That Cardboard Box

Printed Words

2012-01-12T10:00:00.003-05:00

Another year flown by. I can't help but think I'm missing some books below (I could've sworn I read more than that!), but I can't think of any off-hand. Oh well. Printed words, 2011:

Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver
The Woods, Harlan Coben
The Falls, Joyce Carol Oates
Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel
Keeping Watch, Laurie R. King
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
The Heretic's Daughter, Kathleen Kent
Riptide, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Game, Laurie R. King
Justice Hall, Laurie R. King
Organic Farming, Peter V. Fossel
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry
Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock
The Holy Thief, William Ryan
The Dirty Life, Kristin Kimball
The People of the Mist, Henry Rider Haggard
The American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria Francis Child
Stories of a Woman Homesteader, Elinore Pruitt Stewart
AfterAge, Yvonne Navarro
State of Siege, Michael Wallace
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
The Naked Gardener, L B Gschwandtner
The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova

The garden of our intelligence

2011-11-29T13:41:00.002-05:00

"So let us then in the prime of our lives not be indolent or slothful, but with all vigor apply ourselves to the study of grammar until we have arrived at the knowledge of rightly reading, understanding and composing prose or verse. And let us now plant and seed the garden of our intelligence, so that we may eat the sweet fruit all the days of our lives."
- A sister at Ebstorf nunnery, c. 1490*

*Quoted in Anne Winston-Allen's Convent Chronicles, 2004.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T05:23:00.002-05:00

I'm thankful for many things this year. A great family, good health, good friends, a good church, a nice house, a new car... the list goes on. We've been very blessed this year. I'm most thankful for my new branch of our family, though. Being married is every bit as great as I thought it would be (case in point: Paul woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at five am, put on his 'turkey pants' and is happily banging around in the kitchen getting ready to smoke our Thanksgiving tom. He even sang a song about it.) We've added a new member to the family since last year. Nick was our Christmas kitten and he's been a fun addition to the family. Penny is just as great as ever - it's been a learning experience being the primary caregiver for a puppy since she was five weeks old, but it's been a lot of fun. I can't wait to see what new adventures we'li have to be thankful for next year.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

Nostalgia

2011-11-15T15:30:00.007-05:00

I've been feeling quite nostalgic about Penny's puppyhood lately, so I've been looking back through some old pictures. She was so little! These are from the Fourth of July at Brendan's cottage in New York last year.

And in case you don't believe that dogs end up looking like their owners (or is it the other way around?), check out these crazy 'dos:

Writing and Conferring

2011-10-27T10:08:00.002-04:00

I'm in the process of turning a seminar paper into a conference paper. It's been a busy month and it's going to stay busy right to the end... I'll be back with something (potentially) more substantive in November. In the meantime, I leave you with my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comic- it sums up academic writing all too well.

In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

Pictures!

2011-10-12T13:47:00.004-04:00

Hi friends!

Today while procrastinating... erm... working in my office at school I figured out how to get pictures off my phone onto my computer!

So here are a bunch of random pictures that sum up my life for the last couple of months.

The reason it's hard for me to work at home:

"Mom? Are you paying attention to me, or to your book? Mom? Mom???"

Paul's "new" shoes:

(Yes, he now has wooden Dutch clogs. We found them at a local antique store. Why does he need wooden clogs? Ask him.)

Tomato sauce cooking down:

Strawberry jam and stewed tomatoes cooling down after being canned.

A pretty bouquet I picked from the garden earlier this summer

The badass grouper we bought in South Carolina, grilled, and consumed with relish. The enjoyment kind of relish, not pickle relish.

Yay pictures!

Falling In

2011-09-23T12:47:00.003-04:00

So apparently it's already the first day of autumn. Not quite sure how it got here so fast, since I'm pretty sure the first day of summer was about two seconds ago, but oh well.

Autumn is my favorite season. For me, the year doesn't begin in January, it starts in late August or September. Autumn is the season of fresh school clothes, sharp pencils, unsullied notebooks and new books and new ideas to be encountered. If I was a poet, I'd even wax poetic about the falling leaves as confetti heralding new beginnings. Luckily for you, I'm not a poet.

Autumn is also the season of new year's resolutions. I won't leave my work to the last minute. I will get up in time to eat a proper breakfast before I rush out the door. I will do all the reading. I won't pull an all-nighter to finish my paper. (... most of my vices deal with procrastination, can you tell?)

My new year's resolutions this year are also about teaching. Now that I've been a TA for two years (going on three), and teaching with the same professors several times, I want to make sure that I don't allow my teaching to grow stale. The first quarter I taught I was a little bit petrified (I'm teaching modern European history? I'm a *medievalist*!), and I fell into a rut that my students soon came to recognize, which, I'm sure, eventually detracted from what they could've learned from my discussion sections. While it's valuable to have a routine (college students are like toddlers in that respect), it's also important to switch things up a bit to keep them on their toes and so that they don't get into the habit of skipping the reading because they never have in-class quizzes, or because the TA always lets them get by without participating or whatever.

School started on Wednesday, but today was my first day of actual teaching for the quarter. My classes are awesomely small this time around (11 in the first section, 15 in the second), but it's always a bit of an adjustment getting back into the hang of teaching after a summer off. The second section went much better than the first, partly (I suspect) because it's at 10:30 instead of 9:30 (my students are never morning people), but also because I was warmed up and ready to be a teacher again by that point.

I've become more interested in pedagogy lately, and I think there may also be a pedagogical reason that the second class went better than the first. (Incidentally, pedagogy is just a fancy word for the study of teaching practices). Anyway, part of pedagogy is studying the effect body language has on a group of people, and the way it changes the dynamics of the class for the teacher to stand behind her podium for the whole class, or to stand back near the chalkboard with her arms crossed, to move around the classroom, to use her hands while she talks or not... all of those things change the students' perception of the teacher (although, naturally, two students perception of and reaction to the same actions can be totally different).

Anyway, I started my first class sitting down in a student desk facing the class while I had them introduce themselves and explained the course objectives and did the general opening day minutia.

It showed.

From the start, that class lagged. It's not that the students lacked enthusiasm, nor was it just that it was 9:30 on a rainy Friday morning. The energy was just not there.

For the second class, I stood while we made introductions and I talked about the class. There is a table at the front of my classroom that has a podium that sits on it, and I put my class list on it and leaned on it while my students were telling me about themselves and there was palpably more energy in the classroom throughout the period. I tend to walk around the front of my classroom a lot, and I like to write on the board and make lists while the class brainstorms ideas, so standing to start the class made for a smooth transition once we started to review yesterday's lecture and get them set up for next week's topics.

It was a good reminder that my actions, not just my words, have a direct impact on my students' experience in the class. Whereas the first section was awkward and boring, the second flowed smoothly and my students were much more willing to participate and interact with me and with one another. While some of that can probably be ascribed to the personalities of the people in the class and the later time, I think that getting off my lazy butt and "starting off on the right foot" (pardon the lame pun) had a lot to do with it. So add to my list of new year's resolutions an awareness of my ability as a teacher to make or break a class for my students, and a plan to always make my classes interesting, informative and enjoyable.

Happy New Year!

Gorgeous image found here

Hmm...

2011-08-31T11:13:00.002-04:00

So I had this great idea that I was going to come to the library at least once a week to keep up on my email and write in the old blog and all that sort of thing, and when I did, that I'd bring my USB cord so I can connect my fancy new phone to my computer and upload the snazzy pictures I've been snapping.

Then I went on vacation with the fam for a week, and after that I worked a bunch and had an idea for a business I want to start, and then all of a sudden it was the end of August and I hadn't written for a month. So I hopped on my dandy bike and rode to the library. Without my USB cord.

So here's what you would be seeing if I could connect my phone to my computer:

Some adorable pictures of Penny, and a typical picture of Nick looking grouchy.

Me holding a six-pound red grouper that we bought at a fish market in South Carolina and cooked on the grill.

A very cute little baby jacket that I made for my friend Heather's baby shower.

A bouquet of Teddy Bear sunflowers, cosmos and assorted wildflowers that I picked out of my garden.

Penny wearing an old t-shirt to keep her from scratching. (She looks adorably sheepish).

Paul wearing Dutch wooden clogs that I bought him (at his insistence) at an antique store over the weekend.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Bet you're sorry to be missing out. Maybe next time I'll remember the stupid cord.

I'm back!

2011-08-01T10:18:00.003-04:00

So after a slightly mad start to the summer, I've been spending some quality time puttering around the house and enjoying life. Unfortunately, my computer's been on the fritz and hasn't wanted to connect to the internet, so I haven't been able to chronicle said putterings for you, my adoring fans. The computer's at least fixed enough now to connect to the internet from public wi-fi hotspots (I'm at the library now, which is blissfully air-conditioned, so this is not entirely a bad thing), although the dumb thing still won't connect at home. Oh well. Here I am, anyway.

The project I was working on in June was defending my master's theses, and, as all (2) of you probably know by now, I passed. Callooh! Callay!

Now I'm working on getting my reading list together for my general exams, which I'll take in January, and after that (assuming that I pass, of course) I'll be "ABD", or "all but dissertation." Callooh! Callay!

