Nature

Living on 40+ acres we have a lot of nature around us. Part of the fun of living here has been meeting our critter neighbors. Thankfully my good friend Erin is a PhD in Biology and hasn't gotten sick of my emails entitled "what is this?" With her help we've been able to identify quite a few things in our new home. Some animals we have seen some just let us know that they have passed through. 

Here, in no particular order, are some of the things we have found.

1. Luna Moth - Back in our old apartment we found the big beautiful moth hanging out above our parked car. In our new home we found the caterpillar that turns into the Luna moth enjoying our tomato plants. This caterpillar was as big as my index finger!
   
   
2. Spiders - There are lots of spiders everywhere. This guy surprised Marc when he was stacking wood over the summer. Even though he looked really scary it turns out that he's a pretty common garden spider.
   
   
3. Birds - There's a kingfisher who thoroughly enjoys flying from bank to bank of our pond. He also likes to perch in the trees and watch whats going on. We also had some visiting ducks. At first we only counted three and then all of sudden 9 more popped up from underneath the water. We've also seen an egret and geese passing through. And then there was this little egg abandoned by it's mother in a tree outside the baby's room.
   
   
4. Pond Critters - From crayfish and snapping turtles to frogs and teeny tiny fish, our pond is exploding with life.
   
   
   
   I'm not 100% what this guy is below, I think river otter but it has yet to be confirmed. He made an appearance in the summer wandering back and forth along the edge of the water before diving in and then returning to the bushes. ***Update: We now think he is an American Mink (see comment below).***
   
   
5. Evidence of Animals - The previous owner warned us that a beaver once set up a damn at the bottom of our pond. While we haven't seen him yet we did find evidence that he's somewhere nearby.
   
   
   
   And earlier this week we found evidence that deer are creeping up near the house.
   
   

I'm pretty sure I've probably forgotten to mention a couple other animals that we have seen around here. Oh, like the fox that tried to eat the neighbors chickens, the bat that was briefly trapped in our attic or the squirrel that is still running around outside our house. On the other hand, I'm also sure that we haven't gotten close to meeting all of our critter neighbors yet.

Fall ... It's Back!

I'm not exactly sure what's going on around here but over the last week a lot of the trees have been turning a beautiful orange-rusty color. I thought fall was over at the beginning of the month when all the leaves had hit the ground but apparently I was wrong. It's like getting fall 2.0 and I'm loving it! I especially enjoyed it during our walk around our land yesterday which yielded the photo above.

Riverview Farm Corn Field

This past weekend Marc and I went back to Riverview Farm to pick more apples. Even though there was a limited number of apples still on the trees it was so nice to wander around in the sunshine and the quiet.

The best part was at the end we treated ourselves to some hot apple cider and a doughnut. From what I could decipher from the kicks, the baby thoroughly enjoyed the doughnut. We also picked up a couple of colorful gourds. Can you spot them on our "fall" mantle?

Pregnancy Update - 24 weeks

• Earthquake
  On Tuesday night a 4.0 magnitude earthquake struck in Maine and we felt it in our house in Vermont. Marc and I were both sitting in the living room. At first I didn't believe my gut reaction and turned around to look outside to find the big truck that had just driven by. Meanwhile Marc was thinking to himself, "I hope that's not the roof collapsing." Being unable to find anything instantly on the internet we called our neighbors to find out if they had felt it too. At that point it finally registered on the earthquake map and most of our Vermont friends were talking about it on Facebook. Thankfully there was no damage at our house only a few racing heartbeats. 

• 24 Weeks
  We have reached 24 weeks and so far everything is still going along as it should. Baby girl is very active in kicking and moving around and Marc has been able to feel those movements by resting his hand on my belly. The midwife suggested he rest his head on my belly to get a different experience but last night when he did that Baby Girl kicked him right in the ear. Needless to say he was not prepared for it and I think he'll think twice about doing it again. I guess she doesn't like feeling squished in there.
  
  I'm still feeling great and lately I've been really fascinated by my belly button. At first it was just stretching out but now it's beginning to turn from and innie to an outie. Since no update is complete without a picture of the belly here's my view of the baby belly and my outie. 

