Dishman Hills Buttercup Hike

Today I went for a guided interpretive walk in Dishman Hills. It was their Annual Buttercup Hike, led by former Dishman Hills Conservation Association President Michael Hamilton.
Here he is now.
 

Geologists sure have a gneiss sense of humor.

Michael's a geologist. He gave us a nice geological and community-related history of the area. It is a great place to go to see pre-pioneer plant life. 

I learned something new today, which is always good. I knew of the buttercup at the top of this post that the hike is named after, and I also knew the purple, nodding grass widow from looking it up a few years ago. A new one for me was the yellow glacier lily.

We heard the story of how to tell if the tree you're under is a Douglas Fir. Apparently many years ago there was a great flood near a colony of mice. The little mice were in a panic. They didn't know what to do. They finally found shelter in the cone of a Douglas Fir, and to this day you can see all their tiny mouse tails sticking out of the Douglas Fir cone.

Finally we made it to a lovely viewing area looking out across Spokane Valley toward Mount Spokane.

We encountered rain, hail and sunshine on this hike and I even got to see a marmot at the beginning. I wasn't fast enough with the old camera phone, unfortunately. All in all, a good time!
 

Happy Trails

This Sunday I met up with some women from a Meet Up group and walked a small portion of the Centennial Trail. It was a frigid morning; the temperature was hovering right around 32. I was glad I had decided to bring a 3rd layer and my gloves. Walking helped warm me up some, but never to the point I usually achieve when I get so hot I need to remove my outer jacket.

 

The trip was a success and it was nice to meet some new people. I love that this is a women's walking group, so it feels very cozy and quirky and not uncomfortable at all. They are also women who don't feel the need to go at a breakneck speed, so it was great to walk along at a decent pace. Three of them brought their dogs, but since it was my first time out with the group I decided to leave mine at home and just enjoy a leash-free walk for once.

 

I learned that one woman does Doggy Freestyle and dances with her pooch. She had some good sources for agility too even though her dog, Scout, does not participate in agility, so that was nice. I think Kirby would do well at something like that, but he does need to be worked with some more. He has a hard time deciding that what we ask of him is the right thing to do and instead prefers to ignore us sometimes.

 

Another woman had a boisterous yellow lab, Murphy. Only nine months old! He was big, of course, and very friendly and excitable. She (of course I never remember the people's names) had recently moved up here from Tampa, and was still adjusting to ice. I felt for her. This is the first winter in Spokane that I can remember not being totally depressed and malcontent.

 

Partway through the walk we saw a dead, frozen mouse on the trail. On the way back, one of the dogs made a move to pick it up, naturally. He was told to leave it and responded perfectly. I wonder how well Odin and Kirby will do when I bring them out next time. I am going to take turns with them at first. Just one dog at a time in a group setting is enough for me I think.

 

On the way back to the cars, we noticed a pretty little dead bird at the side of the bridge crossing the Spokane River. The group leader identified it as a Cedar Waxwing. It was a beautiful bird, with a yellow band at the tip of its tail, red spots on its wings and a black band on its face like a bandit. I'm not sure if it was just the extreme cold that got to the mouse and the waxwing or what. It was a stark reminder that life outdoors is not carefree.

 

I had set up an app on my phone that tracked our progress and at the end of our round trip it said we had gone 3 miles in just over an hour. Once back in the car, I realized just how cold I had been when I started to shiver at the faint warmth. I cranked up the heater and headed for home. I do look forward to the next Sunday Centennial Trail walk.

I See What You Did Chair

My mom found these chairs for my dining room several years ago at a thrift store. (Thanks Mom!)

I never really minded their look although Chris sure did, but now that we've moved I decided they did need an update. They have now found new life!

Behold, I give you Before & After: Dining Room Chair Edition.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

READY FOR SUPPER

(The fourth chair is in my office until I can get a different chair for in there.)

