Dining Room Remodel- the beginning of the end

7' wide Red Oak Planks

We are locked and loaded and ready to get this dining room finished!  Our 1100 lbs. of red oak wood flooring arrived this week.  The Laird ripped out the carpet, and we cleared out all the stuff that had been stored in there for the past 2 years.  Here are the details.


We wanted long length, wide plank hardwood flooring in the dining room.   Two years ago, we purchased our kitchen flooring from Lumber Liquidators.  Naturally I started my flooring search with Lumber Liquidators and brought home a few samples that seemed close to the color of the stairs that land in the dining room.  Unfortunately, Lumber Liquidators widest plank is 5" (which really doesn't feel that wide- we have some in the kitchen).  The second problem is that none of their pre-finished oak quite matched the color of the stairs.   So began my Internet search for our other options.

 Flooring.org had a great selection of what we were looking for.  They had planks up to 12" wide!  Not to mention long length boards up to 10'.  Because I finished out stairs 2 years ago when we purchased the house, I do know the exact color stain that was used for the stairs.  Though it is a ton more work, we opted to go with the 7" wide red oak planks in various lengths ranging from 2' to 10'.  Though shipping cost more than buying locally AND unfinished wood is going to be a lot of work- we are going to get the exact floor that we want.  Not to mention the prices at flooring.org are great.  The price we paid for 7"wide, long length tongue and groove boards is less than the 5" unfinished from Lumber Liquidators.

The dining room getting prepped for flooring installation

The PLAN:
Floors:  We will be installing 7" wide Red Oak planks.  They will be stained with Miniwax Provincial and seal with polyurethane.

Walls:  Pine paneling will either be taken down or painted white.  The Laird will be building a storage window seat with two 30" wide, floor to ceiling bookcases on the right and left of the window in above photo.  The right side of room will be finished with board and batten wainscot to the Laird's eye level, with a shelf on top.
* The wall by the stairs may also be a built in bookcase.

We'll be working on this room as often as we have time over the next few months.  Though we have a lot of work ahead of us, this is the beginning of the end of large scale renovations/ remodeling.  We are so close, I can almost taste it!  After two years, it will be so nice to be finished with all the major work that needed to be done to the house.

Top Bar Beehive

Our Top Bar Beehive has arrived!

So originally we ordered plans to build our Top Bar Hive.  Upon reading and studying the plans, and discussing where to locate the 12"wide cedar boards and Plexiglas, the Laird and I both decided it would be much easier to just order the kit of pre-cut & pre-drilled parts for a top bar hive.  Though it cost a bit more than building from scratch, we know this route was much less of a headache.

Bee Thinking has been a great resource for our beekeeping needs.  I have been very pleased with the quality of their products and excellent customer service.  Check them out! I got a wonderful book from them called, "Top Bar Beekeeping" by Les Crowder.  Though I have read a couple books about Top Bar Beekeeping, this one had valuable information that I hadn't read in the other 2 books.  It has wonderful color photos too!

We have a few steps left until the hive is fully assembled and ready for bees.  We will have to wait until spring to get our bees and start this journey.

This hive took about an hour to put together.  The hive is made of Western White Cedar.  It has a wooden top/ lid and a screened bottom.  It also has a hinged observation window.

For those new to the topic, there are 3 main types of hives used in the United States.  The Langstroth Hive is the most common hive- it is made of stacked boxes. The Top Bar Hive.  And the Warre Hive.



The Top Bar Hive tends to provide a more natural method of beekeeping, for a few different reasons.    The shape of the top bar hive mimics a hollow log that bees would often naturally build their hives in.  Another reason is that unlike Langstroth hives that have frames & foundation for bees to build their comb, the top bar hive simply has top bars.  These bars have a small ridge that the bees build their comb on from top to bottom.  Rather than building comb cells upon a foundation with pre-designed cell sizes, they are able to do what they know how to do and make the cells sized for the different brood that will hold them (workers, drones and queens).  This small detail supposedly makes a difference in that the bees fit their cell perfectly, rather than an imperfect pre-set cell size- which may account for the rise of wax moths.  Just a speculation I read about.  Top bar bee keeping tends to try to keep things all natural and beekeepers try to avoid using pesticides and miticides as well.  Another factor for maintaining the health of the hive is the fact that you harvest the honey and wax together every time- which means the bees are constantly building new comb, and therefore lessens the chances of disease and pests storing up in old comb.  Though this contributes to the fact that Top Bar Hives yield less honey than Langstroth hives, we are not entirely concerned as we expect to have more honey than we know what to do with from this hive.


Our hive has an open/ screened bottom which helps monitor ventilation within the hive, and also facilitates inspection for mites.  The hive also has a cool observation window on the side, which allows friends and visitors to peek into the hive without fear of getting too close to the bees.  The few times I have seen been through an observation window have been fascinating.

We are heading out to our first local beekeepers meeting this weekend.  They will be discussing bees wax and how to utilize it.  I am excited for this topic as Top Bar bee keeping yields lots of wax, since you harvest the wax and honey together (as opposed to reusing the wax with Langstroth beekeeping).  We will also find out more about ordering a package of bees or a nuc for the spring.

I still have to finish the hive with a protective coat of Tung Oil.  In time, there will be more on bees and beekeeping to document this exciting journey.  This Top Bar Hive is quite fancy.  An observation window.  A screened bottom.  A hinged, gable roof.  Made of beautiful white cedar.  Our bees are going to be living in style.  I can't wait to see what it looks like with the tung oil finish!

