Progression in Paradise

Before we talk about the house, let's remind us of the gi-normous amount of snow we had. It was a fun winter for us. The kids spent hours outside, and i spent hours in the kitchen! For some unknown reason i get a hankering for working with dough when there is snow. I made more donuts, stromboli, soft pretzels, and i hope that's it.

Dave spent some time in Haiti and then on his annual ski trip, so altho he missed some of the food , snow , and fun, we did not let that stop us from having a blast! Between me, my kids, Phil, Shelly, and their little ones, and Chad, we were together almost every meal for a few days. One night the guys made two trips each just to haul me and the kids to supper at Shelly's. Memories were made!! That was some storm!

No school, again!
I didn't even have to ask Chad to open our drive ( in Dave's absence), however, i learned that he "will work for food"!!
I made ham and cheese pretzel pockets. Yumm-mee!
Might as well have 'em all! Mom Nissley was in FL over this storm and Dave was enjoying his own snow in NM.
Brooke and Sheri opted to eat outside instead of taking off all their snow clothes.I tried the whole "hang-out-your-whites-over-snow-to-bleach-them" idea. Maybe my mom didn't mean for me to leave them out all week, but i thought if one day is good, six is better!! Actually, i then re-washed them, hung them out AGAIN, then finally put them away. Are they whiter? Not really, but they were probably ruined in OR already, by never having seen the sun. Good reason to by new this summer.
OKAY!!!......i am in trouble now! Dave has a wrecking bar.........
.....and a mask?! What to do!
There goes my bathroom. Our bedroom is wrecked,too. In the end, they will be a combo. For now we are sleeping in the basement and sharing the upstairs bathroom with the kids. My dresser is in the garage, but when i wear something and it goes thru the wash, it is then in rotation and ends up in the basement in a crib! Winter is leaving and spring is coming, so more and more items are ending up in the crib. I'm about to dig sandals out of a box,too.
One evening i helped Dave reduce drywall dirt by staying a hair ahead of his cut. It really helps. He was in Josiah's old bedroom, cutting a doorway into the new dining room.
This room will then be the library.

Livingroom will be diningrm in the future. Uncle Paul laid the hardwood for us.
Dave put on the stain and finish and i have a never ending headache. Nice floor,tho.
Dave is spraying the primer in our closet. He thinks his hair is gray enough already therefore the turban.
Gone! they took everything!! even the kitchen sink.
Thankfully the kitchen sink is temporarily relocated and is now the 'garage sink'. Even has hot water! We wash dishes about once a day. Funny story( Monday evening)................tonight after a delish supper that was delivered by a sweet friend i ordered Meg, Brooke, and Josiah to do the dishes. I informed them that Britt gets a free pass since just hours ago she washed all the dishes that were out there. She added "and there were alot". I then confessed that it was most of the weekend's worth. She laughed in spite of herself....you see, she'd been at the mountains all weekend with the youth group.
This is what's left of our living space. The plastic walls divide the good from the ugly. There's still lots of dust and dirt, but i'm very grateful for the walls. I've been doing all the painting, not usually on the table, but i'm sorting them here. I do not cook. My wonderful nearby in-laws have been taking real good care of us. And also good friends who have merciful hearts have been bringing crock-pot food or microwaveable reheats. Timely in-home invitations, too. Thank-you all!

And in the midst of all the mess was Josiah's 8th birthday. For 9 years the family tradition has been to put the gifts on the front window sill of this home, usually a day or two before the birthday, so the child can admire the packages and guess what may be in them. Well, the bay window and it's deep sill are gone, so we'll have to come up with something new, but for today i placed them in the spot where they would have been! Happy boy, even tho we couldn't have ALL his friends over and certainly no sleepovers for now.
He brought home 3 friends and we went bowling.

We are very thankful for the sunny weather. The kids have been spending more time outside than inside ( you would,too) and especially here at the new table and 6 chairs. Our old set that didn't make it back across the Rockies only had 4 chairs, so this is a real treat. They are watching a robin, but i didn't know that and promptly after deciding that a backside shot is not so good, i walked out in the yard to face them. 4 "Mom!"'s and 1 "Lil!" got my attention but now they scared the robin away.....or was it me?

Beautiful Spring!! Always on time.

In a week or so my kitchen will be in and by then our bathroom and bedroom should have it's finishing touches done, so i will try and share the joy real soon.

Have a Blessed Easter!

