Happy Halloween Birthday

We all need a little Dr Seuss in our lives. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2?

 LOL

It was Sunday and our little town was having trick-or-treating on the Sunday instead of on the official date of Monday. We got everything ready and we were waiting on the front porch in our cute little hats. It was such a nice warm day, in the 60's. The kids could go in their costumes and not have to bundle up in winter jackets over the top.  I remember slogging through snow on some Halloweens in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when I was a kid. 

The grandkids had come over earlier in the month and decorated the house for us with lit up pumpkins, strings of lights, and a few little cute things here and there. We don't ever do anything scary. Especially for the little toddlers and preschoolers. It makes it a nice safe friendly house to come trick or treating at.

We stocked up with a big bag of chocolate bars and a bag of Steve's favorite Smarties candies. That way when there's leftovers, it doesn't go to waste. Haha! We put the sign on the bucket in case we were in the house or doing something during the 3-hour span of trick-or-treating. Instead of just one piece we let them have two...

Our little scarecrow girl oversaw the bucket of candy. 

She's so cute. 

I did see on Jimmy Kimmel last night in some episodes where people were watching with their door cameras and other greedy people coming in emptying their entire unattended candy bowls! They would tell them to put it back so other people could have some! One woman (with her child right there) was taking ALL the candy. When she got caught, she remarked "oh we were just looking for a certain type of candy bar". Yeah right! Then why did you take ALL the candy and put it in your son's bucket? Some people can be so greedy. Ugh.

We put little Binney in charge of watching all of the trick-or-treaters. She just sits and watches them come and go. But she did get up and bark at two doggies that went by--- just to tell them that this was her house and they better not come in her yard. Otherwise, she is a big chicken. 

As the trick-or-treating neared 6:00 p.m. our grandchildren started to arrive. Here is Chelsea, minus her costume mask, ready to dip into our candy bucket.

Clayton Whitney and Claire clomped up the steps in their costumes. They bypassed the candy bucket because they had plenty of their own already in their bags.

Daughter Heather caught up with her daughter Whitney, she wasn't in costume this year but they had a lot of fun going house to house around our little town. Almost all of the kids we saw were accompanied by parents.  It was nice to see families out and about, having fun. 

Daughter Erin with her nephew, our oldest grandson Jameson. Yes, even a freshman in high school can go out trick or treating in our town and get a bag full of good candy. We never denied the teenagers candy, it's better they do something fun and childlike instead of going out and making trouble!

Soon it was time for all the grandkids to spread out their candy on the floor and do their "trades"

 

They all managed to find some extra Twizzlers and Kit Kats for grandma, and some Smarties for Grandpa. They know what we like. 

While the grandkids were busy doing their trades, I was getting out all of the makings that I had prepared during the day. We were going to have a taco bar for dinner. Something easy to make, and light on top of all of that candy that the kids ate already.

It's a lot of fun to just put out all the food on the island and let everybody make up their own tacos and dips the way they like it.

Everybody brought something to help out with the meal 

and we had a good family celebration.

What were we celebrating?

 My birthday of course! 

My birthday is actually on Halloween the 31st. But because we were all together for trick or treating it ended at my house for a birthday celebration.

Earlier in the day, granddaughter Chelsea had baked a cake and decorated it herself. It was so wonderful to be honored with a homemade cake from my granddaughter.  One candle was all I needed... But I have hit the big 62. Bring on the Social Security! 

Everyone gathered round for the Happy Birthday song and bestowed me with beautiful thoughtful presents. It sure was a wonderful way to end the holiday.  I am so blessed. 

~~~~~~~

A couple blogs back, in the one about "mold", had to do with me making a mold of the wooden scroll work on my antique treadle machine parlor cabinet. The gal that I made the mold for has now sent back a photo. It worked out beautifully and now her cabinet has the matching stroll work on the left hand door! 

And the scrumptious lovely wool sock yarn that she sent to me as a thank you, has now been cranked up into some nice warm lovely fall socks. I use my circular sockknitting machine and do up a pair in about an hour. 

Such lovely colors for autumn in Wisconsin. 

