Spring Has Sprung...A New Dude and New Chicks!

Spring is a fickle season in Central Oregon. Sometimes it's sunny and blossoms are blooming, and other days it's flurries and frigid winds. Either way, we're taking advantage of it - on snow days Mike hits the mountain, and on warm days we get busy exploring or working on our yard. 

One new addition to our house is our friend, Josh, who has temporarily taken over our guest room. He is now an enthusiastic Bend resident, and the first, but hopefully not the last, of our friends to move up here! 

Josh and Mike discussing fat bikes while we run errands.

It's nice to have an extra set of hands around the house. We have a million and one projects left to do, and about half of those involve the yard. We got zealous and ripped up all our grass, and installed boulders. It was so expensive to water the grass that I paid a couple thousand to have rocks dumped on the yard. Makes sense, right?

One day, our yard will be covered in drought tolerant flowers.
It just might take about 3 years for them to all grow in.

One other bonus of having Josh here is that it makes us appreciate our neighborhood more, and reminds you of things you've gotten used to seeing. Although, I'm still in awe when we go hiking in places like Smith Rock.

The view as you walk into the canyon.

Walking along the river trail.

Loved this "balancing rock!"

The sun setting; you can see the "balancing rock" on the right.

There's people to the left behind Mike up on "Misery Trail" for scale.

One new "spring" experience we're going through is that our favorite hen went broody. Basically, she wanted to hatch out some babies and she refused to get off the nest. Even when we pulled all the eggs out, she'd just sit on an empty nest and get all irritated if we opened the nest box door. The problem with a broody hen is: we don't have a rooster. So our eggs aren't going to be hatching anything. 

After a month of her refusing to get off her nest and eating minimal amounts of food every day, we started to get worried. She was losing lots of weight and looking awful. We finally gave in and bought two baby chicks at the feed store. She immediately perked up when she heard the peeping and took them in as her own! She is the best momma hen.

One of the babies - "Two Spot (Tupac)" at one day old.

It's hard to tell but this is the other chick, "Notorious B.I.R.D."

It's been a fun experience with the chicks so far, and we don't have to do a thing except feed them, give them clean water, and make sure predators don't eat them at night (hence the reason they are in a cardboard lined cage). Otherwise, the momma hen does everything. We are crossing our fingers that at least one of them is not a boy...

Chick update in the next post...We should know by then if they're roosters or hens!

The Morel of the Story

Every season we learn new things about our new hometown, Bend, that will make next year even more awesome. For example, I found out too late last year that this orchard down the street has 100%-totally-free apple picking. This fall, you can be sure I'll be all up on that, and we'll be canning apple sauce, apple butter, and making apple fruit leather for weeks.

This spring, we've been learning about morel and bolete mushroom locations. I've started keeping a list, and maybe next year we'll find enough to share! 

If you're interested in mushroom hunting, I strongly advise you join up with a local mycology club, rather than buy a slew of mushroom books or apps. Trust me, we did both. It's just SO MUCH EASIER to have a bunch of nerds show you what to look for. They've already made all the mistakes, and also, seeing the right and the wrong mushrooms in person makes more sense when you can touch them, smell them, cut them open, etc.

a peek at Wickiup Reservoir through the trees.

The leaders of the forays are dedicated. They scout out locations the night before, so that we're pretty much guaranteed to find something the next day. They brought us near Wickiup Reservoir, one of the many lakes off the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway. 

A cool thing about mushroom hunting is that you are generally in a beautiful spot, enjoying a nice long walk through the trees. So whether or not you find something, it's still a winning situation.

I was standing at the actual spring that feeds the reservoir.

I sort of spent the first 30 minutes just wandering, because I'm more of a lucky mushroom hunter, not a good one. Mike is much better at actually spotting them. I rely on the stumbling method, as in, I sure hope I stumble into one. 

And stumble I did! I was the first in our whole group to find a morel. Once you find a mushroom, you're supposed to stop and look around carefully. Mushrooms are social and like to hang in groups. 

My first sighting! Looks sort of like a blonde pinecone, so they're hard to spot.

Sure enough, there was a second right nearby. Mike ran over and we found about 5 more.

a second one!

Mike picking a morel, coral mushroom, and amanita mushrooms.

I felt a little guilty leaving at the end of the day, because you usually do a potluck after a foray, and share all your findings. But since this foray was in Bend and we live here, we just headed home with our goodies...

