The Snowbirds Have Landed! And other Events...

 

 Imagine my surprise the other morning as we heard a honking in the air, and all of a sudden these two lovely Canadian Geese dropped down from the skies and landed right on our "Still Waters Pond"!  These are our first official "snowbirds" arriving from the snowy, frigid north,  taking a little break here as they continue their flight south for the winter. (Or maybe they will decide this is good enough and stay?)

However, after a while they flew away again...perhaps to find a bigger pond on which to spend the winter. I do hope they will decide to come back as they were a lovely addition to our peaceful pond.

We were in the midst of some other projects when they arrived, and perhaps we didn't give them a warm enough welcome.

 We recently had this dump truck load of dirt delivered, for the purpose of leveling out the gullies and "valleys" in our back yard where the erosion of rain run-off over the years left a very uneven back yard.  (Not sure if you can see gullies below, but they are there, trust me)

And so, on this particular morning, when the geese arrived, we also had a man on a tractor spreading this dirt all along the back yard, next to the pond. (I forgot to get a picture of him working on the tractor, so these pictures are the result of his work)

Hopefully, now that we have also added rain guttering and downspouts to our house, we won't have the same run-off problem that was here before. And we have scattered some winter rye-grass seed over the ground, with the hope that it will sprout soon and help hold the dirt in place until the other grass underneath can work its way back up through the dirt.  Thankfully we got a little rain last night to help the seeds get a start.  So we shall be watching this progress and hopefully we will see some grass sprouts soon!

Another project that I have been working on recently was finally completed in the past couple of days:

I mentioned in this previous post found HERE that I found something that I was going to be doing as a project, but I said that I would save that for another post so I can give it more time and space...

So here is what I found:

Yes, this is a very old, faded and rough looking cedar wardrobe, that needed some "love" very badly:

The inside really wasn't all that bad and just needed to be cleaned up. I didn't want to put any kind of finish over the cedar as that would take away its cedar fragrance.

But the outside needed to be sanded down to remove all the old varnish so that a new clear coat could be put back on to bring out it's natural cedar beauty.

So here I am, mask and all, sanding away on the door...

And later I did sand all the sides of the cabinet itself, but we forgot to take pictures...

Finally this week the job was completed, and hubby and I carefully moved the cabinet into the house all by ourselves, with the help of our trusty "dolly", up the steps, and into the guest room.

I know you are saying to yourself about now, "Why on earth did she want this big old piece of furniture for her guest room, when she keeps saying they are "downsizing" and had to give up so much stuff, blah,  blah, blah..."    Well, you are right to question my sanity, but hear me out...

The last room to be set up and finished in our new house is the Guest Room. Why? Well, because we just had too much stuff sitting there in boxes that needed to have a place to be properly stored...mostly boxes full of pictures...you know...photo albums and boxes of photos that were never put into albums, but are organized into smaller tubs by years...and photos cannot be stored in the shed or an attic (which we do not have) because of the extreme temperatures. And after 50 years of marriage and 3 kids, you can imagine that we have lots and lots of pictures.  Add to that  family photos in frames that used to hang on walls in my parents' home and my inlaw's home, that came back to us after they passed on... and anyway, long story short, this cabinet has become the storage cabinet to house our photos:

We installed shelves, and purchased plastic tubs that would fit on the shelves to hold the photos. I still have all the pictures in frames that need to be gone through. I think I will be taking most of them out of their frames and putting them in manila envelopes (or clear plastic sleeves) and then storing them in the tubs...or do you have any better ideas? I'm still thinking that through. 

I must say that a large part of my day was spent actually looking through old pictures that I hadn't seen in quite a while...lost in the happy memories.  Having the photos in this cabinet I hope will make it easier to pull out an album or a tub of photos and enjoy them again. I may write more about that at another time. I certainly saw some old photos that could make for an interesting post someday...

So now that this job is pretty much complete, I can begin to concentrate on getting the rest of the Guest Room in order.  I hope to have this done by Thanksgiving...at least that is my goal. We aren't planning on having any overnight guests that I know of, but then again, you never know! Someone may be too full of turkey to feel like driving back home and they may need a place to stay! That would be just fine with me! That gives me the incentive to keep working on this project until it is complete!!

Okay, that's it for today! Now I am off to our church ladies' UMW meeting.  Always wonderful to fellowship with other women, and encourage one another by sharing the love of Christ together.  So thankful for this church and these precious souls. 

Have a blessed day my friends!! I'll catch up with you all later!!!