First Snow for the Season

I tried to take pictures of how blustery the snow was, but you really can't see it in the pictures. We've settled the bird into the basement with heaters and we're making our winter basement bunker. We'll see how long this lasts.

This picture below is taken out the window in my sewing room. I wish we had room in the garage to bring the furniture inside. We need to get rid of more stuff. :(

Shasta's New Toy

I had seen advertisements for the CleverPet many months ago, but at the time they didn't have any units for sale. They had a sale on Cyber Monday so we picked one up,  trusting it wouldn't be a waste of money.

We set this up yesterday evening. This is Shasta, barely more than 24 hours after we got it! Go Shasta! It's already getting harder and I don't think it's "paying" her every time now.

Yes, she's eating a lot today, but she's still learning how to use it. Our plan is to actually feed her all her regular food through this delivery method as soon as she gets the hang of it.

Bailey, so far, isn't interested. We plan to set it up so she can watch Shasta playing it while we hang out on the couch together. We're hoping she'll learn it too.

December Update

I have no idea how it is December already!

We finally found the solution to our light hanging headache. I ended up buying each of the available picture rail hooks from House of Antique Hardware and this was the winner. It's wide enough on top that it stays on the rail when you're jiggling around the string of lights and the top hook part perfectly fits our picture rail. It's pretty unusual for us to spend money right after Thanksgiving, but we did this year. We bought 60 of these things during their Cyber Monday sale.

Portland had an absolute TON of rain in November and our basement is still dry! (Happy dance.) I'm so glad the guys installed the French Drain last spring. It's working!

We have not finished the bathroom shelf. Oh well. Whenever it's sunny out, the fur children remind us it's time to go to the dog park, not go work in the garage. We'll eventually be tired of having nowhere to hang towels and get it done. I did dig out a board from our pile of fir, but we need to unbury the table saw to rip it to size.

We also spent many hours this month writing our first book. We're almost done with the rough draft and it's over 200 pages. I expect we'll be done with it in the next week or two then we're actually going to set it aside for six weeks or so before we edit it again.

Oh, and since we're disappointed about everything we've been reading in the news lately, we decided to escape to another land. We started playing Elder Scrolls Online (cringe). Only, after three years of behaving like teenagers, this time we're acting like adults (so far). We're doing our task list BEFORE we allow ourselves to sign on and escape to Tamriel.

Dry Basement

Despite record rain over the last few days, I am happy to report our basement is dry!! Obviously, the French drain the guys installed last spring did its job. October was Portland's wettest winter in the last 100 years. There was widespread flooding throughout the city yesterday. So, if our recent rainfall is any indication of what we can expect this winter, I'm glad the guys took the time to install it.

Jeff and I spent a lot of time writing this month. We're working on a science fiction story. It's about 160 pages so far. I'm hoping we'll finish it by the end of the year.

The weather has been pretty uncooperative to finish the bathroom. We need a sunny day to clear space in the garage and use the table saw. It seems like every time we have a sunbreak, the dogs are bouncing off the walls and Jeff takes them to the park for some run time, then by the time he gets back it's raining again. I have faith we'll get to it soon.

Quick Update

Jeff and I have been spending a lot of time writing lately, but I finally got some more work done on the master bath last week. I finished cleaning up the glass and I put the windows back together.

I have used the shower and it is nice to be able to shower upstairs again, but I need to install the grab bars. I'm hoping to get the shelf and towel hooks installed next week. We're waiting on a reasonably clear day so we can clear space in the garage to cut up our large pieces of fir. I'm hoping for next week, but given our current rate, it may be longer.

The tile looks better in the pictures than it does in person. I'll have to take some closeups to post soon. Barrett clearly had a problem getting tile flush and evenly spaced on the walls. Somehow, given all the problems and delays, this should not surprise me.

Shower Door

When the glass installers came out last week to put in the glass, they told me they were having the door hinges overnighted. Well, apparently "overnighted" means, another week. But, FINALLY done.

I've finished putting more coats of varnish on the medicine cabinet, so I'll get the bathroom put together this weekend (I hope).

We've decided to install a stained shelf on the toilet side wall, something like the below photo, so I'd like to buy fir for that soon.

I had bought a train rack for that wall, but it would have had to be installed off-center due to the ductwork in the wall, so I just decided to do this long shelf design instead. We'll install the train rack in the basement bathroom, which could really use the towel storage space.

Master Bath Shower Almost

Jeff and I finally put a couple more coats of varnish on the ceiling and I repainted the walls in hubbard squash. Eric came out and helped Jeff get the rest of the electrical switches installed; we gave up on the electrician.

We also got the interior of the medicine cabinet finished. We're happy with the glass shelves we bought for this one. As mentioned earlier, we bought them from One Day Glass, which was the least expensive source I found online. Luckily it was within an easy drive.

The shower enclosure was supposed to be finished today, but the installer got the wrong door hinges, so it's going to be another day or two.

We're mostly down to installing some misc. hardware, then we'll be done. Though, likely with us so busy with Halloween right now, it will be next week at least before we finish up.