In the (copious amounts of) time that I haven't been working on my reading list this summer, I've been very much enjoying my garden, which is thriving, and riding my snazzy (old) new bike in to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings with Paul. We're also in the finishing stages of a very fancy bathroom remodel that I'm excited to share, although I've been sworn to secrecy until the project is complete. Paul thinks that people won't appreciate it as much if they see it before it's all the way finished. We finally ditched our dumb phones for smart phones this past weekend, so I'll have pictures to show for myself again as soon as I figure out how to get the pictures off the phone and onto the computer. The problem I'm finding with technology is that the operator is still required to be smarter than the device. That wasn't hard with the dumb phone. It's proving to be slightly more of a challenge with the smart one.

In any case, this was meant to be a quick check-in, yes, I'm still alive, sort of post, so I'll wrap it up with promises of being back again soon. Love and best wishes and all those sorts of things.

I thought I was, but I wasn't

2011-06-15T12:28:00.001-04:00

So I thought I was starting summer and things would calm down. I finished grading my student's papers and final exams, I turned in my final paper, I spent about half a minute just lounging and enjoying life... and then things got busy again. I have a project that I'm keeping under wraps for the next week, but assuming all goes well there will be balloons and streamers and general merrymaking around these parts, and then maybe posting will pick back up. But things will be busy, busy for the next week.

Back soon, I hope.

(P.S. The garden is growing beautifully. I harvested my first Costata Romanesco zucchini yesterday, and I have a couple of okra ready to eat today. Tomatoes are coming on, and the edamame and peas are looking good. We've been eating radishes for a couple weeks now. Yum.)

Bang!

2011-06-08T07:22:00.003-04:00

Me: "I love it when students make up words on their exams. Listen to this: "The printing press changed the course of history. It changed how people taught, it universified language....""

Paul: "Isn't that what happened at the Big Bang?"

(Finally done grading exams. Now finishing my paper, then doing absolutely nothing for a few days. Back soon.)

Rain, rain, go away....

2011-05-18T09:28:00.002-04:00

I'm disgruntled because it's planting time and it's been raining torrentially and it's supposed to keep raining pretty much forever and the world is ending on Saturday anyway (or so I hear) and I really just want to play in my garden. I didn't have time to mow on the one nice day we had last week, so now the yard looks like we should just leave it and harvest it for hay in another week or so. I made a plan for my big garden plot yesterday and I'm ready to put it into action, except that the garden plot is just a big mud pit. *le sigh*

Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day,
Little Elizabeth wants to play.

Photo here.

Sunday Funday

2011-04-18T13:05:00.005-04:00

Mom sent me these pictures from Sunday dinner last week and (since I haven't posted pictures in months and months) I thought I'd share.

Eric and Bethany brought over their wedding pictures, so while we were on the subject of weddings and wedding pictures Erin and I tried on Mom's wedding dress. Mom and Dad got married in October of 1981, and I'm told by somewhat reliable sources that this was quite stylish for 1981. (My sources are only somewhat reliable because they are limited to my mom, and why would she admit that wearing a lacy turtleneck isn't necessarily the most stylish thing in the world?)

Reliability of sources aside, however, both Erin and I were pleased to discover that we fit in Mom's wedding dress. She had a pretty kickin' hat, too - in fact, I'm wishing I would've borrowed it to wear for my wedding. Incidentally, that's my own wedding bouquet we're holding. Mom asked what I wanted to do with it after our wedding and I told her I didn't have room for it, so she took it home and let it dry. It still looks pretty good!

Mom even dug out the exact pair of glasses she wore in her wedding for Erin to try. They're... ... ... there are no words. ;)

We also got to spend time with our new little nephew, Marley. He's a beagle mix and he's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. There's nothing cuter than a beagle puppy. Paul and I brought Penny over to Mom and Dad's to see Charlie, so we had quite the menagerie.

And finally, an utterly gratuitous picture of Paul and Marley. Is there anything cuter than your husband holding a baby? Yes: husband + puppy = love squared. :)

Books of 2009-10

2011-04-04T12:57:00.002-04:00

I'm clearing out my "Printed Words" list to make way for the books of 2011, but it made me sad to think of just deleting them, so here's what I read in the past year. (Incidentally, I'm in graduate school and I read at least a book a week if not more for school, so I'm not counting all of those books. These were for pleasure, and are the ones that were memorable):

My Life in France, Julia Child
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear
Birds of a Feather, Jacqueline Winspear
Cemetery Dance and Brimstone, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, mark haddon
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear
This House of Sky, Ivan Doig
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollen
Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Profitable Hobby Farm, Sarah Beth Aubrey
Alex and Me, Irene Pepperburg
The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy
Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Carolyn Walker Bynum

What I [didn't do] on my spring break

2011-03-30T09:37:00.002-04:00

So here's what my March has looked like so far:

Thursday, March 3: my students' book reports due (45 of them. ugh.)

Friday, March 4 - Tuesday, March 9: grade, grade, grade, grade, grade

Friday, March 11: last day of winter quarter, lunch with Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies visiting speaker, speaker's lecture, straight to work

Saturday, March 12: wake up at 5:30am and drive to Marion, OH to adjudicate the DI tournament

Monday, March 14: my student's final exam (3 in-class essays)

Tuesday, March 15 - Thursday, March 17: grade, grade, grade, grade, grade

Thursday, March 17: heart attack because my computer won't connect to the internet and I can't submit grades. Go to work early to use chef's computer to submit them. Sigh of relief until I realize I still have 7 pages of my 15 page paper to write before the next day.

Thursday, March 17, 10pm - Friday, March 18, noon: write, write, write, write, write, submit

Friday, March 18, noon-4pm: put together application to be a facilitator at the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching's fall teaching orientation. Submit.

Friday, March 18, 4pm-5pm: practice the piece I'm supposed to play in Eric and Bethany's wedding. Curse my rusty piano skills.

Friday, March 18, 6:30pm: Eric and Bethany's wedding rehearsal. Have a heart attack because I can't remember how to play the piano.

Saturday, March 19, noon: get ready for the wedding. Still panicking about the piano thing.

Saturday, March 19, 2:30pm: wedding starts. Still panicking.

Saturday, March 19, 2:38pm: play the piano well enough that I didn't embarrass anyone. Feel like I could use a stiff drink.

Saturday, March 19, 2:44pm: Eric and Bethany married. Cue the party music.

Saturday, March 19, 3:45pm: receiving line finally done. Happy I'm not in the wedding party because I don't have to stand for a million pictures. Three family pictures and then I'm done. Find some punch, then go home and let the dog out before the reception.

Saturday, March 19, 6:46pm: Eric presented with a magnificent ball and chain by his friends at the reception. He tells them to have fun in Ohio, he's taking his ball and chain to the Caribbean.

Saturday, March 19, 7:30pm: Paul, Amy, Kyle and I plan our escape. Go home and put on comfy clothes, then go to the movies. Rango wasn't as funny as I expected, but it was fun.

Sunday, March 20: Sleep in

Monday, March 21: Spring break starts. Resolve to do absolutely nothing except read books on my Kindle all week. Get through a good chunk of A Game of Thrones.

Wednesday, March 23: Ikea and the Jeffersonville outlets with Amy

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, March 27: still doing nothing. Finish A Game of Thrones.

Monday, March 28: School starts again. No more laughing, no more fun.

Kindle-ing the flame

2011-03-03T09:13:00.003-05:00

I have been doing nothing in my free time except reading book after book on my new Kindle.

Posting will recommence when (if) the excitement of reading books for pleasure wears off.

Fresh

2011-02-08T20:03:00.002-05:00

Now that my kickin' bookshelves are done (trimmed, primed and painted by my lovely husband - my part was going through with a teeny tiny little brush to make sure there was paint in the recesses of the vine detail on the face strip), I decided to rearrange the living room a bit. It wasn't bad as it was before, but I'm notorious for getting bored and needing to move the furniture around.

It's lovely now.

And I still don't have a camera to take pictures of it.

So just imagine the living room with a gorgeous, glossy white bookshelf running around the top of two walls, with my desk under my neat book wreath against the bedroom wall, and the couch in the corner between the two windows. The rocking chair is by the front door where my desk used to be and the red leather chair is between the closet and bedroom. It's beautiful and airy and I love it.

Pictures soon, I promise.

Chilly/ Chili

2011-02-01T12:59:00.002-05:00

It's cold and icy this week in the Midwest, and I'm loving everything about it except the having to go out in it part. This morning, though, I braved the weather to go to campus for my students' lecture, and now I'm back home and snuggled in until tomorrow (unless, of course, the administration takes pity and gives us a snow day. Please, Lord, let them take pity).

My plan is to start a big crock pot full of chili for dinner and then to sit on my couch and read the book I'm presenting on for class tomorrow (unless, of course, class is canceled. See prayer above). I figure if I count on a snow day and goof off there's a good chance we'll have school, whereas if I read this book and I'm well prepared, it'll be canceled. Unless, of course, the universe cottons on to the fact that I've figured out how to circumvent Murphy's Law of School Closure and outwits me by having campus open tomorrow after all. But I suppose in that case I'll have read the book, so it won't be too big of a deal.

But first, chili and tea. Afternoons like this make winter worth it.

Not one of "those people"

2011-01-27T17:29:00.003-05:00

This is probably a better facebook post than blog entry, but I've already posted on facebook once today and I'm really trying to keep pretending I'm not one of *those people* who gets on facebook every five minutes.

Sometimes you just have to wash your face, make a cup of tea and get on with it.

Discuss.

*picture here

Crazy

2011-01-25T13:19:00.004-05:00

I like the word 'crazy.' It implies that things are a bit out of control (or at least out of the ordinary) without necessarily implying that that's a bad thing.

It's also Paul's nickname for me. Make of that what you will.

