Winifred Manor's gone to the birds!

Springtime sure has brought a lot of birds! We have been refilling out feeders almost everyday! The gold finches are always coming and the woodpeckers are also being seen more frequently (even thought they are here all winter).

Today we saw this guy, a red-bellied woodpecker (not my picture as my camera battery and card have mysteriously vanished, thanks to me putting it somewhere "safe")! Isn't he gorgeous! We always see downy woodpeckers and hairy woodpeckers but this was our first sighting of this guy in a long time!

We have had a lot of Dark-eyed Juncos, Robins, Black-capped Chickadees and European Starlings. We are trying to add a variety of seed to attract other birds as well!


I love Spring and I love my yard and my birds!


Photo credit: http://hillsteadblog.wordpress.com

Spring at Winifred Manor!

The official first day of spring doesn't start until March 21st. However, yesterday was what I would like to call the first day of spring at Winifred Manor. I hope that by calling it spring preemptively that Mother Nature will be happy and decide not to send a cold snap, April Showers will come earlier than expect and March will leave like a the lamb it started out as instead of as a lion.

I know I shouldn't be getting the garden ready yet, but I did survey the yard, which is surprisingly without snow. In the process of gathering pots that were left in strange places and were then buried by the snow, and filling the bird feeders, I noticed something happy! During the fall I planted tulip bulbs in the front garden and I saw that they are beginning to sprout! This made me look even closer at the garden to see that the Lily's of the Valley and some of my other perennials are starting to wake up too! So to celebrate that it is time to garden soon, I bought a new bird feeder!

We also went on a hike at Battle Creek Regional park. It was a little muddy but got me excited to start going hiking with Nick over the weekends.

I am going to keep my fingers crossed that it stays above freezing. I am also going to finally order my vegetable seeds from my mail order catalog. I want to start them inside and transplant them outside starting mid-May.

Oh, Gardening season! I am so excited to see you again!

A laundry room you can actually WALK IN! Well, almost

Our laundry room upstairs is the greatest thing because we never have to haul laundry up and down the stairs and I never have to go into the basement like we did at Bay Street. Of course this doesn't mean that I do my laundry any more frequently (because I hate folding and hanging up clothes). We also can't really get into the laundry room. Our washer and dryer unit is placed smack-dab in the middle of the laundry room which leaves no room for cleaning products, baskets or a utility tub (which will be our next project... that and the dishwasher... which will be a HUGE project).

So we finally decided to do something about it. Well, I decided. Nick and his dad did the rest. I did pay for it though, so I think that is an adequate enough contribution. After two trips to Menards (man, did I miss that place!) and a few hours we realized WHY the old owners never moved the laundry machine where it should have been... and that reason was that it was a pain in the butt. We managed to re-vent everything and move it from the middle of the room, but it didn't quite get to go against the wall and is now at a 45 degree angle. The duct work needed to be longer so for now we can at least WALK into the room and use the shelves that were hidden behind the washer/dryer when it was in the middle of the room. The vent out the window is also a lot cleaner looking. We will finish the project later after speech is done.
More will come. Maybe even from Nick since he technically did the project. As well as pictures... soon. Maybe. If I can get my camera to work. Or find the battery. I promise. Really.

Busy, busy, busy

Me and Nick apologize for not updating our blog for the past few months!

We have both been super busy coaching Speech at Eastview High School. Nick has been coaching four kids in the category of Creative Expression (the category we were both in when we were speechies oh-so-long-ago) and I have been coaching seven kids, six of them in the category of Original Oratory and one in Poetry. We have had a lot of fun coaching but it has eaten up a lot of our weekday nights and every Saturday since the end of January. I started the season even earlier and began coaching some of the traveling team starting in the fall. This is my second year and Nick's first year coaching.

We put a lot of our household projects on hold, but are starting up again and will start posting pictures (if I can get my camera to work after an incident involving my camera, a can of pop and the explosion of said can of pop in a vinyl purse).