By Popular Demand

Hello Friends! Finally, after nearly 7 months of building and blogging, we have some frank commentary on our blog from our dear friend Anonymous. Perhaps Mr. (Mrs., Miss, Ms.?) Anonymous is the same Yum Yum Farm fan who admonished us to "be nicer to snakes" in an earlier post (we have been nicer to snakes, by the way). You've had enough pictures of the ceiling? Fine. But please, allow us to show just one more, featuring the careful and expert job done by our friends at Cullen Painting. Here it is, and it speaks for itself. (Geez, now I'm like all self-conscious!)

And now for something completely different...a finished floor! One of the challenges we're facing toward the end of the Yum Yum Farm house construction is lighting. The days in Iowa at this time of year are about 7 minutes long (you would think that would limit the mudslinging among presidential candidates!), and without all of the lights installed, it's difficult to accurately capture the lovely textures, colors, and patinas of the finished surfaces. We were thrilled this evening to walk in and see the newly sanded and refinished main floor, which is gorgeous! You'll recall that this floor is a reclaimed subfloor from an old farm house near the Amana Colonies. Gray's Hardwood Flooring finished the floor with a product called Osmo Floor Oil, which, like old fashioned finishes, soaks in and protects the wood, rather than just creating a plastic layer on top. In the likely event that we scratch or scuff it (we're not the most graceful people in the world, nor are the four-legged members of our family), we can simply sand or buff out the scratch, and re-apply the Osmo. We can't wait to lie down on it, and take more pictures of the ceiling!