My life's a little crazy right now. School's in session, I'm teaching and taking some labor-intensive classes (including one called "Violence in Early Modern Europe," which I think it's simultaneously awesome and ridiculous. I'm getting paid to take these classes? Really? I took Old Occitan last quarter. Have you even *heard* of Old Occitan? I hadn't either).

Paul and I are slowly but surely making progress on the house, but my camera finally gave up the ghost, so I haven't taken any pictures lately. We finally installed my mad cool bookshelves above the bedroom door and wrapping around to the front corner of the house, and they make me happy every time I look at them. We also put in a proper thermostat, replacing the old, scary mercury-filled one. One of the next projects on the docket is to finish cleaning out the garage (which is full of left-over wedding stuff, Paul's tools and stuff that won't fit in the house, wine-making supplies, gardening tools, soil, mulch, pots and I don't even know what else) and to make a proper tool bench.

Oh, and we adopted a cat.

Just noticed that you can see both my awesome book shelf and our new thermostat in the webcam picture. It's almost like I meant to do that.

So truth in advertising, actually *I* adopted a cat. He's supposed to keep Penny busy during the day while we're at school and work. Judging by the papers I regularly find strewn on the floor when I get home, I think it's working.

Doesn't she look innocent, though?

Life after the wedding

2011-01-09T14:22:00.003-05:00

What with the holidays and all, I got a bit burned out with the wedding posts. I might put up a couple more with some more of the ceremony and reception or some photobooth photos, but I'm trying to get into the habit of blogging more regularly and I'm a bit bored with wedding stuff.

'What?' you say? 'Bored with wedding stuff? But your wedding is supposed to be the happiest day of your life! You should spend the next 10 years poring over your wedding album and wishing you could still fit in your wedding dress! How can you be bored?!?'

Confession: I was accused of being the anti-bride during the six weeks we spent planning our wedding. While I did a lot of the traditional wedding-y stuff (spent hours and at least a year's worth of dexterity in my right hand stamping our invitation envelopes, bought trellises and little tissue paper poofy things to decorate the 'ceremony site', had a bridal shower and a hen party (that included cheese AND chocolate fondues, When Harry Met Sally nail painting and a sleepover at my house), we also did some not-so-traditional wedding-y stuff. Like planning on having the entire shindig in our combined backyards and crossing our fingers that it wouldn't rain. And cooking all the food ourselves. And making my dress from scratch, painstakingly sewing together panels of cut silk taffeta flowers by hand (a project that I could not have done alone by any means - thank you again, Kate!) Or how about getting flowers from our favorite vendor at the farmer's market (who gave them to us for free, since it turned out that their anniversary is the same as ours) and having the lovely Amy make boutonnieres for the guys because she just happened to have worked in a flower shop for a few months last year?

So maybe there was some truth to the anti-bride thing.

Honestly, though, as much as I absolutely loved our wedding, and as much as it was one of the happiest days of my life to this point, I'm ready for what's next. I'm ready to work on feathering our nest, and planning for our future, and having adventures and continuing to learn from each other. So I'm hoping to start using this space to chronicle our present and speculate on our future together, rather than to dwell further on how fabulous our wedding was.

...

Even though, really, it was pretty fabulous.

Something old, something new...

2010-12-20T14:20:00.005-05:00

*My grandmother's hankie
*My outrageous wedding dress and veil, not to mention those killer shoes and that handsome husband on my arm.
*Kate's beautiful pearl set
*And a little something blue

*No six-pence in that shoe though. Sounded painful.

Wedding IV

2010-11-24T14:51:00.019-05:00

I think we all imagined that the trip over to Joyce and Bill's house was going to be sneakier than it actually was.

We discussed all sorts of cloak and dagger maneuvers, including shrouding me in a giant cloak, having all the girls cluster in front of me so I could tiptoe into the house behind them with no one the wiser, or doing that James Bond peer-around-corners-then-duck-and-tumble-into-position thing. (The latter was abandoned after someone pointed out the impracticality of tumbling in a party dress.)

As it turned out, we just sort of meandered over.

The wait for Paul and his groomsmen to get in place so the wedding could begin was interminable.

The wedding was being held in Joyce and Bill's front yard, so we planned to regroup in their front room and sail right out the front door and down to the "altar" under the big tree in their front yard. So we regrouped. And regrouped. And regrouped. And the guys didn't come, and didn't come, and didn't come. And I got more and more and more fidgety.

Kate and Whitney (our bold and intrepid readers) walked my mom down the aisle.

My bridesmaids and I tried to behave ourselves, but we couldn't keep from peeking through the windows to see who was out there.

First Amy,

then Amy and Erin,

and pretty soon all of us.

Kate totally caught us peeking, but I don't think too many other people noticed. See? We *were* being sneaky. Kinda.

Finally, after about a thousand years, Paul and his groomsmen made their entrance.

My cousins Kelly and Ben started playing "You Raise Me Up" on their violins.

My bridesmaids started making their way down the aisle, and I got more and more nervous as they abandoned me.

Finally it was Dad's and my turn.

Erin, bless her, was already crying, and would cry through the whole ceremony. She was no help at all in my own efforts not to cry.

Brother Tony said a prayer, during which I was able to collect myself somewhat.

(Amy totally peeked during the prayer. Kate confessed that she was peeking, too. Bad girls.)

And then my dad gave me away to my soon-to-be-husband.

Wedding III

2010-11-16T13:42:00.015-05:00

Once we mopped ourselves up from the initial "Oh my God, she's a BRIDE" moment, everyone wanted to help get me brushed and fluffed and primped for the ceremony. I'm pretty sure that at one point absolutely everyone in my house had their hands on me

and I got my game face on.

After that, though, it was my turn to shoo everyone off to get themselves ready

while I finished drying Erin's hair. In my wedding dress. Which is exactly how I wanted it to be.

Finally we were all ready.

I decorated Mama

and we were ready to roll. Are these not about the prettiest ladies you've ever seen?

Up next: the exciting dash to Joyce and Bill's house and the excruciating seven minute wait for the ceremony to begin.

*pics by Hannah Samuell

Wedding II

2010-11-11T11:22:00.011-05:00

We were perhaps a bit... casual about getting ready for the ceremony. At about 1:00, as I was still happily fussing with the place settings and getting ready to set up the hors d'oeuvres table behind my house, Kate, dear friend/reader/day-of coordinator coordinator extraordinaire, found me and said something to the effect of "WE-ARE-SUPPOSED-TO-BE-HIDING-IN-JOYCE-AND-BILL'S-HOUSE-IN-*ONE*-HOUR-AND-YOU'RE-NOT-EVEN-DRESSED-YET!"

So we started getting ready.

Only people kept calling for me from outside, and I was still convinced that we had plenty of time.

But eventually Kate and my bridesmaids wrestled me into the living room (or the dressing room, as it was that day) and we all started applying our war paint.

All, that is, except Erin, who hadn't gotten around to showering yet that day, and so hopped in the shower at t-40 minutes to go. Little sisters. Bless 'em.

Getting ready was fun, and girly, and a lot like a high school slumber party or dressing up for prom.

Then it was finally time for me to get into my dress. I will probably someday devote an entire post to the dress, but for now, suffice it to say that Kate and I made it together, and it was probably the single biggest labor of love either of us had ever undertaken. I certainly couldn't have done it alone, and the hours (and hours and hours) we spent working on it together are hours I treasure. When my mom helped me put it on she started crying. Which made me start to cry. When I walked out of my room, all of the girls started to cry. Which made me stomp my foot and demand that they STOP IT RIGHT NOW because it was entirely too soon for any of that.

But all the same, it was a good thing I supplied us all with pretty hankies. We needed them that day.

*Photos by Hannah Samuell

Wedding I

2010-11-09T13:56:00.010-05:00

Tomorrow will be our one-month anniversary. I haven't posted much about the wedding yet because I've wanted to hold it close and keep it just for myself for a little while, but it's been a month and it's time to share. Plus, I can't keep these gorgeous pictures to myself anymore.

To set the scene: October 10, 2010. 80 degrees, sunny, nary a cloud in the sky.

Slight breeze, just enough to set Amy's little flags waving.

I woke up with my sister and we puttered around nailing down last minute details (me baking two cherry pies, she downloading songs for our fabulous playlist).

The chairs were delivered and Paul, Bill and I set them up in Bill and Joyce's front yard, where we'd be married later that day.

Gradually friends and family started showing up to help, setting the tables,

hanging tissue paper puffballs in the tree to float over our heads while we said our vows,

and obsessively organizing toothpicks for the olive and cheese trays by color.

*all photos by the utterly fabulous Hannah Samuell

10.10.10

2010-10-24T00:56:00.005-04:00

I stumbled across a neat project that Victoria Hannan, a photographer in London, put together with nine other photographers around the world. Each of them took ten photos on 10/10/10 as "an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the simple, everyday things that make life beautiful." To think that all these lovely things were being captured on our wedding day!

*photo by Kate Miss, the NYC photographer in the group. 10/10/10 was her birthday.

Hitched

2010-10-18T11:06:00.002-04:00

We're buying a trailer hitch for the Honda this week.

Also, we got married last weekend.

Et voila:

Wedded bliss

2010-10-08T06:48:00.003-04:00

the day after tomorrow.

Oh my.

:)

*photo by the lovely and talented Amy from an engagement shoot she did for us at a local arboretum.

News

2010-09-15T17:57:00.010-04:00

I have been chided for not blogging in, oh, say a month or so.

In my defense, it's been a busy month, and it's about to get busier.

