Long post coming. We got started on the bathroom a couple of weeks ago. As a refresher, 5 years ago when we bought the house, we had the Jar Jar Binks bathroom

It was a hideous mish mash of wallpaper.

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The giant mirror along two walls plus that bizarre cubby space which had no purpose:

Someone actually wanted this look, too.

We did a minor update on it with wallpaper removal (shudder at the memory) and paint, painting the countertop, and including painting over half the mirror to get a decent room:

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Now is time for the big remodel. We had plan A and plan B depending on what happened when we opened up the wall to see what was going on. Plan A was to install a clawfoot tub tucked into the cubby with a smaller vanity to the side and have a walk-in shower. Plan B was to replace the tub/shower combo and put a linen closet where the cubby is. We just didn’t know what to expect as far as plumbing and all that. Both plans were to be done in two stages to reduce downtime for our shower.

The bathroom was enlarged in the 90s, and in this house – that meant removing a concrete wall between the bathroom and bedroom. Our house really only has 2 walls with framing and drywall, and those are the walls behind and to the left side of the vanity. I can’t imagine what it took to do that.

Anyway, we removed the vanity:

Then the tile. We were using a hammer and chisel first, but the tile was just coming up in bits and pieces. Very frustrating. Then John remembered the hammer drill he has:

Yay! It went much faster after that. The mirror came down, which was pretty amazing in that we got both pieces down without breaking them. However, we did (or John did) break them into pieces to remove them from the room. We didn’t want to try to maneuver a 6 foot sheet of glass down the stairway and through the house. It just didn’t seem like a good idea. So 7 years of bad luck it is!

Then we opened up the wall and floor to see the plumbing:

This is always the time in a project where you do this;

The good news was that we were going to be able to put a clawfoot tub in with a flat trap. The drain pipe was the right size (1.5 inches). I was happily looking at clawfoot tubs and trying to decide. It was going to have to be a shorter tub, around 53 inches so that we could get a 30 inch vanity along side it.

Then we got looking at the shower plumbing. A shower/tub combo will have a 1.5 inch drain and pipe to meet code. When you convert to a walk-in shower with no tub, you need a 2 inch drain and pipe. Well, the piping went into the floor and under concrete. There is no way we can replace the pipe without jackhammering the floor and then we aren’t really sure where it goes from there through the house. That is just too much for us to do and not even something we want to have pros come in and do. So, sadly, I do not get my clawfoot tub and we go with plan B. We are going to replace our tub and surround and then wall off the cubby to make a linen closet.

John moved some of the electrical around, including one outlet that we won’t need in the new space and putting it through the other side into our bedroom. Yay for more plugs in there! Plus he put some metal plates on the studs over any wire or plumbing. Code states this, but it wasn’t there from the previous job. Color me unsurprised.

This weekend was putting up new drywall.

Yes, a bit sloppy on the tape and mud. That’s me. I spent today putting a skim coat on the walls and getting the floor ready for tiling.

Our new vanity is being delivered Wednesday!

So, I’ll wrap this up. It’s a long post, so kudos to you if you made it all the way to the end! Just as an FYI, our shower is still intact, and after we removed the floor tile, we put the toilet back in place so that we can continue to use the bathroom fairly normally (washing our hands in the tub). All of the routine daily stuff like tooth brushing, contacts and such has moved down to the first floor powder room. That is a real pain, but necessary for a while.

We should make good progress this week.

Here are just some miscellaneous musing on New Orleans. This was our first trip to New Orleans since John went full vegetarian. The last time we came he was still eating seafood, but no land meat.

That did present some challenges because a lot of the cuisine here is meat based. Many restaurants only had a token black bean burger, which didn’t interest him. However, we did find some interesting places. And there is a growing number of vegetarian/vegan restaurants like the Ethiopian one we ate at the first night.

This was a vegetarian crepe at the French Market. It had spinach and tomato and I think cheese?

I had some crawfish mac and cheese:

Yum!

Breakfasts were easy with pastries and such. Plus the beignets!

We found a diner type of place called Daisy Dukes, which is a 24-hour restaurant. John got a cheese omelet there. Here I had shrimp and grits. They were really good, although I didn’t care too much for the biscuit.

There is a restaurant called Green Goddess, which does vegan and meat-based cuisine. Quite a mix. It’s a small place, but the food was good. John got a tofu dish. Leafy greens, lemongrass tofu, kimchi and “a bunch of other things” as John said.

