Isn't it beautiful?!

This is the new design and I absolutely love it! Cat did a terrific job, considering I gave her very little to go on. I highly recommend her and Blog-Togs, should you want to have a personalized skin added to your blog. Just a side note is that the money you pay to her for the work is partly donated to charity!! It doesn't get any better than that :)

Tonight, this was our view:

It was an utterly beautiful day...it's 76 degrees as I write this. Of course, it's February 28, and we really need winter to continue a bit longer - and we really need some rain. We're supposed to get more later in the week. The "oldtimers" around here say we need at least 8" of rain to bring the lake back up. When it does, the beach in the picture above won't exist.

Yesterday (2/27) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 71° F
Low Temperature: 38° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Site undergoing changes

I've contracted Blog-Togs to redesign the site. They've done work for me before and they're great...I'm positive it will look wonderful :)

Then, maybe I can actually find something to talk about!


Yesterday (2/26) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 61° F
Low Temperature: 36° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

A visit to West Tawakoni

Last night, we went to West Tawakoni, looking for a place to sing. We found a good sized bar called Jackie's Joint. Initially, I wasn't too impressed, since when I asked for a glass of white zinfandel, the bartender had to send the owner to the store to buy some. *gulp* There were only about 5 people in the place.

But after the singing got started, the place started filling up, and we ended up having a good time. We sang three times in about 3 hours, and enjoyed the others singing in between (always helpful). Yours truly ended up with a pretty good buzz. ;)

Today was spent putting up the rest of my books (Scott put up two additional shelves on each of the two bookshelves in the guestroom), and more sorting out of the crap that came out of storage. I managed to empty two boxes today, which is a lot of progress, considering both boxes were filled with papers which needed to be sorted, filed, or disposed of. OK, I admit it, the sun was shining today and it was warmish, so I did spend a little time down at the lake...so, sue me ;)

Yesterday (2/25) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 56° F
Low Temperature: 47° F
Precipitation: 1.61 in

Meeting new neighbors

Last night, we were invited to a birthday party at our next door neighbor's house. This is the guy that has spent a bloody fortune rebuilding the house. We met several of the neighbors on the other side of them. Nice people, but I can see that it's gonna be wild here in the summer...those people can slam down the alcohol. We went over there at 5:45 and by 8:30, we were pleasantly buzzed. We've been told repeatedly that this is party central in the summer...I can see it's true ;)

We're going out tonight to see if we can't find some place to sing karaoke. We may end up at the Scoreboard in Rockwall, where they have singers so good that I get intimidated! I hate bar hopping, but I think that the best way for us to find a place to sing is to start at one end of the strip, and work our way to the other end. Then we'll know what's out there.

I need to go burn down some music....ta!


Yesterday (2/24) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 65° F
Low Temperature: 43° F
Precipitation: 0.49 in

The sounds of silence

It was wonderful coming home tonight and hearing not a sound. It's been weeks since we've been alone for more than a few hours...I can even walk nekkid around my house! ;)

Hey, I'm looking to add links to my side bar, so if you'd like an exchange, let me know!




Yesterday (2/22) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 51° F
Low Temperature: 42° F
Precipitation: 0.01 in

Shades of gray

I've discovered one thing about living on a lake in the winter...everything around us is colored in shades of gray. The water, the sky, the clouds...everything.

It's dismal outside - been drizzling all day, along with some light fog. But, then, there is this :)

Yesterday (2/21) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 46° F
Low Temperature: 36° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Brrrrrrr!

I'm ready for it to be warm again! ;)

Yesterday (2/20) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 39° F
Low Temperature: 29° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Happy President's Day

I wish I had remembered to post the weather for Saturday. It was freezing cold all day. Yesterday, I drove a 60 mile round-trip and the ice never melted off my side mirror. All the flowers who were confused and bloomed last week are now dead :(

Yesterday (2/19) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 30° F
Low Temperature: 27° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Despite the freezing temps, we went Saturday and got the remainder of our stuff out of our storage unit - glad that expense is out of our lives! Now comes the hard part - finding a home for the rest of the stuff. I either have to find a place for it (and there aren't many "places" in this house), or it is put on ebay, or tossed. A small portion can be kept in the "guest house" (ha!) for now, but eventually, the choices will be the same - may as well pull the band-aid off at once, so to speak.