Paul and I got engaged at the end of last month (August 31, to be precise), and, because we're not really ones to mess around once we've made our minds up, we're getting married early next month (October 10th, to be precise).

No, I'm not pregnant, before anyone asks.

The planets have finally aligned, Paul started work in Columbus this past Monday and it seems dumb for him to keep paying rent somewhere until we get married. We've been throwing ideas around about the wedding for a while anyway, and are on the same page about what it is we want (meaningful ceremony, outdoors, low-key, lots of family and friends around, delicious home-cooking). The biggest project I'm taking on is making my wedding dress, and it's nearly done (AND I'm three weeks away from the wedding, which is probably a personal best. I may or may not have a reputation for doing things at the last minute). Paul's big project will be smoking enough of his famous ribs for a 130-or so guest list. Other than that, we really just want to be married at the end of the day.

So if posting is spotty for the next month-ish, it's because I'm organizing a wedding in about two seconds. Don't worry. I'll post pictures once it's over.

In the meantime, I leave you with some of the cute pics that were on my camera when I cleaned it off just now.

"No pictures, please."

See the string hanging out of her mouth? That's from the hem of my wedding dress.

And this one was taken immediately after the previous, once she'd slurped the string up like spaghetti. Could she look any more innocent?

My two favorites cuddling on the couch

Yet another reason why I love this man. He climbed down into my crawlspace (the trapdoor for which is narrower than his shoulders) to fix my stopped up shower drain. Now that's love.

Menagerie

2010-08-14T10:27:00.008-04:00

An update from Penny-land.

She got a pacifier-shaped Kong a few weeks ago, which we've been stuffing with peanut butter to buy ourselves a few moments' peace. It's a hit.

Penny loves cats. Ever since the very first day I brought her home and she met my parents' cat Oliver, she has tried to make friends with every cat she encounters. (It should be noted that the friend-making meets with limited success. Ollie tolerates her, but my aunt and uncle's cat hates her with a fiery passion and tries to swipe at her when she comes too near. The neighborhood cats generally regard her with deep suspicion.)

When we came home from dinner at my parents' house earlier this week, there was a white kitten hanging around my garage. In my garage after I opened the door to park the car, in fact. Penny and I walked around the car to herd the kitty out of the garage, and she got freaked out and ran, but a few minutes later the kitty returned. Penny really, *really* wanted to be friends, so I let her go closer (on a leash so she wouldn't run after it). The kitty hissed a little, but came closer and touched noses with her. Penny and I went in the house and I set a little milk to tempt the kitten back.

I had left my kitchen door open and only the storm door shut so that Penny could look out at the kitty. When next I looked in the kitchen, the kitten was standing up on my stoop with her paws on the window, looking through the glass.

So I let her in.

And she made herself at home.

I started calling her Smudge because of the little grey blot on her head - it looks like someone got grease on their thumb and wiped it off on her. After a short visit I let her back out to hunt and I haven't seen her since. Her mama lives across the alley from me (I've seen several others of the litter running around the neighborhood). Maybe Penny can have an outdoor cat friend, so I won't have to change a litter box!

These are unrelated to the cat story, but this is what I saw when I went into my bedroom yesterday morning:

She heard me come in, so she roused herself to see what the fuss was about.

What a goober.

Lest you think I fell off the face of the earth....

2010-08-11T10:19:00.028-04:00

... some pictures of Paul's and my trip to Saranac Lake, NY, Brighton, Ontario, and Stratford, Ontario.

Penny was not excited about me going away and leaving her.
"Pleeeeeze don't pack your shower stuff! Pleeeze? Then take me with you! I could be a good loofah!"

"Fine, then. I'm just going to sit here and sulk in the bathtub. Maybe I'll just drown. Then you'll be sorry."

Our campsite in New York was at Rollins Pond about 15 miles outside Saranac Lake. We were up there for the Can-Am rugby tournament. Paul's team didn't go up to play this year, but I always like watching rugby, so we went up for the first weekend.

I apologize in advance for all the pictures of us that I took while holding the camera at arm's length. Actually, I think they're sort of hilarious, so I rescind my apology.

Paul's rugby team used to have a competition when they travelled to see who could pack the lightest. My mom got this little suitcase for Paul one of the first Christmases we were dating. I can't remember if he ever got to take it on rugby tour, but I think he'd win.

Have rugby gear, will travel.

Dinner (pre-being cooked over the campfire) the first night. Mmm... I love campfire hash.

Two of the trees just at the side of our campsite were hugging. Aww.

Hugging in front of the hugging trees.

View of the mountaintops. We were way high in the Adirondacks here driving toward Canada, and the views were absolutely spectacular. I think this was taken near Paul Smith's College ("The College of the Adirondacks"). How awesome would it be to go to school there?

Paul's the king of the hill.

On our way from Saranac to Stratford we stopped in Brighton, near Presqu'ile Provincial Park in Ontario. Paul insisted on getting up at dark-thirty in the morning to see the sun rise over Lake Ontario because he had refused to get up for the sunrise in Litchfield when we were there a few years ago. I wasn't that excited about getting out of the only bed I was going to sleep in that week (we stayed at the Apple Manor B&B in Brighton), but it was a neat morning.

Lake Ontario is colder than it looks.

The brave and intrepid voyager surveys the environs and prognosticates on the weather.

(I haven't figured out how to remove the stupid timestamps yet, but I think this is a cute picture of us anyway).
We decided to do "yoga" on the beach at sunrise, because, really, why wouldn't you?

This one's for mom: the warrior pose(ish).

Pretty, pebbly beach.
This is on the opposite side of the point from the previous pictures. The bottom was sandy there instead of rocky and the water was as still as a bathtub. It was weird to see water all the way to the horizon standing perfectly still.

We met Brian, Harold, Rhonda and Mary in Stratford Monday night. Tuesday night was our first show, and I told Paul he should wear a shirt and tie to the show. He was one of maybe three guys wearing a tie in the whole theater (and the other two were, like, 80), but he cleans up pretty nice.

Dressed up for the thee-AY-tur. We saw As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, Evita, Peter Pan, and The Tempest with Christopher Plummer as Prospero. All the shows were lovely, but Peter Pan was the clear winner for staging, technical fabulousness and general theater magic. I think The Winter's Tale was the best acted of the shows we saw, and The Tempest was another neat technical show, punctuated by moments of acting brilliance (Julyana Soelistyo as Ariel was about as ethereal and incorporeal as a human playing a spirit can be, and Bruce Dow as Trinculo the jester along with Geraint Wyn Davies as Stephano the butler added a healthy dose of levity when the show was getting a bit too somber). After The Tempest, which we saw Friday night, we got a backstage tour of the Festival Theatre, thanks to Brian's befriending Bruce a few years ago. I had been on one of the "Friends of the Festival" backstage tours years ago, but it was much more fun to be back there with someone who actually uses all the spaces he showed us. We saw everything from the fly space above the stage where the spot ops spend their time to the vomitorium below the stage where the actors make a lot of their entrances and exits. The tour was certainly one of the highlights of the trip.

We drove to St. Mary's (the next town over from Stratford heading west, out toward our campground for the week) and found our dream house. I took about a million picture of it, but I'll only inflict this one on you. The stone! The dormers! (Although I'd make the dormers in my house bigger, I think.) The covered entryway! The gingerbread!! *swoons* It was for sale, but we didn't have the nerve to call and ask how much it was. Much better to dream about it.

Our last morning in Stratford we ate at Features, the best breakfast place in town. Paul ordered the Paul Bunyan platter, naturally. Less a plate than a trough, perhaps, but it was pretty darn good. I continued my eggs benedict obsession - Features serves theirs on French toast. Mmm.

Surprisingly, considering the amount of time we spent together in the car (we figure about 24 hours total in the course of the week) and a tent, Paul and I did not kill each other. In fact, we were even sad when I had to leave New York to come home. Penny (and my parents and sister, who were watching her) was happy to have me back, though, and it's good to sleep in a bed again. All in all, a most successful vacation.

Summer resolution

2010-07-12T23:22:00.003-04:00

I have long wished I was one of those cool girls who whips out her knitting on the train or during intermission or while sitting around the campfire in the heart of Africa.* My grandmother and great aunts were all domestic goddesses who knit and purled with the best of them, but when they tried to teach me their secrets, their demonstrations confounded my chubby, little-girl fingers and I've never managed to make more than 15 inches of wobbly scarf.

The summer, as I have nothing better to do than finish my master's thesis (which, really, is a minor thing), I am determined to teach myself to knit. To that end, Penny and I walked to the library today and checked out two beginner's guides to knitting, and I liberated four skeins of yarn (three orange, one lemon yellow) from my grandmother's left-behind stash in the boys' basement.

Any and all advice will be gratefully accepted.

* Part of this social fantasy may stem from the fact that I wish I was a girl who rode trains and sat around campfires in the heart of Africa, but I am very good at pretending. Once I learn to knit, I'm sure the rest will come.

Photo courtesy of Flickr

Curb Appeal

2010-07-08T12:27:00.006-04:00

I worked in the yard for three more hours this morning and I think I can declare my front yard done for the time being. Mom and I ran out of steam yesterday after planting about 20 perennials in the two front beds, so I finished them up with some annuals and a couple of herbs this morning. I'm really happy with how they came out. It's nice not to have the homeliest house on the block anymore.