My choice was a beef roulade on grits:

That was one of my favorite meals.

We also found plenty of coffee shops. The New Orleans coffee scene is really growing, which is nice to see. It’s not all bars!

Some of the downsides:

I will say that the homeless population in New Orleans seems to have gotten much worse or at least in the French Quarter. The homeless population in New Orleans as a whole has gone down over the last 10 years, but they seem to be coming more to the quarter. We saw a fair number of people sleeping in the streets and next to shops in the early morning. It’s disheartening.

We also saw the Hard Rock Hotel that collapsed in October, I think it was? It’s still standing and kind of shocking to be walking downtown and see it.

I guess they are still trying to figure out how to implode it, which is challenging because of how it has already partially collapsed. They still don’t know what caused the collapse.

Last bit:

We were early for Mardi Gras, so there weren’t any big parades scheduled, but there was one we bumped into at night.

It was a youth parade. Some members seemed quite young. The back of the parade was all adults walking and handing out beads. I’m not sure what this was, but it was fun seeing it.

This guy was mesmerizing to watch:

He seemed to kind of lead the parade, but wasn’t a drum major or anything. I wanted to keep following him. It was like a moth to flame LOL! You just never know what you will find in New Orleans.

On one of our vacation days, John wanted to hit up Harrah’s casino, which left me to my own devices in New Orleans. Not far from the casino was a newly renovated building called Sazerac House.

The building itself is from around 1800 and the Sazerac company purchased it a couple of years ago to become a centerpiece of their business. Sazerac is a rye distiller first and foremost, although they do rum, Southern Comfort along with a few other alcohols and also bitters.

The building opened up to the public last October and it is gorgeous inside! They have a free tour that you can take. Obviously the point is to introduce you to their products and get you to purchase, but it was really an enjoyable tour about the rise of the cocktail in New Orleans.

The bitters sampling room:

They actually make the Peychaud’s Bitters on site. Bitters are basically herbs soaked in alcohol, which becomes super concentrated. We sampled a drop on the back of our hands, which was all you needed – bitters are potent!

Brewing tanks:

It takes 10 days to make a batch of bitters, so each tank on this wheel is one day and they can be in constant productions.

Fun vintage displays throughout:

This was an interactive display where you could step up to one of those tables and learn about cocktails and how they were part of the nighttime life in New Orleans.

You will note there were not many people in the building. I went just after lunch and hit a sweet time where hardly any people were touring when I was, so I got to ask lots of questions and get personal attention from the various guides along the way. Yay! At this table, you pick a coaster, drop it on the table and information pops up on the table:

That’s all a touch screen and you can flip through the paper and stuff. There are 3 different coasters (the hexagon) and each one gives you a different interactive experience.

There were 3 samples during the tour. One was rum.

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Only the bottom barrels are filled and tapped as they are too heavy when filled for the top two tiers. They found that out after the fact LOL! I don’t drink spirits straight, so I wasn’t crazy about the rum on it’s own. I do like it in mixed drinks, though.

There was a virtual bartender where you sat and chose a drink and he would mix it for you. There were 4 different bars to choose from: a dive bar, an upscale French quarter bar, a tropical bar and a modern one. I chose the New Orleans one.

I had him make me a Sazerac. After this was the actual tasting of the Sazerac. The Sazerac cocktail was born in New Orleans and consists of:

• 1.5 oz Sazerac Rye Whiskey
• 1 sugar cube
• 3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
• .25 oz Herbsaint
• Lemon twist

First the bitters and sugar cube are crushed and muddled in a glass, then the whiskey is added. A separate glass is coated with the Herbsaint (best done with a mister) and the whiskey mixture is added. Then the lemon twist is squeezed over the cocktail. Kind of a complex cocktail. First notes are lemon and licorice (the Herbsaint) and then the herbs and warmth from the whiskey. I actually kind of liked this drink. I tend to like my mixed drinks on the sweeter side and this was just slightly sweet. The samples were a small cup, pretty much the size of a little white paper ketchup cup at a takeout restaurant. So maybe an ounce if that.

Then the bourbon distillery part:

They actually make bourbon in this location but it has to be sent to Kentucky for aging as New Orleans doesn’t get cold enough during the aging process to properly pull out the charred wood characteristics in bourbon.

