The dining area is now freshly painted, as is the guest room, just the living room and master bedroom to get a lick of paint then we can perhaps start on the bathroom! I told you it was spring!

This is a photo of one I took last year.

We are getting in the spring mood, by buying several tins of paint with the intention of brightening the house up a bit. We are also going to be making some changes to our en-suite bathroom. Although it looks fine, we are fed up with it so want to modernize it a bit, so will be tackling that over the coming weeks – after the painting is completed. We hope to get it all done before my aunt and uncle arrive which is getting ever closer – lets hope the snow has gone by then. It was 7C yesterday and will get to 3C today, so temps are over the zero mark with is great. Mind you the overnight temps are still low, tonight is forecast as -12C, but tomorrow will be 4C.

Then on Wednesday we had hurricane force winds battering the area. Lots of people were without power and many trees etc were torn down. Fortunately we did not loose power, although our neighbor lost the siding off his house as it went billowing across our front garden.

By Thursday the wind had died down and the temperatures have gone down to around +5C which is still much above the normal of -2C for this time of year. The forecast is for the temps to drop further to more normal levels and for some more snow next week. And I though the UK had strange weather!

You can tell the temps are up as last night we had four raccoons in the garden. This is the first time we have seen them since the beginning of December. We felt a little cruel chasing them off as the poor things had only just woken up and hadn’t eaten for weeks, but you cannot let them win otherwise you just cannot get rid of them.

The deer has also been around most nights. We think we have over 20 individuals in the area as we have different groups visit us at different times of the evening. They are quite amusing as they look up at us as we watch them and then just carry on eating. They can be frightened by a leaf blowing in the wind but they don’t seem bothered by us gawking at them.

The bathroom, laundry room and hallway are all finished now and it looks great. We redecorated the hallway which had been disturbed by the renovations and of course now that makes other rooms look in need of a make over. Because we are open plan it shows up even more, even though we have decorated everywhere since we moved in 18 months ago. Oh well, I see another project coming on….

We did have one nice unexpected present – a new animal in our garden. It was a long tailed weasel in its winter colours of completely white with a black tail end. At first I didn’t see it because it blended in with the snow but then it started chasing one of the rabbits in the garden – boy can rabbits run! They were both so fast i couldn’t get a photo of it, but downloaded this from the internet.

We also had our Hairly Woodpecker visit us.

Now a puzzle for you – which of these two is the intelligent squirrel – baring in mind it is very cold out there and snowing.

BTW the bathroom is almost finished and the last bits are also being done to the laundry room so almost there.

We had a lots more snow yesterday but it has been lovely and sunny today. Apparently there is weather front coming across from Texas and will dump 10-15 cm of snow on us Saturday night and Sunday – that’ll be nice!

Not much more to add, but probably going to be a busy weekend with bathroom renovating etc.

Our new project is for a new bathroom. At the moment our laundry cupboard where the washer and dryer goes backs onto a half bath (toilet & sink). We are going to swing the laundry side round which will then allow us to extend the bathroom back further giving us space to install a shower cubicle.

This will mean we have two full baths on the main floor which will be great when family visit as they can have their own bathroom. Fortunately we have enough room in our hall/lobby area to be able to do this. Chris has made a start by demoing all the existing walls and reconstructing the laundry cupboard. He will also install a new door from the guest bedroom which will allow them access straight into the bathroom. We are debating whether to wait for the January sales to get the shower, sink etc. We want to get it done and out of the way, but if we can save a few bucks by waiting a few weeks then it might be worth it. It will be just our luck that the items we want won’t be on sale!

On another note it is snowing well this afternoon and the weather man said we might get ice rain later which won’t be very nice. Ice rain is a real pig as it is heavy ice which can bring down power lines and trees. Lets hope it bypasses us. However, the snow does make everything very Christmassy!

When we got to Sears, I picked out one that looked pretty good at $499. When the sales assistant came over to help (as they always do!) she said that that particular model was out of stock for about two weeks. However she offered us another model that was almost identical: the handle splits in two, the other didn’t, but was $50 dearer.

I really didn’t want to pay that much so she said that there was going to be a sale at the weekend and the vacuum would be reduced by $100 and she could offer us that price now. So we took it. This it means I paid $50 less than I expected with the other model, not so bad. I cannot see the assistant in the UK allowing you to have products at yet to be reduced prices!

I also forgot to mention that when hubby took the truck in for service, the guy who sold it to us was waiting to welcome him in the service area. He then sat and chatted with him whilst they waited for the service to be done. Obviously this would happen in the UK too – NOT!

On Saturday the coons returned but even earlier. They were up the tree by three in the afternoon. However, there are only four of them now, so not sure what has happened to the fifth. Hubby went out with the hosepipe and discovered that they don’t seem to like water.

He got rid of them but an hour later they were back. We have now taken to bringing in the feeding boxes overnight to hopefully discourage them coming. Seemed to work last night, but only time will tell.

Did some more decorating yesterday. Also the internet man came back as we were having some speed problems. He decided to change the antenna on the top of the pole to one, which accepts a slightly lower speed, which will speed our connection up – strange but true!

Although we were paying for a 3MB service, we were only receiving around 1MB which compared to our 10MB service in the UK was a little sluggish to say the least. When he changed the antenna and tested the system we were getting over 2MB, so it seemed to work. Just have to wait and see how it goes now.

Before we set the tank up hubby painted the living room walls, so that we will not have to move the tank again – another job jobbed!

On Monday night we had just finished watching a film when suddenly we heard a right rumpus outside. It sounded like someone was being murdered. We went out with torch in hand and found two raccoons in one of our trees either fighting or mating. We weren’t sure which, but either way it was very noisy. Hubby shooed them off – they take quite a bit of shooing! They must have come back though as Tuesday morning our bird feeders were once again all over the place.

Yesterday (Tues) for once we did not go out. We did odd jobs round the house. This included hubby zooming around on his mower cutting the lawn. When he came in he looked like he had been rolling in dirt with all the crap the mower had thrown up!

In the afternoon the replacement satellite receiver was delivered. We had to connect it all up and then phone Star Choice to get it activated – so far so good, but then the other one worked for a week!

Today we have to take the car in for it’s first service. This needed to be done at 5,000 km or 3 months. We have had it for 5 weeks and already gone over the 5,000 km. Whilst that is being done I have booked in to get my hair done.

Any woman reading this will know how stressful having to change your hairdresser can be. But having to not only change your hairdresser, but have it done in a country where the national hairstyle is a mullet is quite worrying. Will let you know how it goes, although I have chosen what looks like a pretty modern salon, so hopefully will be ok.

Might get some fish today too, for the tank – how exciting!