~~~~~~~

On the quilting front, I finally finished up the stained glass quilt for the king size bed in our bedroom. I made it to match our stained glass light fixtures.  This one I started in the spring, but finally got around to finishing it.  We moved the bed around to a better position on an angle. Steve helped me move around the four watercolor leaf prints and put two other prints on the side wall. It's kind of hard to balance out wall decor with the bed on an angle.  But it works out better for us in the room. 

I made the quilt long enough to reach down on each side of the tall bed. I have to finish the binding yet on the sides, but for now I put it on the bed to see how it looked. I like it! 

My next newest quilt I am working on is a pattern called pineapple blocks. I started putting the blocks together on my new handy dandy sewing room craft table that we bought on Thursday. It works out really well and helps me line things up to match while standing at a decent height, rather than crawling around on the floor.

This one is a fun pattern. I will make it into a queen size 

and sell it in my Etsy store when done. 

~~~~~~~~~

We are blessed again with some beautiful warm weather for the last few days in Wisconsin. Although it's supposed to turn very windy later today and might get up to three inches of rain overnight. Time to batten down the hatches. 

Yesterday we did take a ride in the motorhome up to the next town of Peshtigo. They have the best price for bulk propane at their truck stop called Eagle Express. So we filled up the propane and topped off the diesel at $5.05 a gallon. 

Now we are all set--- in case we decide to take off this winter and head south???

The sunshine streaming in the rig just made us want to keep going and going and going.  But we don't want to miss Steve's Dad's 90th birthday party this month, nor the Christmas holidays with the grandkids.  So we will wait for a good day in January and make a run for it if the roads are dry and clear. 

That's about it for today. 

Tomorrow will be My Brawny Lumberjack Man! 

Triangle Abyss

We have a really interesting situation. I talked about it two blogs back. It had to do with discovering more BATS in our attic!  This time just in a tiny part of an attic that we didn't know really existed until recently.

Our original portion of our house was built in the late 1800s. Then in the early 1900s another section was either built on or added on. Where the two houses meet, there is a leftover triangle of space! I called it the Triangle Abyss.

(that vent in the pic was just added, it wasn't there to begin with)

The portion on the left side was the original house from the 1890s or so. The portion on the right side was moved here later in the 1920's or early 1930's from looking at the census records. That is when the elderly widow who lived on the left passed away, and a growing family with multiple children moved in. 

We think the right side portion was moved here from another location because of the moving beams that were underneath that are still there. They look like steel railroad tracks! We are not sure. Or was it built on site here? This tract of land was originally located in the rural township so the records are not accurate. Once it was annexed to the city there is nothing at city hall that is really informational about this property. Either way, the two portions were joined where the yellow dotted line is:

Where they were joined together, this triangular shape was created that really isn't open to either attic to the North or to the attic to the South. The yellow rectangle in the Google Earth view below is the portion we are just talking about. It's probably only about 10 to 12 ft long, about 4 ft wide by 3 ft deep. It is only on the back portion of the join between the two houses. It doesn't even extend to the front of the houses, because of the horizontal roof peak on the old side.

We noticed that there may have been some heat loss through this portion of the roof because there was some condensation on the outside last winter dripping down and making marks on the new siding that we had put on in the fall. It's covered with rubber EPDM roofing material that is tight and secure all around.

So this summer Steve has decided to explore it and check it out and see exactly what is in this triangular space. We noticed some bats had gotten in along the broken lip edge of the fascia by the soffit. Steve sealed up after the bats vacated this fall and now it's time to permanently correct the situation and see what the insulation problem is, as well as adding adequate ventilation.

He had to cut in access hole the same size as a vent that we purchased last week. Measuring to mark where to cut... 

He carefully cut it out with the little oscillating saw to make sure that it was the exact size of the vent grid that he will seal in place later once we are all done.  And he will fix the broken fascia board. That is where the bats had been getting in during the summer! 

He looked in with a flashlight, and of course it was one big long hollow triangular tube for about 12 ft back! There was evidence that there had been some bats in there, but there were none in there now. They have all returned to their wintering-over location in an old mine shaft in Iron Mountain.  He could see the old roofing shingles slanting down from the right and he could see the side framing of the newer house on the left where it had been joined together. So this little triangular roof space had been wide open with never any insulation at all since it was built!  The wall to the left is our shower stall in the bathroom. We have a ceiling vent and it's piped outside in the main attic, but we think moist air is escaping through the side wall into this triangular abyss. 