So, I've spent today, a holiday from work, doing nothing but sorting out boxes, throwing some stuff away, organizing others, sorting through ages old bills, and listing a couple of things on half.com. Got rid of some of the crap, but not nearly enough.

I think I really need to think about whether I really want to do the ebay thing with all this crap or just give it to a thrift shop. Hmmm.

Mother in law is still staying with us, but is going home Thursday. Thank God - We've only been alone in this house for ONE week since we moved in!!!

Its.Freaking.Cold!!

Fun is NOT getting stuff out of a storage unit 30 miles away when it's sleeting and 27° F!

Fun is NOT having your livingroom full of boxes because it's too damn cold to trot your ass up a hill to the storage shed.

This week in February in any year in Texas = NOT fun!

Currently at 5:10 PM
light fog
Temperature: 27° F
RealFeel®: 14° F
Winds: N at 13 mph (across a lake creating wet wind)

Yesterday (2/17) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 44° F
Low Temperature: 35° F
Precipitation: 0.11 in

Photo Day

This is me painting the guest room - not the most flattering picture in the world!

This is one of the catfish Scott caught - he was so proud!

The nearly finished guest room:

These bookshelves will eventually have two more shelves added on each bookshelf, and a shelf will be placed just above the hanger bar, and a TV placed on it.

The beautiful afghan on the bed was made by my online friend, Elizabeth, as a housewarming gift. Thank you, Elizabeth!!

And finally, a couple of pictures of the sunset over the lake.

Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday to my darling daughter, Kristi, who is 24 today. I feel so old...lol.

Work progresses on the dock. Scott's son, Travis, is helping him, and yesterday Travis got his truck and trailer stuck in the mud trying to bring in the poles which support the dock. Travis loves to go mudding, but I don't think that was his intent this time! And of course, this happens while I'm at work and can't take pictures of it!

It was 80 degrees yesterday and it's currently 38 with a "real feel" of 28 - and it's getting colder today instead of warmer. I'm really glad I didn't give in to the urge to put my plants outside! It's supposed to be 31 by 5:00, and then to make things really interesting, it's supposed to rain and ice overnight, hovering around 30-32 all day tomorrow.

Gotta love Texas. Don't like the weather? Just hang around for 15 minutes...it'll change ;)

Yesterday (2/16) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 80° F
Low Temperature: 42° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Not much happening

Yesterday (2/15) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 76° F
Low Temperature: 54° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

What happened to winter??

It was 70 yesterday, and today it's supposed to be 80! I see flowers blooming all over our neighborhood...sad, since we're headed for a cold snap this weekend! :(

Yesterday (2/14) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 70° F
Low Temperature: 35° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Happy Valentine's Day!

Scott is cooking me dinner tonight to show me how much he loves me. I think he's a better cook than I am, so I'm always thrilled when he cooks!

Because he had to stay home today to meet with his mother's home health care worker, he undertook rearranging our offices....his will be mine and mine will be his. I need more room than he does and where I was sitting just didn't work. I felt like a turtle, trying to live in a tiny little shell. He's also putting the TIVO in our bedroom so I can watch my soaps while I'm working - yes...soaps. They are my dirty little secret! ;)


Yesterday (2/13) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 58° F
Low Temperature: 21° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Monday, 2/13/06

Tonight, Scott's mom is coming to stay with us for a week while she recooperates from her recent hospital stay.

It looks like this weekend's big project will be installing new poles for our boat dock!

Yesterday (2/12) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 58° F
Low Temperature: 24° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Busy day!

Today we went to storage and picked up the majority of our stuff and brought it home. Believe it or not, we actually found a place to put just about everything we brought home! We then spent the rest of the day touching up the paint in the guest room, putting my books up on the built-in bookshelves, and doing decorative touches. It looks pretty nice! We've got a few more decorating things to do in there, but it's pretty much done. Will post some pictures tomorrow.

