I know. I owe the world an upstairs house tour. Let me start off by saying – most of the rooms still look like a room with a pile of crap in the middle. Hopefully that will continue to get better as we get all the shelves installed in the closets and we can put stuff away. Now that the mini mudroom is enclosed from the outside at least, we no longer have a semi-urgent indoor-outdoor living situation. (OK it was really an indoor-garage living situation, but you get the idea).
I promise, promise as soon as we get some rooms semi-photo worthy, I’ll post pictures. For now, you can enjoy this lovely picture that Oak took of me during the Hell Week of Paint and Drywall. After rescheduling the carpet installation a few times, we decided we are going to get it DONE dammit! So we went at it hardcore. So hardcore we basically had to work on drywall and painting every day night for about 10 nights straight… No leisurely dinners after work, you chow down on Chinese or fast food or takeout (cooking takes too long!) and get a solid 6 hours of work in before bed at least! According to Oak’s uber project manager skills, it was possible. So we hoped.
When we were nearing the end, I was nearly losing it while painting the trim. So much, did I care that Oak took a picture of me with a huge piece of tape on my butt? Not Really. I didn’t even know that tape was there until he informed me AFTER he took the picture.
And uh yeah, the time stamp of this photo is at 3:48 am. On a work night.
I love the bonus room now, but .. when you’re trying to drywall and paint it, it’s a HUGE ass room! There are 7 windows alone!
We used to make fun of that “Renovation realities” show where people take on too much in too short a period. I have a feeling we could have been on that show with this project, though I don’t think their cameras appreciate giant drywall dust clouds.
And in case you were wondering, no, the hardcore-ness is not a sustainable practice. We still do SOME stuff during the week but we’re mostly just hardcore on the weekends now. Like the 27 doors I am still working on painting.. I’m about 2/3 of the way done.. Then we have to rehang all of them — lol!
Here’s the start of our vegetable garden. Oak hopes to build a series of these raised beds. For now we have tomatoes, okra, peppers, and I made him put some marigolds in there for color.. haha 
We also planted a squash in the mound of dirt behind the box.. apparently squash aren’t too picky. The cucumber we also planted back there though — not so happy. boo!
This garden in the front of our house was full of crazy overgrown plants… even a few volunteer pine trees. Awesome. Oak chopped those suckers down and we started over, for the most part. The garden is mostly furnished with plants we got on our trip to Angier. The big tree in the center is a crape myrtle. For those of you from the great North, I call the crape myrtle the “Southern Lilac.” It’s a bushy tree that flowers for several months during the summer. I think this one is supposed to have purple flowers, and we planted another one that is going to be pink.
It’s surrounded by day lilies, 2 hydrangea bushes, and a few asian lilies. There are some puple phlox in the front as well — I’m not too sure if these survive the summer here because they look pretty tender. If they die out, we’ll probably put in some lantanas to fill in that area. We also got some purple corn flower, which are supposed to be super drought tolerant (not to mention – hiz-ot!). There’s also a lone gangly lookin’ rosebush and some iris that somehow survived the previous owners abuse, so we’re leaving them in their spots to see if they do anything.
I’ll probably take another picture when the tree flowers and some of the other flowers start to bloom. Exciting!
One of our neighbors approached us about a new CSA called “The Produce Box” last month. We had been in the Brinkley Farms CSA a few years ago, and it was a lot of fun… a big box of veggies each week. Somehow having the vegetables there and feeling like you HAVE to eat ‘em makes it so much easier! This one makes it even easier, because we have a neighborhood coordinator that delivers all the food around the neighborhood- we don’t even have to go pick it up!!
We got a choice of three different boxes that have a different mix of vegetables inside. This first week we chose “farmer’s choice” and we got a cool assortment of stuff… and the very first STRAWBERRIES of the season! Mmm! It was worth the “risk” because the other boxes didn’t include strawberries! Tricky! There’s nothing like a locally grown strawberry.
We also got: asparagus, bibb lettuce, cabbage, white sweet potatoes, raw peanuts, and spring onions. We devoured the lettuce in one sitting. (OMG we love springtime lettuce! haha) and the strawberries weren’t far behind. I made a tasty Asian slaw that used half of the cabbage, but I have to think up something else to do with the rest of it – maybe in a stir fry. The peanuts are intriguing.. apparently we have to roast them before we can eat them, because they’re raw. But they’ll keep in the fridge for a few months, so we’re not in too much of a hurry yet. Should be fun! The white sweet potatoes were pretty good, but I think I like the traditional orange ones better. The white ones are sweet like an orange sweet potato but the texture is generally more baked potato-like.
We have started our vegetable garden, but what we have planted is late summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, squash) so this is giving us our fill of veggies for now! Yum!
Because playing on the computer is oh-so-much more productive than doing actual housework, I decided to try out the capabilities of Google Sketchup. I had heard of sketchup through the awesome blog Knock-off Wood and Oak’s Family Handyman magazine. Let’s just say it’s a nerd-tastic program. If you were an engineering major, it probably would be like second nature, or something. (There are axes! Are you baffled yet?) I kind of figured out some of its basic functionality based on this handy tutorial.
