Hi Subscriber,

I hope you're having a wonderful day doing something you love!

Do you remember the nice dreamy email from last week about a slow down summer, full of wonderful time spent doing things that I love?

And have you heard of Murphy's Law? The one that goes something along the lines of whatever can go wrong, will go wrong?

First of all, I didn't tell you we are remodeling our kitchen this summer. We're doing the work ourselves so it's slow going, but I have mentally prepared myself to take a deep breath and enjoy the process.

You know, enjoy the journey and all that good stuff. It will make for good stories in the future, and I truly am enjoying it.

So far, that's turned out to be a good project with no mishaps, once we figured out the way to get your ordered stuff from Menards is to schedule a delivery. Much faster than going to pick it up yourself!

So, with the kitchen kind of torn up, but still usable, we're doing fine. Then there's the Airbnb downstairs.

We're booked solid for the whole month of June, with just a day between reservations to clean. We also have a young kitty who loves to play with mice.

She has an arsenal of fake ones she carries around and leaves all over the place. The trouble is she does the same with live ones she finds outside, when she brings them inside!

It's a bit of a problem . . . especially if one gets loose in the house! And even worse if it makes it way downstairs to the BnB space!

Yup, you guessed it. Last week I got a text from our guest asking if we had a mouse trap because she and her sons had watched a mouse run around the living room the night before.

I was mortified to say the least. I also was running a load of kitchen towels through the washer because I was SO inspired by the new cabinets and counter we had put in. I just wanted to spruce everything up!

So, with the washer almost done with the towels, I found a mouse trap and went downstairs to set it. Imagine my horror when I saw a flood of water cascading from the ceiling onto the living room floor in the BnB!!

It was like a waterfall! Thankfully our guests were gone for the day doing a sports camp on the mountain.

I grabbed every towel I could get my hands on and mopped up the flood and put a big bowl there to catch the remaining drips. I apologized to our guests and made the best of it I could.

Then I realized we couldn't possibly use the washer until we got a plumber here to find out what was wrong. It was clearly not the washer. There was no water on the floor upstairs or around the drain pipe.

But we can't get the plumber here until our reservations are done because we have to take down the tongue and groove ceiling in the BnB in order to take a look at the pipes . . .

So, it's off to the laundromat for a few weeks for me. With all the bedding from the BnB, and our own laundry.

Along with a kitchen in various states of demolition and new construction.

What was I thinking when I wrote about a lovely lazy summer doing dreamy things?! I must have been truly dreaming.

Oh well, thankfully we can take care of it all. And since I got my submissions in to the AIS I have a little breathing room to tweak my planned submissions for the OPA which are due July 12.

A trip to California next week will be a fun time away, but I know myself well enough to know that I'll also be chomping at the bit to get back and get this all taken care of.

I hope YOUR summer is full of joy and fun and relaxing,

Ginny

P.S. Would you like to see the remodel progress? Here's a few photos. .

This is some of what was there. The last time we changed things I wanted it to be like a cabin so we used an old dresser and put in shelves.

I guess I'm old enough to be over the messy look. I want less clutter and more visual relief.

This is what we have in it's place. We'll hang our pot rack on the wall above and a knife holder under that. So fresh and clean!

And on the other side we found that we have to demolish the upper cupboards because they were built as one unit and attached to the wall that way.

You can see I'm an impressionist painter when it comes to house painting too. Lots of layers of paint over the years and rather than taking things down, I have a bad habit of just going around them.

It's been white, yellow and dark red. And why not paint the outlets? You want them to match, right?

I've learned I'm not allowed to do that anymore. Oops.

We put in a new window! We hope to put two more in on ether side of the range so there will be a bank of windows on that wall overlooking the landscape all the way out as far as we can see. I love the extra light!

We'll see if that is feasible. In the meantime, I'll be tweaking my OPA paintings and I'll show them to you next week.

Enjoy summer, and stay tuned!

P.P.S. We did get that mouse!