Aurora Borealis

I finally saw the Northern Lights last night, and they were even more amazing that I had imagined!

They were so strong we first saw them from our backyard when we were letting Willow outside before bed.

Karl was nice enough to hop in the car with me and head outside of Anchorage where it was a bit darker.

To finish out the evening, a mama moose and her baby walked within feet of our car before we headed back home!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I finally managed to get some photos of our outside Christmas lights.  I know I promised them awhile ago...  Oops.  It's been way to cold to stand outside in the street taking pictures, so I've been procrastinating.  This weekend gave us temperatures of over 40 degrees though, so I figured now was probably the best time.  Especially considering that all of Anchorage is going to be one massive block of ice as soon as the temperature drops again...

Having the house all lit up so brightly is a wonderful thing to come home to...

We even had some real icicles to go along with the icicle lights.  Too bad they have since melted with our bizarrely warm temperatures.

I can see them through the window as I sit in the living room each night.  I'm thinking my lights may just stay up through April.  It's quarter to five Sunday night as I sit here writing this, and it's 100% pitch black outside.   My lights help make winter life just a little bit brighter!

Too cold to do much of anything...

I admit it, I've been feeling like quite the slacker for the last week.  I blame the weather - it has been cold! Last week started with 30 mile an hour winds (which are rough when it's only 10 degrees out), and progressed to sub zero temperatures.  These were my morning conversations with my dad:

Thursday 

Me: "Hey, guess what the temperature is this morning?

Dad: "8 degrees."

Me: "Nope, five below!  But hey, my car still started!"

Friday

Me: "Hey, guess what the temperature is this morning?

Dad: "5 degrees."

Me: "Nope, ten below!  But hey, my car still started!"

Saturday

Me: "Hey, guess what the temperature is this morning?

Dad: "8 degrees."

Me: "Nope, fifteen below!  But hey, my car still started!  It sounded like a dying animal, though."

Noticing a pattern going on here?  

What do you do when it's that cold?  Why hang Christmas lights outside, of course!  I had to come inside to warm up several times because I was pretty sure I was experiencing the early stages of frostbite.  Probably not my greatest idea, but the house looks so pretty.  Maybe I'll some get pictures of it for Wednesday - I am NOT going out there to get any tonight!

I also noticed that the guest bedroom window has a nice sheet of ice on the glass.  On the inside.  Probably not a good thing.  It's not even that cold in there - that's the really scary part.

Snowy Sunday, take 2

Looks like Sunday mornings seem to be the day to look out the window and be surprised at the amount of snow that accumulated overnight.  This is what I woke up to yesterday morning:

All told, it was probably another 6-7 inches on top of the 2-3 inches that was already there.  This is already more than accumulates all winter in Pittsburgh!

Luckily I went and got my snow tires this week.  Cost me an exorbitant amount of money, but have already made it a hundred times easier to get around.  It doesn't appear that the roads are cleared very often (ever), as our road still hasn't been plowed.   Honestly, I'm not sure where all the snow would go even if they did plow.  It already seems like the piles from the driveway and the sidewalk are piling up, and it's only November!

No worries about Willow getting used the snow.  There are two things she loves: running through tall grass, and running through snow.  Yesterday was no exception, as she went tearing through the snow, grunting and snorting the whole time.

As I write this, big fluffy chunks of snow are falling again.  Hey, who needs a gym membership if you can shovel snow every day?

It's a winter wonderland!

After hearing the news that Pittsburgh awoke to snowfall on Saturday morning, I was pretty disappointed.  Afterall, I'm in Alaska - shouldn't I get to see the snow first?!?

Well, apparently Mother Nature was listening, and all I saw was white on Sunday morning!

We only got about an inch of snow, but it stuck everywhere (including the road) since we've been hovering around freezing for about a month now.

I guess an inch of snow isn't much for Alaska, because none of the roads were treated.  A bit unnerving for me, because I'm used to seeing snow plows and salt trucks every time it snows.  We had planned a trip to Thunderbird Falls, but decided to stay at home instead.  Neither one of us were particularly interested in hopping on a snowy highway.  Watching football and scary movies is an alright way to spend a Sunday in my book!

Happy snowy Halloween, everyone!

Our wind tunnel (aka the front door)

Karl and I somehow manage to always end up living in old houses.  Even moving to Alaska, we ended up in a house built in 1954 (which is pretty old for up here).  Old houses have their fair share of drafts, and a less than perfectly maintained rental house has a few more.  I really have no idea what to expect for heating bills this winter, so I wanted to get ahead of the game as much as possible.  Our front and back doors had considerable gaps below the door, and you could feel the cold air blowing in even just standing nearby.  I decided to make some draft guards to stop as much of the wintry winds as possible.