Because it wasn't open to either of the attic spaces, it never got any insulation blown into it last year from us either. We decided to take care of it now, but trying to get insulation pushed back in there was going to be difficult. Especially where the opening Steve cut happened to be at a wall stud. He didn't even get a very wide wall opening, so there was no way we could push in batts of insulation. The next step was to buzz up to the home improvement store and rent an insulation blower! He bought three big bundles of blow-in cellulose insulation in because he really wasn't sure how much we would need.  Time to get to work! 

This is what the stuff looks like. It's a recycled cellulose blow-in product that can be blown in with a machine. It's very similar to what we had blown in last year in both of the attic portions of the house.

This is the hopper where clumps of the insulation are tossed into. There's a big auger unit that chops it up into fine pieces and then a big blower that blows it through a hose. Someone has to be on one end of the hose up on the ladder. And someone has to be down on the ground filling the hopper.

Guess who got to be the person filling the hopper?

Here is a little video clip that I shot and put on for you. The reason why the hose is so long is the instructions say you need to let the material travel through the entire length of the 100 ft of hose so it breaks up properly into small fluffy bits to be blown. They said do not coil up the hose tight and small but instead stretch it out long and in a big loop to get to where it needs to go.

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day with blue sky and no wind. It was perfect to work on this project and not be battling the elements. We rented the blower unit for 4 hours and went to work right after lunch.

Steve was the ladder guy to go up high enough to do the work on his end and I was on the other end filling the material into the machine.

On his hip is a long long cord and the remote control to turn on and off the blower unit, so he can stop it when he needs to. Of course, we were both wearing our respirator masks. You can see in his hole where the stud of the wall takes up this very center of the opening. So he had to work around that. To get the hose way to the back portion of this triangular space, he taped a long extension pole to the end of the hose and shoved it way to the back. Periodically he would pull the hose out, shut the machine off and peer into the hole with a flashlight. He would have to wait for things to settle down a little bit to see how full he was getting the cavity. He needed to leave a little air space at the top.

It went rather quickly, as there really wasn't all that much space to fill. We only used two of the bags of insulation, so the third unopened bag could be returned with the machine. Once the triangular space was filled, Steve took out some good adhesive exterior caulk and caulked around the edges of the vent.

He screwed that up into place and double checked the seal along the edge of the soffit where it meets the fascia. That is all sealed to prevent any more bats from coming back in next spring. He will replace the little broken wooden piece of the fascia later, and paint it to match.

So that is how we spent our beautiful Saturday afternoon, blowing in insulation. Not only will this help with the condensation of the heat loss resulting in the water dripping out on our siding, but it should deter any bats from wanting to move back in next spring.

My next blog I will talk about Sunday and our Halloween/birthday celebration. This is enough for today. Steve left to go help his brother Pete with a welding project and I have the entire day to myself to get some sewing done!

Thrifty Thursday

I am getting behind here. I better catch up!

We have this wonderful friend named Vicky who lives down in the Fond du Lac area. We became friends through the Wisconsin Sheltie Rescue and since then we've enjoyed keeping in touch even though we moved up to Oconto. 

We both really enjoy thrifting and set aside one day to get together where we hit all of our favorite thrift shops in the Calumet County and Fond du Lac areas. We meet up at the first one and we hit six or seven of them in a route, and see what kind of bargains we can find. 

Last year when we met for our thrifting we had made a stop at the local A&W for the chicken dinner. So that's what we chose to do again. Vicky even had coupons. It was nice enough out that we could even sit on the picnic tables and eat outdoors. Otherwise this A&W is the old fashioned Drive-In kind with the car hop and you sit in your vehicle to eat.  This was more fun to sit outside. 

Last year we had crawled up in this chair together. This year we were running out of time and had to get moving. So we convinced some little boys to take our cell phone and take pictures of a standing in front of the big chair.

Do we look Thrifty? 

