Thursday and Melting....

 We ended up with about four inches of snow but the story was the 60 mph winds. Everything loose was sent down the street or over into your neighbor's yard. I have two rain barrels in my back yard from the neighbor.  They had a small amount of water in them and they blew and rolled over into my railings and rose bushes. The wind made beautiful drifts around them.  Today we will melt.

The hardy geranium isn't looking so hardy but it is basking in the daylight. It is really healthy as the bedroom isn't  heated much and it isn't drying out from being inside. 

When I turn away from the geranium in the window this is what I see on the opposite wall. The nut cracker goes into storage when I finally get him in a plastic bag. The dresser is an old one that I rescued from a family.  It had dark stain on it and I found this wonderful natural wood color under it.It is in good use there and to think I almost gave it away when we moved. It was a dining room piece in our old house as it fit in with an antique table. I did give away a few older dressers as I seem to over rescue them. We still moved two antique oak dressers, an oak desk and commode stand. 

I was getting tools from the basement to use in the bathroom and stopped to take photos. I couldn't find them and there I lay them on the clean bedspread, once I found them. I accomplished replacing the wax seal on our toilet on Monday. There are no more leaks. The next day I proceeded to redo the tile floor that I had put in new before the leak.  I discovered because of the leak that I had a layer of water under all the new tiles. I purchased some new ones and pulled up all of the tiles, dried things out, and put all of them back down with a good dry seal. The floor is now looking so great. ha

We are doing battle with our tv cable people.  Our one box has shut down and will not let us select channels.  Our box in the bedroom is working just fine. Finally my wife found a number that I could call and get to talk to a real person. I had a video conference with one as he let me photograph with my phone what I could do to try and fix it. He got to see the box connections, the back of the tv, and also the tv screen that keeps saying there is no connection, is the server turned on.  The guy decided he should send a service man.  I got a call from a woman that now says she wants to do the same inspection by phone camera and see if she can work it out instead of  having a repair person. Right now I am just happy a real person is scheduled to come on Saturday. The lady is going to call me back as I was eating lunch when she called. We will see how that goes.

After all of the explaining of things going on I now understand how I forgot to blog for two days.  Tjamls for stopping by today.

Monday, Monday.....

 The bottom of the stairs has blank walls so I am required to turn into an art gallery. Two out of three of the paintings are mine,  The iris is my wife's.

The painting is still in progress. I am adding sea gulls into the plan to add interst and lighten up some of the dark spaces. I took the morning off to take apart a toilet. I had to replace the floor seal as it was leaking. It was heavy work but the leaking water had to be stopped. I now have to go back and replace all of the floor tile as water was leaked between them all. I am thinking the people who installed the shower bumped into it and messed up that seal.

On the other side of the stairs wall is another display of artwork. My wife has two items and my boat paining is at the bottom right.  The gallery doesn't really bother things there as it is a landing before one goes upstairs so one doesn't bump into the artwork. 

 It feels warmer outside even though it isn't. I guess anything warmer than the windy very cold day we had on Sunday seems better.  We are looking at snow coming back again in the near future. Then I can use my snowblower again. It has been sitting, collecting dust for quite a while. Thanks for stopping by today. 

A Sunday Shot.....

 Don't lay any square paper down around me or you will be sorry. I found some leftover squares and they decided to fly away.

It 's Cold Again....

 When the Christmas flower of the season, poinsetta, bites the dust, one needs to buy another bouquet.  The Peruvian lily does make a great filler for a bouquet. 

 

 My cactus is blooming again. It has only two buds on it so it isn't going to be very showy. With my infrequent watering it helps to get blooms any time. 

Hey, I reworked my space this morning. I took a photo to show my wife what I had accomplished but I will show it to you too. I switched the two art tables so I could have more space to work out in the open.  I get natural light there from the windows and it makes more space to spread out my materials. I was going to move the aquarium but I changed my mind. I like seeing the fish as I work there. I still have to get the extension cords figured out and put up my lights on the drawing tables. The aquarium takes up a lot of electric spots so I have to get some strips out to get more space for art lamps. 

I had a bird feeder blown over from all of the strong wind yesterday. I didn't dress warm enough for the new cooling trend of below freezing temps as I went out to right it and one of my fake Canadian geese. I had to rush out and back again as it was darn cold.  

I succeeded in repairing our kitchen sink's faucet yesterday.  I took it apart and found the kind of cartridge that I needed to be replaced. It was an off brand and I was more than happy that Ace had it anyway. I laughed out loud as I found it at the bottom of all of their different parts and it was the exact same one as the old one that I brought with me.  Fixing the faucet was a good thing as it was driving us crazy. 

