Octopus

I'm a little proud of this one.
I had a picture I really wanted for the boys' rooms - E decided he got the planes and t got this one. But the original was 8"x10", and I needed BIG for the empty wall opposite all this orange.
So I made my own.

And I think it came out pretty darn well!

Images of (a few moments stolen from) lake runs

I've been running around our lake (actually, as I type this I've been not running for two weeks due to schedule and bleh - must fix that). The time change has made it harder, but it's worth trying to get out at first or last light. These low-quality pics don't even do it justice - so gorgeous!

Enlightened

There has been a lot of work going on around here. Most of it is the small sort, although we did repaint the whole back area (kitchen, family room). But the rest has been the sorts of projects where we walk into Home Depot and I grab a random assortment of dowel and lathe, hand Ray a picture, and say "make this, please".

You think I'm kidding. Unless you're my family, in which case you just pity Ray.

This was actually a double header. Last summer I bought three lights from IKEA, spent a while at the hardware store pulling together some random parts that would help make three wires fit into a harness built for one, and then pled acrophobia and handed the project off to Ray.

I wasn't kidding about the acrophobia.

And possibly the fear of really ugly lights.

E thought that was an improvement, as did I. But it was still not quite what we envisioned. Hence, the trip to home depot, a few square dowels, some lathe, and oh yeah, spray paint.

I think Ray was on to something...

Oh yeah, much better. And at about a tenth of the price of the lights we were looking at in Seattle.

Now, about that dining room lamp.....Raaa-aaaay....

Cha-cha-changes

The observant among you might have noticed something at the end of the Rock Creek Farm post.

I'll give you a second to go back and look.

There are lots of pictures in that post, so scroll waaaaay down.....


.....

....

Here's a hint: what our house looked like when we moved in.

And another: this is what our block looked like a few years ago (google streetview).

And... what our house looks like as of a couple weeks ago, at least in hard-to-photograph lighting. The pics in the Rock Creek Farm post. are much more true-to-color.

It's so awesome. E can easily pick out our house now. We all love it!

The Reveal

Hopefully you'll all be just as excited as Eamon to see.....

Our new sink!

Look, it swivels! (Or is he giving me that look for the overhyped drama going on here? Probably more the latter, eh?)

Fine, I'll let E show off the utility of this baby:

You can turn it on...

.but when Mom and Dad notice, you'll have to turn down the flow.

You can get a drink...

...or wash your face.

I suppose you could even wash your hands. 

Water conservation? BOOOOOOO.


Like the sink we loved at the old place, super deep on one side and huge, with a little side sink that perfectly holds a pan or muffin tin for soaking:


It blends so well with the other appliances.

Now, about that countertop....it's looking awfully beige. Hey, didn't some store open up in Denver last week?

The rest of the weekend that didn't end

I've already mentioned that our weekend of two (now three) weekends ago was pretty packed. Before I went to bed on Saturday, I started on project #2 for the weekend.

This side yard is vastly improved if you just look at the sunset instead.

But if you change your focus, you'll note: a lot of river rock.

Also: a faucet right next to a fence that makes it useless to the backyard.

I suggested adding a faucet for the back side yard. Ray wasn't as into that as you might have thought, so I managed to convince him there was another way.

When Ray was out buying faucets, he also picked up some wood, some mulch, and $20 worth of abused bedding plants (that being what one gets at a big box store, particularly halfway through the summer). I spent Saturday night clearing out most of the river rock between rainstorms, and Ray pulled the fence on Sunday while I cleared the rest, rototilled, and added some actual soil. One looong day later:


Ohh, look, more river rock! Lots more river rock.

Anybody want to haul out some river rock?

The plants in the foreground of last picture are actually raspberries that we pulled out of the old house in October. Fantastically, they survived the move and are now fighting out the mint for supremacy of the side yard (along with a lot of weeds... so very many weeds.. and some moss). The plants in the background are peas - my first successful ones, mainly because our neighbor overwaters and keeps our peas happy. And the plants in the background are the "professional landscaping" we've been mocking - two spyria, two junipers, an ash, and -hah!- more river rock.

Eventually we want to have a nice path coming from the front yard through the gate and then along the side yard. Fortunately, we didn't start on that, since I was expecting Ray to set the gate up very differently from what he did and the path would have been a bit odd with a fence in the middle of it. Regardless, that last bit of river rock in the front is headed out soon if I have any say. Particularly if I can get someone else to shovel it.

I'm also hoping to terrace out this whole slope for gardens - if you look at the drop off from the back patio, you'll see that it's a bit much for playing ball-associated games (unless you like balls in your peapatch), and this being Colorado, the north side of the yard seems to be our best bet for "sun-loving" plants (none of which seem to love 15 hours a day of high-altitude sun in the least). That, however, is a bit more of a project, to say the least. It wasn't happening this weekend.

For the record, I ran away from home and went kayaking the next weekend. Ray and E hung out with our friend Jimmy and did very little in the way of house-related work. It's all about balance around here.

I already mentioned that we had a full weekend two weekends ago. Here is the first of three posts to explain that comment a bit further.

Ray and I both got the bug to start making some improvements on the house. Thanks to Heather's visit several months ago, I have had a sink in the garage awaiting a new faucet to vastly improve our kitchen (we both hated the enamel-covered aluminum super-deep double sink we had). Although E considered the sink in the garage great fun, a cast-iron sink is a bit of a tripping hazard. And it works better in the horizontal, plumbed state. Ray had finally had enough and decided that we were going to stop waiting for the perfect faucet and just get a good, workable one.

Thus, Saturday morning looked like this:


(Amazingly, Ray was managing to detach the plumbing while his wife sniggered and kept shooting in the background.)



One last time.


Yay, sock mitten dusting!

Amazingly, I don't have an "after" shot for you all. Partially because I'll never get this posted if I wait for one (I keep forgetting until late at night when the light in the kitchen is poor) and partially because E and I left to go do something else and left Ray alone to get the sink done. But that is a whole OTHER post....

So.. keep checking back, I'll get some before and after shots on this.....soon.

Office

It hasn't quite gotten warm enough to work outside, but I do have a glorious new home office.
An open door, a nice view, and a comfy beanbag? Heaven.

Right outside is a great spot for a post-shower snack.
Again, heaven!

That was one BIG bear

We've had this crazy carpet in our bedroom for a while. It's what's left of the basement carpet from the old house. It's thick, it has this crazy texture (it sort of crinkles under your feet), and it's awesome for wrestling about on. It is not, however, allowed to be near the cats, who seem to think it's a good target (hence, "it's what's left"). So we put it in the bedroom. Everyone who walked it saw the view, and then asked what was up with the carpet. We had to do something with it. A blog gave me an idea. Ray found more info. So we did this....

Always good to throw a dance party while you work!

I ran off to get some other stuff done... and came back to this.

We did have some vacuuming up to do, but now it's just awesome, and fun. And now the reaction we get is "That was one BIG bear."

View

This should have been posted a while ago...this was what greeted us the day we moved in to the new place.
The guys were already at the house and I was driving up. I had to pull over to get a picture (the one above is at the turn into our subdivision) and tell Ray to go upstairs.
Fortunately, they made it. (Side note, check out those eyelashes on E...)
We're right in a common ballooning area. Last Monday morning E was eating his muffin.. "balloon?" - even in cold icky weather, two were out!