Meet Holly!!

After almost two months of anticipation, I am proud to show off Holly, our new house! The keys were presented to us on Wednesday, the we spent the next two evenings exploring the place.

The living room has two layers of carpet, padding and a layer of linoleum glued down to the wood floors.

This is Jered scraping off the purple linoleum. It came off pretty good in most spots, but some places were glued on very well!

This is the spare bedroom. The carpet had been mostly pieced together, so it was quite easy to remove. The dark wood underneath is just beautiful!!

But there were more than a few imperfections as well.

Daisy doesn't know what to think. She is pretty nervous walking around and such, but I am sure she will settle down, once we settle down....

This is going to be our bedroom. This carpet came up the easiest.

That was two layers of carpet and padding, it was friggen heavy! We ended up unrolling it and cutting it in half just to get it into the truck.

Last, but for sure not least, was the linoleum. I took this picture because Jered had a big piece starting to rip. That happened a few times, but what I will really remember is the little pieces that just refused to let go.

Frick! Another thing I will remember will be uncovering this bright piece of wood. It was quite an eye sore compared to the rest of the room (spare room).

Here more than half of the linoleum is up. There is a pile of wall paper (it was underneath the carpet in our bedroom along with some newspaper from April 25th, 1965) and such that we are going to save for when we paint. There was still a lot of glue left from the linoleum, with beautiful wood peaking through the cracks.

There is still a lot of work ahead, but it sure is exciting. Stay tuned!!

Our house to Olalla!

Yesterday we hiked from our house to Olalla Reservoir. It was a wonderful hike, and amazingly did not rain on us at all.

We have attempted this hike multiple times throughout our stay in Siletz, but the last house just before you would cross the logging gate has about one million dogs, and they all come running at you before you can cross the gate. So we neglected to attempt to cross the gate with Daisy (tried only once, and it was not good!) and left her home to watch the house. We made it across the gate this day with four or five dogs closely watching us, along with the giant Rottweiler growling at us every other step of the way (not on leash, so you can imagine how scary this is). The dogs aren't terrible, but I am sure it keeps most people from crossing the gate (the dogs deterred us at least three other times!) We made it past the dogs, which was our biggest hurdle, and off we went!

I would like to hike up this road someday, today just wasn't the day.

With a quick super steep down hill right at the end, we made it to the lake looks like it had filled up somewhat since the last time we had been there, but still a stump forest.

A Great Blue Heron is sitting right atop of the snag in the middle of the picture. So beautiful! We decided to go around the lake and connect to the power lines we could see and follow them back to our house. Then we would make more of a loop than an up and back for our hike.

There sure wasn't much of a trail on this side of the lake! (The other side of this reservoir is very developed)

We made it to the power lines and started back to our house. It sure wasn't a long hike; the drive from the house would have been around 10 miles, but I think our hike was maybe 3 at the most!

The power line trail was very steep! Although heart pounding, it made for a beautiful view once I was at the top. Even a glimpse of the lake!

This snail didn't make it up the hill, or maybe it was just resting.......

What a great hike!!!

Second Day of the Year

After noticing that NOAA had issued four weather warnings regarding the astronomically high tides that we were having, we decided we couldn't miss the opportunity to check it out.

Needless to say, it was quite disappointing. The most entertainment came from these young boys that were playing on a log in the surf. They obviously don't know that two inches of water can move a five ton log!!

The kids got away in time, but that water isn't very deep anyway. Nye Beach turn around would be a great place to watch big waves, if they were there. Watch for big waves another time.

A quick drive out to Yaquina Head showed bigger waves, but still, barely anything to snap a camera at. So we left the beach and headed back to the country.

These look like old railroad tracks as we drove along the bay road.

Awesome "new" dresser

I have had this dresser almost forever, but I was very tired of the ugly cream color and the orange circles where my teenage stickers had been. It was time for a change. I decided this way back when I was living in Waldport and I was using it in my kitchen to store bowls and such. I just wanted to wait for the right time to do it.
With all of the anticipation of moving into the new house, some time was made to finish the dresser. It has become one of the most beautiful pieces of furniture that I have now, and I am so happy.

Daisy

She is so cute, no matter what age!

Busy Beavers

This is along the highway on our drive to work. I would imagine that the people would be a little worried by now by the busy beaver work.
None of the trees have fallen on the house....yet.

Driving home from Salem on Christmas day we got a great view of freezing fog.