Grrr.

Don't you hate it when you put off doing something that you really should because you think it'll be tough? And then it turns out to be easy.

Grrr.

I've been living with exposed plumbing and HVAC for about a year and it turns out that it was surprisingly easy to deal with. We're mostly done the heavy lifting for our builtin bookshelf and desk.

I still have to figure out the hinges and trim work but most of the hard work is done and we only started it a week ago (now it helps that I was off for two days this week).

We still have no word on our Solar Array yet. It's been a crazy weather year – this time last year there had been two major storms (one of them closed the 402!) This year it's December 30^th and the temperature right now is +6^oC. That means that the ground isn't frozen enough to bring heavy equipment in and is so saturated that you sink in just walking around my tree lot!

I put on a new hat today too. I'll tell you about it next time.

In other news we had a fantastic date night over Christmas. I opened one of my nicer bottles of wine and we had 8 year old cheddar with an Artichoke and Asiago tappas spread.

Wow.

My taste buds thought they had died and gone to heaven. We're planning on offering that platter as a special Honeymooners Package complete with Picnic lunch and breakfast in bed.

Interested?

With food like that we know that your first stay here is Bound to Please!

I guess it's called Low Hanging Fruit for a reason.

I'll take it – the fruit is just as sweet and with (almost) no effort you can see some pretty cool results.

I've started my 2012 renovations a little early – I have shelving up in the Wine Room now.

The intention when I put some finished rooms into the Barn out back was to have a decent sized Wine Room where I can practice my craft (I hope I'm never done learning!) in a warm and comfortable space.

The ideal didn't quite get realized – the utility room where all the plumbing and electrical go sort of needed a little more room than I was hoping and that had to come from somewhere – so my Wine Room gave up about four feet of width that I wasn't planning on.

That means that I'll need some pretty serious Vertical Integration in my space.

These shelves are a good start.

Sherry and I have also started to design what the storage area in the Fireplace Room will look like – we'll be buying some of the building material later this weekend.

Should be fun!

I'll be sure to post the before and after photos here…. But please, don't hold your breath!

It's official.

I have a list of lists again.

We're getting ready now for Sherry's off-season (she works in a garden center and there's no need for her in the winter). The off-season is when we get all of the heavy lifting done.

I'll stop doing my projects between work and supper and start doing the major ones. We have a bunch of tile to lay, we need to build bookshelves, install trim, put in a door, and paint, paint, paint!

Oh! What fun!

We're going to officially launch the B&B this spring (in time for the birding season – does anyone know when the Spring Migration is? Ike?)

I've set an ambitious goal for myself this year (I'm not actually going to share it since it has a dollar figure attached and that makes people all weird). Let's see if I can get this one done too!

(My 2011 Impossible Goal was to program an app for a Tablet – I was hoping for an iPad app, but I managed to get a decent little calculator written for an Android Tablet – I'm counting that as a win. I did end up learning that 75+ hours only gets you enough for simple buttons and message boxes to pop up. I didn't get anything done with data structures or concurrency or memory management – I'll have a LOT to learn when the time comes!)

I'm so excited to get 2012's goal achieved that I've already started!

Whohoo!

I can't wait to see you in the spring – I know that it's Bound to Please!