "Cookie Day" together with the grandkids. It's such a special day to me because I get all of the grandkids to myself, without any other outside distractions like presents, other parents, traveling from place to place, and big family celebrations. The cookie day event is just for me and only me. I feel kind of selfish, but I also get all of these cookies decorated and they all go home with a big tote full of their creations. To me, it's more special than Christmas itself. I get a lot of one-on-one with them, plus I also get to hear them interact with each other and joke around and build more memories. 

Ahead of time, I baked 18 dozen plus sugar cutout cookies. I get the baking done ahead of time because it takes quite a while. And that way when the kids come it's only the fun stuff of spreading on all the decorations and having a giggling good time during the entire process. We fill them full of pizza for supper and then get to doing all of the cookies....

It is such a special day for me and I'm glad that they still will pose all together for a photo. Missing are two grandchildren of the bunch, but as many come as they can. Even the oldest, Jameson, who is now 16.

They are all wearing handknit hats that I made for them.

Afterwards, we drive them all through the Winter Wonderland that is set up at our local campground in our city. It's all lit up at night sponsored by various businesses and organizations and private displays. It's quite an event to drive through ---- and we lay down the back seats of our SUV so the kids can roll around and romp in the back end. Its just like we did when we were kids in the back of a station wagon in the 1960's!  Once we are done driving through the display, we stop under a street light and put all the seats back in the upright positions. Then everybody is seat belted back in correctly. But it's just kind of fun to break the rules for a few minutes while we drive slowly through the park. 

Our little town also has two roundabouts. I always make sure that we drive around them in a complete circle loop-de-loop every time on the way there and the way back. It creates a lot of giggles and I hope it's also creating memories.


As for Christmas Eve, we don't like to make demands on the family members to all gather on the exact holiday. Instead we set aside the following Saturday for everyone to meet up at our oldest daughter Erin and husband Waylen's cabin in the woods.

That means Steve and I have a peaceful quiet Christmas Eve alone at home. We put on some soft music and Steve fires up the outdoor propane burner set up with the big kettle and a huge steaming basket. We steamed up snow crab legs for our special Christmas Eve dinner.

Snuggling up by our fireplace, next to the lit up tree, with Christmas carols playing... This is peaceful. We are thankful for everything that we have gone through this year and we are reflecting on our memories. We are also making plans for the future year and what we would like to accomplish.

By the weekend, it was time to load up the SUV and head on up to the kids' cabin. Because the roads are covered with salt and snow and slush we do not drive the motorhome up there. It's best to keep it clean and dry and in the yard waiting for an escape in the future. The cabin is only 45 miles away, so it's a short jaunt over the river and through the woods...

Shrieks of delight 

and laughter 

and fun 

and gifts 

and wrapping paper 

and food 

and presents 

and decorations 

etc etc etc 

This is what a Family Christmas is all about.

Poor Jameson was feeling ill and opted to not spread his germs among the rest of us. We kept in contact with him through the miracle of the internet, and sent him photos and texts throughout the evening so he would feel included.

Grandma got regalated over to the kids table... And I sure didn't mind because they were full of silliness and jokes and memories and talking about fun stuff. They were also sneaking treats to all three of the dogs! 

The grownups sat at the bar, and we had a feast of all the wonderful food that everybody brought. Topped off with a homemade cheesecake by granddaughter Whitney. 

Here is Chef Whitney, my mini mini me, along with our youngest daughter Heather who is my mini me. Lol!

The kids decorate up their cute little cabin in the woods, and host all of us now every year. It's becoming quite a tradition. They have a lot more room than we have in our little house. It's great to gather up there in the northwoods and build more family memories.

We headed on home with smiles on our faces, and love in our hearts. 

Christmas was good this year. At home, my special present was a three-piece camera case. I have gotten a new Panasonic Lumix digital SLR camera for my birthday, and this case will allow me to carry that along with our two GoPros and all the gear and even the laptop for processing as well as the tripod. It can come apart into three pieces and be used separately or put it all together and use it as a backpack. For our upcoming travels this summer, it's going to be very handy! 

Here's a link on Amazon if you are interested: 

https://a.co/d/ffeqAwr

The other big thing that I've been working on this year has been a special quilt to put in our motorhome. I collected the fabrics to make this quilt last year from a tiny little quilt shop in Canada called The Buttons Quality Fabric and Yarn Shop just east of Sault ste Marie Canada:

https://buttonsqualityfabricandyarn.com/

The woodsy themes and natural prints of these fabrics are carefully picked out from the Stonehenge line by Northcott. The name of the quilt pattern is called Winter Solstice. 