I would not use the same stain+poly combo that I used to turn these black. It was a mess and stunk. I think I would just spray paint next time and save myself a little time and effort. Not to mention I got covered in the stain. My sweet husband ran to Lowe's just to get me the mineral spirits called for to remove stain and that stuff was a miracle! It got the stain off of my body and my hardwood floor after I stained my glider and the stuff splattered all over.
I am really proud of my first "reupholstery" job. It was almost too easy!

Maiden Rock Trail #321

(Fallen, spiky tree.)

 Idaho hiking has been some of the most enjoyable hiking I have done. It was just over a year ago that I hiked in to Settler's Grove of the Ancient Cedars. (I believe the road to Settler's Grove remains washed out to this day.) This weekend we tackled a much shorter hike - Maiden Rock. Maiden Rock is a large outcropping of stone that juts into Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho's Panhandle. It is the largest and deepest lake in Idaho - so deep that the U.S. Navy reportedly uses it for submarine practices.

I say we tackled this hike, because it was strenuous. It is a short hike - depending on the source, around 4 miles round trip. The two miles in are a fairly steady descent which becomes steeper and has a few switchbacks as you near the lake. That means that the hike back out is a grueling ascent - at some points the dirt was just a few inches from my face as I huffed and puffed up 45° angle hills covered in loose dirt and rock. Granted, I'm not in great shape. I think my sister would have whizzed up the trail with fewer huffs. However, it is rated moderate for a reason, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't bring water, decent shoes or a hiking stick. (Disclaimer: Chris did not use a stick and was fine.) My point is, this is no Liberty Lake Trail to the cedar grove and back. This is a much narrower, steeper and rocky trail.

That being said, this was a great hike and a super fun day. The lake was incredibly clear and the water was a great temperature.

When we parked at the trailhead and started walking in, I was glad to note that an earlier report was right - most of this trail is shaded - which is perfect for two part-time hikers and their shaggy beast.

We saw a bunch of different mushrooms. I can't even begin to identify them, but they were interesting colors and textures and shapes. The only one I recognized was ghost pipe, and that is because of my sister. They were a fun change from the usual brown and white mushrooms I tend to see. There were a lot of them too!

Let's see, red mushroom...

...ghost pipe...

...pink bumpy mushroom...

...yellow-ringed pink mushroom...

...shelf mushroom...

...goblet-shaped mushroom...

...yellow cauliflower fungus...

...yes, that's my foot - this fungi was huge. No, this is not foot fungus!

After we passed the mushrooms, we moved on to some rockier terrain.

We didn't have to climb this! This is just looking up the shale covered hillside.

This was taken when we were heading back to the car.

Many of the rocks at the bottom that were shaded were covered in moss. This must be a pretty wet place most of the year.

We reached one point that was at the base of two hills, rocks on one side and dead trees on the other, and it was markedly cooler there. It was like walking in nature's air conditioner. It was great. We experienced this on the way back, also, and not only in the same spot. We noticed that where a stream of water came out of the ground from under some rocks, there was also cold air blowing from that spot. Well, not blowing exactly, but you could totally feel this crisp, cold air and the rocks themselves were very cold. It was pretty awesome. I really wanted to move the rocks aside and look underneath - there has to be some kind of caverny thing going on under there. Alas, the rocks were way too big and heavy.

Moving just a few feet onward up the trail the warm air enveloped us again.

Continuing on toward the lake, we saw all kinds of berries. I don't know what any of them were except for the thimbleberries, which I was very excited about. I was a little disappointed not to find any huckleberries, but the thimbleberries were awesome. I have actually never seen so many thimbleberry bushes in one place ever. They were all along the road leading to the trailhead, and they were scattered along the trail - very thick in some places. I took a picture of all the different berries we saw, but they all turned out blurry!!

A blue berry on a single stalk.

Yellow berry with spider.

Salmon colored berries.

Thimbleberries!

A very dark, almost black berry.

Shiny, waxy red berries.

