Full Days

If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was spring out there. Today we had a high in the low 40s and tomorrow we are supposed to be close to 50 degrees. It even is starting to smell like spring, as the ground is not as frozen with these warm sunny days. It’s so early yet though – my logical side knows that we have plenty of time yet for some of that white stuff to grace us with a winter coating. I will continue to enjoy every one of these springlike days, until the real season of spring comes along.

Our days are chock full of activity, but I can’t really list what we’re getting accomplished with our time. Of course, work takes up its usual majority of the week, and now that we have added five hours/week at the gym…well, I am still adapting to that. But we are determined to stick with it, as we are both feeling so much better. Even with only 2 and a half weeks under our belt.

Harry started the bathroom prep last weekend. The change is not going to be nearly as dramatic as it was with the upstairs bathroom. We painted this room only last year, so we are hoping that the wall color will go alright with the new floor. If not, painting this room (again) could still be added back on to the “list”. The toilet came out with no issues, thank goodness. So we don’t have to make any further major purchases to do the bathroom makeover.

On Sunday, we worked out in the garage. You may recall when Harry built these shelves. (haha if you do, you have a better memory than I do, because I just looked back and I couldn’t find the pictures.) But take my word for it, Harry built these shelves out in the garage, sometime in 2010, I believe. They had gotten filled up over the past year and a half. Well, on Sunday we got out there and cleared them off!! The section near Harry is where we are starting to gather some of the supplies that we will want to keep. So we emptied it out first, and then filled it back up!

 

Come spring, we are going to have our work cut out for us. Because most of this stuff still has to find its new home.

 

 

 

We have a lot to do in 244 days!!

Friday again…

It’s raining! And our high today is supposed to be 51 degrees! Wow!

This was last January around this time. That is our garage in the background behind the snow.

 

 

 

 

 

This is the scene outside our front window today.

Guess which one I like better?

I made contact yesterday with a potential realtor for our house sale. I heard about her last fall from a member who came into the credit union, and was telling me about her. She was very pleased with this realtor’s work. So I emailed her, and got back a very quick response. We plan to meet with her in April to show her around the house and see what recommendations she will make about the house preparation.

This weekend we are getting back to work on the house after a little over a week off. Harry is going to put in the new floor in the downstairs bathroom, and I am going to work on doing some more sorting and pitching. I am working on one room at a time now and trying to completely get that room done before I move on. So the downstairs guest room is on my agenda for this weekend.

Vroom, Vroom, Vroom…

That’s what the days seem like lately. I have good intentions of writing blog entries as close to daily as possible, but the time gets filled up with stuff, and before I know it, several days have gone by!

So, let me catch up on recent events…

Sunday dawned as a picture perfect day with a clear blue sky. SO much nicer than the gray day we had on Saturday. In the morning, the roads were still wet, but by afternoon they had dried for our trip home to NY.

 

 

Schaun opened his presents, and once the “boring” ones were out of the way, proceeded to have a good time with the fun gifts. I guess I should probably say that both Schaun and Papa had a good time playing while I amused myself by capturing all the moments.

All too soon, we had to be hitting the road for the trip home.

 

On the home front, we have been spending time once again at the local fitness center. My company gave all of its employees a one year membership to Planet Fitness as a holiday gift, and Harry and I interpreted that as a sign that we should get ourselves moving and maybe even get in shape. We set up a schedule for ourselves and have been going to the gym for an hour five days a week. We are both feeling better already just two weeks into our new routine, but a side effect has been that our already short weekday evenings are now even shorter.

The weather has been pretty nice. We did have a little cold snap and the snow last weekend, but today the high was in the mid 40s. It felt like spring. Our snow has just about melted away again. We both have spring fever already, and are looking forward to our first trip of the season, which is now 115 days away!

We haven’t had much time to work on the house over the past week and a half or so, but this weekend are planning to get back to it.

One More Celebration

Yesterday was our day to travel to Massachusetts for our last holiday celebration of the season. And as luck would have it, or not, of course we would get one of our first measureable snowfalls of the winter.

