Ruff Stuff

The photo above is part of where I hike through our valley. Over the last winter and summer, these trees have fallen across the creek bed. Yesterday was warm so I grabbed my little chainsaw and hiked down to the bottom to carve a way through that mess.

If you are a contortionist, you can make it through rather easily but it requires squats, high steps, and a lot of twisting. I thought I'd make it easier on myself with a bit of trimming. The after shot never got taken, however I can walk through without playing Twister right now.

My little saw can take on a lot. But the large trunk of this old oak was still too solid for me to cut through. I cleaned the area up so now I don't have to go around this obstacle any more. The tree toppled in 2018. A 'friend' offered to clean it up. He did a fairly poor job at it. But I beggars can't be choosy. 

So for the past 6 years, I've rerouted. However, now I can just step over the log on the left side of the trail.  It is only about 18" tall.

Now I can go straight down the old trail that was put in years ago instead of detouring. It was originally put in with a bull dozer in 2007 and then again cleaned up in 2016. I don't know if I'll pay to have it done again as I am the only one that uses the trail. I imagine I'll let the next owners take that expense when I sell the place.

At one time my husband used it so he could drive the 4 wheeler down through our land and also use the skid steer to pick up a deer he got in the valley. I use the 4 wheeler, but don't need to drive down into the bottom. I prefer to walk.

I was having so much fun at trimming, that I stopped in the summer meadow on the ridge and knocked off some overhanging limbs on these box elders.

When good spring weather comes back, I'll grab some chains and ropes and drag those large branches into a burn pile with the 4 wheeler.

While I was clearing another bunch of snags by my favorite cottonwood tree, I had to stop and admire the deep reflections from the trees above me. The ice is hard and there was about a quarter of an inch of fresh water on the surface.

This too is part of my daily walk. I just felt like clearing a path along the steep bank that would make it a bit easier to hike through.

Mother Nature will have to break down the big logs. Flash floods will move them to another area. The creek in this narrow valley often gets changes. That is one of the reasons I find it so fascinating.

Below...The Old Man Cottonwood and my shadow.

Today or Saturday I hope to take a hike on groomed trails at KVR to give myself a break from the rough stuff. 

We are so dry, we could really use some nice snow or even rain.

The Christmas Tree ... starts....

Sometimes you need a supervisor. In my case, the supervisor holds court from the middle of his couch with a chew bone.

I often ask his opinion on things and he just gives me a look and a slight wag of the tale. I take it to mean that he approves of the new 'Christmas Chair' that I purchased this past spring.

It always starts with a deep cleaning. The space I have to work with isn't large at all. I am not one to do things exactly the same way as I've done before so each year, I try a new approach.

This is living room to the south in the photo above....☝👆

and

...the living room to the north...in the photo below....👇

this is it...

now you see almost all of our house. 

The Hutch houses things like camera lenses and Lego builds along with minifigures. The old table is where I do much of my indoor photography.

The room in behind is our tiny bedroom. 

Of course this is what things look like when I have scattered stuff willy nilly...

and then I make a huge mess...

It is no secret that I like boxes. I have old shipping boxes, dynamite boxes and fruit crate boxes as my movable units for books and things I want to display. They all get emptied and rearranged for the month of December. [I actually constantly move them around and restack them the rest of the year.]

In the winter months sunlight comes in directly through the south facing windows so I use a printed shower curtain to diffuse the light. Odd, but it really works and when the curtains are drawn, there is a nice lit up scene to view.

This chair is ugly but it exactly why I love it. The challenge is to make it beautiful. I started this year with a pine cone garland that is bendy-twisty. I'll adorn the chair with it.

In years past, I've always used an old white lacey table cloth as a 'tree skirt'. This year I won't. I want to keep the warm feeling of the wood floor. The lights reflect a nice warm light when bounced off the floor.

I moved my little birch tree into the dining area of the kitchen and added some red battery operated lights. In the dark mornings, it creates a nice glow of color in our eating area.

As soon as deer hunting ends, I'll be out looking for golden rod stalks that have bumps in them along with milkweed pods and grasses to fill my vases with dried floral arrangements. This is something my Grandmother Pearl did in her tiny cottage so many years ago. I always loved her little arrangements.