Even better, I was able to use things I already had on hand!  I had some leftover canvas from my homemade shopping bag project (or rejected project - so no worth it when you end up getting them free half the time) that was just perfect.

I ended up with two pieces of fabric that were just the width of the door, and about two feet long.  Probably more fabric than I needed, but I just split what I had sitting in my box.  I folded each piece in half and stitched up one of the long sides and one of the short sides.  

Then I turned it inside out, and sewed two rows of stitching down the middle (this is the part that goes underneath the door).  For the draft guard for the front door, I stuffed both sides with some leftover stuffing. 

For the back door, I used stuffing for the part on the inside of the house, and crushed packing peanuts for the outside.  I used the packing peanuts for two reasons: 1. I didn't have enough stuffing to do both sides, and 2. there's very little overhang over the backdoor, and I figured stuffing would end up a soggy, disgusting mess when it rained.

Super easy project, and will hopefully save us a few bucks on heating this winter!

At least it's not snow...?

Actually, I'm really excited for the first snow.  It would be perfect if we got a nice, fluffy snowfall, and then sunny weather for another month and a half until winter really came.  Probably not likely to happen, however.

This weekend was full of rain, rain, and more rain.  Pure luck that it wasn't snow - the temperature never quite hit freezing.

When I woke up yesterday morning, the raindrops were clinging to the branches and the few remaining leaves on our tree in the front yard.  They looked little tiny balls of ice and I thought they were just beautiful!

FYI, I'm experimenting with using bigger pictures in my posts - if you are one of my three (haha) loyal readers and your internet connection makes that a problem for you, let me know.  Otherwise, I'll probably stick with it.

The Man in the Moon

The past few days have been wonderfully clear - hardly a cloud in the sky.  The moon will be full later today, but I had to take a quick photo of it illuminating the night sky last night.

Even though we live in a relatively crowded neighborhood, it's still very dark at night as there's no streetlights.  Make the moon and stars really stand out!


The big dipper was so much clearer than this picture would lead you to believe.  I think I might need a better tripod (my camera usually makes mine tip over)...

I have the rest of the photos taken of our house, so I'm hoping to get them into a post in the next day or two.  Check back!

Fall is in the air!

The temperature has dropped and the leaves are starting to change colors here in Alaska.  It's dropping into the forties overnight, and is only going above 55 degrees if it's a very sunny day.  From what I hear, the fall season is much shorter and we only have a few short weeks to enjoy the beautiful golden and yellow leaves.

With the variety of trees being so much different from Southwestern Pennsylvania, it's a bit different from what I'm used to.  It took a moment to get used to, but I'm definitely liking the contrast of the brightly orange birch trees interspersed with the deep green spruce.

Of course, the mountains towering over it all really make for the perfect scene.  Soon enough, the leaves will all be gone and the snowflakes will be falling.  The mountains will turn a beautiful (though harsh) contrast of bright white and dark gray.  Time to enjoy the weeks we have left before winter grabs ahold of the Last Frontier.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It has been RAINY in Alaska!  And of course, the rain is bringing in cool weather, so I know Pittsburgh is jealous of me!  It's only supposed to hit a high in the low 60s today, and is still supposed to rain every single day for the next week.  I thought I left Pittsburgh where it seems to rain all the time?

In any case, we have been planning a trip out to the cabin for the last several days, but the rain and high winds has kept delaying our departure.  We do need to make it out there though, as the 5.3 magnitude earthquake last week was centered in Skwentna which is very near to the cabin.  Hopefully it hasn't fallen off of it's foundation or anything like that!

I wish I had something interesting to say about the earthquake, but apparently I'm less aware of my surroundings than I even realized!  It happened around 6am, and woke both Karl and Willow up.  This is  how it went:

Karl: Do you feel that?

Me: Feel what?

Karl: The earthquake.... There, it just stopped.

Me:  Um.  No?

I guess my head must spin on a daily basis so I don't notice when the ground is shaking beneath my feet. So my first 'major' earthquake went by quietly, although I would hazard a guess that we've already had a bunch more.

This is a graph of earthquakes in Alaska in the last week.

http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/Seis/recenteqs/index.html

Apparently they just happen constantly and they're small enough that you don't even notice.  I'm content with that!