From left to right: foxglove (in the pot), sage, lenten rose, dream queen hosta, green mountain boxwood, another sage, holly, plantain lily "halcyon" hosta, caladium, another hosta whose name I didn't write down, Japanese painted fern in the corner, a barberry bush that was already established, and a winter green boxwood. The other side is basically a mirror image of this layout, but with a Japanese beech fern instead of caladium and a "forever and ever hydrangea" instead of the foxglove. The annuals are begonias, impatiens, and dianthus.

Slowly but surely, it's looking like a real house!

Too hot to think

2010-07-07T23:51:00.002-04:00

It is 11:52 and it's still over 80 degrees in my house. I'm sitting in the dark eating frozen grapes and thinking cool thoughts.

Mom and I got the front of my house landscaped today, so I finally don't have the ugliest house on the block. I'll post pictures tomorrow. It's too hot to get up and find the camera cord.

Must, must get insulation soon. This is ridiculous.

House tour, part I

2010-06-25T14:36:00.008-04:00

As promised, some pictures of the CB. I'll start with the bedroom, since it was the cleanest yesterday when I took the pictures.

The butterflies on the wall are vinyl decals that I am still playing with - they won't have the blue paper behind them once I finally adhere them to the wall. (Don't worry, Dad, they are removable and won't ruin the paint if I decide to take them off in the future.) The "bedspread" is a shower curtain from World Market that I liked - the sort of greyish-blue stripe in the middle is almost the same color as my walls, although it doesn't look it in this picture. My grandma made the crocheted spread at the foot of the bed for me - it's one of the most beautiful things I own.

Bed and bedside table. The glass tube in the window is a thermometer - you know it's bad when there's only one bubble floating at the top of it (80 degrees), but it's even worse when not even the 80 degree bubble is floating. Must, must, must get some decent insulation into the attic in the next week.

Dresser-top, because I'm nosy and like to see what other people have on their dressers. Notice my awesome overhead light reflected in the mirror? I wish I could say I meant to do that.

This plant is a "wandering Jew" that I adopted from Kate when she moved to California a couple years ago. Although it periodically goes through molting phases when I become convinced that I have finally killed it, it has thus far sprung back each time and seems pretty happy in this eastern-exposed window. I couldn't get my camera to photograph them properly, but the leaves are a really lush magenta streaked with green and sparkly silver. It absolutely glows in the sunshine. The cool terracotta vase and wooden cat are souvenirs from my grandparents' visits to my Aunt Beth and her family in New Mexico.

Penny was napping under the bed while I took these first pictures, but she stirred her stumps and came out when it seemed like I might take a picture of her. She's a ham - she will actually hold still and preen a little for pictures now. I think I may have completely spoiled her.

And finally, perhaps some additional evidence for the spoilage, gathered the other night while I was working on my computer in the front room. I turned around to see where she was, and this is what I found:

What an absolute brat.

One more page of gratuitous puppy photos, then I promise some house pics this week

2010-06-21T10:24:00.007-04:00

LT goes home today and I will once again be a one-puppy household, so I thought I'd leave you with a few more puppy pictures from the weekend.*

This is the dog who lives across the alley from me. She's a Mexican hairless chihuahua who wanders over to visit from time to time. I'm pretty sure she was an accident, because surely God didn't mean to make something this unfortunate looking.

This puppy is more my style. I think she looks like a little black bear in this picture.

I took the pups up to my parents' house yesterday for Father's Day and they played outside for most of the afternoon. I finally managed to tire them out: they slept last night from 10:30 until 8:30 this morning. That may be the longest I've slept at one time since adopting Penny. Glorious.

An action shot of LT:

Penny resting in the shade:

"Digging? Nope, I haven't been digging. That would be naughty of me."

It's been fun having the little sisters this weekend, but two puppies are definitely more than twice the work of one!

*These were taken on my mom's camera, which apparently thinks it's August and not June, so ignore the timestamps.

"Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters..."

2010-06-19T09:22:00.004-04:00

(Bonus points if you can tell me where the quote in the title comes from.)

Penny's sister LT (Lucy Two) is visiting for the weekend, so I tried to snap a couple shots of the girls. Most of them came out like this:

And in fact, I didn't get a single one that is perfectly clear. I'm going on the theory that it's impressive that I got them to hold still for even long enough that they're not just two black blurs. You get the idea, anyway.

They're quite the sister act.

Update: I just managed to snap a rare photo on my cellphone of the two of them in repose. Study this one, because it doesn't happen often.

Puppy at the lake

2010-06-17T23:00:00.008-04:00

Penny and I went up to New York this weekend to visit Paul and we all went to Paul's friend's cottage on the lake. Penny thinks she could be a lake dog.

Still life

2010-06-11T12:27:00.003-04:00

The week (mostly) in pictures

2010-05-28T14:01:00.010-04:00

Paul and I went to my friends' wedding in Wooster last weekend. I asked his opinion about which shoes to wear with my dress, and he suggested his. I decided maybe not.

I bought a fan to combat the outrageous heat wave we've been having. Penny got her own Cardboard Box out of the deal.

The peonies have worn themselves out with their own decadence.

But I finally got some veggies in the ground. This is a green bell pepper - I also planted carrots, radishes, green and wax beans and some cucumber plants today, but the garden doesn't look like much yet. As soon as I have sprouts, pictures will be forthcoming.

The clematis is doing well this year.

So remember a while ago how I posted about the beautiful sunshine that comes in my kitchen? It's really lovely in the spring when it's still cool outside. It's a bit much when it's 90 degrees by 11am. I strung up some tea towels until I find inspiration for this window. I might just try to get one more calendar tea towel for a year between 1986 and 2010. I think they're cute. The 1986 one was my grandma's - she used to get one each year. I like to see on what day my birthday fell each year. My first birthday was on a Tuesday in 1986.

Family

2010-05-17T15:15:00.003-04:00

Paul came to visit for the weekend, so we took some family portraits.

Most of them looked like this:

But we managed to get some cute ones.

See any family resemblance?

Gratuitous puppy pics

2010-05-08T13:24:00.007-04:00

"Ok, enough pictures, Mama, time to go play now...."

I see the light!

2010-05-04T07:58:00.004-04:00

One of my very favorite things about the CB is the gorgeous sunshine that streams into my bedroom and the kitchen in the morning. Pictures don't do it justice.

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes...

2010-04-24T09:47:00.009-04:00

So I meant to post this last week, but between moving into the CB last Saturday (I know, right?!?) and having a puppy on my hands (literally - she's teething right now and her favorite chew toys are my fingers) it didn't get done. Little Miss Penny Lane is now taking a nap (picture to follow) after a big morning playing with my mom and Lynn when they came to see her, so I'm finally free for 20 minutes or so.

The story on Penny is that my friend Kelly from work knew someone who had a litter they were trying to place in good homes. Penny is a border collie mix, and she's about seven weeks old now - she was just over five weeks when I brought her home. I've arbitrarily picked March 12th as her birthday, so free your calendars next March - we're having a birthday party.

The first couple nights I had her (Monday and Tuesday) she didn't sleep through the night at all, waking up every couple of hours crying to go out. While I appreciate that she wants to go potty outside, the lack of sleep was brutal. Since then, she's slept through the night pretty well. As long as I take her out around 11 she will sleep until 6:30 or so, which gives momma a blissful and much needed 7 hours. She was doing really well on the potty training until last Friday, when I had to leave her at home most of the day while I worked a double. She was not happy about that, and let me know by christening my house pretty liberally. Luckily her bladder is tiny, so it's only a teaspoon at a time, but I swear she was deliberately punishing me. Since then she's only messed in the house when she first wakes up from a nap if she's still too sleepy to remember what she's supposed to do.

In other news, I moved in to the CB last Saturday and have been living here for a week now. There are still a few things that need to be done, including painting and installing shoe molding and figuring out what the heck I'm going to do with all of my books, but the major work is done. It's really starting to feel like home. I'll take pictures of the finished floors and the furniture soon - it's rainy today, and the house really looks much nicer in the sunshine. After four months of backbreaking labor*, I'm finally in.

* Ok, truth in advertising: it wasn't really four solid months. More like a few hardcore long weekends. Parts of it were pretty backbreaking, though. At least the bruises on my knees have finally healed.

So anyway, on to the gratuitous puppy pictures:

Penny's current napping place:

Her other favorite napping spot in the pantry:

Learning to climb the stairs at the big house the first week:

Now she's a big shot and wants to climb everything. She made it onto my desk from my lap a couple days ago. Too bad it's harder getting down than getting up...

She "helps" me clean the house by chasing the broom and biting at it/ stepping on it/ standing in my dust piles. It's comical, if inefficient. She is undeniably cute, though.

Oops, somebody's stirring. More pictures to follow shortly!

Penny

2010-04-20T20:47:00.005-04:00

!!!

2010-04-19T16:12:00.003-04:00

It's moving week!

Also, there will be a new addition to the family tonight! (Hint: I'm not pregnant - the new addition has four legs and black fur).

Pictures to follow shortly.

No pictures yet, but....

2010-04-06T21:45:00.002-04:00

MY FLOORS ARE DONE!

Paul and I finished staining the floors this weekend and sealed them on Sunday. I have to wait 7-10 days for them to cure, then it'll be moving day!

I'm going to give them the full 10 days, both because I'm busy this weekend and because I'm terrified of messing up our hard work, so I'm looking to move toward the end of next week.