I skipped out yesterday but I am back today. Thanks for stopping by today.

Another Nice Day.....

 

Our morning looked like this with a clear sky. We are warming again today but the cold is coming back soon.We will have a high of 53 degrees F. today.  It will get down to freezing again tonight. 

 It bugs me when I spend more time choosing the kind of coffee and ignore that they are coffee beans. I don't mind grinding them even though one has to do it by the cup full. I use to always grind the specialty kind but I have gotten lazy and buy it ground for me.

 I spent time reworking my work center downstairs this morning. I like seeing the aquarium there but I do need the space to spread out my art materials. Moving the aquarium is a project and a half if I do it right. I do have a place that I can move it but then I can't see it while I am sitting there. I guess I need to come up with a table to go in the corner. I could make one or scrounge around and steal one from another area of the house. The aquarium also uses up all my electric outlet options and I have to rig up all sorts of things to get everything plugged into electricity. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week Day...

 

The sky views keep showing up so much color. The sunset is obscured by the city skyline of rows of houses. The sky still can be seen even though the horizon is never going to be there. 

 

I took a candid shot today as I was trying to take a movie with my iPad. The sky in the back ground shows we are having a mild day. Some chores were done this morning and then we went to Hobby Lobby. We had some necessary things to buy as well as some fun things to also buy.

I bought a red truck today just for fun.  I guess I must be collecting them now as I do have another smaller red truck. They remind me of my Uncle Donald who had a older black truck like this. It was pretty beat up as he drove it for years.  Eventually he had to turn it over to the junk yard. 

We gave our oldest son a red truck like this that had a Christmas tree in the back of it, There are no moveable doors on it but I still like it.

 We are going to cool down again and it will be winter again. The red twig is showing off its red this time of the year. I bought mat board today to further mat up some of our art works. I needed to build up a supply so I can freely create new mats for paintings. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Everchanging Skies....

 This morning sky was a glow for a ver short time. It is nice to get up in the morning and their is sunlight. 

Last evening this was the same view with different colors.  We are getting a lot of color both morning and evening. 

Looking up the street northwest one could see this kind of sky. We have warmed up a lot and it is wonderful. We do have snow predicted next week which would be typical for our February/March weather.

We were gifted a decorative looking pumpkin last fall. I am now saving the seeds just like an old fashioned farm boy. If it were the depression, we would be eating that pumpkin and be glad of it.

Seeds are now rinsed and cleaned of all of the gunk. I have them drying now and will put them in a jar once they have dried. I doubt that I will only plant two of these seeds. The internet warms me that they probably won't look like the decorative one but I will like to try growing pumpkins just once again in my life. I may send some to my brothers in California and Arizona.  I guess I could bake them and eat them as pumpkin seeds are tasty.

We may reach 57 degrees F. / 13.9 C. today which will rid of us of any pesky small drift piles. Good riddance to them.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Monday's Mentions....

 The evening sky was so great. I enjoy seeing the clump birch against that sky. You can see in this shot that our snow is melting.

The Air Force jets were out and about this morning. We are having such warm weather today. It will be almost 60 degrees F. this afternoon. 

Our warm weather is going to hang around for a lot of days. I am sure all the snow will be gone by the weekend. We can have some really harsh winters in March so I am not figuring we are done with winter. 

The red twig dogwood always turns a good red color in the winter.  It has been a busy day with a couple of errands this morning. I have one more trip this afternoon to mail our 12 year old grandson birthday present. Thanks for stopping by today.

Visitior......

 

 

The mourning dove wanted to use the empty feeder for a perch. They like to sit up there and look down on the world below. I have not seen them very often to the feeder but the doves seem to survive. 

All of the Christmas angels are now gone and the menagerie of African carved animals are back on display. We collected them a few at a time through a few short years. The carvings are from a certain country and the company that managed them was buying them from the carvers, giving them a good profit, and selling them in the United States. It was a mission to help the people of the country to gain and improve their economy. 

I do remember the name of the country as being Kenya.  I can still pull up African carvings on ebay. The kind of shop at that time sold articles from many different countries with the goal to help the economies of poor countries. I wanted to get an elephant for the collection but deemed it not essential. I guess the internet has taken over the world craft markets.

We are melting today. It got up to the lower 50 degrees F. and we have lost a lot of snow in the yard. We are to have a week or more days of this same kind of weather. Thanks for stopping by today.

Afternoon Delight.....

 

It is an afternoon sky with a 35 degree F. temperature. This is looking east from the back of the house.

