Adventures in Homemaking

Andrew and I sold the house and bought this sweet van.  This blog is going to be a lot more exciting now.  We're going to spend all of our non-working hours on adventures, and will retire early because we're saving so much money.  

Or...I can lead with this picture of our trash and recycling cabinet.  I love our trash and recycling cabinet.  It's an ideal space-saver for a small kitchen - except that you have to  give up precious cabinet space.  

We have not yet abandoned our house for a van, but we do discuss that option daily.  We still have a house, but no longer own a wet bar.  Andrew had to do more plumbing than he expected to remove it - something to do with sewer gas - and he and Kitten spent a lot of time in the crawl space together.

Andrew and I spent our first Thanksgiving together in Reno at home, preparing for our new floor.  The downstairs of our house was very uneven, and we used five bags of leveling compound and a few sheets of plywood to straighten it out as best we could.  Our Thanksgiving dinner was simple, but delicious.

Katherine, Randal, and Milo stopped by Thanksgiving weekend on their way back to Klamath Falls.  Milo already has a great sense of humor and helped us pose with my favorite Muppet Tree.

Andrew and I really enjoyed the first couple of days of laying the floor. We started with the biggest rooms, and the work went quickly.  Halo enjoyed the amount of time we spent on our hands and knees, and Kitten loved all the new boxes and scraps.

I took this picture at the end of our first night of working on the floor.  Laying floor is a piece of cake.

Halo thought we were giving her a new rug every time we spread out new subfloor.    She enjoyed each new layer before we covered it up.  It took us about a week to make it to our guest rooms, and then another week to finish those, because small rooms require a lot more work.  We haven't done any of the trim yet, and enjoy looking at camper vans while we procrastinate.

In addition to looking at camper vans, we've had a fabulous time playing in the snow.  Winter here is so beautiful and fun, and we've made most of our new snow shoes.

For our biggest adventure of all, we hosted the Wissels for Christmas.  We cut down the blue spruce in our front yard because it was encroaching on our garden, and it made a beautifully rustic Christmas tree.  Andrew's parents brought his childhood ornaments, and the tree represented his interests over the years.

Andrew's sister Elizabeth is a domestic goddess, and she helped me reupholster our kitchen chairs (which a neighbor had given us for free) her first day in Reno.

Liz also helped Andrew and his dad assemble our new shoe bench, and hung our first pictures (after finding me the best deals on picture frames.)

We had a beautiful white Christmas in Reno, and played in the Arboretum on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I'm not sure why our Arboretum has a dinosaur grove, but I'm glad it does!

We piled all seven of us into the Subaru wagon for many of our adventures.  Madeline and I sat  in the trunk, hoping not to get pulled over.  A police van did pull up behind us, but luckily the driver only smiled and waved.  

We continued some Wissel traditions, such as smorgasbord dinner for Christmas Eve, and added a fantastic new one - tamales on Christmas Day, thanks to our newest member, Audi (Madeline's fiance.)  

Now that Andrew and I don't have any guests to prepare for, we're putting aside homemaking for awhile, and are spending our next two weekends camping and hiking.  We rely heavily on visitors for extrinsic motivation for housekeeping, so please come visit!