The building is really gorgeous and beautifully restored as well. I loved the wall of spirits:

Two floors tall. At the end of the tour like any good theme park ride, it dumps you out into the gift shop LOL! There you can purchase the different products they have or other non-alcohol merchandise. Overall an informative and interesting tour. Plus it’s free – so you can’t beat that!

We have been to New Orleans 5 or 6 times. I can’t remember LOL – but we have never visited the botanical garden. Part of it was not knowing it existed earlier, but also not thinking about gardens in January. Things actually bloom in the south during winter, who knew?

Our day started with a couple of pastries at Croissant D’Or:

This is a nice cozy place. We went here twice, actually.

We knew the gardens would be a little quiet, but definitely worth the trip. Admission is $8. The garden is part of City Park and 10 acres in size. So, not huge, but right in the city. We took a bus from the French Quarter to City Park and then walked through the park to the garden.

Being winter, there were not many people. It was also chilly and cloudy, so that probably played a factor as well.

Wall o’ plants:

These were young plants that weren’t really blooming yet. This wall will be covered in flowers later this year. I bet it looks amazing!

During the summer, the garden has a working mini train area.

This is something I would love to do in my garden.

There are actually groups that are dedicated to train gardens and how to build them. Like I need *another* project…

Peek through a greenhouse window:

A Japanese garden:

You can see this tree has weights on the branches so that it shapes their growth:

Then the conservatory area:

It was nice and warm in this building. Very damp, too.

Lots of orchids in bloom. You could just look around and they would be in a tree or rock edge.

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Pitcher plant:

This is a carnivorous plant. Insects get drawn into the nectar in the opening and fall in. They can’t get out and get digested in the belly of the plant. Ick.

It was a nice way to spend the early part of the day. We exited going through the magnolia area, which were just starting to bloom:

So pretty! I’m bummed that our magnolia tree died. Our neighbor planted one last year, but it didn’t look very good at the end of the season, so not sure that will come back.

After a chilly day, we had a nice warm dinner at the Gumbo Shop. They serve many classic NO dishes like jambalaya and etouffee.

I had a classic chicken and sausage gumbo:

John had a vegan gumbo:

His bowl got a little slopped over, so sorry about that picture. It was full of veggies and rice. This is not on the printed menu, but you can ask for it. There is also a vegetarian gumbo. He said it was quite good.

We split a bread pudding after dinner:

The sauce was a little boozy! I actually like my bread pudding better, but it was still good 🙂

We finally had our long awaited vacation! We spent 5 days in New Orleans. It wasn’t super warm, but a lot warmer than upstate NY! You do forget that temps in the 50s sounds way warmer than it really is when you are in the middle of January in the North Country LOL. The nights were cooler and temps around 60 or so.

We stayed at Place D’Armes, where we have stayed a few times. It’s really right in the heart of the French Quarter. I was excited when we first got into our room because it had a great balcony!

It overlooked the alley between our hotel and I think restaurants and hotels across the street.

I loved the balcony, but it ended up being way too noisy for us, particularly when the trash trucks came at 4 a.m. and banged around the metal dumpsters. After a couple of days, we asked to be moved to a room overlooking the courtyard instead.

New balcony:

I told John he had to wave in all the pictures 😀 Looking down into the courtyard:

There was a pool, but it was a little too cold for swimming, although someone was swimming one day and they must have been freezing!

We got into New Orleans around dinner time, so we unpacked (into the old room) and then headed out for an African restaurant that we had been to probably 20 years ago or so on our first trip to New Orleans. It’s called Benechin and is really a little hole in the wall place, but the food is good. It was easy for John to eat here (being vegetarian) as they had a lot of choices.

You will have to excuse the lighting for these photos. It was terrible in this restaurant and no amount of editing will help that LOL!

John had a black-eyed pea dish with coconut rice and fried plantains:

I had a baked chicken with sauteed spinach, coconut rice and fried plantains:

These were yummy and a lot of food. We spent the rest of the evening walking around the quarter and reacquainting ourselves with the city. We stopped for some jazz at one of the many Cafe Beignet places:

Of course, we had to have some beignets!

This was one of my favorite places to listen to music during our stay. It was bright and open.

Pretty much every coffee shop and cafe serves alcohol in New Orleans.

I’ll be posting more from our vacation, but will leave you with a shot of the French Quarter at night:

Hi strangers! I can’t believe it has been so long since I blogged. Already near the end of January. We had a good Christmas, ate a lot of food, spent time with family. Work has been pretty busy still, and a lot of recovery from the busy holiday season and needing to make new inventory.