 

We WERE lucky though, that we didn’t get much snow.But the roads were wet and sloppy in places and it was one of those gray kinds of traveling days.

I did take several pictures as we were traveling…but they all look the same…with no colors other than a mixture of grays and whites.

 

It was worth it though.

 

 

 

 

 

Today its time to open presents from Grammy and Papa.

Wednesday Again!

Along with the weekends, this seems to be my best day for blogging recently. (Even though its sometimes a pain to work on Saturday, I do love having a day off in the middle of the week.) The work days of the week just seem to go along the same way all the time…work, home, dinner, bed.  With a schedule like that, there’s not too much very interesting to write about. Don’t want you all to fall asleep reading!

So anyway, it’s not going to take long to catch everybody up!

I am happy to report that we are still snowless for the most part. We did have a huge deep freeze over the weekend, followed by about an inch of the white stuff overnight on Monday. But yesterday warmed back up into the high 30s so the majority of it has melted away again. I don’t know if we can actually make it through the whole winter without another big snowstorm, but I’d be ok with it. The ten day forecast has a lot of highs in the 30s and even 40s, so it sure has been a mild winter so far.

We finished the upstairs bathroom closet on Monday. It looks really nice with the wire shelving as opposed to the wood boards that were there before. We also weeded out what was in there, and threw several bags away. I also started weeding out the kitchen cupboards. Thankfully we have done this once, last February, when we did the kitchen remodel. So the first level of culling has been done already, and now I am working on the second. I have already filled two boxes with glasses and holiday mugs that we never use.

This weekend we will be traveling to MA for our last Christmas celebration of the season! Nothing like making a holiday last!

Fun Day of Shopping

Today we headed out to Albany with Hannah for her Christmas shopping excursion. We had to bundle up warmly because of course we did pick the coldest day of the winter so far for our trip. It was seven degrees when we left the house.

We had a fun time checking out all of the possible combinations.

 

 

Then we headed into the dressing room to try all the outfits on.

 

 

 

After picking out the winners, we headed for a yummy lunch at Chili’s.

Hannah discovered that she likes mozzarella sticks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great time shopping, and after taking Hannah back home, we are now settled down watching the Giants play the Green Bay Packers.

GO GIANTS!!

Change in Plans

There’s a couple different changes in plan to write about today. The first is for the weekend. After reading the blog last night, Harry remarked that there were still a couple things to get done in the upstairs bathroom, so it seems that work on the downstairs floor has been pushed back a few days. Right now everything that was in the bathroom closet is sitting in a box, so we are also going to try to pare that down to essentials before we return them to the closet. I’m not quite sure how I have ended up with so many varieties of creams, polishes, and other cosmetic supplies sitting on my closet shelf when I basically use the same stuff all the time. It’s one of those deals where I hate to throw “good” stuff away so they continue to sit on the shelf unused, because I don’t want to throw it away but I don’t want to use it either. What a conundrum!

The other change in plans is a little more exciting. Those people who are tuned into details may notice that the house sale countdown on the side of my blog has “jumped” a bit. That is because Harry and I have been talking about our date for putting the house on the market. Realistically speaking, the chances of our finding a buyer immediately are not great. Even though the housing market in the capital region of NY has not experienced the same problems that are in some parts of the country, there are definitely a lot of homes on the market right now. And even once we find a buyer, the sale process is not quick either. Our buyer for the condo had six months to get her mortgage etc. and we still didn’t close when we were supposed to. So with all that in mind, we have decided to put our house on the market this fall instead of waiting until January. Yes, that’s THIS fall, as in October 1st, as in just EIGHT months away!!! Should we find a buyer quickly, we will just be upfront with them about the fact that we can’t go anywhere before early February 2013.

Putting the house on the market in October for some reason makes it seem so much more immediate, even though it’s only three months earlier. So I (yes you guessed it) have made another list!! As I mentioned yesterday, we still have a lot of sorting, and pitching and packing up to do around here. Time to get busy!

