The Wood's Secret Garden

How many people do you see in the image below? Take a good look and use your imagination.  I will be the first to admit that my husband and I have a very child-like imagination; but, that is a good thing. Unless of course you are sitting at a stop light, oblivious that it has turned green and cars are honking at you, while you are staring at the cloud formations with bated breath watching a giant whale slowly morphing into what appears to be an elephant. Along those same lines, when we downloaded a few pictures from the new blooms in this Year's Spring garden, my husband and I both saw a Calypso Orchestra smack dab in the center of one of the flowers.  There are at least 24 men in black pants wearing those ruffled sleeve Calypso shirts.  Now do you see them? Well, even if you don't, you might enjoy the simple beauty of a few of the flowers that are currently blooming in are tiny little garden, in the tiny little back yard of our tiny little 520 sq foot house....

Before moving to our little mobile home in Rancho Cordova, we lived in an apartment that overlooked a creek and greenbelt.  During that time we must have seen seven different species of these little guys--more than I had seen during my entire lifetime.  I never dreamed that we might be visited by one here in the park.   But, to our delight, there he was.  I went out to the garden yesterday morning to water and as I moved a branch on the "bleeding heart" plant (that we had planted in May for our Anniversary) there he was!  

I can't tell you how many times I get the raised eyebrow when I tell people that we live in a Mobile Home.  There is such a stigma tied to mobile home living and mobile home parks and, working in Code Enforcement as I do, I admit there are some who live in mobile homes that are not helping to improve the perception.  Having said that, there are also plenty of people who own "normal" homes that are less then upstanding citizens. With the current trend to downsize and simplify, the best way to accomplish that is by purchasing a vintage mobile home (for next to nothing) and renovating it.  That is exactly what my husband and I have done.  We purchased a 1964, 520 square foot, single wide for $3,500 and turned it into a magical place--both beautiful and functional!  I have posted several of our renovation projects over at hometalk.com which you can read about here: http://www.hometalk.com/4079y/posts After posting my renovation projects, I was bombarded with p...

Before we actually started the renovation of our 1964 single-wide Mobile home, my husband Michael scattered some wild flower seeds that we had purchased at Home Depot along with all the cleaning supplies we would need to begin the renovation.  There were already two raised flower beds in the back of the house that our best friend Deni had weeded for us the previous week.. He really had no time to prepare the soil or do really anything right when it comes to seeding a garden.  However, the season was coming to an end and if he didn't scatter those seeds, we would have to wait another year.  I'm so glad he did. I came home from work yesterday and Michael said, "You better check the camera. I have a little surprise for you". And to my delight, Michael had captured a beautiful Junonia coenia .  That's right a Buckeye Butterfly in the family Nymphalidae!  Isn't she lovely! The wild flower seeds that we had purchased said they would attract...

In the bedroom - We wanted to keep the originals; but they kept spinning around whenever we attempted to turn them on and off; and the threads were stripped, so they had to go.  We were able to find similar ones that actually matched the decor better. . The Kitchen as the sun is setting with the new light fixtures on: Thanks Kelly!  You really blessed us today!

Our long awaited Open House happened yesterday!  The idea was for us to meet our new neighbors here at Mobile Country Club in Rancho Cordova.  One of the best things that happened?  We witnessed people who had been living here for quite sometime meet their neighbors for the very first time in our little house. The only thing that might have improved upon the day, would have been the weather.  It was HOT!  So, we were unable to leave the doors and windows open and the area where the refreshments were set up was outside on the patio, in order to allow for more people to move through the house comfortably. Even Betz stopped by on her way to the Jazz Festival:

Although we are not yet finished with all the renovation projects, we have decided to host an "Open House" next Saturday - in order to meet all of our new neighbors. Heck, we may not be done for another year and didn't want to put off meeting people in our new community. The first step was to decide on how to invite everyone. I decided to create a photo collage invitation; save it as a jpg; and, have 4 X 6 photo prints printed at Walgreen's for 10 cents each. (We will be hand delivering these to all 500 and something homes in the park.) Phew - Not looking forward to that! I also really wanted to have something for all the guests who might pop in to meet us and tour our little home to take home with them, so step two was created little favors. I found little organza bags (meant for baby shower favors) at the Dollar Tree - (6 bags for a dollar) and filled them with: 1. A brief bio for both me and Michael with our contact information and our blog addresses tha...

