“Mo-o-o-om, Molly’s Using the Little Dog Bed Again!”

Bedroom Progress

As I mentioned in my last renovation post (wa-a-ay back in November), Jim didn’t let any grass grow under his feet after finishing the master bedroom renovation…he immediately began working on our daughter’s bedroom.

This room had a lot of issues – icky lavender paint, navy blue carpet and scrawny, little baseboard:

One wall had a pocket door that we wanted to get rid of, another wall was on a diagonal, and the end of the closet was also on a diagonal. It made for a lot of awkward places in the room:

And of course, there was the popcorn ceiling, which pretty much made my skin crawl every time I looked at it:

Jim demo’d the walls we wanted to change:

He patched the gaps in the ceiling where the old studs used to be:

The yucky old popcorn ceiling got scraped off:

Jim brought home another load from Home Depot and studded in the new walls:

He put up new drywall and went through countless hours of taping, mudding and sanding. He applied a knockdown texture to the ceiling and new walls, and then primed the ceiling and all walls. He painted the ceiling white:

And – surprise, surprise – he painted the walls pink:

He installed the same bamboo flooring that we used in the master. Then he did such a bang-up job on the baseboards that I wrote a tutorial called Installing Colonial Baseboard and published it on HubPages.

And the most recent addition to K’s room was – TA DA! The first completed door in the house! Jim built it from scratch, rather than buying a pre-hung door:

We need to finish the closet and put up decorative items, but K’s already moved in with her bed, chest, dresser, and pink butterfly chair. It’s great to have two functional bedrooms again!

Another Back Yard Critter

We had a new visitor yesterday in the back yard.

He’s a wood stork, and is probably down in this area for the winter. He has a long, decurved beak and a very interesting, scruffy-looking head – it reminds me of a turkey or vulture with its roughness. His body was white, with just a little black underneath, his legs were black and he had pink feet.

In the U.S., the wood stork is an endangered species and is the only stork that presently breeds here. It lives off a diet of fish, frogs and insects.

Christmas Day Visitor

We had a back yard visitor on Christmas Day…as usual, I had to run get my camera and telephoto lens to get a shot. This particular critter is called an anhinga.

If you’ve ever seen this bird swimming, you know why it’s also called the snakebird – it swims with its body submerged and, with just its head and curvy neck sticking out of the water, it looks like a snake. Another common name for the anhinga is the water turkey, due to its long tail.

After swimming, it likes to perch and spread out its wings and tail to dry. I could tell this bird was a female anhinga, because her head, neck and breast are buff-colored.

These birds will dive underwater to hunt for food – It’s interesting to watch them come up with a small fish clutched in their beaks and then carefully flip it into position so they can swallow it.

And a last little tidbit of information – the binomial name of this bird is anhinga anhinga, which for some reason just cracks me up…it’s like someone ran out of ideas when they were naming this bird, and just used the same word twice

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Roseate Spoonbill

I know it’s been forever since I last posted – much has been happening, which is why I haven’t written in a while, and I will try to post a detailed update soon.

For now I wanted to share a photo of our new backyard visitor. As I’ve mentioned before, Allen’s Creek runs right through our back yard. It’s a brackish water creek that feeds into Tampa Bay, which connects with the Gulf of Mexico. We are really enjoying watching and identifying the wildlife. So far we’ve seen lots of turtles, pelicans, yellow-crowned night herons, crabs, white ibis, anhinga, river otters and ducks.

Recently I saw a big pink bird flying by…I started yelling that there was a flamingo out back and ran to get my camera.  After examining the shots I took and taking a close look at the fellow’s beak, I realized that it wasn’t a flamingo – our bird book helped me I.D. it as a roseate spoonbill.

It was gorgeous!  It’s the only spoonbill bird species native to North America.  It is a wading bird which feeds by rhythmically sweeping its spatulate bill back and forth through the water.  I haven’t seen one feeding yet – this guy was just hanging out with his buddies on Bird Island.

This other little guy was also hanging out on Bird Island – I think he was posing to be on the back of a coin I’m a little unsure, but I think he’s a great cormorant. They have a large hooked bill and a bright yellow throat patch bordered by white feathers. One of their characteristics is that, when perched wet, they will hold their wings in a spread eagle position to dry.

There’s never a dull moment in the Huebsch House back yard!

A Lot of Pooh in Our Bathroom

My blog friend Leena over at Bye, Bye Brooklyn had a recent post about the quirky switchplates in their 130-year-old house which they’re renovating.  I got to thinking…we don’t have a lot of quirky switchplates in our house, mainly because we hardly have ANY switchplates period in our house.  However, there is a stellar one which I have to share.

Yes, Winnie the Pooh adorns our bathroom wall – but wait, there’s more! The previous owners were apparently Pooh-maniacs. Pooh is surrounded by lots of blue clouds.

There are blue clouds over the doorway…

blue clouds over the window…

blue clouds over the shower…

and blue clouds on the light soffit.

But wait, there’s EVEN more! There’s a Winnie the Pooh cabinet knob:

And we wouldn’t want Pooh Bear to be lonely, so there are also Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet knobs:

And we’re not Pooh-i-fied enough yet – there are Pooh and Tigger stencils EVERYWHERE…on drawer fronts:

On closet doors:

And my personal favorite, over the toilet paper holder:

I guess you can never have too much Pooh in the bathroom