Ah Wilderness Revisited

This past weekend we went back to fix the ceiling and get everything back to normal.  We arrived late Friday night and while getting ready for bed, I discovered that neither of us had used the main bathroom.  When I turned on the light, I found a new surprise.  A dead mouse in the toilet!  I wanted to flush him, but Ken decided to scoop him out and dispose of him outside.  Evidently, D-Con makes mice thirsty.  They are supposed to leave the house looking for water outside, but this guy decided to take a fatal shortcut.   We now have mousetraps set up in the house and will return next week to check them.  Say a prayer that the traps are empty and we are finished with little visitors.

Ah, Wilderness!

Three years ago, Ken & I bought a little second home in the North Conway, NH area.  We just love our petite maison.  We stay there at least one weekend a month, often more.  Yes, it looks small, but it has five rooms, 2 bedrooms and 1 1/2 baths.  All creature comforts are covered and it is located close to everything.

Thanksgiving day we went to my sisters for dinner and afterward we drove up to our little house for the rest of the weekend.  When we entered the house we were greeted with a strong stench!  We had rented the house two weekends earlier, and at first, we thought someone didn't take out the garbage when they left, but the can in the kitchen was empty.  We also found the smell very strong in the second bedroom directly under the kitchen.  This led us to the conclusion that some creature got into the house and died between the two floors. Yuck!  I thought it must be a chipmunk since they are always running around outside the house, Ken thought it might be a mouse.  We were both hoping it was nothing larger than either of those.  The smell was pretty much contained in the kitchen and one bedroom, so we closed the door to that bedroom and went to bed.  In the morning, Ken decided to rip out part of the bedroom ceiling to take a look since we could find no evidence of anything in the kitchen.  Well the smell was even stronger once the ceiling was removed.  He couldn't find the critter, but did find a lot of mouse droppings.  I got up on the ladder with a flashlight and found the varment.  I saw two little mouse ears peaking out from under an electrical wire.  The little guy had got himself stuck under the wire and couldn't get out.  He had not been there long enough to get messy, thank goodness, just stiff and flat.  Once we removed him, removed all the insulation around the area and sprayed a gallon of Lysol, the smell improved.  By the end of the day, there was no smell in the kitchen and the bedroom had a faint smell.  We decided to leave the ceiling open for now  to air it out and will repair it on our next visit.  I guess we are lucky all we had was a mouse.  We do have electronic critter repelents in the house, but this guy somehow got through.

As for sewing, I am working on a fancy evening jacket to wear with black crepe pants to a couple Christmas parties coming up in December.  I cut out the jacket and fused interfacing the weekend before Thanksgiving, sewed Sunday and Monday night and it is half finished. I had sewn this jacket before, so the fitting issue was not something to slow down the process.  The jacket is McCalls 6042 I'll post a picture when I'm finished which hopefully is next weekend since I need to wear it on December 12.

Pumpkin People

The first weekend of this month my husband and I along with his sister, Nadine, and her boyfriend, Victor, spent three days up in North Conway, NH taking in the foliage, sites and enjoying some great food. We have done this every October for the past five years. Nadine and Vic travel from Phoenix, so this is a real treat for them--a dramatic change of scenery. As for me, I grew up in New Hampshire and went to college in the White Mountains, but I'm always happy to go back and enjoy the area.


We spent the better part of a Sunday in Jackson, which is just up the road from North Conway. Jackson is a very small, but upscale town which appears to have had a pumpkin contest. I took pictures of all the pumpkin people we found.



Happy Halloween!