Coming down onto the beach, I knew that there were supposed to be four campsites there. I wasn't sure if we'd see anyone - there was only one other car at the trailhead, and there were three trails leading out of that parking area. I was not at all prepared for the sight we did see, but it was kind of neat. Boats!

There were four boats parked there with a fifth one jockeying into place, and there were a couple families and another dog. They all looked at us a little funny as we crashed out of the bushes, but we didn't care. We probably did look pretty dusty from the trail. Chris fell on his butt once and I wound up falling about three times coming down that slippery dirt hill. (When we got home I found out I literally have bruises on my butt from hitting so hard.)

The lake was awesome! I took a picture of the namesake, Maiden Rock (above, with the boats) and then we moved down the beach a ways to a more secluded area. Lake Pend Oreille was absolutely beautiful and we took full advantage.

Odin couldn't wait to get in. He swam for a long time leash-free today. :)

The absolute worst part of this trip was that I forgot my camera at home. That's why there are all of these skinny, blurry camera phone shots. Better than nothing I guess, but I was looking forward to using my camera today. Oh well.

I'm not sure I would do this trail again. I told Chris that next time we'll just drive to a lake and get right in. Being in the lake was my favorite part. I know the hike was good for us though (as bruised, scratched up and exhausted as I am) and I couldn't think of a nicer way to spend the day than to try out a new hike and have another "happy place" memory to think about when I'm at work.

Cheers!

Before and Afters

I have been working on various little projects around the house and I wanted to put some of them up as before and after shots. Forgive the quality. I was in the middle of working when I took them and the pictures are not very good. But I think they still illustrate the difference a little paint can make! (Except the last project, which required a bath and some olive oil.)

The first thing I did to kick off Operation Get Shit Done, as I like to call it, was to paint the fireplace. The previous owners had painted it a dark brown and I really didn't like it. It was dark and well, I just hated it. I hemmed and hawed for a couple of weeks on what color to use, and I finally decided I would just save myself some money and use one of the paint cans they had left. I thought I would go with the wall color to help the brick blend in and not stick out like a chocolatey brown thumb. Well, the wall color bucket was a huge 5 gallon deal that I could barely lift and I didn't want to schlep it upstairs. I grabbed another can that looked similar but was called "Oatmeal" (as opposed to the Navajo White they used for everything else). I have no idea where else they used this Oatmeal paint, but I could see as I started that it was a bit darker than the wall color. Nevertheless, I loved how it was getting rid of the brown. Actually, up close and in person, the brick really did look like a chocolate bar, and I fancied that the color I was using kind of looked like a marshmallow so the whole time I was painting I kept thinking about s'mores. Go figure.

Anyway, cut to the pictures, right?

Before:

You can see a white line around the perimeter of the hearth - it's not paint. The glue from the old owner's child-safety foam thingy pulled up the paint or left some glue or something. It was not cool. This is a pellet stove. I am curious to see it in action this winter.

After:

Another Before:

Here's a more recent after, (after getting a side table off Craigslist and hanging a sarong as a temporary placeholder for future fireplace art):

I really need to learn how to take better low-light photos.

It's so much better. I think so anyway. I debated on painting the bottom with the Oatmeal too but in the end I decided it helped give the fireplace some weight and also complemented the dark wood mantel (that you could barely notice in the before pictures, amIrite?). I figured I could always go back and paint over it in the future if I decided I wanted to unify the color a little more. I really don't do browns except with wood, and it has to be the right wood. (For instance, that glider in the corner is way too light for my taste and is going to get painted black sometime soon.) Looking at this picture really makes me want to get the paint back out and go over the bottom with Oatmeal. I think it's just the bad quality picture combined with how late I'm putting this post together. I'll have to re-evaluate tomorrow.

I still need to get a couch, art for over the fireplace and a dozen other things (at least) to bring this room together, but it's a good start.