In the summer I bring in flowers from the garden, in the winter I bring in sticks, grasses, and elements from the outdoors for bouquets. It works for me and gives me pleasure.

Hubby is used to this now after all of our years together. He refers to my bouquets as 'weeds'. 

I won't bore you with any more of my ramblings.

How do you decorate? Do things you use have fond memories? Do you have heirlooms? Real trees? Fake trees? No trees? 
Do you like white lights? Or are you multi colored?
Traditional? Not Traditional?

I decorate with a goal of visual creation in mind. It is more for myself than anyone else as we rarely have visitors here.

My supervisor is the one who takes more interest in what I do....

well....

Tools

My husband is notorioius for not organizing his tools. He just drops them on a piece of plywood on top of a couple of saw horses.
Yesterday I need one tool as my project was to take apart the old picnic table that had rusted through.

After not being able to find what I needed, I started to unload the plywood and place it on the shed floor so I could see what we did have and didn't have.

I found screw drivers that I have thought I lost while fencing. Obviously they went back into the messy pile to be buried under debri.

When I asked hubby where he may have a 7/16 socket wrench ... he simply lay on the bed and said it was on the 'tool bench'. I said show me...he said, 'It is there.'

While searching [I never found the proper socket] I did find some other items of interest.

Broken things. Things of no use. They were also stacked on the 'table'. I sorted through some things and tossed them on the floor. I realized that I needed to find the tool I was looking for and not get sidetracked by the messy table.

I did find a 7/16 little hand wrench thingy... it worked. Along with a sledge hammer and a pry bar, I spent a few glorious sweaty hours dismantling the old picnic table.
I had to get creative as some of the bolts wouldn't unscrew, they were frozen in rust.

In the end I completed the task.

At one point Rich called out the kitchen window asking if I'd found the tools I needed. I motioned for him to come out and help.
He disappeared from the window but came back to the kitchen window and called out...

"You didn't mess up my tool bench did you?"
Ahhhh, I love how he thinks sometimes.

Mean old me. I pretended I didn't hear him and used the sledgehammer and the pry bar on a particularly difficult section. I then used bolt cutters to get the job done.

No cursing, no swearing, and no blood was spilled in the dismantling of the old picnic table. But one more job that had been on his list for over a year was now done.

I may get sidetracked the next rainy day and actually organize that horrid mess of a table. As of now, he has no interest in using it.
Getting him to leave the house is a monumental effort one I fight with every day.

However I should say he has fed the donkeys for two mornings in a row. I consider that an improvement.

Next up, the broken glider.
If I could only operate a chainsaw safely. All bolts on that are frozen/rusted solid.

Oh...what happened to those bits and pieces of 'saved' broken stuff? They went into my bucket of things toss away. I am cleaning up junk...one small bit at a time.

I have a full schedule for this week. But still plan on finding time for a couple of projects.

I imagine if I clean up the 'tool' table, it may come as a nasty shock to my husband.
I think I'll do it anyway. I'm still looking for that socket wrench.....

It looks better through the lens...

See?
This is the spare bedroom now. And I thought I'd take a photo of how I set things up.
I had to use a tripod because the day was so overcast and gloomy that very little light was coming in the west window.

But the result turned out well.

Gourds and rocks on an old shipping box from Rock Falls, ILL USA!

Here is a shot of the room as a mess. When I get in the 'creative' mood, things are dropped all over as I try things out.

I was doing a very nice family/memory/things of the past photo and decided to grab a dinosaur and use the pearls...

Sometimes silliness wins the day.

However I did complete the serious shot I had been thinking about.

The elements are a photo of Rich's father's brothers and sisters. A doily, pearls, and a page from my Grandmother Pearl's diary.

This morning I went out to the woods and found that the rapid temperature change had done some neat things. I detoured with my blaze orange on from the trail camera to a place further downstream.

Well I had no tripod and the light was not very good.
So I put the camera down and steadied it with rocks. I put the timer on a 2 second delay and shot the ice and water.

I think it worked well. Improvising is a good thing.

I then wanted to see it as it was ... cold. So I made it black and white.

Programs used SilverEfexPro [free for download].

So there you have it.
I also used ON1 for editing.