• Centering Pregnancy
  This week was week 4 of our prenatal group meetings. Not only did we find out that our due date is February 7th (somehow we had thought it was the 11th) but we also got to go to the hospital birthing center for a tour. It was great to be able to check out the rooms and see what type of equipment they had for us to use. It was also really great to be able to ask questions about the birthing procedure and understand just how much say we will have in the process.
  
  If you ask Marc though, it was a traumatizing experience. As we were looking at the birthing tub at the very end of our visit the lady in the room next door was in the final stages of giving birth. The fathers of the group were all standing in the doorway so they had the best vantage point to listen to the groans and screams. They were also the first to watch the nurses running by to aid the mother. I have to admit it is a little unsettling when you see nurses running.

• Pocket Like It's Hot
  One of my pregnancy cravings has been Lean Pockets. It's something I haven't had since I was a kid but for some reason they were really appealing to me during my second trimester. Marc has been pretty surprised by this craving as it doesn't follow my normal pattern. Earlier this week he found me this awesome video.
  
  

Guest Bathroom

Remember back in this post I told you all the work we had done on our guest bathroom? Well today I have a little picture update for you. On day one we started with this bathroom.

We liked the shelves, the mirrored cabinet, and the fact that there was a window in the shower. Pretty much everything else had to go. Especially the blue and white tiling. Our first step was hiring a contractor and coming up with the scope of the project. To save some money we agreed to do the demolition and help with the easy things like hanging the towel rails and painting the walls.

Demolition of the bathroom came near the end of our first week of owning the house. This was the week that Marc had off of work so we had spent every waking hour working on the house. Unfortunately this meant that by the time we got to demolition we were lacking the energy to literally knock it out. Thankfully Marc's Dad volunteered to come up to Vermont from Connecticut and help us. He had the bathroom torn apart and cleaned up in what seemed like 20 minutes and saved us from probably hours of work.

Demolition done!

The next step was having the contractor put everything back together. The idea was to have a clean fully functional bathroom ready to go by the time we moved into the house at the end of July. But, if you've ever done remodeling before, you know that there's always something that gets in the way and for us it was a special tile order. Eventually everything got sorted out and for a while now Marc and I have been calling our guest bathroom done.

But by "done" we mean a beautiful upgraded bathroom that has a plywood floor, may have a few holes in the wall from installing the towel rail and might need to have the heater cover properly installed. It's definitely fully functional but before I can snap "after" pictures I would like to get the above taken care of. In the meantime here are a few snapshots of my favorite parts of the bathroom.

This is the light switch and the exhaust fan control. (1) I absolutely love that we have an exhaust fan. (2) I love even more that the exhaust fan is on a timer so we don't have to remember to go back in and turn it off.

These are the lights. Nothing special but I just love their shape. So much better then the outdated globe lights that used to be in the bathroom.

This is the absolute best part of the bathroom. This is a Moen shower head with an adjustable slide bar. This is the best shower head when you have one person who is 5'7" and one person who is 6'3". With the slide rail we can easily move the shower head up and down and Marc no longer has to crouch in the shower to wash his hair. It is also super easy to take a shower and not get your hair wet if, for example, you just got your hair cut and are getting cleaned up to go out for the night. I imagine it will also be a great shower when we have munchkins and want to lower the shower head so water doesn't get everywhere. This will change your life.

This final picture is a glimpse of the new vanity, counter top, faucet, wall color, and shower curtain. I absolutely love how it all came together and can't wait to show you the full "after" pictures. You know once that fix-it gnome comes over and finishes up in there.

Squirrel Proofing

Not long after we moved into our house Marc and I awoke to the sound of something running around in our attic. Hoping it wasn't rats Marc headed upstairs to check it out and returned to let me know that we had a squirrel in our attic. It appeared that he would enter and leave at different points during the day, but as far as we could tell he wasn't calling our attic home. We also couldn't figure out how the heck was he getting in and out of the attic.

Squirrel picture from here

Then one day as I was walking through the kitchen I peered out the kitchen door towards the screened porch and to my surprise, there was the squirrel. Inside the screened porch! After shooing him away and inspecting the screened porch I finally realized how our little visitor was getting into our attic. You see there was a small hole in one of the screens about the size of a half dollar coin and holes in the netting that covered the vent hole between the screen porch and the attic. Basically the squirrel could just waltz in and take all the insulation he wanted.