Beginner's Luck!

We found more than the whole group that day. Go team! Did you know these suckers are like $40/pound? 

An added bonus - we learned how to find and identify boletes, another mushroom that is prolific in this area and very popular with those in the know. I cooked one up for us and although it was tasty, it tasted just like a regular mushroom. The morels, though - they were tasty. It might have been the butter.

King Boletes. According to the book, they are "edible, and choice."

The true test will be next spring, if we can find morels all on our own. If we're successful, I know a bunch of foodie friends (and relatives) who are going to be super happy!

The Scourge of the Neighborhood

You know that neighbor with the overgrown yard, peeling paint, and crumbling front porch? The one that's a total eyesore and is dragging down property values? 

Well, hello! That's us. While we've been busy prettifying the insides of our so-very-humble abode, the outsides have been a bit neglected. 

It's not entirely our fault, since the former owner never laid eyes on the place or took care of it. And I'll ask for a little leeway since we did just move in, in January. But now it's May, and everything is in bloom, including our lovely dandelions, which we are growing for market. You didn't think we were just letting random weeds grow in the yard, did you?

Here's where I post some embarrassing pictures of our yard:

Those two fir trees on the left are just the worst - half dead, and I'm pretty sure the 25+ years of dog pee that they've experienced hasn't helped anything. The birch (white trunks), while pretty, has a trunk that is leaning into our roof and needs to go. And that tree in the foreground? It's dead. Yep. We figured that out after it refused to blossom this spring.

Our side yard is just as awful, if not worse:

The fence is from the 90s, part of it blew down in a recent storm (where you can see the neighbors trashy - pun intended - temporary "fencing"), and we have a disgusting mixture of old gravel and random weeds growing out of the ground. But you know what this is? A blank slate! I'm imagining a sitting area, strawberry beds, and a fire pit...

I found an arborist doing work at the house next door, and scheduled them for the following week. For $400.00 they cut down no less than 7 trees in our yard and hauled them away. For another $75.00 they came back and dug up the stumps. Worth every penny.

the arborists at work and a glimpse of our crappy backyard.

The front of our house now looks so much better...you can actually see the house now! 

Before

After

See that crazy storm cloud in the "After" picture? Mike had to hurry and get our roof patched up - it's been leaking in the garage. We're planning on replacing the entire roof, but probably it'll happen later this summer. In the meantime, my super handy husband took care of it himself:

A house is definitely a labor of love. It's never-ending, and while rewarding, it's also exhausting. I'm happier than ever that we bought a small house. Less to maintain, less to clean, less place to store useless "stuff." Less is more, for sure.

While we'll continue our daily mini-projects and figure out how to haul away all our yard debris, it's time to take a break. We're excited for this upcoming summer, and we've got lots of hikes and local vacations planned, starting this weekend. More to come!

Every Day I'm Hustlin'

OK, so we're not hustlin' as hard as Rick Ross, but making that "To Do" list on the last post really made us accountable for our actions. I highly suggest stating publicly (or on Facebook, because that's practically the same thing) what you're going to do, because wow, is it motivating. 

I'm still learning how to do new things with the remodel, and on this particular day, it was electrical wiring of our outlets. My boss, who is an electrician, told me it'd be simple - just pull out the old outlet and look at how things are wired, then just pull out the wires and plug them into the new receptacle the same way. Sounds easy enough...

I pulled out the outlets (after turning off the breaker - that is the most important step!), and there were yucky cobwebs in some, the wires require some muscle to get out and push in, and there would be any number of wires, from 3 to 7, that might be connected to any particular outlet. I managed, with a lot of help from Mike, to figure out how to do it, but it took me about 2 hours to finish six receptacles. I also electrocuted myself because I forgot to test the outlet before touching it, and it was wired to a different breaker. I am officially the worst electrician ever.

My electrical outlet progress and Mike installing the trim.

Mike worked on the trim all afternoon, and got the living room mostly completed (minus wood putty and paint). It got difficult around the bullnose corners, but we'll figure that out another day. For now, it's enough that we're making progress.

I also got some seeds started for our "garden" this summer. Our yard looks like...well, it looks like the yard of a house that's been a rental for 25 years. So it needs a lot of back-breaking work. Since we're already toiling away on the interior, with a guest bathroom, roof, and siding to finish this summer, we're putting off the yard until next spring (which, if climate change continues on this path, may be even earlier next year). This year, I'm growing food in pots, which will give me an opportunity to work on my atrocious gardening skills. 

you can see my successful regrown green onions at the end of the sill.

