APRIL 26 UPDATE: Thinking about colors and ceilings

I was gently prodded (ow!) by my sister to update the blog. I've had all sorts of things to think about, but I haven't sat down to get it done. But here I am!

COLORS: My mother-in-law was asking me all sorts of questions about colors when she and Don were here over Easter weekend, meaning I had to actually make some decisions about what colors I want in the house! Well, I had done some thinking before, but I hadn't settled on anything yet. And I'm not quite sure I'm settled on this yet, but for now, here is the inspiration for the color palette for the house:

I want "prairie colors" as color scheme for the house. I had started with wanting colors from Lora Schaunaman's "Savo Summer" watercolor, then after looking at it more closely, I realized those colors are too pastel for me. I checked out this book based on the lovely cover (though it is a very good book otherwise -- I would recommend that high schoolers read this so they understand the land they grew up on).

After trying to pull specific colors from this, however, I am realizing that it might not be exactly what I want. The colors playing off of one another look good, but on their own, they might look like odd blocks of color. Sigh. I guess I'll have to just trek off to the paint store and see if I can find a close color scheme that works.

The plan is to have the high part of the ceiling in some shade that makes you think of the prairie sky -- that's likely blue, but it might not be. Then, over that, as a low border, I was looking into wall decals of prairie plants. I haven't found anything just perfect yet, though this is the closest I've found so far:


CEILINGS: Pretty soon we need to make a decision about what kind of ceilings we want in the living room and kitchen (the rooms on the north side of the house will just have drywall, textured ceilings). I had wanted ceiling tins, and I contacted Jim and Kay Dumire, since I was pretty sure they had ceiling tins. Well, they did, but they have a LOT of work embedded into them -- Jim took them off the ceiling of an old church, and had to remove about 4o nails per 2-foot-by-2-foot tin, while looking up and dodging falling dirt that was behind the tins. So the charge is would be $20 per tin. NOT in our price range, unfortunately.

We've gotten some other suggestions -- my sister suggested beadboard, and another friend suggested getting ceiling tiles that look like tins and painting them with a metal paint, which gives the same ceiling tin effect -- but I have this crazy idea that would recycle at the same time. Keep an open mind and consider ...


... the old tin they took off the granary roof! Dave thinks I'm kinda crazy, and maybe I am, but I think, if we're trying to preserve that "old granary" look, this might be pretty cool.

We'd have to put up a plywood backer, I think, so it wouldn't be much cheaper than drywall. But it would definitely be more interesting.

Mari thinks it might be OK above the kitchen, but that it would look too industrial above the living room. She might be right. We could try it in the kitchen area first and see what we think.

All right, folks, time to vote! What do you think of my tin ceiling idea? Leave a comment!

...Dave's been busy with other things, namely getting the garden ready, but he's also managed to do quite a bit of drywalling. Sofia's room is nearly done. It looks a little funny, actually, with that one corner of the downstairs nearly done and the rest of the downstairs walls' innards bare -- like that corner is a stage set in an old warehouse or something. (Sorry, no photos of that. I'll get some more soon.)

...And I'll leave you with this nice photo of Sofia and Grandpa, taken when Don and Mary were here over Easter. The astonishing thing to note here is that it's taken at least a mile from the house, and Sofia had walked all the way on her own two legs! She was carried a short distance on the way back, but she did most of that on her own, too. She's a good little walker.

... And Sofia is learning how to spell. She's got two words down now (in addition to SOFIA, which she's known for a long time): BABY and STOP. Not because we keep telling baby to stop (though we've been doing that a fair amount too) but because she kept seeing stop signs and asked about them, and because we had a box with the word baby on the table for a while. Most of this is her own instigation. She just likes letters.

We figure she's going to be bored in kindergarten.

APRIL 11 UPDATE: Easter Bunny's at work

It's going to be some Easter for the kids, I think.

Dave had some summery presents he wanted to get for the kids, and with Sofi's birthday in December and Erik's in late July, there wasn't a good holiday for present-giving except Easter. So Sofia is getting a small bike, and Erik is getting a small slide, in addition to the usual chocolate Easter goodness.

Dave just finished getting the bike adjusted and the slide put together. I wrote up a few riddles for Sofia to figure out as she runs around looking for eggs, which will eventually lead to the bigger presents outside. ... Hmm. I hope we're not setting too big a precedent ... well, if necessary, we can make up some sort of story next year, about the Easter Bunny having a broken leg or something.

... The huge flocks of geese seem to have mostly moved north in the past few days, but flocks of ducks remain. This is in a prairie pothole in one of our fields, less than a half-mile from the farm. The ducks eased away a bit when I walked close, but they didn't take off, apparently judging me as not much of a threat. We did bird ID by photo, and figured out that these are lesser scaups.

