Month: June 2008

Trim

We’ve had stacked trim just sitting in our garage for a few months now. I needed to rip 12 of the boards down to width, and the guys at the lumber yard were quite clear that the only way to do it was a table saw. We both researched, but the things are expensive, you have to store them, and there are safety concerns… Brian suggested way back in March that I look around at local places and see if someone would do the cuts for us for cheap. Sounded like a plan, but it took me a while to find a place. Meanwhile, there’ve been stacks of MDF blocking all the space in our garage.

Something finally clicked this week, and I found Hardwoods Supply online: six minutes from our house, open on Saturdays, and willing to make 21 10′ cuts for me.

I loaded the wood into the car, drove over, unloaded, they cut it up, reloaded, drove back and got everything restacked in the garage by the end of the dryer cycle (40 min). Nice. A very, very good use of $30. (And the guys were great. The one ringing me out was tickled at how mortified I was when I signed my maiden name on the credit card bill — I haven’t done that in months.)

So far I’ve managed to cut 12 pieces to their proper size. I have about 35 pieces to go (25 are straight cuts, the rest mitered), but all of a sudden I’d had enough fun for one afternoon, so the rest of the cuts and the painting will have to wait till tomorrow. Still, it’s a great start.

View in early June

It has been raining, cold and dismal here for the last week, but we’re finally at the time of year where everything is so green and the flowers are so bright that it’s not so bad. Here’s the view of the front yard from my computer/sewing machine>

With all the flowers are starting to fall — I’ll miss their color. They were so saturated and brilliant while they lasted.

The right sort of friends

We’ve been having fishtank light issues for about a week. The fans on our lights (the same things that are in a computer case) have been noisy for the last year or so, but one of them has apparently become completely unbalanced and starting last Sunday now makes a loud revving noise approximately every five seconds. I figured out which fan was causing the problem and took the light apart to try to remove it. Electricity isn’t exactly my forte, though, so Kevin took over once everything was in pieces and I’d given up.

Kevin ordered new fans, put the light back together, and the day after they arrived, the actinic lights blew. We have four compact florescent bulbs in the upper tank – two are white (with yellow/pink tints) and two are blue (technically called actinic). Kevin took apart the lights again, played with wires, switched the bulbs, checked the switches and sockets, and it appears that part of our ballast blew – expensive and crummy. The light is three and a half years old, so it shouldn’t be dying but it’s also well past its warranty. Adding to the worry is the fact that we’re looking at upgrading our tank in the fall, so this really isn’t a good time to be looking at multi-hundred dollar temporary light fixtures.

Just when we were starting to get fairly distressed, we realized that Amanda and Brian not only gave us back our old fishtank when they moved away, but Brian threw in his two compact florescent fixtures. They’re perfect (even the right pin configuration!), and now we’re back in business.

A wild success! Thanks, guys. What a save!

Belated progress

I finally got over my discouragement, ripped out the offending seams, starched all of the pieces, and am re-attacking attaching the trim for the daybed quilt-top.

I’m four seams in, and some of them weren’t properly aligned so I clearly have another date with the seam ripper in my future. At least I’m finally back on the wagon. It is fun to work on it again.

Happy Anniversary to us!

We’ve been married for one year.

It flew; so much happened. This year we got married, honeymooned, wrote thank you notes, bought a house after two-plus years of looking, hosted two holidays, bought appliances, missed family and friends on the east coast, puppysat, vacationed, and I used a lawnmower for the first time. I changed my name (what endless hoopla). Kevin decided that he’ll hire people the next time we drywall. I finished a quilt, we replaced windows and carpet and floors, we bought furniture, we hosted guests. We painted, bought tulips weekly for a good stretch of dull winter days, Kevin played video games on the green couches, I read and read on the red couch. We played with a digital camera. We moved a fish tank. We explored bits of Washington, and committed to more travel and camping. We watched it snow nine times. Kevin switched jobs, I got promoted. 4 babies were born to friends or family. Our yard is infested with mint, forget-me-nots, ivy starts, and bamboo, but the rhododendrons, azaleas, and lilacs are also blooming like mad. We’ve joined an organic CSA, and the first drop is in two weeks. We shop (endlessly) for water heaters. We bought 14 gallons of paint.

What an intense, wonderful, satisfying year.

My dad has informed me that we’ve graduated from “newlyweds” to the moniker of “young married couple”. 🙂 Very exciting. Hope that treats us as well as our former status did. Here’s to year two!

24 hours in Leavenworth, WA

We went to Leavenworth, WA this weekend for a spur-of-the-moment 24 hour overnight. – Larry, who is turning into quite the summer trip planner, had a friend visiting from Boston, and so we went out to Leavenworth with them, Shawn and Sanna for wine tasting and the scenery.

It was about a 2.5 hour drive out. The first 40 minutes are sprawl, then farmland (with lots of alpacas and horses), and then you hit the mountains. The Cascades on the drives in and out were amazing. The snow is finally melting in earnest after a very late spring, so we rarely went a quarter mile without seeing a waterfall. The 2-lane highway runs next to railroads and a glacier stream (lots of rapids), and I can never get over that grey-green glacier water — it’s amazing.

(Excuse the photos taken from a 65 mph car!) The pass was amazing with mountains leaping up on all sides.

All of the trees were barely beginning to bud (almost two months behind Seattle) and I loved all of the 1800s town and viewpoint names: Startup, Deception Falls, GoldBar. All of it was particularly striking after an early summer weekend in Providence – all of the west coast settling is almost painfully recent to me, and the outdoors exist on such a larger, wilder scale.

No photos of the pass on the way home — there was extremely heavy fog, and we had about 15 feet of visibility. Creepy and daunting.

Leavenworth was something else – even the Bank of America had balconies with carved hearts and tulips, and lovely murals. Kevin and I were enjoying the Ye Olde Starbucks, Ye Olde Jiffy Lube, Ye Olde MacDonalds, etc. 🙂 Apparently the town was struggling in the 60’s and decided to convert all of the architecture to model a Bavarian village theme. I talked for while with the manager of the restaurant we had dinner at, and she said that they had a Memorial Day festival, rest the week after, and then have about a festival a week all the way until the nonstop December festival (they have a very large nutcracker museum in town). Sounds exhausting, but she said it does good things for the town.

We started by going wine tasting at an estate in Peshastin (Icycle Ridge). It was quite impressive. Apparently, it’s a family operation, and they ended up converting the lodge house that the patriarch built in the eighties into a tasting room and event center. Here you can see the enormous stone fireplace and some of the animals that adorned the place.

(I wouldn’t exactly label myself a hunting afficianado, but there’s something majestic about a bull elk’s head that’s as big as you are, even if it’s stuffed.)

His son in law manages all of the wine making — he spent an hour and a half dropping in on our tasting and then showing us around their cellar. Very fun. They don’t sell the wines in stores, so if you want them, you have to join the wine club and receive them by mail or go to their tasting rooms. We also went to Kestral – I’m not a fan at all of the labels, but the wines are awesome. Here’s Larry, in his own shirt and shades, plus a borrowed “wine diva” hat, enjoying the cocoa-crusted almonds that were given with the Cabernet Sauvignon (I think?) at Kestral.

And, here’s Michelle, Larry and Shawn with the post-tasting haul.

Then, we went back to our hotel to check in and drop off bags, then went tasting down the main street of town for the rest of the afternoon. We ate dinner at Visconti’s (quite yummy Italian food, a little fancy, and awesome rooftop seats with heat lamps nearby) – a great meal.