Dark January Days

Well, we lucked out in terms of snowfall – only a little snow yesterday morning and then the rain came in and washed it all away.

It has been dark though – dark and dreary and not the kind of days to fill a person with energy.

I think I can tell in the afternoon that the days are increasing in length; even those few minutes are welcome to see!

 

This is this weekend’s project. It won’t be as dramatic a change as the upstairs bathroom was, as it had already been somewhat updated a few years ago with a new vanity and mirror. It still has the old floor though. So replacing that will give it a nice fresh look.

This is the last makeover we have to do. After this we just have to paint the downstairs office and put new shelving in a couple of closets. Then, our major job after that will be a lot of cleaning out and pitching stuff. Even with all the cleaning out we have already done, we have more to go through.

We do have a little fun coming up this weekend. Last year, we gave our niece Hannah a shopping excursion for her Christmas gift. We all enjoyed it so much we did it again this year. So we will be heading to Albany on Sunday to enjoy some clothes shopping. I will try to remember to bring my camera this time!

Have a great day everyone!

Another Fast Week

January is movin’ right along. So far, so good with the weather. We’re supposed to have a storm over the next couple of days, but we may luck out and end up with rain. So far this has been one of those nice green winters, but they don’t usually last the whole season! We have two months left.

In the spirit of looking forward toward spring, I made camping reservations yesterday for our first trip of the season, in May, at Hartwick Heartlands Campground. Yay! We have reserved a pull through full hookup site that’s located in an open area. Should work out well for our satellite.

Harry and I have checked out the fiver every few days. Still no sign of any critters, and we both get another case of hitch itch every time we go out and look around. It’s going to be such a great feeling to pack up, and head down that road! <sigh> Still four months to go…

In the meantime, we are gearing up for our next project…the downstairs bathroom. This one should be easier, as we are not replacing the vanity and mirror, just the floor. We’ll be getting started on that this weekend.

Almost Done!

The upstairs bathroom is almost finished!

These are a couple pictures of what it looked like before…

(I couldn’t find a picture without the mess.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now here is our new and improved bathroom...

 

• new paint color
• new floor
• new toilet
• new vanity
• new mirror
• new lights

 

 

Next up…downstairs bathroom…but not tomorrow. We’ll start that next weekend.

Busy First Week of the Year

Another fast week around here! We had a little two day cold snap, and now we are back into the high thirties for highs. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 40!! Wow! Lots of people coming into the office these days bemoaning the lack of snow in our winter this year. Not me – I think it’s just fine.

We had the plumber here on Tuesday. He was here for quite a while even with Harry’s prep work, so we are waiting for the bill to see what the damage was. Oh well. At least everything looks good, and we can now move on with the upstairs bathroom.

Before…

 

 

 

 

 

and after…

It is all ready for the new floor to be overlaid on top of it. That will be happening tomorrow. Then we can move the new mirror and vanity into the bathroom, and get the closet put back together. Almost there!

 

 

The other job that the plumber finished up was the installation of the new showerhead and faucet in the downstairs bathroom.

Before…

This is the cut out closet wall in the office. I wish I had taken a picture of the showerhead/faucet that we had in the downstairs bathroom before this week. Suffice to say, this new one is a HUGE improvement.

 

 

 

 

and after…

This weekend is going to be another busy one – getting lots of stuff accomplished around here. More items being checked off that list!

2012 Camping Plans

We had no sooner parked our fiver back in the driveway last September after our trip to Lake George than we got busy planning for the next season.

We haven’t completely nailed down the exact dates yet, but generally we have planned one trip every month between May and October. It would be awesome if we could just take a short camping trip more than once a month, but working on Saturdays makes that pretty difficult. Even so, I’m pretty happy with the camping plans we have made for next year.