Signs Signs, Everywhere Signs

A very common practice here in the county is folks making a little side money with scrap wood, maybe a young son uses his father's leftover lumber, or an older gentleman is keeping his hands busy making birdhouse or such.Then you hang up a sign for the whole world to see! Years ago my dad made saunas and the neighbors shuddered at the thought of him burning those wonderful cedar scraps when they could be making a perfectly good craft with the wood. So he collected the pieces in a box and routinely someone would drop by to gather them for themselves.
Homemade brooms are 'the bomb'! The one i took to OR got weather ruined and i couldn't wait to come home and purchase a 'REAL" broom again! This combination of sale items are an interesting mix......
I would advise anyone that is wanting to buy a quilt to follow one of these signs rather than going to a formal quilt shop. Besides the price being reasonable, you'll get to set foot inside an Amish family's home and most likely the seller is the seamstress.
I've never bought homemade soap, but it sounds nice. This array of signs was all in a days journey. It was one of those days when my camera was in the car and i had enough spare time to stop and snap.


NO SUNDAY SALES! ...never ever, not in Amish Country. To my knowledge every one of the signs you see on this post are at Amish homesteads/farms.
Go ahead! buy one, ......or six. Or, buy two and pretty soon you'll have 60!
No sign, but a typical Autumn sight.
Lots and lots of folks plant extra veggies and sell them right off the driveway or out of the yard. I rarely buy these items in the grocery store when they're in season here. It's just a no brainer! I took these particular pictures to show you that spelling is a non-issue, or so it seems. And here's to the right.....
......and to the left, depends if you were coming or going.I saw so many spellings today for 'Cauliflower' that i can hardly remember the correct one! I think this is it.

But, we all know what these folks mean.......
....even if they confuse 'flour' with 'flower'. cute, huh? Most of these little roadside stands are self-serve, with a small container for putting your money in. The 'honor system' is heavily practiced here and works well for the most part. Every once in a while you'll hear a report of someone hacking off with the 'money box', but it rarely contains more than a few dollars, because families will periodically empty the container through-out the day.

As many of you know, our kids speak Dutch, and sometimes an English word comes out extremely sloppy, but when you're with other Dutch speaking people, it's a non-issue. In Oregon, tho, some of those words were foreign sounding to our friends and down-right embarrassing to hear coming out of my kids' mouths. I'm sure i have my weaknesses, too, but i'm still blind to them, so i'll use this example from the kids:

Sometimes pumpkin gets pronounced punkin. I was told recently that there really is a sign here in Lancaster County that advertises "Punkins for sale"!!! My only excuse for the mispronunciation of that word in my household is that when speaking Dutch, that's how it's said. Sounds good, so you just carry it over to English and sure hope your friends know what you mean!

Would you care for a punk in your pie?!

Monday's 'Wash'

Monday is laundry day. One day, last Fall, i was driving across the county on errands and had my camera in the car. I snapped a few 'washline' photos for you.
Many many country folks have a line extending from the porch out to a pole of sorts. It's a double cord with a wheel at each end. You can stand at one spot, hang a piece of clothing, and then turn the wheel, hang another, and so on. I feel silly explaining this, but in Oregon i never saw any laundry out to dry, let alone these LONG lines we see everyday. Lines are very important for the Amish who have no electric dryers. No electricity at all for that matter.
This tall fence has deer in it. The towels are dangling above the pen.
I, too, love to hang out laundry. However, i prefer not to spread my family's underwear for all the world to see, but here in Amish country it's just another Monday!!!

Air dried laundry is so much fun to fold and smell. So lovely and crisp. I enjoy folding each piece as i bring it down off the line. It feels pressed and folds beautifully. No comparison to the mounds that come out of my dryer this time of the year. I'm just not die-hard enough to go out in 20 degrees, i have a dryer for good reasons! My mom had me hang out plenty of laundry year round as a kid. I'd wear gloves and still freeze my fingers. And at the end of the day, some of it was frozen stiff. Well, duh, it was TOO cold out that day!! But she always loved to hang whites out on a sunny day if there was snow on the ground. Claimed that the reflection off the snow was somehow brighter. What can i say, my mom has spotless whites, while mine always have a yellow hue.

I really missed my lines in OR. I don't have a sky high line, just a triple row out in the yard.

Any locals care to guess where the pictures were taken?

