A new Spring. (From almost a year ago!)

Ten months ago I posted here. Ten months! In ten months, I've seen my wonderful friend get married, celebrated 2 years of marriage, 2 years of living in our house, and a mother-in-law's 70th birthday (she is more fit and active than me). We visited and fell in love with a new southern city, and I worked my way through half of my masters program. We encountered several feet of snow, three snow days, one frozen apartment, one frozen pipe and one broken dishwasher. A dishwasher that has yet to be fixed. But will be fixed by the time we have company and lots of dishes to wash at one time. I hope.

We painted and put together another guest room and we (Jesse) painted two office spaces upstairs. One will become mine this summer! I loved the idea when we first moved in, then realized I do all my work downstairs by the fire when it's cold and on the porch or in the sun-dining room when it's warm. But now that Jesse painted the room white, and the floor a light blue, and the trim and doors a slate blue, and I've accrued a good amount of mementos and framed things that don't seem to fit anywhere else (besides my limited space closet) it feels like it's time. So this summer, I will set up shop upstairs in the little room with the brick chimney.

April vacation felt cold but relaxing, and of course the year at this point is moving at a fast pace. The May ahead is full of wedding showers, retirement recognition dinners for a certain mama(!), two dad birthdays, Jesse's birthday (35, wow) and the last full month of the school year...

'May' your days

I have been reminded why VT is such a great place to live....well, I sort of knew why all along, but honestly these WINTERS. Draining, really. But May, beautiful May. It may (ha no pun intended) be my new favorite month. After June. And September. It's just so beautiful!

Outside our bedroom windows is this apple tree, whose pink blossoms are making my morning!! 

We can see pink outside 3 of the 4 windows, and the sun's rising so early these days it makes for a happy wake up.

We also have a couple of these pretty white blossomed trees, which are a close pretty second.

We had the best weekend enjoying the sun, making an impromptu trip to Home Depot for tea lights and herbs and flowers and a paint sample. We stopped at the Walpole flea market, and got a new/old rug and an old orange crate with a great sticker still on it and this stool, all for $13:

The top has an old painting of a pretty apple tree on it, and I couldn't resist.

 It finally feels like a new season! A warm one! We'll take it. 

Lately

Somehow, it finally seems to be spring...as in, not winter. Which seemed endless, as I think it always does in VT. But really. March was not mud season, it was full snow on the ground and April was way too cold to qualify (in my book) as spring. SO, it has been a long time coming but I feel like May, even with the almost daily rain, counts as a new season. Hurrah!

We took a trip to Keene last weekend and ended up purchasing more than we planned; but it was all stuff we wanted for the house/yard/barn, and nothing was too much of a splurge. Which, it turns out, is a good thing, because I splurged this week on Jesse's birthday present: a new grill! But he loves it, and I figure it's an investment that will last us (hopefully) many summers.

Anyway. New dining room chairs:

I loved these, but thought maybe they were too industrial with our country bumpkin blue chairs. But Jesse loved them too, and we can use them out on the porch. 

Gold-plated crab (Jesse the non-cancer discovered this!)

My old playmobiles & dollhouse dishes made an appearance, and true to form were the source of hours of entertainment for some young visitors:

new paint:

no more snow!

Found this pot under the porch with these leaves popping up, not sure what it is yet...and our garlic that I planted in November! Pippa snacked on a few but hopefully some make it.

First daffodil: (we now have three variations coming up all over! light yellow, hardy yellow, and a darker orange-centered yellow)

Also, this little slope near the stone wall had a dead vine-y shrub thing that I held out hope for last year, but Jesse took an ax (new favorite tool) to it and I admit it looks nicer now that the areas clear. He can't wait to mow our expanded lawn!

The awful bishop's weed will no-doubt return this year, but we're hoping to stay on it and just mow over it along this wall.


Painting over the light peach hallway wall & dark red stairs:

Somehow all the paint we've chosen for walls (and stairs now) takes on a shade of blue; this wall color looks gray sometimes, but it's funny because we didn't ever talk about blues. They just seem to work, and the upstairs is so much lighter! I actually now go up there occasionally.

Still undecided, definitely not green

My attempt at color-coded books :)

Silver linings

I can't say this winter made me a lover of snow and cold. I hoped I'd embrace the season, maybe take up snowshoeing or xc skiing... Just enjoy it more, since having your own house and dog make everything better, right?