I have decided that my word for 2020 is Focus. Sometimes I feel like I get pulled in way too many directions and I that can get me frantic feeling.

Anyway, I wanted to share this beautiful sunrise picture I took this morning:

The sky was golden. So pretty. I need to learn how to erase all those things in the picture so it is just sunrise and horizon.

We have decided to tackle a big home renovation project this year – the upstairs bath. We did a “lipstick” makeover on it with wallpaper removal and paint a few years ago, but we are wanting to really make the bathroom nice. We have some preliminary plans, which are scribbled out on this sheet 😀

There are some unknowns until we actually disassemble some things, like the sink area. The back wall in this bathroom was knocked out to expand it, so we have one wall that is drywall, but the rest are the concrete/cement walls. We need to find out where the piping runs so that hopefully, fingers uber crossed, that we can get at least a small clawfoot tub in the bathroom and convert the shower to a walk in. So much depends on what we find for drains and venting that is already there.

I have done some shopping for my feet lately. I have a new pair of sneaker type shoes.

These are from Sketchers and they have partnered with PetCo to work with adoptions for animals. Cute and they do good!

Those of you on Facebook saw my new boots:

Excuse the picture taken in the back of the store. I have wanted boots like this for a long time, but I need wide width shoes and finding boots that fit my feet and my calves is impossible. Boots the actually fit both would bunch up around the ankles and look terrible. Well, wouldn’t you know that when i was not even looking for boots – I found these on clearance for $8 ! What a deal and they fit. I’m a happy camper 🙂

We will be going on a much, much needed vacation very soon. Our first real trip in several years. I didn’t make my goal of 20 pounds, but I got about halfway to that. Christmas cookies happened 😀 It’s all good, though.

I haven’t updated my progress in a while. Really, I have just been maintaining for the past month. Lose half a pound, gain half pound, lose half a pound, gain a pound. Maintaining right now is a good thing. I am snacking more because of the stress of the holidays. Still holding to 8.5 pounds down with a goal of 20 by the beginning of February. Not so likely to happen, but who knows? Anything is possible. And I’m happy with any progress towards that goal.

Business has been super busy, which is good stress, but still stress. Things should start to quiet down in the next couple of days. I’ll be putting my shop on vacation and letting Amazon handle the orders from what I sent in to the warehouse.

Each year at this time we think – “I know it’s going to be busy and hectic, but I forget *how* busy and hectic it is” LOL. Like Groundhog day – it never changes. At least shopping is pretty much all done.

My gym is at the mall and when I went there today the gym wasn’t crowded, but the mall sure was! Eeek! Doesn’t make me want to go there again before Christmas.

Anyway, Just a pop in post!

I had been contemplating a new mattress for the last year or so. Ours was over 10 years old and not really top of the line. It developed a sag in the middle and being a pillow top mattress, once you rolled to the middle it was a fight to get out LOL.

Mattresses are big purchases and we needed to shake out the cost of my hysterectomy after all was said and done with insurance to see if it was feasible. Turns out we were in the clear! So, the hard part came in choosing a mattress.

I wanted to go with a mattress in a box because they all come with such long trial periods and free delivery. I have to say that deciding on one was driving me crazy. I had settled on either a Nectar, Tuft & Needle or Purple as the brands that had qualities I was looking for.

One of the top things was a mattress that sleeps cool. For many years I have been roasting at night. Waking up sweaty and just too hot – even in winter. Poor John is wearing flannels and has used an extra blanket on his half of the bed while I slept in a t-shirt.

I finally pressed “place order” on a Tuft & Needle Mint Queen mattress. It was on sale at the time, which was good because that company doesn’t do discounts or coupon codes. They actually have this brand available at Lowes, of all places, but they don’t carry the Mint, which is the upgraded model with the 3 layers I wanted because of the sleep cool factor. The top layer of the Mint has graphite in it, which is what pulls body heat away (I guess that is how it works anyway).

This is the Mint (picture courtesy of tuftandneedle.com)

The mattress arrived a few days later in a box. A very heavy box. It must have been 100 pounds. We got that up the stairs and then opened it up. You can just see the rolled up mattress to the right. Sorry there isn’t a better picture of it.

I had mild concerns about the mattress with how banged up the box was, but it was fine inside a heavy duty plastic bag. Very tightly rolled. As soon as we started unrolling it, the mattress started to decompress, so no good picture of it really flat.