Winter What Nots

Just in case you forgot, we are remodeling our home.This was the livingroom look for a few days in December. Dave chose the coldest day to date to knock out the bay window and put in a new one that's bumped out a bit and offers more floor space for our future "morning nook".He hung blankets across the room to block the noise, dust, and the cold. It wasn't a bad day at all. And a few days later it was all cleaned up and the furniture was back in a single layer.I took this picture especially to prove to some of my girlfriends that Dave does indeed tear into projects without any given notice to the little lady. This day he decided to fill nail holes and paint our bedroom window trims. Great idea! and by the end of the day he even had our blinds hung. However....all without me having made the bed. Notice the tools on the bed? Well, that's HIS side of the sheets. When he was finished working and i finally got to making the bed I thoroughly brushed any grit off my side, but when i was preparing his spot I couldn't resist brushing ALL the remaining 'crumbs' to the exact spot where his back would lie that night!

I was already snuggled in, carefully staying on my side of the bed, when he crawled in that night. He bounced right back out, and with a hint of surprise stated that there's a bit of grit on the sheets. He brushed them onto the floor without any complaint and climbed back in. I never said a word.....until now!

Read the shirt........you decide!


We had a lovely snow on Saturday, December 19th.
My snow-capped shrubs.

Tradition has it that i make donuts on the first snowstorm of the year. We invite the neighbors and have a grand time of fattening up and fellowshiping at our dining room table. This year was 'catch-up' time as last year we were in Oregon and no one filled my shoes. Typically about 25 people shuffle in and we devour about 6 dozen glazed donuts! That's allowing some to carry out plates for a brother or a mother that couldn't make it over.

Somewhere around 15-18" fell on Saturday and church services all thru-out the county were canceled for Sunday morning. This is all except the Amish, who never cancel. This family had the pleasure of getting out the sleigh today. That's not possible every year here in Lancaster. Because of the weekend, road crews were not so quick to clear the back country roads.


And then Christmas......Meg loved her hat, scarf, and Chi.All her gifts were from the neck up! Yeah, she's a teenager.My husband and kids went a little crazy on me!! I didn't know that i needed a Magic Bullet, but i now know that i did and i do! I love it especially for salad dressings.
We gave the kids this four-wheeler and today as the snow melted and the rain fell, Brooke rode around and around and around.

Brooke took this shot of a slug out on the walkway. Adorable, if a slug ever was!

More random pics on the way. Thanks for coming! Love to all from the Nissleys

More House Updates

These pictures were taken and uploaded a while back, but i will journal and share and later show you more. I know, i know you all don't believe me. Dave and others built a front porch for me back in November. I say 'for me' because i've been asking for one for 17 years and i don't remember Dave ever pining for one, so i feel pretty special to be given this luxury. In fact, as he was still working on it i came out to investigate one of the kids' actions and then i proceeded to yell out orders from my perch. After i'd settled the matter, i turned to Dave with glee and said "i feel like a queen on her throne!" His response was laced with anxiety as he asked:"what have i gotten us into!" I love my porch!

The back porch/patio is more or less his. He designed and built the patio around the existing screened in porch back in 2002. Now he made a new porch and will rearrange to patio a bit. He saved some gorgeous furniture from Vintage Gardens and this will be a family paradise next summer.Most of this backside is newly painted with our new colors. The rest will patiently wait until Spring.

A better view after construction is cleaned up. These days i have a new picture window, too, so keep watching. I just want to make sure that you have a taste of the old, so that you will appreciate the new with me!

Remember this picture? The bathroom in September.....................

The bathroom in December! Not bad, huh? Britt picked the paint color, and we 4 females shopped together for towels and decor. Still a few touches to be made......

This is Josiah's new room. It's a portion of what was Meg and Brooke's huge room before we left for OR. We added a bit to our upstairs and were able to split a large room into two medium-sized rooms, thus having 3 rooms upstairs. Previously Josiah slept on the first floor, across the hall from Dave and I.

What fine restaurant with outdoor seating, you ask? That's our fireside porch set. Another piece Dave 'saved' for us. Actually, i think we'd sell it still since it's not exactly what we had in mind for here. In the meantime, it is gorgeous, especially with the snow.

This post is dated way back the day i uploaded the pics, before all the rest of my pictures got loaded to Dave office computer when we switched to a new one for me. Now Dave's office is not even close to being luxurious. It's hardly even comfortable and i have been avoiding it like the plague. I know if i go out there, i'll start cleaning and i do not really want to clean my way to my pictures. so in the meantime...........i'm without all pictures taken before December '09.

I'll put on my ( actually they're Dave's) muck boots sooner or later and figure out how to transport them back into the house. Note: i'm not delighted with this situation.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you care.