Yesterday (2/11) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 45° F
Low Temperature: 30° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Today's work

Every weekend since we've moved in, a project has been worked on. The work accomplished so far has been:

Wall knocked out between our bedroom and the bedroom next to it, creating one large bedroom/dressing area/office. New paint, carpet and tile throughout the two rooms. New blinds hung. Scott and Shannon did this one.

Guest bedroom painted from it's original pepto-pink with neon green and lavendar trim to seafoam blue with white trim. New blinds hung. Our friend Ed, Shannon, and I did this one.

Boat house cleaned out and dock rewired. Scott and Ed got this done.

Now, before you say it doesn't sound like I did much, please remember that I'm 9 years older than my husband, and somebody has to cook, clean the house and do the laundry while the other work is getting done. I've never enjoyed housework more! ;-)

So, today, Scott and I began work on this little project:

When we first saw the house, I thought this would make a cute little guest room - with a bit of work, of course. Everything you see inside that door was left by the previous owners for us to clean up. This picture was taken last August, and if anything, the mess was worse. So, we emptied out that shed, cut back the English Ivy, swept everything, and prepared it to be used as a storage shed for now, until we are ready both physically and financially to begin the remodelling work.

Our house sits on 1.02 acres of land, with most of the land being in the back, past this shed. I don't know how much you can see in the picture below, but it goes up a hill quite aways. Since even before we moved in, I've wanted to go to the top of the property and see how it looked, so today we hiked up to the top of the hill. Unfortunately, I didn't think about bringing my camera, because the view was awesome. The hill is high enough that the view clears our rooftop and is unobstructed out to the lake. Scott ultimately wants to put a deck up there.

The little rain we got yesterday didn't do much for us, except to clear the air. Tonight will be a full moon, but it is very cold out there, so I don't think we'll be sitting outside looking at it.

Yesterday (2/10) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 55° F
Low Temperature: 36° F
Precipitation: 0.12 in

Let it rain!

When we originally signed the contract on our house in July of 2005, the lake looked like - well, a lake. The water came up to the boat dock the way it should, and we had no beach at all.

August, 2005

By the time we actually moved into our house in December, 2005, we had 100 feet of beach!

(Facing away from the lake)

Lakes are measured in surface acre feet. Last March (2005), Tawakoni held 900,000 surface acre feet of water. Today, it holds 600,000. While it's really nice to have a beach to walk on and run Jonah on, it would be nicer to have the water!

Needless to say, when we hear that we may get rain, we're thrilled beyond belief! Last weekend, we got 4" of rain (or so I'm told), but the ground is so dry that it did nothing for the lake, although it did get the burn ban lifted.

It's raining today and I'm begging, pleading, and bargaining with the weather gods to bring it on and dump as much on us as possible!! The weather is supposed to be really cold this weekend (February in Dallas is always nasty) so let it rain!!

Yesterday (2/9) in Quinlan
High Temperature: 62° F
Low Temperature: 35° F
Precipitation: 0.00 in

Life at the Lake

On July 31, 2005, we signed a contract to purchase a house on Lake Tawakoni, in Quinlan, Texas. After living through the escrow from hell, with sellers who should have been drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, and tied to chairs to watch 138 consecutive hours of American Idol auditions, we finally closed on November 18, 2005 and moved into our new home on December 18, 2005.

So, who are "we"? We are Scott and Helen, a couple who have been married since July 11, 2004. We have one Labrador Retriever named Jonah; one cat, named Misty; one cockatiel, named Sammy; one Quaker Parrot, named Katie; and one Senegal Parrot, named Ozzie.

We have five children between us - Scott has two, Helen has three. All of the kids are adults, except for Shannon, Scott's 15 year old daughter, who visits us on alternating weekends. Scott is an elevator mechanic, and Helen is a legal secretary. We both work in Dallas, Texas, which is about an hour's drive from our home in some of the worst traffic you can imagine...weehaw. Helen is a city girl, while Scott loves the country, but neither of us have ever lived at the lake, so this will be a new experience for us.

We'll be remodelling the house, redesigning the yards and, of course, fishing! Hope you'll come back and visit us from time to time!