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Amongst other things, he has been busy in the yard this past weekend. He really wanted me to upload these pictures and share them. Ask and ye shall receive, I say!
When we moved into our house, the previous owners had had bonfires in the yard and left a barren spot in the yard. We decided that we wanted to build a proper fire pit. By “we building”, I mean, “husband building”. Using materials we had found while doing landscaping – rocks & slate- and small gravel that we scavenged, we, er, he built us a dandy.
He is asking me to compile a “honey do” list for him since his big projects are all done. Gosh, I think that he is a keeper!
Jim took me to visit the Laura Plantation just about 7 years ago. I fell in love. Well, yes, with the guy, but also with the plantation. It was a working plantation, far from the grandeur of others (ahem, Oak Alley), but what it lacked in elegance, it made up for in style, character and culture. If you ever have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it.
A walk around the property led us to the potager’s garden. Walking through the potager’s garden was eye opening for me. It was the first time I ever saw wine bottle edging (not my picture). I knew then that someday, I wanted wine bottle edging in my garden too.
That someday is now. We have been saving wine bottles for years in anticipation of our project. We shipped bottles from Guam to Saipan and on to Alaska with every move we made. We have three big wooden crates of bottles. Which, to my estimation is just under 300 bottles.
Yes, we like wine.
So many memories in this crate. Vacations to Door County; holidays on Saipan; commissary wine from Guam; trips to Galena; celebrations of life…promotions, engagements, births, death. Wines I forgot that we ever bought, let alone drank.
One at a time, no rushing this project.
A little bit of progress…
Seamus will never be a Sommelier if he only learns about wine from what we drink.
138 bottles later. The project is 1/3 the way done. We still have the other bed to border and then onto the garden.
A rhubarb update for good measure. Four days of growth and it has gone bonkers. Fingers crossed that we are eating rhubarb in a couple of weeks!
I have a friend. Let’s call her Phoe. She takes amazing pictures. She knits (and designs) amazing things. She makes amazing jewelry. She makes amazing food.
All of the picture taking, creating, and cooking send me further down the spiral as it were…my friend Phoe is an evil temptress. Okay, so she really is not evil at all. But she still is a temptress.
Originally, she got me hooked on Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock sock yarn. Which in turn started my sock obsession. Most recently, she posted a recipe link and amazing pictures of something she just baked…so of course I had to do a little clickety-clicking and found myself salivating at the keyboard.
Have a look-see over here. I will wait.
I know, right?
And I don’t even like damn cheesecake!
But I couldn’t shake it. I thought about those brownies for at least 24 hours.
Then I did it…I made them…
And to this non-cheesecake lover, they are phenomenal! It is hard to put it in words how freakishly good they are.
I have to put cream cheese on my grocery list again *licking fingers*.
Peace.
I have no awesome reason for not blogging lately. I have just been keeping incredibly busy with life. These two boys of ours make the days go by so quickly that it is hard to remember what day it is most of the time.
I do have lots of things to share with you over the next few weeks, my way of getting caught up. For now, I will just share something very sweet that we did many times this summer…
Blueberry Lime Jam. We picked the wild blueberries, and canned the jam all by ourselves. I was pretty excited, it was the first time I have canned anything without the sage advice of a veteran canner in the house. And it is tasty! We have also made cranberry-orange and strawberry-rhubarb. YUM!
Peace.
So, in my effort to make the boys’ room cute, but not too cute, I made the ever-popular birds from the Spool pattern (it’s free!). The pattern shows it as a mobile, but somewhere on the internets I saw an interpretation of it mounted to the wall on one branch. That got me thinking that it would look really cute in the corner of the room, hanging from fishing line.
It is cute and was quite easy. The first one was the trickiest, but after that I whizzed right through them. The hardest part was getting the birds on the branch and then getting it up on the wall/ceiling.
A few weeks ago, we snapped up a bookcase from our local Freecycle. It is a great bookcase that only needed a little sprucing up via a new paint job. It holds a ton of books. Which is great because our boys seem to get new books every single week. (For you Juneau-ites, St. Vincent de Paul sells kids books for 10 cents each!!)
Peace.