Mid-May

Hartwick Heartlands Campground – Cooperstown, NY

We are excited to have found a campground near Oneonta, NY which sounds big rig accessible. It is maybe 2 hours from here. You are probably thinking – Cooperstown – Baseball Hall of Fame…

 

however, we are interested in staying there because it is where Harry’s parents lived. Also, he has a brother still in the area. We have not been there since we have been together.  And I have a friend who lives right there as well. So we hope to be doing some biking and socializing during our stay at this campground.

June 12 – 17, 2012

Lake George RV Park – Lake George, NY

We are excited about this stay! We will be attending our first Heartland rally – the NY state chapter. It is at the same rv park where we stayed this past September. It is also about 2 hours traveling time.

 

 

We walked around the campground and checked out the sites when we were there, so we know where our site is located. It’s a great spot, where we should be able to get our satellite up with no problem.  We are looking forward to staying there again.

Mid July

Brook n Wood Family Campground – Elizaville, NY

Their picture got blurry when I enlarged it a bit, so I had to leave it a little smaller. Hopefully you can see something in the picture without straining your eyes too much! This campground looks very nice, and also sounds big rig friendly. It gets really nice reviews. We are going to take a ride out there to check it out in the spring, but it looks to be about an hour, hour and a half from here.

This campground looks very kid friendly, with lots of fun things to do. That is why we chose it, because we plan to spend a few days there taking my sister’s kids camping. Should be a lot of fun!

 

Mid August

Iroquois Campground and RV Park – Peru, NY

We chose this park because it is only 15 minutes from where my childhood home is located. We have been trying to get together for a few bike rides with my mom for the past three years, and we are hoping that this year is finally the year when we can make that happen.

A year ago October we went to my mom’s for the weekend, and I shared some pictures from our trip to Rulf’s, a local apple orchard. This rv park is only a minute or so from that apple orchard.

September 26 – 30, 2012

Copake KOA – Copake, NY

This is the second Heartland rally that we will be attending in 2012. It is the one for the Northeast region. We just lucked out that both the NYS Chapter rally and the Northeast Region rally were scheduled at

 

places that are basically right in our backyard. Copake, NY is also in the Hudson Valley, which is where we live, and we figure it is about an hour traveling time for us.

October 14 – 22, 2012

Seashore Campsites – Cape May, NJ

This is our last outing for the year. Yes, with this one we probably officially qualify as rally groupies! LOL

We are heading down to one more Heartland rally in Cape May.

 

We were already thinking of going to Cape May in October to hopefully enjoy one last little bit of warm weather. So when we saw the NJ Chapter had reserved sites at this campground in October, we figured it was a sign!

 

 

So there it is, our trip plan for the year. It will be a nice break from the past two year’s pattern of spending all the warm weather season working on the house. We will still have projects to accomplish around here, but we will be looking forward to the next trip while we are checking off the items on the list.

New Year 2012

Happy New Year 2012! I said to Harry this morning, now we can say NEXT year we will become fulltimers! Yeah, I know we’re really only one day closer, but it sure sounds good.

This morning we checked out one of our gifts from yesterday. My mom and stepdad gave us a griddle for our Weber Q.

Now we are all set for breakfast this year when we are out with the fiver!

(And Harry looks real sharp in the red polartec vest which was another one of his gifts.)

 

OK, so you must have known this was coming…no first blog post for a year would be complete without the ever-present TO DO LIST. But this one is a little different – this is our last major list of stuff that we want to do with the house. By the end of the year, we will be ready for the house to go on sale. All of our improvements will be done, the place will be completely empty of extraneous stuff, and we will be ready for the next step! So without further ado, here is the 2012 TO DO LIST.

• Stain the sliding glass door to the deck
• paint the downstairs office
• clean out basement
• wash basement floor and walls
• replace downstairs sink faucet
• replace downstairs bathroom floor
• paint the downstairs bathroom
• paint garage to kitchen stairs
• dismantle shed
• empty above garage storage area
• rent dumpster (and fill!)

We also have some fun plans for the year…but that’s for another blog post!

Have a great day everyone!!