Vicky also loaded me up with some quilting supplies from her mother who passed away.  These great quilt kits will keep my busy all winter long! They are complete with the fabrics and the patterns for each one.  I am going to make the most favorite one up for Vicky, in memory of her mom.  It has an assortment of cardinals and is a nice wall hanging quilt.  I will do the quilting parts and she will complete with the stitching of the embroidered leaves and blanket stitching around the appliqued birds.  So it will be a two-person project. 

One of the most spectacular bargains I found was this rolling Sullivan craft table for TEN DOLLARS! I saw it in the back corner of a thrift shop and I knew I had to have it. I had missed out on one on Facebook Marketplace last month for $25  and knew exactly where I wanted to keep it

.

They sell over $200 new at Jo-Ann's. Every once in awhile you can find them on sale for about $130 or use a coupon. So for a mere $10, it came home with me! It seemed to have been put together incorrectly and it was a little tilted at the main center section where it meets the frame. But Steve looked at it and said we could correct that at home. He nicely loaded it up in the back of the Saturn and rearranged everything else to make it fit.

We sure found a bunch of other wonderful bargains, didn't spend much, but we covered a lot of miles and had a lot of laughs.  Steve followed us around while I rode in Vicky's car with her.  It was a great way to spend a day.

After we headed on home, Steve unloaded it all in the house. I piled things up on the ottoman until I figured out what goes where. We have a deal when we bring something IN the house, we have to take something OUT! So there were other things that I've been putting in a box to donate to the thrift stores. Making things even-steven. But we sure did make a haul didn't we?  I needed a small casserole dish for the motorhome, got some boxed christmas cards, extra craft supplies, story books, and a hand crocheted Home Sweet Home in a frame. I even found a skein of wool sock yarn.

Steve found a pair of jeans, and a new windshield wiper for the Saturn.  We even found this great set of solar powered patio lights. They were brand new in the box and we checked them, and yes they work. The original price tag was $39.95! We got them for $4.99.  The string is only 9 ft long and we need closer to 18 ft for the awning on the motorhome. I went online and found the exact same box on Amazon for $20. So I ordered that and it should be here next week. Now we have a complete set for the entire length of the awning.  Nice! 

The white milk glass bowl with the lacy edge is for a project. We had seen on Pinterest where you make it into a pin cushion and the little scallops around the edges can hold scissors and other various sewing tools. 

We had kept our eye open at 5 or 6 different thrift shops looking for this type of bowl. We each wanted to make one. But we didn't see any! As we walked into the 7th Thrift Shop I mentioned to Vicky:  "Oh my, we still haven't seen those white milk glass bowls" And what do we do, we looked up on the very next shelf and there were four of them!  I also bought the tree made of wine corks for a craft idea for Xmas.

I thought these boxes were really cool. They're called Bob's Boxes. They are decorative nesting boxes that are very sturdy and heavy cardboard. I am going to organize them with a variety of my sewing things to stack up in the corner of the She Shed. A pretty way to store items instead of just using plastic totes.

When I got home, I found a box sitting at the front steps. It was from my friend Linda down in Tennessee! I had lamented about how my favorite cookies that are no longer available at our local Aldi store. They had been there a couple weeks ago and I bought one box. I had wished I had bought more.

 

They are very rich and creamy made with real maple syrup from Canada. They are so rich you can only eat one cookie at a time so a box lasts quite a while. But our Aldi was out and said they didn't know if they would get more, it's "seasonal" item.  I was feeling sad that I couldn't find them again. Well, that stinker friend Linda found four more boxes at her Aldi in Tennessee and mailed them to me! It cost her more to mail them than what the cookies cost!

Steve wheeled in my new-to-me craft table. After a little bit of adjusting on the bottom and he unbent two of the hinges. It was back in perfect working order. What a great bargain for $10!

Here it is all stretched out with my biggest rotary cutting mat.  Maybe I will need to buy another mat or two yet? LOL  I can also set my big ironing plank board on top of it for more space too. 

This is a great addition to my She Shed.  I can fold out only half of it, if it's all I need for space on a smaller project. When it's in the closed position it makes kind of a closed off cubicle out of my sewing desk area.  (and blocks off the view of the clutter on the sewing desk!) 

    

It works perfect to stretch out and lay out to piece the quilt blocks together instead of having me crawling around on my hands and knees on the floor.   Here is my newest quilt, and I am lining up blocks to pin together in a certain order, making sure no two same colors touch each other. 

We can even use it for extra buffet 

or dining table seating space 

for family gatherings. 

In the next blog I will catch up a little bit about our Saturday house project and then our Sunday family gathering for Halloween and my birthday!