Colorado! Fire Tower, Friends, and Home Improvement in the fall

Scott and I spent almost 4 months in Colorado after all our early-year travels and it was wonderful to catch up with friends and enjoy our house and town.

Home Improvements:  

almost done - some day it will get a new front window too but meanwhile, I later painted it bronze.

My She-shed got a huge facelift!  I painted trim, changed hinges, put a big window in the back, painted its interior, and just made it sweet and attractive!  Fun project with help from Scott.




We got new gutters, a new garage door, had our neighbor make wood shutters that I painted, and got new house paint.  Then got very lucky with hail damage and also got a new roof! The Beech House is lookin' good.

The shed before with old house paint: Test paint colors and the X removed from bottom. Not attractive yet.

Friends Visit: My life-long friend and travel buddy, Kirin, and her husband Matt came to visit us for a few days, including Halloween.  Unfortunately, it was COLD!  But we saw elk, hiked in RMNP, went bowling, hiked at Chatauqua Park and the Flatirons, saw Red Rocks, walked around Prospect neighborhood for Halloween night after a good meal, and generally had a great time!

Squaw Pass Fire Tower Adventure!
We got so lucky to finally get booked at the fire tower!  It's almost like winning the lottery then you wait 6 months to get to go - we went in September.  Our first day hiking in and that night were spectacular and magical.  The weather was warm and clear, aspens were golden, and views were unbelievable!  Awesome!

We knew cold and snow were coming so we brought snowshoes and warm clothing for day 2.  What we didn't know was that 60 mile per hour winds were coming with single digit temps.  We survived!  But that 24 hours of howling winds and freezing was brutal.  We got out of there ASAP the morning after that second night.  I was SO happy when we got to our car and it started! Not our best outdoor adventure.

Maybe we will try to book it for summer!  Never again in spring or fall.

The In-Stitches quilting ladies had another fabulous quilt retreat and many of us made the bookcase quilt that's behind these friends.  What a great bunch of ladies!

Happy Hour at Madeline's on a warm fall day.