Living in a Winter Wonderland

Marty and Buck

It's been flurrying steadily where we live. The temperature has been in the mid-30's by day and 20-25 at night. I prefer a layer of snow to all the gray and brown around us. The evergreen trees give life to the scene as well.


The most-asked question of people who live in Northern rural areas is: what do you do in the winter; how do you survive? This is our first winter in the sticks, but I'll go out on a limb and say: We manage quite well.


Winter is a good time for projects. Last week, we painted our living room a gray-blue tone that's a good foil for our colorful Latin American art. I have years of painting experience, and while my husband doesn't love to do it, he pitches in. He has no choice.


The living room is fairly small, but it has 3 windows and 3 doorways. This means a lot of brush work around the woodwork. We used painter's tape because my hands aren't as steady as they used to be and I don't like edging tools. What we thought would take a day, took a day and a half, most of the time spent in prepping. A small amount of time was lost to the our dog Buck breaking through the barricade and managing to put one paw into the paint pan. This happened when Marty was was gone for 10 minutes. I screamed, and Buck stopped in his tracks. Unfortunately he'd already made some tracks before I could clean his paw. The wood floor in the kitchen area was easy to clean, but the rug we have there wasn't. I'm used to seeing this kind of mayhem on television commercials or silly movies. In retrospect, though, it was funny.

New color

This is me relaxing on the sofa in our new blue room. I have more projects in the pipeline: sewing curtains; doing my son's high school scrapbook (3 years post-graduation); organizing 10 years of photos; plus more things I don't want to do.


Spring, where are you?!