Spring Slides into Summer

This is the blog post where I should be talking about the garden but probably I'll wind up talking about how amazing one's social life can be when it is nice out!

Minor improvements have been happening all over the garden.  Like this schlubby patch of weeds underneath this ancient honeysuckle vine:

 

Added some compost and some low plants and voila:

 A slightly less schlubby bed. 

And these rosemary topiaries in their uggo red and green pots from Christmas?

Finally transferred those guys into some real pots!

(Ignore the porch flotsam, it was a long weekend of working hard.)  I realize this is incremental progress, but that's how it seems to roll with the garden tasks. 

While I'm definitely learning to appreciate gardening for gardening's sake, I still mostly do it for moments like this one:

A lovely spring evening.  Or this one:

 A great dinner with hilarious friends.

We've been enjoying spring all over the city, not just in our backyard.  There's not a lot to report on the homefront because we've been busy making pictures like these happen:

Croquet in the park! 

And the ever popular Madras Monday:

Complete with gin and tonics... in the park!  (Only minorly illegal!)

This month feeling very lucky to live in such a beautiful city.  Raise your glasses to spring into summer!

Classy, or Trashy??

This is the blog post that could be otherwise titled "creativity". I spend all day harnessing my creativity for my projects at work, and I often forget to apply that on the homefront. Sometimes there is a project on your list that bothers you.  The elephant in the room. Sometimes it's right in the middle of your living room! But the effort it would take to finish it correctly means that it will get done at some point during the next ice age.  It was time to remember that when life hands you lemons, you should make a cocktail!

Our living room is shaping up nicely:

We actually got drywall and paint up on that last bare wall, we found some china storage, all good things...until you turn around...

Blam!  Unfinished-tastic.  This pass through used to have a door covering up the below-stairs area.  The husband tore it off and threw it away when he put in the new floor in this area.  Yay for no more crappy door.  Boo for a gaping hole and ugliness.

The bare studs are hein and from the far side you have my favorite, jagged drywall. 

Pretty sure everyone on Apartment Therapy is a week away from embracing jagged drywall as the latest trend.  Yeah, you saw it here first.  Feel free to pin this last picture, you know you want to.

I started brainstorming (with myself, ahhh the skills of an only child) about how to cover the door and the ugly ceiling area.  What do I have in abundance?  Shoes, sass, back issues of Domino, and fabric.  Lots and lots of fabric. Cue the lightbulb.

I started with a piece of fabric a friend lent to me that I think started out as a bedsheet.  A few thumbtacks later, and voila!  A door/curtain!

Next up, I cut a rectangular piece of ecru canvas.  I tucked the edges under all around and stuck that sucker to where the ceiling would be if we were normal people who didn't like it to rain 100 year old dust on us all the time.

 

Practically looks like drywall!  OK, only if you squint, but hey, it's like a Monet?  I haven't figured out how to get around the rough drywall edges yet but it already looks better from the far side:

 And from the near side?  Before and after!

I can't decide if this is the best idea I've ever had, or if Martha is rolling over in her grave with the trashiness.  Either way, not having ancient dust bunnies divebombing us is the jam so I don't regret it, even if it is only temporary.  You get to vote, classy or trashy??  Can we get away with it for a couple months?

Craigslist Find of the Century!

So.  Several months ago the element in our bargain-basement, bottom-of-the-line circa 1975 oven went out.  This puppy was old and sad and banana yellow and so cheap it didn't even have a window in the door.  Even in this proud moment where we painted the walls and put in new counter tops:

So...bisque.  Also, it was electric.  With one large burner.  You could grow old before your pasta water came to a boil.

So.  Oven dies.  The manfriend and I talk it over and decide to start the Craigslist hunt for a new one.  Manfriend would like a Garland.  Retailing at a cool $6000, and beloved by chefs everywhere from Julia Child on up.  We both opine that a Viking would do.  Those only retail for $5000.  Y'know.  Like you do.

