The work has begun

Well today they started on the apartment over the garage.  Surprisingly Celeste has not mentioned anything about it.  I thought she would be curious as to what was going on but so far, she hasn’t said a word.  I guess she’s used to me doing stuff around here all the time.  Besides, between school and her other part-time job, she doesn’t have much time when she gets home for anything other than what she does around here, Little Joe and her homework.  A young woman her age shouldn’t have so much on her but she handles it so good.

I have been told by the contractor that by Friday, they should be putting up dry wall.  I guess if I’m going to have any of my ideas used then I better get off of here and draw them up for him so he can hopefully see what I’m wanting and let me know if it can be done or not.

All of the rough in materials are here

Well they delivered the wood, nails, wire, plumbing needs and everything else it will take to get everything roughed in yesterday.  I had them put it in the garage so it doesn’t get snowed or rained on.  This morning, my guy was here laying everything off and by now has already made pretty good progress.

All there will be is two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open living room, kitchen, dining area.  I have a lot of ideas in my head for things to make extra room but I haven’t really mentioned them to Charles yet.  Of course I want all of the comforts of home for them.  He allowed me to show him where I thought everything should be and he did up the plans for it.  I can’t wait until the drywall goes up so it starts looking like an apartment instead of an open room with nothing but a bunch of wall studs up.  I’ll keep you up on the progress.

Time to do some remodeling

Celeste and Little Joe need a place of their own.  This isn’t something she is saying, it’s something I realized.  As long as she’s here in one of my rooms, she feels like she’s under my thumb.  I don’t want her to feel that way.  She has her independence from an overbearing father and sure doesn’t need to feel I’m watching her like a hawk either.  I sure don’t want her to leave so I have come up with the perfect solution.

There’s sort of a studio over the 2 car garage.  I have decided to turn it into a two bedroom apartment for her and Little Joe.  That way, she has her own place to call home and can work for me part time to pay for the apartment and everything that goes with it.  She also has a part time weekend job waitressing so she has some extra money of her own.  That will allow her to buy her food for them and pay her own insurance too.

My guy that does all of the work around here for me has already looked at it and said it will run me about $4,000 to do it.  That’s not bad at all so I told him to get the material list together and I’ll take care of it.  I guess you could call this a graduation present for her since she graduates from school this year.  I haven’t told her a thing about it and won’t until she asks what’s going on.  She doesn’t ask many questions so hopefully the apartment will be close to being finished before she asks.  We shall see though.

New Years Eve

Well we’re completely booked for New Years Eve through Sunday.  What a wonderful way to bring in the New Year.  I really hope it will snow.  That would only make it better for my guests.  That’s one of the things they look for this time of year, snow.

We will have a buffet set up with all sorts of finger foods, eggnog, wine, and champagne for midnight.  There are plenty of noise makers and Little Joe is one of them!!  He’s been running around since Christmas laughing and squealing like crazy.  I love it too.  Nothing like joy in a child to bring this old house to life.

It’s been a year full of blessings, surprises and additions to not only my bed and breakfast (the barn and animals) but to our lives in the form of Celeste and Little Joe.  I can’t wait to see what the new year brings to us this time.  If it’s half as good as last year, I’ll have another wonderful year.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Quite week thank goodness

Well it’s been a quiet week around here, thank goodness.  A couple of local Christmas Tree growers brought us three deer they killed because they were eating their trees.  I made jerky from some of it, had some of the other made into sausage,  and the rest were cut into roasts and ground into hamburger.  A local butcher does all of this for me and he does a great job.

When he makes the sausage and hamburger, he always adds a little beef fat to it because deer is so lean that it’s so dry if you don’t add the beef fat.  Once that’s added then the sausage cooks much better and you don’t have to add any oil to the pan when it’s cooking.  I use the deer burger for soups and chili.  I’m not crazy about just deer burger to make meatloaf but if you put half deer burger and half hamburger, then it makes pretty good meatloaf.  Surprising how many people come here because I serve wild game.  It’s the only place they can try it and know it’ll be good.

I’ve also had a blast Christmas shopping for Little Joe and Celeste.  I guess I have spoiled them  because I got Little Joe a remote controlled car, a Nintendo Wii (I hope he’s not too little for it), a Leapster and a bunch of games for it, and a bunch of other small toys like dinosaurs and even got him a frog aquarium.

Celeste, well she’s like a daughter to me.  I bought her a used car but it’s a good one.  I had my mechanic check it out to make sure it’s a sound car.  I got her a Honda because they get pretty good gas mileage and are pretty darn dependable.  It’s a Honda Civic and I can’t remember what year it is.  I have CRS (Can’t remember shit) so you’ll have to excuse me.  I also got her a Dell Laptop computer.  She graduates from High School this year and is planning on going to college.  She’ll need a laptop in college and it sure won’t hurt for her to have one now.