Ironically, I finished sewing the quilt on December 21st which WAS the Winter Solstice! That was not planned at all--- here it is out on the bed in the motorhome along with the two little throw pillows that I made to go with it.

The most important part was the tag! My friend Connie has an embroidery machine and made this tag for me. If you read closely, you will see what our upcoming summer travel plans are:

YUP! 

WE ARE PLANNING 

A 3 TO 4 MONTH LONG TRIP TO 

ALASKA!!!

We are still in the planning stages, but we figure it's on our bucket list and we better get it done before it's too late. I did have a bit of a cancer scare this last few months but things are looking good and all contained within the margins from surgical removal. I don't go back for six more months so that should give me the clearance to go and leave for Alaska by May.  

If we don't take the time to do this for ourselves now, when will we ever do it? 

We are watching a lot of YouTubes of different RVers who are traveling throughout Canada and into Alaska. We are taking copious notes and adding a lot of interesting boondocking spots to our maps. We have The Milepost book for planning from 2024. We will buy the newest version in 2025 as soon as it's available in print.

We hope you all follow along and I want to try to blog every night while we are traveling. Because we have the Starlink, we should have internet access wherever we go. They may be short blogs, they may be long blogs. Who knows? But I will also follow up with videos on the YouTube channel that I made specifically for traveling. 

Please join us for this upcoming adventure??

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime, while we are still at home, we are getting a few things done around the house.  We spend the majority of our time down here in this addition room called The She Shed. It really was an attached garage and mud room to our old farmhouse. Steve and I made it this way to contain all of my weaving, quilting, sewing and knitting stuff. 

I have about 10 of these handwoven sample panels of shaft switching and twill weaving from classes that I took from Jason Collingwood over the years. Steve asked what was I going to do with them? I used to have them hanging on the walls in our last few homes, but never got around to hanging any in this one.

Out came the ladder and the laser level. In no time at all, he had four of them hung up on the wall in my She Shed.

What a guy. He sure makes me smile.

We are not sure about taking any trips this winter. We still have doctor appointments and a dentist appointment to finish up during the month of January. Then of course, the dreaded property taxes are due. Once these things are all taken care of, maybe we can see our way clear to taking off in February and March to go south somewhere warmer.

But we are not sure, maybe we will just save our pennies and stay home.

Nicholas thinks staying home on the couch in the She Shed is not such a bad idea either...

Stay tuned, and maybe you will see what we figure out what to do next???

Thanks for sticking with us. 

Around The House Projects

Since both of us are starting to feel a bit better,  we decided that we wanted to work on a couple projects around the house. I ordered these really cool lights from Menards, and wanted to put one on the top of each of the new fence posts

They didn't quite look that cool when I got them. They were a copper color. So before assembling them, I spray-painted each of the tops and the base sections with red paint to match the red trims on our house. The solar panel square at the top was still sealed from the factory with a piece of cellophane so it was pretty easy to spray paint.  I just love working on projects like this. 

Although the instructions said it would fit on top of posts, with the various size adapters in the base construction as the specifications listed, I think they are meant to fit onto wooden posts like deck posts! It didn't mention plastic PVC fence posts! ACK! 

Soon I realized I would not be able to use the nice base pieces that I had painted. But, as luck would have it, the clear prism part had a ridge on the bottom edge that would exactly fit into the recessed area of the PVC fence post!  Whew... crisis averted.

A few little dabs of my glue gun on opposite corners was just enough to hold them into place without being inadvertently knocked off.   I didn't want to glue them all of the way around the perimeter.

My dad used to use the term "INGINILITY"!  I believe it was a cross between Ingenuity and Ability. So I used my inginility to figure out how to get these lights on the top of the posts. And here they are!

I waited until night time to go out and take a picture. The lights are able to glow in either white, or blue, red, or green. We chose the white.

I was quite pleased with how they turned out, and they reflect off quite a bit of light. This was only the first night so far.  They didn't even get a complete day's worth of a solar charge.  

Another project that I worked on today was to rescue my clumps of coleus that are still growing in the yard, as well as some that I had rooting inside on the windowsill. I carefully preserve these the strains of these plants every year. I keep them growing throughout the winter in the basement windows. Other years I had planted them in individual pots. It was a lot harder to take care of them spacing them close together as I could with the tapered flower pots. 

