Name Change

Last week, I went to probate court, and legally changed my last name and added a middle name, to signify a new start in my life. We celebrated by having a late breakfast mostly to tide over until the ice cream shack FINALLY opened. I chose pina colada ice cream, my sis had black raspberry and it was quite good.

 

We meandered through the country side and stopped at a beautiful pond. We picked mushrooms, and life was excellent.

 

I spent most of the week going many places to change my name, like the DMV and city hall and my local bank. Turns out the DMV needs my naturalization papers too, so I can go back there next week.

 

Since I changed my name, I figured I could as well change my hair too. It turned out a bit more flamboyant than I expected, but it should wash out eventually. I half love it, half am happy it will wash out ^^

 

Licorice Ice Cream

Every time I go pick up the girls from dance class, I drive past this ice cream place advertising '24 flavours of soft serve ice cream!' Every time I drive past, I wonder how one can even design 24 different soft serve flavours. So it was unavoidable that we found ourselves stopping there on the way back from dance class, especially since it was someone's birthday.

 

We stopped and studied the chart. I now realize I forgot to count the number of flavors, but there were quite a lot. Maybe I should go back another day to count how much variety they have. Just to make sure of truth in advertizing.

 

One girl chose espresso soft serve.
The next girl chose pina colada.
Third girl went for chocolate coconut.
And me? I couldn't resist the licorice ice cream.

 

It was surprisingly good and we all enjoyed our ice cream and life is even better once one knows where one can get licorice ice cream.

 

Hobbit Hole

First one in my series of 'Houses which fascinate me and I briefly considered, but then common sense took over and I didn't'

This is what they call an earth sheltered house, but I would call it a hobbit hole.



It does not have any heat source beyond passive solar, which might or might not be a good idea in Vermont.

It has many advantages, like low heating costs (I hope ^^) and it just is a very cool concept. How can one not love a house like this?



What did worry me was where it says 'Needs extensive work' I mean. I do have seven willing workers, cough, but somehow it still didn't feel like the best decision to move into this house and pretend to be hobbits.

A few days ago we actually tried to FIND this hobbit house, just to see what it looked like from the outside. We drove and we drove and we drove. Roads got smaller. Woods sprang up around us. Thunder storms were raging. We got farther and farther away from Vermont's major civilization.

After driving for an inordinate amount of time, we finally arrived on the right dirt road. We tried to find the correct house number, but the house numbers were not in any logical or helpful order. We went back and forth on this road for a while, but it was very clear that this house was a bit too private and far away for us.

Click here to see the house. Read 25 reasons to get an earth sheltered home. Here are some myths and facts.

Still, this house is not for us. Too bad ^^ It would have been fun to be a hobbit.

Weather Forecast

 

Today

 

Showers likely early...then a chance of showers

 

Gotta love living in New England...

 

Fire Tower

 

First fire tower climb of the season.

 

 

I LOVE the views.

 

Six Miles Hike

We went hiking / geocaching in Concord and had a wonderful time.

 

We were organized enough to have two cars, so we could park one on one end of the trail system and one on the other end, enabling us to hike all the way from one side to the other. It was a beautiful hike.

 

We met squirrels, who would yell at us for disturbing the peace in their forest.

 

We saw many frogs and toads.

 

It was a great day and I plan on doing many more hikes this summer.

Nachos and Cheese and House Hunting

I grew up in the Netherlands, where there is not much variety in cuisines beyond Chinese food, which usually is actually Indonesian over there. My mom was a typical Dutch person with a healthy suspicion for any food which wasn't Dutch or Indonesian, so we ate boiled potatoes and boiled veggies and meat. We definitely never ate nachos and cheese. Heck, I am not sure whether I even knew about the existence of nachos and cheese.

When I moved to the States, I heard about them, but it took awhile before I actually got to eat them. Once I did... I was addicted! Somehow I never learned how to make them though. So much life, so little time. A a few days ago, I decided to start to learn. I was home by myself and put some nachos with grated cheese topping in the oven. Not bad, but not really what I wanted. I was envisioning the gooey yummy cheese sauce I am used to see on nachos.

Fast forward to tonight when I tried this recipe from the Big Red Kitchen. I was attracted to the simplicity of the recipe. I mean, I wanted to make nachos and cheese, but I didn't want to spend tons of time to prepare before I could eat them. They turned out very well with sharp cheddar and mozarella (the cheeses we had available) and everyone enjoyed them. Well, the ones that like nachos and cheese that is.

 

On Friday we spent our first day house hunting. We looked at four houses. First one was old town offices, a lovely house, school with big playground and ball field in the back yard, and interesting attics. The drawback was a very old, very small kitchen and the biggest drawback was the very busy road in the front yard. Both the house and the front yard location didn't feel like our best choice.

Second house was boring looking on the outside, but excellent on the inside. It was a newer house, built in 2003. Four bedrooms, everything in such good shape. Walk out basement, nice big backyard, and to make it really Vermonty, it was at the end of a dead end dirt road. This house gets the top place for now.

 

Third house had The Best Kitchen Ever, and was in good shape. It had a cemetery behind the backyard, which the realtor was apologetic about, but we reassured her that we would be fine with that. What I wasn't fine with was yet again a very busy road in the front. Not to mention that the 'river frontage' which had been advertised as something wonderful and perfect, was on the other side of the road. Let's just say that kids and busy roads do not go together well. It would be a great house for a family with older, or no kids. But not for us.

Fourth house looked great in the pictures, but was in bad shape and built by a do-it-yourselver who wasn't a very good do-it-yourselver. It had many weird issues, and it again wasn't our best choice for a house.

 

One out of four isn't bad though, is it?

Tonight, we spent some time driving past more houses. Some got rejected when we couldn't find it after driving for three hours on a smaller and smaller dirt road and STILL not being there. Others got rejected for other visible reasons when we drove by. It was interesting to drive around on unknown dirt roads and NOT knowing whether this was either a dirt road which went somewhere, or a dirt road which would disappear into mud and nothingness. With big drop offs next to the road for good measure. Making me wonder how I would EVER be able to turn around the van here if needed.

Did I mention how it was raining? And we drove through a Very Impressive Thunder Storm and I did not like half of the dirt roads, and life was wet and that is why we needed nachos and cheese when we came home.