While looking west a few hours later this is what one can see. The colors are subtle but beautiful. We hit some time with snow melting a little bit.  Most snow that is on the roofs has melted. There is actually a trickle of water in the street curbs. We will warm up more tomorrow.

The snow in the shade just doesn't go away but maybe the warmer temps tomorrow will hit it a little. The gardens look so strange in the winter as everything has gone dormant. 

 

To give my blog some color I took a photo of our fruit bowl. One lone Delicious apple sits among Pink Lady apples.  Did you know that the Delicious apple was developed in Winterset, Iowa?

Thanks for checking in today.

Friday Finds to Share.....

 Two of my wife's doll look out to the world while showing off their fancy dresses. They look like they are waiting for the party to start. 

 When there are two artists in the house the walls are covered with art displays.  Our bedroom has a display of paintings depicting lakes and oceans. The two on the left are my wife's work.

We visited our son in Maine a few years ago. The Atlantic Ocean is so fascinating and my wife has captured the feel of the waves coming in against the rocks. We have painted along the North Shore on Lake Superior many summers for years but the visit to Maine was a whole new experience. 

 

 

Another of my wife's paintings shows the foam and it almost can be heard while viewing the painting.

The snow is starting to melt in the sunlight even though we are not above freezing. It is still cold at 14 degrees F. We are going to warm up soon and that is such great news.  We have not received a lot of snow and weather people say we are 14 inches behind in our totals. It would be nice to get it in the form of rain but I am sure we have lots of days in which we can get snow again.

Spent the morning at an eye appointment for my wife and I went for groceries.  It wasn't a long list but things that we needed and some things that I just wanted. Both of us have a future of three appointments for each of us and hopefully we will see things more clearly.

Thanks for checking in today.

Explosion.....

 My Valentine from my wife this year was lighted up for a surprise. It is quite a card with the lights showing off all the hearts springing out of the card. 

My morning view as a clear crisp one with the temps at -7 degrees F./-21.6 C. I know there are much colder places north of us but this is cold enough. It has warmed up to 14 degrees F. this afternoon and it seems balmy.  I have to admit that the wind not blowing has made the cold better to tolerate. Our curve at the bottom of the hill turns our house 45 degrees to the world. I am not really use to it being turned but I have spotted things outside that help me know the true directions. My neighbor Ben's corner of his house is true north. 

I have things going on today and it seems my blogging length will be shorter today. Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Artic Zone.....

 This painting hanging in our bedroom gives me warm feelings in spite of the temps outside. I didn't date this when I finished the painting so I can't tell you the age of it. It is an imaginary scene and yet the sights of the Lake Superior with the sand and water and a few rocky hills in the background.  The ragatta's at Duluth do take place over the summer months.  I think I may have gotten carried away with the number of boats but it was fun to paint.

The Japanese crane is still being created one by one and then I have to find creative ways to hang them. I have a second section to add above this one and we will see how successful that will be.

I successfully bought off of the net a great shelf unit for my wife. When we moved here from the old place we really didn't have a place to display her doll collection. They were scattered downstairs on shelves and in closets. I really wanted her to enjoy seeing them.  I couldn't buy one from the stores around here at Christmas time but I did find this on the net. It was heavy and in parts and we did get it together. Because of the heights of the taller dolls we had to take out one shelf. Now this is seen as you enter our bedroom.

We are still in our deep freeze. It warmed up to 8 degrees F. this afternoon so we went to get some groceries. The wind chill is bad but we did get it done.  It is nice to have a garage where you can unload the car inside out of the wind.  There is no way anyone can adjust to this cold. We won't need to get out now again until Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Tuesday's Things....

 It was too cold for me today to go out to take any shots of the sunrise.  We were at -11 degrees F. /-22.888C. and we won't really warm up much. 

In the early mornings it works better to turn on the gas fireplace to warm the big room. The heat from it takes off the chill from the windows especially when there is a north wind. 

I have been out on the deck yesterday to dump birdseed in the feeder. I didn't get the deck shoveled and now it is frozen down with the cold temps. Our whole week is to stay this cold. Maybe by Thursday we will get up to 14 degrees F.

All that is left to do with the village is to box up the people and trees. We boxed up the houses and church in a three day period and today I stacked all of them on the shelves in the store room.  The remaining items won't take long to box up and roll up the snow. 

I took a blogger break yesterday as I had a crash day. I rested for most of the day. I feel good today but I didn't feel so great yesterday. My diabetic condition can take me out on some days and I finally have things looking better with blood numbers today. I have one more folded crane project going on and I may share it when it is done. I have to do a lot of string ties and balancing of the birds to get it to look right. My patience is being challenged with this mobile design. 

Thanks for stopping by today.