I  mentioned I had a couple of projects. Here was my other big one:

This desk used to have an upper cabinet, on-desk drawer, pull-out keyboard tray, the works. I bought it from a friend and it has been a total b*tch to move around. We had to take it apart both times, move it around all funkily to squeeze it down hallways and through narrow doorframes, and it has injured me twice.

(Oh, here's a pic that my friend sent me when I was thinking about buying it. The thing is really way more massive than it seems.)

When we put it back together the first time, my husband didn't think it was secure enough. Let's say it wobbled a bit. Well, bless his heart, he bought these weird nail grids. It's like a square of metal with pokey ends on one side, and the idea is to nail it into two things to hold them together. Well he beat the hell out of those things but couldn't do more than pierce the laminate of this freakish desk. So then he bolted the top and bottom together and sawed off the end of the bolt that stuck out. What was the first thing I did when I came home that day? Sliced my hand open on one of the razor sharp bolt ends. Yeah. I was hating this desk. I thought about painting it like Frankenstein but I decided to go with a simple white. (When we moved it the second time I decided to ditch the top. I wasn't really using it anyway.)

It is so hard to see it well in the after pictures, but I actually used these "Paint Crystals" from Lowe's and made it glittery. I used half a bag of silver and half a bag of gold and 3 coats of paint.

Unfortunately it made the texture of the desk a little rough, since it was basically like adding shiny sand to the paint. I didn't really think about that until I was done. But I love the look, and I applied paste wax to the top and got a little smoother feel. I really wanted a shiny lacquer look but I couldn't take this out to spray paint and I read some pretty nasty stuff about lacquer and how un-environmentally friendly it is.

Here is the desk before:

(Apparently I didn't take a good before pic before I took it apart to paint.)

During:

And after:

I would love to add some art to this room down the road, and maybe a plant stand on one side of the desk and something else on the other side to balance it out. (Probably Odin. He likes to either lay in the corner or in the middle of the rug whenever I'm in here.)

My desk doesn't shine, but it does sparkle! It's subtle and hard to capture in pictures though. Here is a shot of one of the drawers as I was working on them. It's really the best I could do. You can see a couple of sparkles if you look hard enough. It's better in person. It totally reminds me of my Grama's sparkly popcorn ceiling. I used to love looking up at her ceiling at night whenever I visited. I remember nestling into the shag carpet and giggling about raccoons with my cousin until we fell asleep.

Finally... wait, is this post too long? I haven't posted in months it seems and I just don't know what I'm doing. Ha.

Well this one is short and not much of a change. I bought some brass cranes at the thrift store. I used to hate brass but I guess since I've been seeing it everywhere now, it's grown on me. I finally realized that I love things that sparkle and shine. Brass is definitely shiny and looks kind of golden and luxe, if it's done right. It's made its return anyway. And who am I to judge? I will let brass shine all it wants.

So I bought these birds because they remind me of the cranes I bought for my wedding. I bought two large brass cranes and painted them purple and stuck them by the entrance to the outdoor deck where we got married. I'm sure not many people noticed them, but I knew they were there and I loved that they were a pair. 

They make me think about birds mating for life and I get all romantic for like five seconds. Awww. (The wedding cranes live outside my front door now and I kinda wish they weren't purple, but they still make me happy.)

Well I stuck these mini cranes into a warm bath.

Don't they look at home in this frothy pond?

Then I gave them an invigorating lemony salt scrub as recommended on the brass-cleaning tutorial I read and rinsed them off. I rubbed them with a little olive oil and a clean cloth and now they live on my piano.

I hate the reflection in that shot, but I love it in this next picture.

Isn't that sweet? The scrub didn't shine them up as much as I had hoped, but at least they're clean. I might buy some brass polish down the road, but for now I am enjoying them just the way they are.

So there you have it. My favorite part of any makeover project, gratuitous photos that show the bad befores and the somewhat better afters. There is much more to be done and I will probably do a few more posts like this as it happens.