May 31, 2009

House Horrers & Hard work!

This is why I'm back in New Hampshire a month early. It's also why I've not blogged and why I'm taking a sabbatical from beading for the Summer. Can you believe that most of my beads are still packed in the trailer?




This is what the place looked like when I bought it. The largest construction dumpster has now been filled and it's possible to start seeing the possibilities.


For this stage of my life, 1,200 sq ft of single floor Ranch living suits me just fine. It's situated on 2 acres of land and is tucked between 2 Lake districts. I can listen to the water going over the damn without having to worry about Lake front property taxes.



Except for the kitchen, the house has lots of nice light. Once the busy wall paper is gone and the walls are a light, smoky gray, it'll look a lot better. My studio will be a large end room just off of this living room to the rear.


I turned 65 this Spring and sometimes forget just what age my body really is. A project like this will remind me many times, I'm sure. I've just spent 2 days re-building a rock wall and have muscles telling me that they've not been that abused in years!

Trip East -Spring 2009

I've not had much time to update the blog since I arrived back in New Hampshire. I'll fill you in on why in my next post. Meanwhile, here is a quick synopsis, with highlights, of my last trip home.


White Sands, New Mexico was awesome. From the distance you start seeing these small white hills and then you're in the midst of large white gypsum sand dunes.


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Driving the Park roads made me think I was driving New Hampshire snowy roads...... So much so that I kept expecting the car to slip and slide on ice.
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They even plow the roads to keep the sand off of the pavement. The dirty sand even looked like dirty winter snow.
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For 30 years (in another life) I was involved with British cars and at one time we owned 7 of them. It was a delight to meet this couple at the Monument gift center. They had actually driven their MG TC on my dream trip..... The entire Pan American Highway from South America to Alaska. Here are some of their notes from the trip when they were in Arizona.




We were passing Mullinville KS when we saw a strange fence line and couldn't figure out just what it was. So we took a detour and enjoyed ourselves with several fields of "found object art".





Seems the artist had a problem with town politics!





We stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch one day and this beautiful wall caught my eye. The weathered and faded paint just made a beautiful design.





It was a quick trip, a month earlier than usual, but I had bought a NH house in January and wanted to get renovations started as soon as possible.