This year I decided to use my long plastic window boxes and plant them in rows. I only had three window boxes, but my handy dandy husband built me a fourth one. He also made some wonderful support racks for down in the basement to hold the window boxes level to the south-facing windows.

Last year they grew quite well over the winter and got adequate light as well as the warmth from the furnace in the basement.

For the next few days we will roll them out during the day into the warmth of the sun and the weather and then in the evenings roll them back into the garage. But it's good we took care of this now, because the weatherman said tomorrow night we will be going down to 36 degrees! We might have a few evenings of frost coming up, so it's worth it to get these sheltered in the garage before cold weather sets in.

Another project I had seen was to make a tea kettle hanging sideways on a post. It makes an adorable little birdhouse. Since my mom just sent me a beautiful new blue tea kettle to keep in the motorhome, I took the old 1970s one I had in there and gave it a fresh coat of pretty glossy red paint. I think it's going to be cute. I just felt like getting it done because I had the spray paint out and wanted to get this accomplished before winter. That way we can hang it out by Springtime, perhaps on the end post of the fence and hopefully get some new inhabitants??

Here is a picture of 

the main idea of what 

I want to accomplish

Another project we decided to work on, with something else that we ordered. This time it was something we got from Amazon. Seeing as we are social distancing and remaining as isolated as possible, we are doing a lot of our shopping online or do curbside pickup.

Anyhow, when we use the water heater in our motorhome, we have it on a timer so we only use it at certain times of the day. Why waste all of that propane running the water heater 24 hours around the clock if we're only using water between say 5 and 8 p.m.?

Well, if that works good for our motorhome, we decided it should work good for our house!

Let me explain, our house has a fairly new water heater, but it's electric. It was put in by the sellers and was not our first choice of a source of energy for creating water in our house. So, we looked at replacing it with a natural gas power vented water heater and that would run us in the $800 range. Then we looked at the on-demand natural gas water heaters that along with all the configurations and items that go with it would probably run us $900. So, we decided to do the next best thing. Steve is always thinking you know....

Because of knowing how we use the timer in the motorhome, he looked up and researched about special timers you can buy for an electric water heater in your house. On top of it, we both researched into the Wi-Fi water heater timers. We already have our home heating thermostat on Wi-Fi, as well as our security system and door locks, why not put our water heater on Wi-Fi?

This is what we are ordered. It came in just a few days and we were all ready to set it up.

Steve took care of all the connections while I read the directions and downloaded the app for the smartphone. In no time at all we had it figured out. I did one Boo Boo on the setup and had to reverse it and reset and do it over again.  That was nice to be able to start over and correct myself. 

Now we are expecting to see a nice drop in our electric consumption. We set the timer to run between 5 and 9 p.m. That's when we do our dishes, take showers or baths, or perhaps throw in a load of laundry. The water still remains hot in the tank overnight. The next morning there is still enough if we want. But with most of our hot water usage between the hours of 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. or so. We will let you know after our next electric bill what are differences in consumption.

Like I said, our cool fall temperatures are going down and we have started kicking on the cute little gas fireplace in the She Shed. Tonight we are cozied up to it in our wool socks and our jammies. It's comfortable and cozy watching the flickering flames...

I have my glass of wine ready and the debates are going to start soon. We will see what we will see, not going to get political here. 

Just going to be an entertaining evening, 

I am sure!

Back to Projects in Our National Folk Farmhouse

Now that the holidays are over, it's back to working on projects again in our National Folk Farmhouse.

The she shed was officially done before the holidays. Steve finished up the corner closet, added the door and trim and I got it all painted.

By putting it on an angle, it doesn't block our views out any of the big french windows looking out over the backyard.

 It's so nice that we get birds, squirrels, deer and even a few rare ones like foxes and coyotes out in the back.  We turn on the spot lights at night and surprise them. 

~~~~~~~~~

I didn't write a lot over the holidays. Number one, because we were so gosh darn busy. Number two, just because it was all about family and decorations and festivities are really didn't have anything to do with house projects or traveling.

We gathered with most of our kids and grandkids the weekend before Christmas.

The she shed worked out very well for a family gathering place and many members congregated in there to visit and play.  We were also gathered up in our living room for present opening and around our dining room and kitchen for our large meal. I was very pleased to have a dining room big enough to have my dining table stretched out with both leaves and all eight chairs around it. The older grandkids sat at the round tall table in the kitchen while the two littlest wee ones at the play room table and chairs brought in for just the occasion. Our girls brought seafood!! Steamed crab legs, shrimp and clams while our son in law made a beef brisket. It was so much fun to be cooking in the kitchen with my two girls and having happy grandkids running around our feet, chock full of holiday excitement and sugar!

Erin and Waylen bought us all matching bear jammies! 

Then we kept all of the grandkids overnight for a sleepover.

Our Christmas holiday was delightful and we also traveled on Christmas Day up to the tip of Door County to spend the day with Pops Pfundtner. We brought a big ham dinner with all the trimmings to celebrate the day with him.

Now it's the New Year and time to get back on the project program with our house.

