the cast of characters

Please let us introduce ourselves here at the calliope...

Bryce is our fearless leader, a fabulous husband and my best friend.
How blessed I was the day I met him in 1999!
Our grandchildren call him Bah.
By trade, he's an x-ray technologist at our local hospital, but his heart has always been working with his hands. He loves a project!
Since our marriage in 2000, we have built a custom home in town & then re-modeled and renovated our current home in the country.
He single-handedly built our "unfit" kitchen from salvaged pieces & barn sales. Our bathroom cabinets were built from a flea market dining table I just had to have because of its fabulous legs. Our walk-in pantry cabinets are old hardware store shelving he retro-fitted & added hutch-tops.
Our whole country home is a tribute to his keen sense of style and his eye for design & function.
This blog will be our story of how we built & re-modeled with salvage, tag sales bargains and flea market finds while living the good family life in the country.

Danielle is our daughter-in-love.
She is the mother of our adorable grandchildren. They live here on the property in their own apartment.
She is in school at the local Junior College studying all things medical and early childhood education.
She is also part-time "girl friday" for an older couple, who love her dearly.
She is our family errand runner and she tries hard to keep us all organized.
She is sweet and tender by nature and smart as a whip.
We tell people, she is the daughter we never had together or that we just "had" her late in life.
She is newly single, so we tell her that any serious suitor must understand we are a package deal.
We love her!

Sean Russell, our grandson is 6 years old and all boy!
He is currently very into "Ben Ten Alien Force and Transformers", can't wait to catch or hit any ball he sees & especially loves family trips to the beach in Carmel.
Sean is in the 1st grade & has discovered the world of reading. He is reading several grade levels above and is very into all the Treehouse Series.
He recently heard me ask Danielle to set the table with the china and he said, "that's a country where the Great Wall is!" It was a great opportunity to explain the difference in the meanings and to see his mind work!
Sean has never met a stranger, he truly enjoys people. At Disneyland this summer he wore a Pluto hat. Every time he saw another child looking at him he would lean down close, take his hat off & say,"I'm not really a dog, I'm just a boy."
He warms our hearts and gladdens our days!

Mackenzie Taylor is 5 and the cutest granddaughter ever!
She loves her big brother and wants to do everything he does.
She plays ball, throws rocks & plays just as hard as he does, only she usually does it with a purse over her arm, a bracelet on her wrist & a bow in her hair!
Her dark tousled curls & deep hazel eyes melt our hearts many times daily.
She answers to Sissy, Kenzie, Pumpkin & Gorgeous.
Mackenzie is in Kindergarten & loves adding & subtracting numbers. She has recently started reading and loves to spell. She and Sean like playing "spelling bee".
Sissy's cat, "Belle" had 5 kittens this summer and she is the sweetest caretaker. We can't imagine our world without her!

I am Deborah & our grandchildren call me YaYa.
I am a bookkeeper & very fortunate to have wonderful clients. They are a pleasure to work for.
I am living a "charmed" life, my fondest dreams; life in the country with a loving husband, family close by & we are helping to raise our grandchildren.
Our lives revolve around our family, church & home.
Bryce & I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, (Mormons) & we are blessed to teach the Sunbeam class in church on Sunday. These are the 3 & 4 year-olds & we currently have 12 in our class! We love each of them & learn from them each week!
Bryce and I share a love of antiques, especially country primitives. We love to re-purpose, reuse & refine fun old pieces for use in and around our house & garden. Renovating and building our country house with ingenuity & lots of salvage has been a labor of love.
Our dream date is when we spend time together at flea markets & salvage yards.

Our current home has been so fun to remodel & renovate & we have so many other projects just waiting for us!
We are delighted to have this blog to share family tales and the "how-to's of home renovation, then and now.
So glad you stopped by, please check back often. Our next post, What were we thinking?!