Bricks

When we bought our charming little house in the woods, the plywood skirting had taken enough beating from the sun and snow that it was bent, cracking, and not really worth a picture. (Don't want to give you nightmares.)

So Mr. Fix-it, a.k.a. Bob Bahlmann, replaced it with foam insulation board.

But that's not all! 

Even though it was prettier than the scruffy particle board, it was very plain.

So Bob put some thin coat over it, then traced a brick pattern in the thin coat before letting it dry.

But he wasn't done yet! Using different colors of paint, he went around and around the house again and again, painting the bricks different colors.

Oo-la-la! What a difference some paint makes! Now they're all different colors, but they're still not done. What else can there possibly be?

Shading!

One of the neighbors who didn't watch the process complimented us on our new rock facing.

Yeah. It's amazingly awesome...

...except for the creepy photographer shadow.
Do you like do-it-yourself projects?
What have you tried?

A Man's House is His...

There I was, driving down the road during a visit to Logan, Utah, minding my own business, when what to my wondering eyes should appear?

ENGLAND!

After assuring myself that I hadn't been transported back in time or across the ocean (more's the pity) I got out of my carriage, er, car, and took a picture.

Because that's what I do.

I would have liked to have a tour of the house, but I imagined how I would feel if someone came knocking at my door and asked to see my bathroom.

Yet, someone actually did that when I had a "house for sale" sign up in my yard. For the first breathless second, they pretended like they wanted to see the house.

Then, in the second sentence, they admitted that they couldn't hold it anymore, and asked, "Which way is the bathroom?!"

I pointed.

I'd already cleaned the floor and didn't want to have to do it again.

Have you ever sold a house?

How much fun was THAT?

Green Grass/Glacier

Green grass is growing around most of the yard, but on the north side of our house is a glacier! (It's higher than the top step, and there are two steps off our back porch!)

This reminds me of the first summer Bob and I were married, when we went camping on the north side of Timpanogos Mountain and saw a glacier there. (That's also where I woke up in the night and thought I saw a toddler in a blue coat wandering among the sagebrush with little short-legged steps, but Bob said he couldn't see anyone. After blinking hard three times, saying that I could see a little boy out there between each blink, I finally lost sight of him myself. What was that? Leftover dreams?) 

I'm so glad for snow and the summer water it gives us.

Are you a snow complainer? Or a snow celebrator?

House of Two Toilets

by Shirley Bahlmann
As we drove down Main Street in our historic little town of Ephraim, Utah, one of my sons pointed to a sandblasted rock sign in a front yard and asked, "What does 'House of Seven Gables' mean?"
I shifted in my seat. "Do you see those little pointy roofs?" I asked, aiming my finger at a gable jutting from the old house's roof line. He nodded. "Those are called gables," I explained. "That house has seven of them."
"Big deal," my husband said from the driver's seat. "I think we should make a sign for our house and stick it in our yard."
My interest piqued, I straightened in my seat and looked at him. "What would our sign say?" I asked.
"House of Two Toilets," he intoned.
"WHAT?"
He shrugged while our son giggled in the back seat. "That's every bit as important as seven gables, if not moreso."
What else could I say? He was absolutely right.