Yet to be done:
* Finish making Roman shades for the front room windows
* Hang front room and bedroom curtains
* Make kitchen curtains and hang them, too
* Clean the stove that apparently hadn't been cleaned for 20 years, but is a nice little stove nonetheless
* Stain + install the oak threshold that will cover the linoleum edge into the front room from the kitchen
* Install the metal threshold pieces for the outside kitchen door and the pantry door
* Paint the bathroom floor (although this doesn't necessarily have to be done before I move in)
* Paint and install shoe molding

I'm totally encouraged. My to-do list is all simple stuff that will take a few afternoons of light work, and in fact not all of it absolutely has to be done before I move anyway. I also have a bunch of plants and bulbs that are raring to be planted, so there will be some serious yard-work to come, but things are definitely coming together.

I'll post pictures of my gorgeous, custom floors soon!

On the subject of kitchens...

2010-03-22T21:55:00.005-04:00

So today was supposed to be front-room-and-bedroom-floor-staining-day, but we changed course after a slight mishap this morning and focused on cleaning up the janky old kitchen floor and making it someplace that could be clean enough to eat off of. As a reminder, this is what the kitchen floor looked like when I bought the CB:

And the floor after having been scraped a bit, but on an even worse kitchen-as-storage-for-everything-in-the-house day:

So today, instead of staining the floors as planned, Mom and I went down to the local floor coverings shop and picked up a remnant of linoleum and proceeded to attack the nasty orange foamy goo that remained. Some scraping (and about a million four inch long nails to be removed) later, here's the big reveal:

Much, much better than orange goo.

Thanks for your help, Mom!

Evidently I'm cool and I didn't even know it....

2010-03-17T01:18:00.004-04:00

So, I was browsing Apartment Therapy a few minutes ago (while I was supposed to be working on my final paper) and came across this feature from The Kitchn on green kitchens. Apparently I was on-trend and didn't even know it. Brilliant.

Back to paper-writing-jail. Looking forward to turning this sucker in tomorrow and being able to come up for air.

*first picture from Apartment Therapy; second by me of the CB's kitchen.

IT'S PLANTING TIME!

2010-03-07T14:30:00.005-05:00

(...almost)

I got my first batch of seeds yesterday in the mail and it has me pretty fired up about getting the gardens going and finally (finally) being done with winter.

In this envelope of goodies:
*Sweet Million tomato hybrid (Because cherry tomatoes are like candy in the summertime)
*Brandywine tomato
*Golden Rave tomato
*Rainbow blend baby greens
*Rainbow blend carrots
*Swiss bright lights chard (x2) (Are we seeing a color pattern here?)
*Spaghetti squash (x2)
*Perfected Detroit dark beets (x2)

I still have an offering of Mary Washington improved asparagus starts and three flowering quince bushes coming from this seed and nursery company, but they'll be shipped after the ground thaws. I'm also waiting on another batch of seeds from another company and some berry bushes and flowers/bulbs from a third company. It's like Christmas in March, only better!

I'm so excited for spring!

*chard picture from Henry Field's. Isn't it pretty?

End of the quarter madness

2010-02-26T11:08:00.004-05:00

Posting will be light around here for the next couple of weeks as I wrap up the quarter, get my term papers written, and try with all my might to finish my master's thesis so it won't be hanging over my head anymore. I'm about 20-25 pages away from being done with the thesis, which theoretically means I could write two pages a day for the next two weeks and be more than done. In practice, however, I am still trying to think through some of the things I am writing and I don't feel ready to commit to one particular reading yet. Or maybe I am just using that as an excuse because I don't want to work on the project. In any case, I can't quite justify spending too much time with the CB for a bit until I get some of this other stuff done.

To tide you over, this is what I spent many hours earlier this month working on:

Nearly done sanding! There are some places that are stained from water damage that chemically adhered the foam carpet backing to the wood and almost petrified the wood, but I think when I stain the whole floor it will even those spots out somewhat and, anyway, who wants a totally perfect floor? The rest of the CB has character - the floor might as well, too.

The quick run-down on the floor is:

1.) First weekend I owned the house Paul and I rented a rotary sander and went over every inch of the floor about a million times. I think we probably spent about 17 hours on this step. It was brutal.

2.) I made good friends with the belt sander and palm sander as I went around the edges of the floor and got all the places the rotary sander couldn't reach as well as going over some tough spots on the floor after we returned the sander. I'm estimating about 12 hours of this so far (I still need to get a few more spots around the edges of the room and also around the heater grate in the floor).

3.) I borrowed some flat, metal scrapers from Amy's dad Bob and have been going over every join in the floor scraping the edges of the boards that are a little lower where it's hard for the belt sander to reach. Probably 8 hours of this so far.

So I'm estimating the grand total so far to be around 37 hours of sanding. On one hand it doesn't sound like that much, but on the other hand, I spent at least 20 hours of that on my hands and knees on a hardwood floor, so it's not insignificant, I don't think. I should be able to finish up the last of the sanding in about two or three hours, then it'll be time to clean the floors really well so there's no dust and then we can stain. The stain only needs about six hours to dry before we can seal it, so that will be a relatively easy weekend project. The sealer has to cure for a week or so before I can put furniture in, and then it'll be moving day. I'm a bit behind schedule for moving (it'll probably be more like the end of March, so not mid-February as I had hoped), but school is important, much as I'd like to forget about it and only work on my house until it's done.

Still, I'm so close I can almost taste it...

Done with the cold

2010-02-22T22:19:00.004-05:00

I'm super ready to be done with the cold and the snow. I put in my first seed and plant order on Friday, and I have more to make in the next couple of weeks. We've now reached the part of winter when I don't have my birthday to look forward to anymore (it was last Thursday - more on that soon) and I just want it to be warm so I can play in the garden and coax little, tiny seeds into being something I can make dinner from someday. This growing season will be even more exciting, because in addition to my regular garden (at the house I live in now), I have big plans for the CB which will include both pretty, floral plantings and lots and lots of edibles. It's going to be farmer's market central around here come August and September.

Last year's veggie garden around August. From left to right: tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and tabasco peppers (the tall ones in the back), jalapeno peppers, green and wax beans, carrots, and some onions and garlic around the whole thing to keep the rabbits out. I also had a container garden last year with herbs and some stray jalapenos.

My hand looks so tan compared to my winter-white skin!

Ok, spring, I'm ready whenever you are.

New friends!

2010-02-17T18:10:00.006-05:00

So it took a bit longer than I anticipated, but Faith's swappity swap package finally made its way to her mailbox in faraway Washington. It arrived late because my house (and more importantly, my street) looked like this the day it was supposed to be mailed:

I was driving my mom's PT Cruiser that day and it's just not made for driving in that much snow. Here's what had built up in Eric's and Ben's trucks* overnight:

We've actually had about six more inches of snow since these pictures were taken, but these little pretties finally made it to the West Coast as a belated Valentine's present:

Here's Faith's very flattering post on their arrival. They say the best gifts are the ones you would be happy to receive yourself, so I tried to keep that in mind as I was putting it together. Amanda, our bold and intrepid swap organizer, did a good job matching us up, since evidently we're two peas in a pod!

And speaking of other neat new friends, I have been perusing Kersten's blog A Grain A Day since she was my swap partner and made the lovely apron and eye pillow that I have been putting to good use this past week. I'm always interested in learning more about healthy living and eating (although the red velvet whoopie pies** I made last night suggest that I don't necessarily always put what I know into practice. But moving on...), so I'm excited to read up on her blog and learn more about what exactly a macrobiotic diet entails and what the benefits are. If it means giving up cheese I probably could not make it as a macrobiotist***, but I'm always game to learn something. Thanks again, Kersten!

* Eric and Ben are my brother and cousin. They're my current housemates, although once I move into the CB we'll still be neighbors, since the CB is right next door to the house I currently live in. Had I mentioned that? At least it should make moving easy. Or it would if we didn't have 18" of snow on the ground....
** fantastic recipe from littlebrownpen, although I think next time I'll only use about a half a stick of butter in the filling instead of a whole stick. I know - it makes me shudder a little, too, but oh man, are they good.
*** I just made that word up. I'm not sure what one calls a person who eats a macrobiotic diet, but if I learn the answer from Kersten's blog, I'll be sure to share.

The antedote to Builder's Beige

2010-02-16T10:50:00.005-05:00

We finally had a nice, sunny day (on Sunday, appropriately enough), so I toted my camera over to the CB for some quick glamour shots of the new paint in the bedroom and bathroom. (I do not have mad photography skillz, so these shots are perhaps less glamourous than they might be, but you'll get the idea). I painted the bedroom Olympic Plantation Moss and the bathroom Olympic Sprig of Ivy. After some initial nerves while waiting for the paint to dry (it went on an awful, muddy poo-green/grey color) I really love how the rooms turned out. Having the bedroom a different color changed the feel of the whole house - as if I meant for the front room to be beige. The bedroom is a lovely light green-grey that changes with the different light throughout the day. The bathroom is a darker shade of the same color that feels dramatic against the bright white of the cabinet and curtains. I'm not quitting my day job to go into interior decorating anytime soon, but if I did, I would probably paint every client's house Plantation Moss and Sprig of Ivy. Even the names are romantic.

Afternoon light streaming in the front room windows and the bedroom window.

The bathroom from the bedroom. I couldn't do justice to the color of the bedroom - it's less grey than this in person and more of a soft, pretty green. You can see the contrast between the bedroom and bathroom colors here, though.

I had to cut down the shower curtain to make it fit the opening since the shower goes back behind the sink wall a bit, so I sewed a curtain for the window out of the excess.

Now all I need is a crown to hang on the wall over the toilet and my throne room will be complete.

Swappity Swap!