~~~~~~~~~

When we bought the house in April, we knew the red clay tiles of the fireplace hearth were cracked and loose.  We just put the larger oriental rug overlapping them to cover them up until we had time later to replace them. We decided the time was now!

While walking in the local big-box store Menards, during Christmas shopping, we saw some large 18 inch ceramic tiles that caught my eye. They were on special clearance of only 99 cents each. Can you believe it?  Enough of them came home with us to span the entire width of the fireplace hearth.

We invited grandson Clayton during his Christmas vacation to help do a little demolition. He was thrilled! Give a boy a little hammer and a screwdriver and tell him to go to work on some broken red clay tiles for our hearth by the fireplace in the living room.

Oh boy, did he have fun. He first started removing the broken pieces a chunk at a time. Then the big goal was to try and remove a full piece without breaking it. This was difficult because the tiles were old and brittle. He was finally successful and managed to get TWO complete tiles removed without any cracks! What a challenge.

He would remove a few tiles at a time and then put the pieces in the bucket. From there he would run the Shop-Vac and suck up any of the extra little shards. It was a very clean neat job and all of the mess stayed right at the fireplace hearth and not dragged around the room.

Pretty good job for a seven-year-old kid. He managed to remove all 33 tiles and only once in a while did we have to actually chisel one away with the pry bar and a larger hammer.

He also helped to swap around the rugs 

from the living room to the dining room.

He had a little mishap that he called a "technical difficulty" while unrolling the smaller one in the livingroom!

Once his job was all done, we offered to pay him. He declined, saying no he just wanted to be nice --- and besides, it was fun!

(I did tuck a five dollar bill into his pocket when it was time to take him home)


He also decided that since he had the Shop-Vac out, he would clean the the firewood cubby compartment. It was pretty dusty and dirty in there so he took care of cleaning that up. Then he used a sharpie marker and wrote us a message on the wall inside. What a great idea! I think I will let each of the grandchildren write us a message in there on the wall. We had done something similar to that while we built our house out on the Oconto River in 1997. We let the children write messages to the people of the future from the people of the past - and closed up the wall.  I think our grandkids writing in this cubby will be a cute time capsule.

Here is the message that Clayton drew for us. What a wonderful secret hideaway complete with his secret message.

(Clayton Lock, Jan 1, 2020   I love Grandma and Grandpa)

We decided to extend the span of tiles along the hearth to go the entire width of the fireplace. The original red tiles only went up to the little firewood cubby door. Steve carefully cut away at the rest of the hardwood flooring to extend the recessed areas for the tiles.

Once he had the hardwood strips removed, then he filled in the extra gap in the floor with some subfloor to make it level with the rest of the recessed space.

This morning Steve decided it was time to mix up the mortar and start to install the tiles. Carefully laying down cardboard and prepping his work area, I was his gopher and watergirl as he mixed up the mortar.

The first tile is always the scariest, 

so we made sure it was square and level with the wood floor.

Tile number two going down and matching up perfectly! 

Here is tile number three in place,

and it's looking SO good to me! 

Tile by tile, it is transforming the hearth into a beautiful new pattern.

Tile five is down and now he has to measure carefully

and cut the sixth tile to fit.

There is number six into place.... 

or should I call it five and half? 

What a change from the cracked old red clay tiles!

(the leg of my chair is holding the last corner level) 

I am glad we went the entire width of the fireplace.  Before the red clay tiles were only up to the firewood cubby door.  That was kind of awkward and unbalanced.  Now it's more symmetrical.

A bit of grouting and we should be done with the tile.  I think that I am going to paint the mantle to match the color of our furniture a bit better. We are going to replace the wood burning fireplace with a gas log one in the future. For now we will just put the leaded glass fireplace screen over it to cover up the old pitted brass trimmed doors.  (this is a "before pic" to show the screen)

Time to run now. Steve's older brother Mark and his wife Anne are stopping by in a bit to see our house and head out for lunch together.  Will write more about our next project tomorrow!