Is this awesome or what?  I spent the evening, (approximately 5 hours) experimenting with something I read about on hometalk.com  It starts with a paste made with Vinegar and Baking soda.  You rub it on, let it sit for a bit, scrub and rinse. The acid in the vinegar and the baking soda combine to cut through lime, calcium, hard water spots and soap scum.  The above picture is actually a close-up of our incredible wire glass shower doors in our 1964 Mobile Home.  With all the renovating we have done, I thought it was high time I actually clean the shower doors.  I was blown away by the quality of glass, the construction of the frame and the wonderful wire mesh that is inside the glass. I still have some scrubbing to do.  Just wish I had known about baking soda and vinegar, 30+ yars ago.  I have spent most of my life, using products that simply can not stand up to this simply solution of vinegar and baking soda. So glad  we didn't rep...

As promised, the following are some "after" pictures.  We have moved everything in and organized most of our things.  We still have several all day projects, like replacing the diverter valve and the washers in the shower.  Currently no functioning shower; but, I can always take a bath until we can get this done.  Yuck! No time to write.  Just enough time to post a few pictures: Bedroom - Notice the TV that plays VHS - Really Modern stuff in a 1964 House - (smiling) Michael at his desk preparing for Sunday's Sermon Looking out from the Kitchen into the Living Room Temporary Patio - Hope to build a small, screened in Platform Patio in a few months Looking into the hallway Bathroom My Favorite Room The Breakfast Bar The entry way - Looking in through the Sliding glass front door! and clearly - Monkey is back to normal!

As much as one attempts to organize and schedule; sometimes things just don't work out the way we plan.  We had earlier in the month successfully moved three, seven foot high, solid oak book cases and two solid oak desks down the skinny flight of stairs.  So, how hard could it be to move a mattress and a "Monkey"? Well, Monday after work was the scheduled day to find out.  This was the first afternoon move that we had scheduled.  Every other move occurred between 6:30 and 8:30 in the cool of the morning.   I had no idea how much that mattered.  It was over 85 degrees when I got to the apartment at 4:30 p.m. It was not only hot; but, I had put in a full day at the office and was tired.  As we attempted to move a queen size mattress down the skinny stairs, a few yellow jackets decided to check things out.  So here I was contending with a very awkward and heavy mattress, walking backwards down the stairs, while trying not to get stung!   Did...

Moving is difficult enough when one is moving into a new house or apartment that is "ready" to occupy; but, moving when you must first tear just about everything out and start from scratch is another thing all together. We closed on March 8th and have invested every free moment in making the house "live-able".  I took Monday and Tuesday off in order to make our move-out date of April 15th.  We had been spending so much time at the new house, that we had not had time to pack the stuff in our apartment.  Plus, we had scheduled to move all the big furniture (accept the bed which is staying until the last minute) on Tuesday; but with the rain we knew we had better move it on Monday or it would not get moved. So Saturday, Monday & Tuesday were 15 hour, non-stop, days.  Our apartment is pretty much packed.  We are now facing carrying down a flight of stairs over 70 boxes.  Here is our apartment as of Tuesday night. We were not able to fit the Oak Tabl...

As many of you know who have been following our progress, I am taking every Tuesday and Friday off from work to get the house ready to move in.  Tuesday morning we would be moving the 7 foot tall solid oak bookcases over to the house, which meant that we had to spend 5 hours Monday night getting them ready to move.  They were screwed to studs in our bedroom, due to the fact that the bedroom was carpeted which is not a stable flooring for 7 foot book cases.  We also had to move them out into the living area and determine the best way to get them onto the landing and ultimately down the flight of narrow stairs in the morning.  We finally went to bed with these towers looming over us as we slept. Deni and Yvonne (a lady that lives on Deni's block) arrived each with a truck and we actually managed to get the three bookcases down the stairs and onto the truck without incident.  We had previously loaded the table saw onto Deni's truck knowing we would need it to ...