HELLO AGAIN!!!!!

WOW!  October 2015 was my last post!  I had no idea it had been that long!  Life has been a whirlwind and I ended up dropping my design teams because of it.  I'll give you some highlights now and then in a couple of weeks or so I'll get the whole blog updated and post more about my favorite projects created since then, our new life and especially a new picture for my topper!  My grandkids are so much BIGGER now!  LOL!

First of all, in December, 2015 my husband and I put our house in Florida on the market to sell.  It took until May before we got a solid buyer and then things happened FAST!!!  We had 13 days until closing and we were out of town for the first 3!!! 

We closed at the end of May, 2016 and immediately set out on the road for our new adventure.  We finally retired and moved to our property in Hollis, Alaska!  The nearly 3 acre oceanfront property is on a lagoon off a bay in Southeast Alaska.  When we arrived, we had my husband's old work van and a cargo trailer filled to the gills with what I couldn't part with and his tools.  Guess what the first things to get packed were!  My scrappy things!  And my Mom's dining room set that I've loved since she purchased it in 1965 also came with us!  As well as the rocking chair that was my maternal great-grandmother's!  And we also brought our little dog Baxter. 

We traveled across the United States and into Canada and then took a 6 hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert, British Columbia to Ketchikan, Alaska.  Steve grew up in Ketchikan and I spent 5 years up there when we were first married.  We stayed there for a couple of weeks and then took another ferry (3 hour ride) over to our island, Prince of Wales Island.  If you've ever seen the National Geographic show called Port Protection, they're at the northwest side of the island and we're at the southeast side.  Our island is 100 miles long and 45 miles wide.  The little community of Hollis has a population of about 165 and we LOVE it here!  The main town on the island is called Craig and is a 35 mile drive on a twisty 2-lane road across a mountain pass from our home!  It's a stunning drive and we have a LOT of pictures!  :)

There is only a ferry terminal (which has 2 vending machines outside), a great library and a very small school that has one teacher and she teaches all 12 grades in Hollis!  There's no store, gas station or anything!  For that we have to drive 25 miles to Klawock.  There's a grocery store and post office, restaurants, gas stations, etc. there.  Then Craig is another 10 miles past that.  It has the pharmacy, another grocery store, hardware store, the post office where our mail comes, car parts store, etc., etc.  The closest Walmart is in Ketchikan so we do a LOT of online ordering!  LOL!  What a difference!!!

When we arrived on our property there was a very small A-frame cabin that Steve and his father and brothers built in the 1980s.  We had hoped to use it for a bit while we built a new one.  Unfortunately, it had been hit by a tree and was in no condition for anything to live in it!  So we salvaged what we could from it.  But that meant we had to stay somewhere!  And for that story you can check out our Facebook page which has told our story in posts, photos and videos from the beginning.  Here's the link - Alaskan Jungle Chronicles 

Since we arrived in June, we've had quite the adventure!  I fell the 2nd day we were here and cracked my tailbone and twisted my ankle!  Thankfully they both healed quickly!  So we found a doctor almost immediately.  The summer and fall were filled with lots of construction and adventures. (Be sure to read about the MICE and watch the video we made when we got the electricity hooked up!  You never saw such happy people!)  My husband worked VERY hard and we have an adorable little cabin in the woods that is far from finished but we're living in it anyway!  Thanksgiving came and we went back to Ketchikan for a visit and a BIG trip to Walmart.  We went back for Christmas too.  And then I had to go back for a couple of weeks in January because my gall bladder decided to go wonky and I ended up having to have surgery to take it out!!!  Never a dull moment in my life!  LOL!

Winter hit with a vengeance!!!  We've been told that it's the worst winter in at LEAST 8 years!  The temperatures got so low in February and March that we were breaking records set a VERY long time ago!  And the SNOW!  Normally it rains in Southeast Alaska (thus the reference to jungle).  But it snowed the Saturday after Thanksgiving and dumped 2 FEET on us!  Then it kept coming!  Finally in early January it warmed up enough for the snow to melt off the roads.  We had some light snowfalls after that until February 26th when we got DUMPED on!!!  By the time it stopped almost 2 weeks later we had FOUR FEET on the ground!!!  And the temps dropped again in to the single digits with strong wind chills at night. 

But we stayed warm and dry in our little cabin!  Thanks to some awesome neighbors, our new church and other friends who blessed us tremendously because they knew we weren't prepared for all that!  Today it's March 24th and it's finally in the low 40s and raining.  Back to normal weather!  LOL!  However, we could still get some snow!  And rain is VERY good because we need to catch the water because there's no well spring or city water coming to us!  And snow on the mountains is very good for the salmon returning in the summer.  Some species return in 2 years and others in 5 years so we should have good "runs" then!!! 

We finally were able to empty our storage unit at the beginning of the month the day before the snow hit us and that made me extremely happy because I finally had all of my things in one place - especially my scrappy stuff!  Needless to say, I haven't scrapped a whole lot in the past year or so.  I've done a few things, but am just starting to get back into the groove. 

I've been asked to be a designer for the Creative Inspiration Magazine!  The link takes you to the February issue, but the April issue is due out soon so be sure to check it out!  And I'll be the April Guest Designer for the Creative Inspiration Forum.  I'm anxious to get back into the swing of things! 

So in a long, wide nutshell that's been my life since October, 2015!!!  Preparing our house to sell, selling it, moving from South Florida to Southeast Alaska and building a home there!  Talk about life changes!!!  LOL! But we LOVE it here!  I'm not one that enjoys camping and this isn't much above living in a tent right now, but I'm happier here than I've ever been anywhere else!  And our little dog LOVES being able to run wild and free!  Oh and we got a kitten born October 24, 2016.  His name is Little Jeff and he's soft and VERY fluffy and extremely affectionate!  He loves being outside and will be a GREAT mouse catcher thank God!  :)

If you've read all this and are still with me, THANK YOU!  Please leave me a comment and tell me where you're from!  And in the meantime I will work on this blog.  We have only had our cellphones for internet service at home so we've been quite limited in our ability to do things like this.  But we use the library's or the church's wifi right now.  Soon we'll be hooked up to our own internet provider and we'll almost be somewhat normal people then!  Thanks for stopping by and staying for awhile!  Happy Scrapping!