A lot to see between California and Iowa!

We've seen so much since the last update! We'll have to skip over some things, but here's a look at what we did in September.

La Pine turned into a whirlwind of projects as our back slide turned out to be completely moldy and needing replacement. What a good thing that Abe decided to bring so many of his tools! His work in replacing a complete FLOOR was very impressive.

 Across Oregon and into Idaho - totally new landscapes! Rhanna was pretty freaked out at the lack of trees, so she was happy when we got into Montana.

Yellowstone involves a lot of driving while in the park in order to get to the different areas, but we were lucky to see quite a few animals on our first day. Emrys had been wanting to get to Yellowstone for months, so seeing a bison up close in the first fifteen minutes was super exciting for him. He also really loved the museums, and all the kids enjoyed working on the Junior Ranger program.

We celebrated Rhanna's 18th birthday while at Yellowstone! She wanted to dunk herself in Yellowstone Lake to commemorate the occasion; it was cold, but she did it!

Made it to Jackson, Wyoming to see the Tetons! The girls and I drove a different route and arrived earlier than the boys, so we had time to walk a labyrinth.

The Autumn colors were stunning!

Tea party with magic tricks under the crabapple tree in Jackson.

Rest areas in Wyoming are FUN.

We ended September in South Dakota, where we were met with a DOOZY of a storm, with high winds, about three inches of rain, and flood warnings. We kept checking this little creek behind our parking space for trouble, but it never overflowed its banks, thank goodness!

This rain was not the cute kind of rain we get on the west coast, no; it was a deluge. So we stayed indoors hiding out for the last couple of days of September. You'll see Mt. Rushmore in October. :)

PS - you can read a little more about this on a new blog we've recently started with another Fulltiming family, here: http://www.nomaderwherewego.com/thunderstorms-in-south-dakota/

Our mascots

This great room is finally finished! The fairy lights are up and Falkor (our Luck Dragon mascot) is here; here's a panorama to tide you over until we come visit and you can see it in person. ;)

(click to enlarge)

Our other mascot is Mr. Lawrence, our kraken/squid/octopus Cephalopod of Greatness who holds all of our fandoms. He rides on the back. :)

 getting it all on was tricky. . .ironically, I needed more hands!

Closeups - find your fandom!

Verdant Bedroom!

Admittedly, I jump into projects I am excited about, but normally I begin with a good plan. In this case, I knew the redecorating would be a great change so I made everyone promise to remind me to take "Before" photos before I started painting the bedroom. Did this happen? NO. Is it my fault? I could argue that one. haha

So here are some stock photos I found online which approximate the "Before" room, at least color-wise.

Rhanna did take a panorama, but it's kind of dark (and Gwynnie looks scared to death, lol!):

Now the room is a forest of greens (I think five or six different shades. . .I lost count!) and is much brighter and happier. I replaced the chair with a bookshelf and Gwynnie's little desk (my Nana made both pieces for me - the bookshelf when I was in high school, and the desk/chair when I was about two years old). I took out the fake built-in "desk" and put half of Gwynnie's play kitchen (also made by Nana, for Rhanna when she was four years old). It was important to me that Gwynnie still have a place to play kid stuff, and pretty cool that she gets to travel with furniture her woodworking great-grandmother made. Then I added a little "garden" in the tiny bedroom hallway, which is pretty fun. Gwynnie wants me to add more flowers to the rest of the walls, but I think that might be a bit much. ;)

This week we are starting to move in! There's more redecorating I want to do, namely curtains and floors, but those will have to happen next month. Well, curtains certainly - floors might be a while!

The kitchen is also finished - the silver-tin backsplashes made a huge difference. Photos soon!

Second Week Renovations and TULIPS

Well, I could have finished the Great Room (haha) today, but instead we decided to get out and enjoy the sunshine, opting for some touristy sightseeing, which we have hardly done at all since being in Washington. It was a good test of how long the kids could stand to be in the truck. 

Going forward, it might be best to keep travel days to about four hours. :)

So we drove north to the Skagit Tulip Festival, where basically you drive around on backroads and look at tulips. :) This field was so bright red, and with the bright solid white of Mount Baker in the background, it was striking. 

Plus, a cute farmhouse!

Obligatory photos in the fields:

Who wants to be a goofy tourist?? These kids do!

Okay, so here's where we are with the RV. I finished up all the trim and 

got most of the doors and hardware back in place:

And it's looking really good! So much brighter and cheerier!

I've got a few more cupboard doors to put back up, will need to paint the large doors and install the tin backsplashes (those will make a huge difference!), but I'm about ready to move on to the back bedroom.

Until next week!

First Week Renovations

It's in my nature to wait until a project is finished before showing the result, but this is supposed to be about chronicling the process, so here's an update of what has changed in the first week that we've had our RV.

Gwynnie spent time getting comfortable with the new drawing table in the dining area 

and "painting" the exterior (with water)

Thane helped begin removing the exterior advertising decals 

(it's just a "thing" of mine to not advertise for people who aren't paying me!)

He's got two and a half sides finished now. :)

We have big plans to add a collection of new decals - more on that later!

 

And the biggest changes are happening in the living room / kitchen area. Here's the a photo of what it looked like when I first started adding blue painter's tape everywhere:

The lighter cabinets had an overglaze on them that made them look distressed, grubby, and dirty - I think that's a premium feature, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. Here's a close-up, with the beginnings of my first coat of actual clean linen.

Here's about where we are today:

It's sort of dark inside, so this photo makes it look more purple than it is; mainly the back walls are a light blue, and the cabinet doors are a white linen (not white-white). I'm also doing the trim (the stripes of brown you see above) in a darker blue that makes for some great highlights (photo of that later). 

Two other cool things I've done: The entire back of the island (that's pushed in front of the fridge in the above photo) is a blue chalkboard for the kids to play with, and several of the panels I underpainted with magnetic paint, so we can hang magnets everywhere. They are SO COOL.

It actually works! Woo! Now we can collect little magnets wherever we go and display 

them all over our main room. It's going to be so fun.

The last things we did today involved dismantling furniture and increasing our storage space.

We took out the hide-a-bed in the living room loveseat, which will give us a secret compartment

 for things like bulky jackets and things like that that we don't need very often. 

We're going to cover the loveseat with a more coordinating slipcover.

The table was originally installed perpendicular to the windows, but with both leaves in (which we need so all six of us can sit together to eat), it stuck out pretty far into the room - no FLOW. :)

Here's another in-process photo that shows that:

We unscrewed the table from the floor and re-positioned it parallel to the wall, and added a cedar chest as a bench seat in the back - now we'll have a huge amount of space for pantry items in the chest and comfortable seating for all of us as well! And FLOW! Pretty cool.

So that's it for the first week. Next week I'll have the painting finished and will post completed photos. It's going to be unrecognizable from the dark interior full of browns and tans. Maybe I'll even have some new curtains finished. (I started cutting fabric for those today!)