2010-02-14T17:04:00.006-05:00

I participated this year in the second annual Valentine's Day Swappity Swap hosted by Amanda of first milk. My swap partner was Kersten*, and these are the lovelies I received in the mail earlier this week:

I put the pretty little apron to good use yesterday making scones - one batch of cranberry-orange and another of dark chocolate-walnut-orange zest.

For my part of the swap, I sent a little package winging its way across the country to Faith of Poppycock and Sunshine. I'm not going to post pictures of what I sent yet, since I am not sure whether it has arrived,** but I had a great time participating. Thanks so much for organizing it, Amanda!

Happy Valentine's Day, friends!

* Kersten - I don't have your blog address! I will link to it if you send it to me.
** I was in the thick of Snowpocalypse 2010 on Saturday and couldn't get out of my driveway in time to get to the post office on Saturday when the packages were meant to be mailed. If the USPS is true to their word then my little package should have arrived on the West Coast yesterday, but the mail seems to me to be more art than science. Here's hoping....

Let there be light!

2010-02-08T14:37:00.017-05:00

Now that the camera-to-computer situation is worked out, I can finally post pictures of the fancy new lights that now illuminate the CB thanks to my lovely boyfriend-the-electrician. So without further ado:

I decided that I wanted five can lights in the front room, so we figured out about where they should go and drilled test holes into the attic to make sure there was enough room between the beams to install them. My job was to hold a long drill bit up through the hole so Paul could see it in the attic from the ladder. (I balanced it on a roll of duct tape because I wasn't quite tall enough to get it above the beams otherwise). There were some allegations that he was doing all the work while I lounged around holding the walls up. The allegations were deemed false.*

See the ugly ceiling fan? That had to go. I didn't take pictures of its removal since I had to catch the thing when Paul unattached it from the ceiling (further proving that I did not stand around watching him work all weekend), but getting it down was pretty straightforward. And good riddance.

The funny (or horrifying, depending on how hard you think about it) thing about the ceiling fan was that it was wired with an old extension cord cut apart and run across the tops of the beams in the attic. The extension cord was one that didn't have a ground wire, so they conscientiously ran a separate ground wire along with it (the green wire in Paul's hand). My personal electrician was not amused.

"Really?"

He was even less amused when we saw the junction box where they all tied in.

(Hint for the non-electricians: they're not supposed to all be hanging out and wrapped with tape like that. Thanks to Paul, they're all now properly capped and covered. He's handy like that.)

The other j-box was like that, too.

After we disconnected and got rid of the nasty fan, it was time to cut holes in the ceiling for the can lights. (At this point there may have been some truth to Paul's assertion that I was standing around watching him work, but I maintain that I was offering moral support. That's important, too. Also, I was singing loudly to Bon Jovi to encourage him in his pursuits. So I was helping.)

As we were doing this, we discovered the walls and ceiling are made up of a layer of drywall, a layer of stoneboard and a skimcoat of plaster. I didn't take a picture of what that did to Paul's jab saw, but suffice it to say it's not as sharp as it used to be. In fact, when he went to poke the saw through the ceiling to cut the first hole it just bent into a "U". I was amused. After that he drilled a starter hole, but now I owe him a new drill bit as well as a new jab saw. At least I know the walls won't cave in anytime soon....

"Stop giggling! It's not funny!"
(I was apparently too amused to get my finger out of the way of these shots. My camerawork suffers when I'm laughing so hard it makes my abs hurt).

"Really - IT'S NOT FUNNY."

I didn't take pictures of Paul running the wires and connecting the lights because I was too busy running up and down the rickety old ladder bringing tools and parts up to the attic, but only a little blood, sweat and tears later, we had five lovely can lights up in the front room.

This picture was taken sans-trim kits because I still needed to patch the edges where the plaster chipped and touch up the paint, but still - aren't they pretty?

The bedroom light was super easy compared to the can lights. It was a splurge, since Paul got the can lights for a song as a return at the Lowes near him, but I love it.**

Pretty, pretty, pretty.

No more dark, gloomy house for me!

Coming soon: paintingpalooza.

* It being my castle, I get to be queen, judge, and final arbiter of all disputes.
** In fact, the bedroom fixture cost more than twice what all the can lights and the trim kit did, but that's mostly because we got the can lights for stupid cheap.

Design Philosophy, or what my house wants to be when it grows up

2010-02-02T20:34:00.018-05:00

One of the things I've been having the most fun with since I bought the CB (... let's be honest - even well before I bought the CB) is scouring the internet for inspiration pictures to help me design my dream house. I love natural colors*, light, airy rooms and clean lines. These pictures capture some of what I hope to bring to my house in the coming months.

I can't get enough of mid-century design right now. Hello, bandwagon, I'm here, but I do like the straight lines juxtaposed with the egg-shaped lamp and the round footstool and curvy chair.

(I stupidly did not make a note of where I found this image - if anyone knows, please tell me and I will link to the site. I suspect it's from Design*Sponge or Apartment Therapy.)

I also love rustic fabrics and textures with more classic pieces. Stay tuned for my burlap Roman shades for the front room, coming soon.

(via Design*Sponge)

My new kitchen is not this big, but I love pretty much everything about this one.

(also via Design*Sponge)

I'm planning a breakfast nook something like this for the corner of the front room nearest the kitchen. How great are the topiaries?

(Design*Sponge. Are we seeing a pattern here?)

Check out the powder room on the left - I'm digging a darker color in the bathroom set off with bright, bright white.

(via loving living small)

This is just neat. Again with the bold color and bright white. (I didn't go quite so all-out with my bedroom wall color, but I do have white butterfly wall decals from PopWall that I will be graphic-ing things up with a bit.

(also via loving living small)

I named both this and the previous picture "airy bedroom" in my "house and garden inspiration" folder. Don't you just want to move in and curl up with a good book? I do.

(via Apartment Therapy)

So there you have it. I will be on a pretty tight budget for the foreseeable future, so the goal will be to decorate a pretty, airy, design-conscious house on a budget.

Ready, set, go.

*Bright, bright green is a natural color. I have philodendron plants to prove it.

Sigh

2010-02-02T20:20:00.003-05:00

The lack of pictures continues for a while, since I made a special trip to one of the big box stores (hint: rhymes with pest fry), brought my camera with me and checked with one of the guys there to make sure the cord I was getting to connect the camera to the computer was the right one. On bringing it home and risking my fingers on the lethal plastic packaging, it's not. So, irritatingly enough, it will have to be returned (and is likely subject to a restocking fee... grr) and the search will continue for the proper camera cord.

In the meantime, an update (albeit a less exciting one than if it included pictures):

*Bathroom is painted a lovely darkish green/grey (Olympic's "Sprig of Ivy": D68-3). Shower curtain has been cut to fit and I made the remnant into a cute little curtain for the window. Yet to be done: Paint the floor (it's wood, but too damaged to bother cleaning up and staining like the rest of the house), clean the tub and caulk thoroughly and re-caulk it for a fresher look.

*Bedroom is painted one shade lighter than the bathroom (Olympic's "Plantation Moss": D68-2). It looks like a light green during the day and a very soothing grey in artificial light. Love, love, love. Yet to be done: stain floor, hang curtains.

*Front room can lights are up, but I haven't installed the trim kits. Yet to be done: trim kits, stain and seal floors, make curtains and hang them.

*Kitchen is done except for laying the linoleum, which I plan to do this week before I stain the wood floors, since I'll need to put the fridge and stove in the front room to lay the lino.

Having the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen painted and having proper lighting is making the CB feel a lot more like mine. It's starting seem like a real house!

Another (lame) teaser post

2010-01-29T23:21:00.003-05:00

So I'm not quite sure what happened to this week, but somehow it's the weekend again and I still haven't posted about what fun we had with the lights last weekend. This is partly because I need to get a cord to connect my fancy new camera (thanks, Ellen!) to my computer and partly because I didn't get much in the way of school work done last weekend, which meant that this week was catch-up time.

But to quickly re-cap and give another teaser for this weekend:

*Paul came last weekend and we installed five can lights in the front room and a fancy-dancy overhead light in my bedroom. They are beautiful, and make all the difference in the world. It's amazing what some proper lighting (read: more lighting than one ghastly ceiling fan) can do for a room.

*We discovered that whatever they paid the last electrician, it was too much. The old ceiling fan was wired with a cut-apart extension cord and a separate ground wire running haphazardly over the rafters in the attic, despite the fact that the junction box they were connected to wasn't properly grounded anyway. At least they tried?

*We also discovered that, although the insulation is probably older than my mom (which really doesn't make it that old - 30 years at most, right, Mom?), the attic isn't really in bad shape. I'm having visions of putting plywood down for some kind of floor after I replace the insulation and decorating the attic like Sara Crewe's attic in A Little Princess. How awesome would it be to have a secret playhouse accessible by a ladder through the closet ceiling? The 9-year-old in me is utterly enchanted by the prospect.

Teaser for this weekend:

*My mom, my best friend and I are priming my bedroom and bathroom tomorrow, the painting on Sunday or Monday. After that, the only things left to do will be to stain and seal the wood floors and to finish scraping the kitchen floor and slap some linoleum down. Hooray!

Also to come: a more philosophical post about my design philosophy including some pretty inspiration pictures. The plan is to pick up the requisite camera cord tomorrow, so pictures are forthcoming. :)

Happy weekend!