This photo especially helped in the ID, since we could see the peaked head. Greater scaups apparently have a rounded head, in addition to being bigger, the guidebook says.

... Dave's parents are here for the weekend. Don and Dave worked on several things in the new house today, including fixing the door (somehow the strike plate was set too far back, so the latch wouldn't stay in place and keep the door closed — a shim behind the strike plate did the trick), adding one ground wire they had missed, and doing some drywalling.

We had quite a discussion about what the move-in date might be. It's really hard to say at this point, as we have to guess at too many factors — how many hours Dave gets to work on the house, for example. But midsummer still seems like a good guess.

... I might have a few more hours to spend on the house, depending on how accomodating Mom is on doing child care: I found out a few days ago that my contract with my online editing job is being ended as of April 15. Basically, I'm being laid off, along with the rest of the copy editing staff. We've been deemed "redundant," and the mangement wants to be more "nimble" so they can post stories without having to wait for us to read them.

It's not fun to hear, especially as the money I brought in kept everything less stressful around here and allowed us to put more money into the house, but we'll survive. And I have a feeling something else will fall into place for me, workwise. I'd like to get my name out to do some more graphic design work, for example.

But first, I'm going to work on my book about my Aunt Lillian. I've taken it as a sign that she has a massive heart attack within a few hours of me finding out that I'm laid off. Really, how much more of a kick in the pants to I need to get going on this project?!

APRIL 10 UPDATE: High-traffic area

Our farm has definitely become a high-traffic area lately. Hundreds of thousands of geese are traveling on their way north to Canada toward their nesting grounds. They make quite a racket as they travel.

The other day, thousands of geese decided to stop to rest near our artesian pond. They would settle down, then fly up and circle for a bit, seeming to enjoy just flying in the spring sun before they settled back down again.


Taking pictures of geese is harder than it would seem -- or at least it is with my camera. I happened across one good shot, though. (I did doctor the photo in Photoshop, though.)


... The Prairie builders crew has been working in the house again. They've nearly finished all the drywalling. They are going to return to help us with the taping and texturing, but we think they'll wait until it's a little bit warmer. That way they don't have to heat the building while they're working.


... Erik has decided that he wants to feed himself. He won't eat unless he has a spoon in his hand, or something like bread that he can eat himself. He's not very neat yet.

... I ran out and got a nice picture of a sunrise yesterday morning. I didn't even throw a coat over my pajamas! Gotta love spring.

I did this blog entry using my new toy. It's called NaturallySpeaking, and I didn't do any typing at all. I just talking to my cool Bluetooth headset and the words appear on the screen. Of course, it did think that I said peace instead of geese. But its accuracy apparently improves as I use it.

A cool little surprise

I was helping Sofia write in her bird book this evening (Dave and Sofi bought a little notebook where they can write down all the birds they see each day) when I glanced out the window and told Sofia she'd have to wait a minute, the light was just right for some lovely photos. So I ran down and snapped a few pictures out the door, then carried the camera upstairs, thinking I'd show Sofia what I was so excited about. The angle was better from Sofia's window than it had been from below (the contrast of the dark sky with the yellow corn stubble was what looked so nice), so I snapped a few pics from her window, even though I was taking pictures through the screen, and I doubted they would turn out at all.

This is one of the pics I got from her window:

A surprisingly good picture for one taken through a screen. But then I noticed what was in the upper right corner. Here's a zoomed-in version:

That cloud is a flock of thousands of snow geese. I didn't even see them when I took the picture -- the screen hindered my vision more than it did that camera's, apparently.

I think we'll have to print this out to put in Sofia's bird book, don't you?

I just love a little surprise like that!

APRIL 1 UPDATE: Winter. It's still here.

I'm not sure how much snow we got here — probably 5 or 6 inches. Enough to be irritating, but it was still possible to drive through it. Just a few miles north, however, they got considerably more. Dave took this photo while he was out working somewhere by Monango, N.D.

We're pretty hardy folk up here, but with the blizzards, then the flooding, then the blizzards, then the flooding, a person's stamina for winter does start to wane about April.


... The kids haven't lost their stamina, though, as you can tell from this photo. Erik made an attempt to climb the stairs today. This is as far as he got. He couldn't figure out how to lift his feet yet. But he's motivated (notice his sister egging him on), so I'm sure it won't be long.

He was so darn proud of himself.

We tried to do some more babyproofing last night, but there's one problem I can't keep ahead of. We've had a ladybug invasion lately. They must have hatched out as soon as it got warm — er, make that not so ridiculously cold. I vacuum them up several times a day, but there always seems to be more. Tonight Erik just about ate one — hand was already in the mouth, but bug was still in the hand. Yech. Though I suppose there are worse things than bug eating, and it does show his hand-eye coordination is improving. Yech all the same.