I repurposed some old egg cartons for the seeds and planted lettuces, mâche, yellow strawberries, eggplants, and little Mexican cucumbers. Everything is specifically for this climate and ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. We'll see what sprouts and what I can keep alive! If all goes well, I'll be able to transplant these babies into pots in a few weeks.

In preparation for our DIY landscaping, we've been checking out garden centers around town. This one, Tumalo Garden Market, was so unbelievably cute! They had greenhouse kits, beehives, tons of fruit trees, and even a mini "canyon" you could walk through, to get ideas for your yard.

this place was like a garden amusement center - loved it!

I'm hoping we'll keep up the hustlin' into this upcoming week. But today, we're headed to the movies! Fast and Furious 7...and I'm bringing a box of tissues.

Into the Dust Pit and Back Out the Other Side

It is more difficult than you would think, living in a house that's going through a full-out remodel. If you have the means, I would highly recommend moving out of your home, if you ever take this on in the future. Our house is constantly dusty; anything you wash gets dirty within minutes, and we don't have a working kitchen or even a kitchen sink. I have a whole new level of appreciation for deep sinks with a proper faucet and garbage disposal.

We just made it through a week of grinding the countertops, which created an atmosphere in the house close to what I imagine working in a quarry feels like. Despite our best efforts to tarp off the kitchen and blanket our belongings, our entire house and our very own lungs got coated in a thick layer of concrete dust. 

Our kitchen looks ghostly with all the plastic and tarps up!

We had to live only in the master bedroom (due to all the dust), and I sort of wish we had drugged the cats for those few days, since all 6 of us were cooped up in the room together. It was impossible to use the toaster oven, and we did carry out and fast food, sitting on the floor of our bedroom, eating off a cardboard box. I kept reminding myself it was like camping, but without the beauty of nature, it's hard to keep a positive attitude.

But after a few days, we made it through the grinding and polishing, and then we moved on to tile, which was considerably less dirty. I picked this beautiful ice white glass subway tile, which makes the kitchen look incredibly clean. The picture below doesn't quite do it justice, but when the whole kitchen is done, I hope to get a better shot!

Mike celebrating after day 1 of tile.

The empty horizontal spaces are where the open kitchen shelving will go. I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but because we found mold and had to ditch the old kitchen cabinets, that left us with an extra cost we didn't anticipate in the remodel. The solution? We only purchased lower cabinets, and on top, we're putting open kitchen shelving. It works perfectly for us for several reasons: we love the open airy feel, it updates the traditional style of this 90s kitchen, the kitchen feels bigger, and our everyday dishes are all white, which makes them ideal for displaying!

Adin from Artisan Tile laying the last tile on the back wall.

Adin knocked out the tiles in 3 days, and then it was on to building the shelves. Mike found a blog online where this girl built her own shelves, and he decided to go ahead and make ours!

The frames for the shelves and a glimpse of the unsealed counters.

After all the kitchen insanity, and because the office looks like the picture below, we really felt a serious need to organize and clean.

One day, hopefully not too far in the future, this will be my office.

In a way, chaos in your house reflects the chaos in your life and mind. There is a real level of peace I get from not only organizing my belongings, but paring them down. One $99 closet organizer and an afternoon will buy you this sort of inner calm:

This is everything we've been wearing the last couple months!

Sure, there's like 2 more boxes and 3 more bags of clothes, but I was pretty happy to find that we've pared down quite a bit from our previous lives, and we picked out even more things we can donate. I think I jettisoned about half my closet once I quit corporate office life. I still have my collection of LBD (little black dresses) over there on the left, though. There's a level of practicality that speaks to keeping those around.

We're hoping to get out of the house more this coming week - we miss our nightly walks and just exploring around Oregon. Not only do our lungs need some fresh air, but spring is here, whether we're ready or not! Usually, the last frost is in May here in Bend, and I'm a little bit concerned for our plum tree. Should it freeze again, the blossoms will fall off and we won't get any fruit this year. Sad face (for potential lost plums and climate change).

Enjoying the beautiful plum blossoms while we can...

Mike's niece is coming up on Tuesday and we are so excited to show her around our little town. More to come!