Let me tell you about.......Summer 2015

Hello Readers,
I have been retired for 7.5 months already!  The summer is showing signs of easing into fall here in Colorado and I have noticed the panicked looks on parents and kid's faces as they shop for school supplies lately.  

I certainly do not miss the days of spending so much money on school supplies and clothes for our kids and I can only imagine how challenging it must be for a family of 2+ children to ensure that everyone is adequately prepared for a new school year.
I think about teachers at this time of year and all that they do in preparation for our children. As my Facebook friend list grows I note that several of my new contacts, old high school friends, are teachers and I admire them for that career path. 

I have several new blogs in progress but instead of publishing any I have spent the summer doing an inside project to assist in the completion of our last unfinished room in our basement.  Yay! 

My husband transformed the remaining east half of our basement from a room with no walls or floors into an extension of the already existing family room that came with the house.  We now have a really fun place to hang out if anyone ever comes to visit.  LOL, inside joke.
The transformation was not an easy feat, either.  My husband is amazing with his carpentry and electrical knowledge and his ability to pull it all together.  

My part was just getting the vision of what we wanted the room "to be".  The final decision was a western themed bar.  Dad and I set out with many trips to local and not-so-local flea markets and other stores to gather items for my "vision".  

Dad in front of a flea market, so fun!

 I am so pleased with how the room came together as we brought home items from many places.  The days spent with dad on this activity were priceless and fun as we looked through SO MANY booths and cast aside treasures from peoples lives.

Steve and I also had fun trips to shop for the room and found a lot of fun stuff.  The culmination of furniture, art, and antiques came together into a room that is amazingly comfortable and a fun place to hang out.  Of course, the fact that it is a bar complete with a kegerator is not so bad either. lol

During one flea market adventure Steve and I found an oil painting of a barn that ironically is located on the road up to our mountain property so we purchased it for a very low price.  It is really a nice painting and framed very rustically so it fits well with our decor.  There was a note included on the back of the painting that told us it was the "Batterson Barn" near Red Feather Lakes, CO.  This confirmed our suspicion that it was the same barn we pass every time we visit our property.  We recently discovered that the barn is included in the National Register of Historic Places and has a nice story attached to its existence.  Here is a link, it is a good read.  http://redfeatherhistoricalsociety.org/local-histories/historic-local-sites/batterson-ranch/#ranch

Original Barn

Oil painting of barn

It was a fun and exhausting project for us but we are very thrilled with the end results.

From the entryway

The bar area

South wall from entryway

North wall from entryway

Of course, I have also been busy with yard work, something alien to me since becoming an adult. I avoided yard work since my teenage years, weeding was used as a chore when we were in trouble and I never enjoyed working in the yard prior to retirement.  Now, I mow lawns, weed, and all kinds of yard work.  I recently was told by my son Jason "nice tan", first time I have ever heard that in my life!  Forty years of office life kept me very pale and now I have a what appears to be a tan but is mostly my freckles all starting to connect.  haha

We sold our rental house that was on the market for almost two years, phew! We had some camping weekends, so much fun!  We were not able to squeeze in as many as we hoped to but hopefully still have time to make a couple of more trips up. We celebrated the arrival of grandchild number eight in July, that will be a separate blog. 

The summer will be ending with visits from kids and grandkids from Kansas, a Colorado Rockies baseball game, and then lots of September birthday milestones this year.  

As always, thank you for reading my blog.  I love to write and even if a few of you read it makes it worthwhile for me.

grandma P