So off to Home Depot we went! We bought screening to replace the screen the squirrel had already chewed through. It turned out to be a very easy job but in the day after we replaced that he quickly chewed another hole in the next screen over. So we re-screened that panel as well and then went big. We bought some hardware cloth to cover the outside of the screens, something he would not be able to chew through.

And for good measure we trimmed the tree outside the screened porch so he could no longer use it as his ladder to the windows. As you can see in the picture below it also gave us a much better view of the valley.

Before - the tree covered most of the window.
After - you can only just see the tops of the tree at the bottom of the window. 

Being the curious little squirrel that he is he returned to inspect our work. (I apologize if it's hard to see the little guy in this video, I was standing as still as possible behind a closed window with a screen to capture his antics.)

Adventures of a Curious Squirrel from Christina A on Vimeo.

Thankfully the hardware cloth has deterred our persistent visitor and now he spends his days running around our yard, investigating the wood pile and finding nuts to bury for the winter. He has yet to chew through another screen nor has he figured out how to get around the hardware cloth.

Aquilas - 1, Squirrel - 0

It's Update Time!

Fall n. the season of the year that comes after summer and before winter; Autumn. 

For the past three years this was the season that both Marc and I missed the most. Somehow fall doesn't find it's way to the palm trees in San Diego, CA. This year I am taking in as much fall as I can get and quite honestly I might be a little obsessed. It's just so beautiful! 

With the arrival of crisp cool air, morning fog in the valley, fresh apples at the market and the crunch of dry leaves under my feet I feel like it's probably about time we update you on the progress of our house. And write it down so we can remember what we've accomplished. It's been three months since we got our keys and just over two months since we've been living here.

Our goal for the summer was to make the main floor of our house livable for us, move in and spend as much time outside the house as possible taking advantage of our land. Below is a list of summer projects that we completed divided out by room. I think I remembered most of them but you never know if pregnancy brain/momnesia/baby brain drain might have struck again. 

Summer Projects

• Master bedroom - ripped out old carpets and replaced with brand new; painted the walls a beautiful gray/blue; painted the trim and closet insides white; hung curtains in front of the french door; removed bi-fold closet doors; rid the built in drawers and cabinets of the moth ball smell and lined with contact paper.
• Guest bedroom - ripped out old carpets and replaced with brand new; removed wallpaper and painted the walls a light peachy cream color; painted the trim, heater covers and closet insides white; hung decorative curtains and blackout curtains. 
• Nursery - ripped out old carpets and replaced with brand new; removed wallpaper and primed the previously red walls gray; painted the trim, heater covers and closet insides white. 
• Guest bathroom - completely gutted the interior of the bathroom except for built in shelves; hired a contractor to "put it back together"; painted built in shelves white and bathroom walls a sandy brown; hung toilet paper holder and double towel rail. 
• Living Room - ripped out old carpet, padding and staples.
• Kitchen - cleaned all cabinets, shelves, drawers and hardware; lined all shelves with contact paper; relocated fridge; removed part of the wall between the kitchen and the living room; removed carpet from "eat-in" portion of kitchen; replaced ceiling light; replaced kitchen faucet nozzle; vented exhaust fan to roof instead of to chimney. 
• Dining Room - painted the walls light yellow; painted the heater covers white. 
• Outside - trimmed trees away from house; mowed lawn, a lot; planted apple trees and tomato plants; started a compost pile; discovered stone paths to the front and back doors of the house; built a bridge across our stream; created a path from the bridge up into the pasture; discovered a canoe and explored the pond; squirrel proofed our screened porch; hung up flags; created a fire pit area. 

Wow! Typing all of that up made me realize just how far we have come since that first day we set foot in our house and we haven't even touched the basement. We are so grateful for all the help we have received from our friends and family who helped make some of these changes to our house. It definitely is feeling like home.

It also makes me realize that I haven't been very reliable in providing some updated pictures and stories about our summer projects. I guess you'll have to check back over the next couple of weeks to read those!