We left it for 24 hours just to give it a chance to fully decompress and let it air out from a bit of a “mattress wrapped in plastic” smell. Luckily we have a huge master and room for the queen mattress to be on the floor of the same room. For a 100-year-old house, that is quite the rarity.

Poofed up:

This mattress is a bit firmer than our old one and having a memory foam core means you don’t feel your partner getting in and out of bed, which is awesome! It was a bit weird at first sleeping on a bed that wasn’t sagging LOL.

It took a little getting used to for a few nights, but one thing that is amazing to me? No night sweats!! For a month now I have slept cool and I just can’t get over that. For any of you that are hot sleepers, I can’t recommend this enough! Hooray for graphite 😀

It fit right on our box spring that we already had. Really, it’s just like a regular mattress. The mattress is a couple inches shorter than our old one, so we may have to do something with our headboard to lower it a little. It’s attached to the wall.

There is a trial of 100 nights to return it, but we won’t be doing that. After a couple of weeks, we got rid of our old mattress and are happy on this one. Plus it has a 10 year warranty! Tuft & Needle didn’t pay me anything for this. I just purchased and wanted to share my thoughts!

I can’t believe it has been a month since I blogged last. I keep starting posts, but then don’t get them finished. We are in the busy season here now. I’m not feeling frantic like last year, which is good, but still time goes by so fast!

We did have the most beautiful sunrise this morning. I took this photo while walking downtown for breakfast:

We actually were able to get on the bikes this week, too. First time in a month for me – kind of like my last blog post! It snowed and then was just too cold for riding. Normally we get some kind of riding in November, but not really this year. Now we have a cold front coming in, so perhaps it is done all together. I haven’t brought the bike inside yet because you always have that glimmer of hope.

We have our traditional Thanksgiving planned down at my sister’s house. Lots of food, games, football and family time!

Have safe travels where ever you go and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

John and I took an overnight getaway last weekend. One problem we have with running our businesses is that we tend to work all the time, including weekends because when orders come in – you go work on them, even if they don’t ship until Monday. Sometimes the only way to not do that is to physically go away.

Luckily, John had a free hotel night through credit card rewards, so we just found a place that wasn’t too far of a drive that had a room available, which turned out to be Rutland, Vermont. It was a very nice weekend weather wise and we were able to catch some nice fall colors, albeit a bit past peak.

Downtown Rutland is a fun town. There was a big market going on, which we browsed around before having some lunch. I was all about having a bagel for lunch!

Rutland has a lot of stone and marble buildings and it seemed like a lot of churches LOL

Marble was a big industry for Vermont and it shows.

We tried some yummy drinks at a taproom with dinner. When you can’t decide, try a flight!

The one on the left was not a beer but a cider – a pumpkin cider! It was my favorite drink and had a cinnamon sugar rim. Need to find more of that.

Our hotel was decent. Not great considering the price of the room (although free for us), but they did have a pool that we swam in. I haven’t been swimming in probably 1-1/2 years. My suit has seen better days 😀

On Sunday, we had a leisurely breakfast and then headed out to a maple museum:

The museum seems a little old, but with a really nice and brand spanking new gift shop attached to it.

John made a new friend at the entrance:

Really old equipment for gathering syrup from the woods.

Maple syrup is everywhere around here being the northeast, so you don’t always think that much about it. The syrup making season runs about 6 weeks in the spring when the sap flows.

Making syrup started with the native Americans, who used to boil the syrup by putting hot stones into the sap. These are some of the original kettles used by early settlers in America.

Did you know that it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup? Each tree will produce about 10 gallons of sap per tap and the number of taps in a tree depends on how big the tree is.

These days there are commercial evaporators to boil the sap:

The sap is boiled and goes through the various trays in the evaporator to the correct sugar concentration at the end, which goes into the filter tank:

Then it is graded and packaged. Personally, both John and I prefer the dark grade maple that comes at the end of the sugaring season. It has a really intense flavor. It’s considered a syrup grade for cooking, but I like it on things.

It’s surprising to me that maple syrup is not more expensive. It goes around $45-50 per gallon here and considering how much work and sap it takes to make that gallon – it’s a good deal.

We sampled a lot of syrups and got a few maple products in the gift shop and then worked our way back home, including a stop in Lake George, decked out for Halloween!

It was nice to get away, even for an overnight. We really need to do that more often just to refresh and recharge – even if the accommodations aren’t free LOL!