It *could* be a lot flexible in its operations — you can’t change the dimensions of an object after you draw it (as far as I can tell), so my Adobe Illustrator-oriented mind had a hard time grasping it. However, I caught on enough to come up with a 3-D model of the shelving that I want for the inside of the craft room closet:
Groovy eh? I can’t tell you how useful this model is for actually building the project because we haven’t even started to attempt to build it yet. Like.. how do you know what the dimensions of all of the pieces are?? You can’t click an object and find that out.. there’s a little ruler tool you can use to measure things. What a pain!
I did draw it out on paper and figured out all the dimensions ahead of time – you get one chance to put in dimensions before the object is drawn forever. I really don’t see how you could do anything free-form with this program (maybe someone else knows better? I could watch some more tutorials.. lol)
My idea with the extra space at the bottom of the right hand side shelves is that I can put the wrapping paper and other tall items in there with the piece of wood on the front to “corral it in.” The heights of the middle shelves are adjustable because I want to use shelving standards. We shall see.
Oh, and I want a shelf that goes across the top but I got frustrated with trying to draw one and gave up.
Now it’s time to develop my non-existent woodworking skills… stay tuned.
We’ve been meaning to make the drive out to Angier, NC and all of the nurseries out there. It’s well known as having great bargains on trees, bushes, and other perennial plants – many of these farms are the suppliers of plants for the local big box stores. With Oaks family visiting (with big truck!) we figured it was a perfect opportunity to get some flowering trees for the yard.
Well, it definitely did NOT disappoint. This time, we only made it to McLamb nursery – they had a ton of stuff but next time we’ll do some more venturing. We got quite a haul of stuff at probably 1/3 of what it would have cost at a local nursery (that doesn’t say our ending bill wasn’t large. Plants sure add up quickly!). However, we were able to get some nice big specimens that have spruced up the front yard considerably. Here are some photos from the day:
Redbud trees galore! Here, they are a native plant and bloom in late March/early April. We bought one and also moved one that was growing too close to the house to a better location.. hopefully it survives.
Considering the perfect specimen…
Crape myrtles galore! I call these the “lilacs of the south” as the flowering is similar, but they come in purple, white, and raspberry and bloom for the entire summer! Love them!
Skye enjoyed cooling off in the automatic sprinkler system:
I know for sure that spring is here when my car gets this unmistakable coating. No, that is not mud, dust or dirt, it’s not snow flurries, it’s not baby powder…. it’s TREE POLLEN. It does blow off a little bit when you get going in the car, but here it is after a full day in the IBM parking lot… check out the roof in particular..
I have no idea why it’s so bad here, as I don’t remember anything like this ever happening in upstate NY. In fact, I was out in the garden earlier and my feet and shoes even got coated in the stuff. Gross. All I can figure is that there are considerably more evergreen trees here – our neighbor across the street has some huge pine trees that keep producing teeny seedlings in our yard.
We have great weather now, but don’t want to open our windows and get this nasty yellow stuff inside the house too! Especially considering I’m fairly allergic and get a scratchy throat after extended periods outside. Wonderful! Luckily it only lasts for a few weeks, when my throat will be unswollen and the car can return to its normal color. We just have to wait!
The baths were probably my favorite site that we saw on the trip. Getting there is a little complex because they are on a separate island from where the cruise ship docks – so you have to find a ferry or other transport from Tortola to Virgin Gorda. However, we had this friendly fellow named Egbert approach us about his service on a private boat that he runs to the island. So, we went along with that.
I think these photos pretty much speak for themselves. It is a beautiful national park. You walk down a path through boulders to a pristine beach. We went snorkeling, and i didn’t want to leave the camera on the beach, so I put it in a (supposedly) waterproof bag. When I opened the bag later, it had an inch of water and a dead camera inside! Boo!
Oh, and let me tell you.. that Egbert is evil with the rum punch he feeds you on the boat ride back. It tastes like koolaid but is extremely lethal! Consider yourself warned if you ever come across him in your travels! lol.
Usually on cruises, we don’t get all that attached to any specific venue. We like to check it all out. Well, this time was different because the Star Bar on the Dawn had buy one get one free martinis every night! It was kind of funny because we’d end up seeing the same people there every night we went, in particular two colorful Canadian ladies (eh!).
We got to try a variety of martinis, but I do think the lemontinis were my absolute favorites. Then again, as Daniela can attest, I am a fan of any lemon-flavored beverage (Beware of getting us anywhere near limoncello and prosecco.. omg tasty!)
And, because the bartender was like,our best buddy (OK not really, but let’s pretend), he even offered to take our picture for us! This shot came out better than any of the other professional shots that we managed to get.. then again, who really looks attractive while sunburnt and standing next to a giant stuffed parrot?
Thanks to Oak for tolerating a large amount of girlie beverages… then again, cruise ships almost never have a decent beer selection, so I think this was his next best option. 
