New stove!

Today it snowed again - not as much but I was worried about the stove guys crawling around on the roof. But they did fine and our beautiful new stove is all in! I had it painted honeygold brown; don't know if you will get the real color from the computer (depends how well your screen is calibrated, probably not great) but this should give you the idea. I think it looks great with the rocks, so you get two shots.

so tired

Double click on the picture to see it bigger (at least this worked for me!)


I am sort of sick of winter - today we woke up to 4 more inches of snow! It is April here people! Grrr. And I guess I'm wishing for a fun getaway - somewhere warm with room service. Of course J would hate that...The rock guys are pretty much done - still putting in mortar in places, but all the rocks are "up". The paint is mostly done in the new downstairs - still waiting on the stain which is all upstairs. I would post more pix but I'm having some computer issues right at the moment; mostly the usual "photo computer" is now Kasjakstan research central (guess who).

Argh!!!

So many decisions! New carpet, paint, tile, rocks. Cool. But, to put in new carpet, paint, tile and rocks one first has to remove all old items from the rooms (everywhere the orange carpet is, plus the pink room). Of course these rooms are crammed with junk, and Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless won't go through his stuff. There is a time issue. Kind of terrifying! Somehow it will all get done I'm sure, but right now I may be getting an ulcer.

more

Probably most of you won't even be able to "spot the differences" (like in those pictures for kids) between today's pics and the ones I posted yesterday - but I can tell! So here are some more.


First is from the deck looking through the french doors and out the big windows so you can kinda see the view...


Then downstairs below the big windows (with the old front door) - I just love how under the deck is turning out too.

And the front shot - the siding makes it look so much better; and hopefully the "rock man" is coming next week.

Its happening so fast!

So I almost don't want to post these because they are already out-of-date; but oh well. I'll take more tomorrow (maybe)! As near as I can tell (cuz my server doesn't let me lay out the photos very easily) the pics are: the front door from the porch, the front door from inside, the back door (which used to be the front door), under the deck (with the dog), and the front view.

Another pic

Another update on the addition...although right this moment we have about an inch of snow all over things. It didn't seem to enhance the look, so I just went with the pic I shot Friday. It is really cool that we can go up on the deck (easily) and I can envision the railings and stone around the columns - then I get all overwhelmed about decision-making. Seems like things are moving fast now!

Books

Wow, I see the picture I posted last week and realize we need to get an update up there! But that will wait until tomorrow, for now I have this somewhat disturbing list of books I haven't read too many of:

Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
Instructions:
Look at the list and color red those you have read.
Italicize the books you LOVE or if you can't put a note at the end.
I am adding those that I have partially read in bold.

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo