An Eye Opener

Well, good morning everyone. As I type this, I am enjoying the sounds of Camp Creek meandering its way towards Deer Creek, that is headed to the beautiful Platte River. I think you all will find that I do a lot of my best work at about 4 am!

We spent last night here at our cabin/B&B, The Royal Roost, which brings up a very valid reminder to all of us small business owners; whatever type of business you own, use it as a customer would!! We have owned this cabin for six years and have not stayed here since we started using it as a B&B. We rarely have a few days in a row without guests (thankfully!) to do maintenance on it, so we have used this break to really go all out. In the last week I have sanded and restained the deck, “made over” the downstairs and given the front door a heaping helping of feng shui with a cool green paint job. I'm sure the green door will bring in a ton of money! As far as the basement, it looks fabulous if I do say so myself. It is built around a huge rock, as a matter of fact, the bed platform is on top of the rock. I call it Colorado's most comfortable bedrock in our advertising. Needless to say after over forty years, the rock room was a little musty. I pulled out the orange and green shag carpet and put tile down that will not collect any moisture, painted just about every surface that I could and gave some of the built-ins a really cool paint treatment.

The kids have been helping some, you know, as much as two teenagers and a 91/2 year old do. Anyway, they decided that with all of this work we are doing, maybe we should enjoy it for a night before the next guests arrive on Friday. Boy am I glad they came up with the idea! My daughter was poking around as young girls do, and found the crisper drawer in the fridge full of old food-gross!!! Then when Tom and I came downstairs to go to bed we discovered that the air mattress is freezing, even for a person who suffers from night sweats (me, of course)! It reminded me of when I first met Tom and he slept in an unheated water bed (boy, does that date us or what?) with the window wide open! I always thought he'd turn into a popsicle, I had no idea an air mattress was that cold, I was the one who was a popsicle!
As an Inn Keeper (that's what I like to call myself, it sounds fancier than cook/maid) I really strive to help our guests have the vacation of a lifetime. I'm thinking rotten food and cold beds are somewhat of a turn off. It's funny, I would not have thought to look in that drawer, so the kids HAVE been very helpful. Now the ENTIRE fridge is on my list of things to check when I have the maid come in, oh wait a minute, that's me! I am starting a new list:
1. Figure out how to get the air mattress to not be so cold.
2. Work on warming up the air mattress.
3. Do something about that darn mattress.
4. Hire a maid.

Really, it's been wonderful to spend the time here. Tom and the kids took a little hike while I made dinner last night. As is required we played a game and had some good old fashioned family TV watching time. The sights and sounds here are like no other place on earth. The Roost is nestled in a pretty dense pine forest, but because we are south facing it gets a lot of sunshine so it is quite lush for Colorado. The bird watching is unparalleled (at least for smaller birds) and the dogs are ecstatic to give chase to an occasional squirrel or chipmunk. You think they'd learn that they will never be able to catch one, but at least they get a lot of exercise and sleep well at night.
Speaking of birds, I hear them starting to wake up, I guess that is my cue to get to work. Which brings us to today's pictures. This bird has been nesting in the stairway of the Royal Roost since we bought it. From what I read when I was trying to identify her is that birds will often come back to the very same nest for their entire lives. We really look forward to seeing her arrival in spring and getting a good peak at her eggs that quickly turn into demanding young'uns. Don't I know it!!!

Stay tuned, I am going to do a llama lesson next, I know that's what everyone is curious about. I'll try to answer any question you may have in the next post, but if you have one that you are dying of curiosity to know the answer to, leave me a comment and I'll make sure to include it in my “lesson”.

Have a miracle of a day!