Maybe if we had less actual feet (yes, plural) of snow... Because I can honestly say I don't remember EVER having this much snow around in all my 26 years. I fell through today (in the balmy slushy 35 degrees) and it was past my knee! Mid-thigh. I was actually appalled.

Anyway, this was supposed to be focused on the bright side of things. So. In spite of this never-ending season, I had a Tuesday off this week thanks to good old-fashioned town meeting day and being outside that afternoon was actually o.k.

After around the 8th snowstorm, the back marsh no longer became really walkable....the week or two when it was consistently below zero (sob) made the snow crust hard enough to support us, but lately Pippa's started falling through, so we don't do our usual exploring through the marsh into the woods. Too. Much. Snow. BUT this week was sunny, and I braved the tundra and Pippa frolicked around while I realized how pretty it all still is.

Jesse's been clearing out the barn and found two long boards, which he dragged down and made into footbridges for us to easily cross the river stream.

Pippa's nervous crossing the first bridge, so she sometimes finds narrow spot to leap over. But coming back she's ok! And she is getting better. 

She was hoping I'd come back before she had to cross :)

That blue sky! I just need to remember to look up once in awhile. And keep thinking Spring!

DR

Also can be called, Better Late Than Never.

It feels like we were in this warm, sunny, beachy gloriousness YEARS ago, when really it's been only a couple of weeks...

We stayed in Cabarete, a beachside town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. It's known for kite-surfing and wind-surfing, and it was unbelievable seeing the long beach completely swarming with the mini parachutes that surfers use to kite-surf.

I think the beach is known for the plethora of mojito varieties. Jesse enjoyed many, and I mostly stuck to frozen margs and coladas.

As much as I hate to admit, Jesse and I got a bit sick of beachside bar food and frozen drinks....of course it was amazing and delish the first couple days, but on our last full day we decided to rent a moped and get out of dodge/the tourist trap.


 We discovered some cute small beaches...

... and had the most delicious snacks at a lady's little roadside stand---empanadas and yucca logs! In other words, fried dough with cheese and what I can only describe as the corndog equivalent of the DR--but with cheese. Just yum.

And this was one of the many, many adorable pups that I fell in love with! They were a highlight of the trip for me for sure...it actually helped with our Pippa withdrawals.

And some others:

We also spent a day in Sosua, a town formed around WWII when Jewish people from Poland left Europe and settled here...it had the feel of a resort town, with lots of Europeans, but we loved the beach:



 and even went paddleboarding! After filling up on a fish...


...and a bev in a pineapple.

I think it was after this that I decided I'd reached my year's quota in frozen fruity drinks.


One day we took a moto---a motorcycle taxi--to a hidden beach where it was a surfer's paradise...it felt like Samara! Complete with attractive surfing families, yummy warm black coffee, and precious pups.

Our hotel was right on the beach, almost a mile from the beach bar center of town. It was beautiful, and had a great cafe between our room and the water (seen under the open roof below):


We had a reeeeaaallly early flight home (my mistake! accidentally clicked on the 2am departure instead of the still-early-5am) but we actually were so happy to be getting home with a whole Friday ahead of us that it wasn't so bad...especially when we discovered these Big Gulps-sized lattes at the aeropuerto! Ha.

missing this view:

New Stoves!

As much as we have loved this blue gem of a stove, it was a bit small to heat our sun-dining room and living room, and we were using more oil than we wanted to...

So we got a new one! It's not Vermont Castings, like the blue one, but Jotul (pronounce yodel :) is apparently a great brand for big warm stoves, and this one has a side loader! That may mean nothing to you, but it has made me very happy and keeping toasty has been so easy. 

I also am in love with the slate pad underneath it, where I am currently warming up my boots and Pippa is warming herself.

Bedroom before:

Our bedroom is freezing unless we turn the heat on, and when we do that we are heating the entire house which really isn't necessary and uses more oil than we'd like. So, we decided to get a little propane stove! Our room is pretty spacious, but we decided to put it on the side wall so it would be able to reach and heat my closet and the bathroom...

and after:

There's a little remote installed on the wall near our bed (on my side :) and I can press a button to turn the stove on or off. We hope this will keep our oil bill down (to almost nothing) and that the propane shortage ends soon....go figure that propane prices are up and there's a shortage the winter we get a propane stove!