Beautiful Fall

Indoor fabric reflects outdoor nature

Fall brings with it a change of scenery - where all was lush green with vibrant fun hues - we now see leaves begin their showy performance modeling oranges, yellows, reds, golds, and deep maroon - such rich colors.  The frost tames the colors and they move into browns, tans, and greys.  This is all before the arrival of cold temperatures and blankets of millions of snowflakes - the earth resting.

Our MN trees are loosing their leaves and as they do we try to pick up as many as we can - they get hauled out to the mini forest at the back of our yard - the wind knocks a lot of small branches down so we are continually adding them to the forested area - a nice place for bunnies for winter.  We have lots of wildlife around our yard - we have a small all black squirrel - we've named him Blackie.  Our woods are home to a pair of screech owls - we see them winging through the woods hunting mice we hope. Blue jays, nuthatches, and woodpeckers and red and grey squirrels spend lots of time scratching around the yard.  Deer wind their way through our yard quite often.

Fall Teaching

As my business, Design Consulting has developed I have had many opportunities to share my design skills.  I write a newspaper article every month for our home town newspaper - I started writing them to inform people about the vast world of interior design - my October article will be the 43rd I have written. 

I have had the privilege of doing a number of Career Days  and from those I have had 3 job shadows.  It has been a privilege to work with these students helping to shape their future career decisions.

I've also had the opportunity to host Home Design Parties.  The guests get a tour of my home, a brief  look at my business, lunch, and door prizes - one lady said - "this is just like a spa night for women, but with design".  

Our October trip to the cabin

Now copper

We did get to work on the two September projects in October.  We now have new ivory colored counter tops with speckles of grey, copper and tan.  The new counter tops have completely changed the look of the kitchen.  When the counter tops were red that is all that one saw, now the logs are standing out and the beautiful grain in the cupboard doors is visible - it is like we have a totally different room.  I washed and spray painted all the switch plates and plug-in plates - copper - they look great!

Paul and I mixed cement for our basement bathroom shower area - that is now setting up and he will be able to start tiling the rest of the shower.  When he finishes that he will tile the rest of the bathroom - walls and floor.  We have purchased the vanity, stool, and mirrored medicine cabinet for the space.  Lighting and finishing the ceiling will be the last projects for that room.  We hope to have it finished before we do our first family Christmas at the cabin.

About that September trip

The Minnesota lumberjacks

We arrived at the cabin to find that we had lots of little critter visitors - we loaded and spread out mouse traps and sticky traps along the paths they seemed to be taking.  We caught a bunch!  Our neighbor, the game warden, told us that mice are particularly bad this year - the acorn crop was so sparse that they are finding it hard to find food of any kind.

We also arrived to find at least 10 large trees uprooted on our property - the result of some big winds that did some severe damage north of us.  One tree lost a huge branch that ended up draped over our second story roof and hanging all the way down to the ground.  Landis and Paul got out the tractor and it took the two of them working to keep the tree from falling on them or breaking any of our sun room windows.  Because of the downed trees the lumberjacks were busy cutting, hauling, and stacking wood.

Whenever we find tasks that were unexpected it keeps us from getting projects done that were on the list.  Little bathroom work done and we didn't get the counter tops done either.