Quick update/ teaser for after the weekend

2010-01-20T16:05:00.005-05:00

The sinus crap of doom seems to have subsided and left me with a bizarrely husky, lounge-singer-y voice but otherwise feeling ok. The downside of the past week has been that, aside from being sick myself, I found out that my car needs surgery to the tune of another $650 (this is a long and painful story, but suffice it to say that, had I not had my car worked on earlier this month, I don't think it would need to have the transmission replaced now). So money is even tighter around chez moi this month than it would have been otherwise. I have cried at least five or six times at the thought of losing this car, however, so I have decided the investment is merited. (I may eventually devote an entire post to my old, ugly, well-loved car. I've had it longer than any of my pets, have put well over 100,000 miles on it and can't quite imagine my life without it right now, pitiful as that may be).

The good news is that Paul's coming this weekend to help me work on the Box. He got a good deal on can lights for the front room, so we'll be putting those in, and taking out the horrible ceiling fan currently in place. I have my eye on a really pretty overhead light for the bedroom. We're also hoping to scrape up the rest of the (different from the front room) nasty foam stuff from the kitchen and get some reclaimed linoleum (read: left over from my aunt and uncle's bathroom project) laid in there. If we really get ambitious, we may get some paint on the walls in the bedroom and bathroom as well, although I'm not holding my breath on that. It's good to get some sleep, too.

I'll leave you with a taste of the fun we'll have this weekend in the kitchen:

It has progressed since this picture was taken because my sister came over and scraped her little heart out (bless her), but this ugly orange foam is still holding on under the fridge and stove, so we'll move those out and get the rest taken care of. Eww.

The Saga of the Floors

2010-01-16T13:29:00.008-05:00

I am a sucker for wood floors. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but there is nothing more beautiful to me than a well-put together room with a big, open expanse of wood flooring.

Which is why I'm driving myself a little crazy to rehabilitate the rather distressed original oak floors in the Box.

You see, the Box was built back in the days when "sub-flooring" meant "really thick tongue and groove hardwood," but sometime in its history some benighted soul put carpet (ugly, ugly puke green carpet) over the hardwood. The house has been a rental for at least the past 25 years, if not more (I'm still in the process of putting together more of the house's history - there was nothing enlightening on the title. Actually, more about the title later). In this case, being a rental meant not being taken particularly good care of for a number of years, unfortunately, and the owners let the roof go so long that it leaked all over the front room of the house. The standing water coupled with the carpet and foam from hell meant that a chemical reaction took place between the foam and the wood varnish, basically bonding the foam to the boards and petrifying the wood underneath. All of this combined to leave the floors looking like this when I bought the house:

And another for good measure:

The green stuff is the left over foam that stuck to the floor when they ripped out the old carpet. The people who were fixing up the house to sell it started sanding the foam off in parts because another prospective buyer wanted them to refinish the floor for him, but they gave it up as a bad job once the guy decided he didn't want the house. They were going to put carpet down through the whole house again, but when I signed the buyer contract I told them to leave it if they would knock a few thousand off their asking price. I've never liked carpet anyway, but I do love a challenge.

And it's been a challenge so far. We had to wipe down every bit of foam with a damp mop to saturate the foam to make it easier to scrape off, then we went over every, freaking inch of that floor with little plastic spatulas to scrape the gunk off. Here's an action shot:

Also, when they were painting the walls to get it ready to sell it they weren't particularly careful about the paint-drippage, so we (by "we" I mean my long-suffering boyfriend) had to get some paint off the floor without damaging the wood, too.

After getting all the foam and paint up, we rented a rotary sander and spent about 17 hours on the day after Christmas going over (and over, and over, and over) the floors, making sure we got as much of the varnish up as we possibly could. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this process, which is a shame because for at least a couple hours of that time I was "riding" the sander while Paul steered because we found that the extra weight helped on the damaged parts of the floor. I don't really recommend this because I had to be really careful not to stay on too long or the motor would start to overheat, and also because I almost got lobotomized by the ceiling fan, which hangs lower than I thought, but I'm sure it looked pretty comical.

The next step was to use a belt sander and palm sander to go around the edges of the room to get the places the rotary sander couldn't reach. I'm pretty much done with that stage at this point and now I'm using little metal hand scrapers to get the varnish out of the low-lying cracks between boards. I don't have pictures of that, either, but I'll take some next time I'm at it. In the meantime, here's a picture of the floors post-scraping the foam off, but pre-sanding. Much better than with all that nasty green stuff sticking around!

Meet the Box

2010-01-13T16:51:00.009-05:00

So between winter quarter having started last week, putting an unexpected $630 into my car, and having developed some kind of obnoxious sinus crud, there hasn't been much additional progress made on my house in the past couple of weeks. That being the case, I thought I'd give a quick run-down of the basic stats on the CB (that's cardboard box - I'm not sure for how long I can keep coming up with different ways to say "my new house," so I think it's going to be the CB for short).

So, the house:

Square footage: 484 sq. feet, if you measure from the outside. Its footprint is a perfect square, 22'x22'.

Levels: 1, although it's built over a crawlspace, and there's access to the attic as well. Both are accessed through the front room closet.

Rooms: 4 (5, if you count the broom closet, which adds a not insignificant amount to the floor space). The house is divided down the middle length-wise, with the front being all one big (or "big," as my mother would have it) room and the back half being divided between the bedroom (so the bedroom is the size of 1/4 of the house) and a bathroom opening off the bedroom plus a wee little kitchen with a broom closet off it (so the broom closet shares walls with the bathroom and the kitchen). Actually, this will be easier:

The blank room between the kitchen and the bathroom is the broom closet - I couldn't get the label to fit without blocking out other stuff. Also, the blank spaces in the outside wall that aren't labeled "door to outside" are windows. I couldn't quite bring myself to label all of them. The Paint program is not quite as much fun as I remember it being from when I was a kid.

So anyway, that's my house. There's also an unattached garage, which is kind of a funny thing itself. It's not square, you see. I don't mean it's a one-car, rectangular garage, although it is. I mean if you look at it, it looks like it's leaning pretty significantly to the right. Here, let me demonstrate:

That's the reaction I get when I open my garage door. The even funnier thing is that the roof seems to be square - that is, it's parallel to the ground and doesn't seem to be in danger of going anywhere anytime soon. But the walls... the walls they are a leanin'. The garage has been this way for years, and it seems to be sturdy enough. The house is already showing itself to have a personality - I suppose it's only right that the garage should have one, too. And the garage seems to be channeling "Wino" as its persona of choice.

Projects to be done before I move in:

1. Finish scraping wood floors, stain and seal them
2. Paint the bedroom to counteract the "builder's beige" theme going on in the rest of the house
3. Possibly paint the bathroom as well (the front room is going to stay beige for the time being, both because it's actually a really nice paint job - better than I could do, if we're honest - and also because it's a huge room (relatively speaking) and the thought of painting that much square footage makes my shoulder hurt).

I'm hoping to get the painting done next weekend (not this weekend because I'm in the process of writing my master's thesis and I promised my advisor a solid chapter draft by early next week), and the staining done in early February (after I get paid again, since my car about wiped me out this month).

Still on track for moving in mid-February.

Bringing spring home

2010-01-11T17:30:00.009-05:00

When I stopped at the grocery today I saw that tulips were on sale for $2.99 a bunch, so I chose two gorgeous pink bunches to bring home with me. It reminded me of a book I had when I was little, Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street. In it, Big Bird buys a pretty bouquet for himself, but he ends up giving a flower to everyone along Sesame Street. By the time he gets back to his nest his bouquet is pretty much gone, but he looks back down the street and sees flowers everywhere he looks. I've been a little blah for the past few days what with it being freezing, bloody cold and snowy, so the tulips felt like a little breath of spring. They made me smile while I was braving the gusts out to my car.

(Sorry about the sad picture quality - my camera broke, so I'm relying on the cell phone pictures for now. Hopefully the camera situation will be remedied sooner rather than later)

The dreary winter days really make me crave color. With that in mind, my best friend Amy and I painted my (itty-bitty) new kitchen green last weekend. When I say "green" I don't mean green-that-could-almost-be-neutral. I went for out and out green on this one. It's not subtle. But I love it, and it reminds me of spring every time I walk in my door.

I will post better pictures once I shanghai someone's proper camera instead of trying to use my cell phone's "camera". The ugly light will likely be going away sometime soonish, and the kitchen looks especially crowded in this pic because the stove and fridge are pulled out from the walls so I could paint behind them, but the kitchen is only about 5 feet wide by 7 or so feet, so it really is as cozy as it looks.

The color is Olympic Grassy Meadow, in case you're wishing your kitchen was GREEN, too.

My Cardboard Box

2010-01-10T19:16:00.001-05:00

I am the proud, new owner of a wee little house. Because I am a graduate student, my budget did not encompass anything bigger than 500 square feet, but I have had the itch to have my own little piece of heaven for a while now, so when the opportunity presented itself, I took it. I will be using this space to chronicle my adventures in home-ownership, particularly in do-it-yourself-land (because who can afford to hire someone to do it for you? Not this girl). If we're honest, this blog will probably also turn into a cooking/ reading/ gardening/ generally commenting on the finer things in life sort of blog, but being a member of the propertied class - the landed aristocracy or ruling elite, as I like to think of it - is what I'm particularly exercised about these days.

The blog title is what my great-aunt Allie has taken to calling the new chez moi. There have been some jokes made about the size of my castle. Now, I will be the first to admit that it's small (22 feet square, to be exact), but it's mine, and it's just right for me. I am in the process of refinishing the (original, old-growth oak!) hardwood floors, then I'm hoping to move in by my birthday in mid-February. Come in, come in!