'The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name"- personalized children's books

Recently I noticed facebook posts about personalized children's books through Lost My Name.  I decided to check it out and was very impressed with what I found.  Basically you personalize the story to the child receiving the book, with their name and a character that physically resembles their features.  The story is about a girl or boy who wakes up one morning and has lost their name.  They proceed to go on an adventure where they meet all sorts of magical creatures and characters that start with the letters that spell out their name.  You are able to preview the book you create.

I wanted to give my niece something special for the holiday, and decided this would be the perfect gift.  They offer a discount for purchasing more than one book.  Since lady genevieve has such a lengthy name, her adventure was quite full- so I decided to order a book for her 3rd birthday coming next April.  We love giving her a special book for each birthday (1st a family photos book/ 2nd Redwoodshire Stories "A Tale of Two Berries" written by daddy and illustrated by her grandmother), so this fit the tradition for gifts.

If you're interested in buying a copy, use my link  and you can get 15% off your first book and help me earn a free copy of "The Amazing Alphabet That Appeared In The Night".  I only need 3 friends to get a copy of this book for free (they do not sell this book, it can only be gotten through referrals!)  Once you order your book, you too can try to earn the free book as well.  Another bonus: Shipping is FREE!

http://www.lostmy.name/friends/sarah-nestlen-2

The Gift of Mail- a tradition of newsletters

Though this is a post from last year- it's that time of year for sending mail.  I just finished our 2015 newsletter and had it printed at FedEx/ Kinkos today.  The envelops are addressed and they are ready to mail.

Who doesn't love getting mail?  Well who doesn't love getting real mail?  Real mail meaning that which doesn't have to do with credit card advertisements, bills, ads and all that junk that fills our mailboxes today.  It feels that sending and receiving genuine paper mail today is becoming a lost art.  In a day of facebook, emails, Facetime and even blogging, "instantaneous" has become the culture.  We are so used to getting the immediate gratification of the click of a button, and so busy with our lives, that we hardly take the time to write a letter to someone we love, or send birthday/ special occasion cards.  Which also means, we are robbed of the joy of receiving those forms of communication and love as well.  If you're like me, I pretty much dread checking our mailbox because I already know the time it will take me to weed through all the junk & bills.  But there are still the faithful few who have not lost this art of sending cards and correspondence- and for those people I am so grateful.

If people are going to send cards, it seems that this is the time of year for it.  Since I was a child, I have loved all the Christmas cards that people have sent to us.  We'd always hang them up on our walls, on display to look at and admire.  And even as an adult, I have continued this tradition in my own home.

Many years ago, I was inspired by a Christmas Newsletter my parents had received from their friends.  It was visually appealing with nice photos, and very informative about the life events of their family over the past year.  I loved it, and decided that I definitely wanted to do that "when I got older and had a family".  I loved how informative they were, and especially loved the photos.  So when I got out of college, I decided I would start then.  Since we'd lived in California until I was 16, and then I spent 2 years in Connecticut and then 4 years of college in Western NY, we had loved ones across the country.  And now that I was out of college, with a new job and living on my own, there was a lot that I could update about my life.  And rather than take 5 minutes to hand write a letter to each person on the list, I could consolidate everything into an awesome newsletter and save my hand from aches.  And so began my journey into the tradition of yearly newsletters.   It's been 10 years since the first annual newsletter, and from what I can tell people still love to get them.

My newsletters evolved from being solely about me, to including details about the Laird, and now lady genevieve has been included the past 2 years.  I am not going to pretend it's an easy task to accomplish.  It does take time, as you must figure out what you want to write about and include each year.  Which involves thinking about what you did over the past 12 months.  One important part is coming up with a Name for your newsletter.  Our newsletter is called: "The N.Y.(Nestlen Yearly) Times".  We also happen to live in NY, so it works both ways.  I begin my newsletter process in October, with brainstorming a list of big updates, like vacation, or buying a house... and then come up with specifics for an article about each person of the family.  I have a MacBook, and use Pages to make my newsletters, but I know there are lots of cool programs out there to accomplish the task.  Photos are as important as the actual written content, so once the articles are written, it's fun to pick out a few photos to highlight the article.  I have always done double sided letters, and never had a problem figuring out how to fill both sides of the letter up with articles and photos (even when I only wrote about my own life).  When the newsletter was just about me, I was able to get very specific about a lot of different parts of that year.  Now that my family has grown, I have to choose my content wisely and include simply the most important stuff.  In the very beginning I would add a favorite recipe to share, or a section of fun facts (like how many miles my very old 1995 Dodge neon currently had on it).

Once the letter is complete, I have discovered the beauty of Kinkos FedEx print center.  I used to go through the hassle of saving my newsletter to an external hard drive and then taking it to the store and using their computer to then print it up.  What a hassle and time waster!  Now I can do all the work at home, upload the newsletter to their website, select all the specific print details (color/ black & white; single vs. double sided; paper weight; number of copies...etc.), pay online, select when to pick them or up or have them shipped.

I have saved a hard copy of each newsletter over the past 11 years, and have a collection of them at this point.  They serve as a wonderful "Year at Glance" to revisit the big events of each year that has passed.  I hope to put them in a notebook for better access down the road.  Be inspired to make your correspondence filled with quality, rather than a quick signature!