I noodle on Craigslist for a couple weeks.  Nothing even remotely decent comes up.  The mother-in-law starts sending me pictures of new stoves from appliance stores.  But of course, new stoves look flashy and still cost an arm and a leg.  Sigh.  We will never find the perfect thing.

One day apropos of nothing, I'm surfing on Craigslist for something for work.  I decide to just type in "gas range" and see.  VIKING STOVE $300??!?  WHAAA?

TRUTH.  Observe:

OMGEEZY!

I have no idea why this lady was selling this for $300.  I have no idea how I got so lucky to be the first person to email her.  I have no idea why she still let me pay $300 even though other people were offering $600.  All I know is that we won the stove lottery and that lady is rad. 

This beaut probably could have sold on Craigslist for $3000.  It was the perfect size, didn't need to change the cabinets a bit.  We got an online permit (thank you City of Seattle for being tech savvy), the husband did the gas plumbing in a cold, furnace-less weekend while I was out of town (thank you husband for being so handy!) and it was a done deal.

One burner has an ignition clicker that will stick occasionally.  The oven knob needs to be fixed.  But you can have hot tea in 30 seconds, there is a window in the door, multiple burners are strong enough to burn your eyebrows off with, there is even convection!  Not to mention, NO BANANA.

Shall we do a before and after??  Oh yes please. 

Before:

And after:

The legit-ness of our kitchen just went up a billion percent.  Thank you Craigslist gods!  Anyone else have any good finds lately??

The Effervescence of Spring!

I know I do a "spring has sprung!" post every year but every year in Seattle the spring is surprising.  After the long wet doldrums of January and February, that first sunny day with bright yellow daffodils and coral-pink tulips is a shock to the system.  

 

I'm sure everyone on my Instagram feed is sick to death of my cherry blossom photos but I just can't get over them.  Ever.

They are so..exuberant!  The ones on the University of Washington campus are fairly famous, for good reason:

It's a giant crowded party under the trees, but I don't begrudge anyone this little slice of paradise.  I prefer Green Lake myself:

White ones:

And pink ones:

And tulip trees:

Ahhh spring, I'm so glad you're here!

Seattle had a few sunny days last week, which I tried to take full advantage of.  One day I went on a midday run with some friends down to the Seattle Sculpture Park.

So glorious.  That's water in the background and mountains behind that.  Moments like that make me think "I actually get to LIVE here!"  Yay!

Easter was another gloriously sunny day.  Easter gets a separate post because the photos are so amazing.  The Easter Bunny really outdid himself this year, so here's just a little teaser:

 Hope your spring is being glorious wherever you are.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?  I am one of those people who aspire to be a crack gardener.  However, I am embracing the fact that I have too many hobbies and will end my days as someone who is proficient in many things and expert in none.  C'est la vie.  Gardening is a hard one for me.  As Rudyard Kipling said:

"Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made,
By singing "oh how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade."

What a pity!  Because I am an ace at sitting in the shade and not yet an ace at spending hours of work in backbreaking labor in pursuit of dubious things I'm not good at.  Here's what I know about gardening so far:
1.) Nothing is certain
2.) Experience is critical
3.) Reading does not help

This puts me already out of my element.  I love books and reading is the most sure way for me to feel more comfortable with any new task.  Reading about gardening serves to inspire, but when you actually get out in the dirt, reading doesn't ever seem to help.  So, experience.  Given that this is my third year with this garden, I feel like I should be doing better.  That said, there are a lot of exciting things that have gotten established since I moved in.  What we have established in the past three years:

1.) Peonies!  The peonies are already growing and there are seven plants that I can see coming up.  Seven!  So excited for peony season.
2.) Daffodils! 

We actually could have more daffodils but I have a hard time with how to plant many daffodils and also plant things that will bloom when the daffodils are dying.  So tricky!  I think this falls squarely into the "need experience" camp.  There are some tulips as well, which appear to be being ravaged by slugs.  More on that later.
3.) Snapdragons!  OK, to be totally honest, these are some tall perennials in the front bed that could be hollyhocks.  Or something totally different.  I know they aren't a weed, but since they haven't flowered yet I don't really know what they are.

The Mystery Plant

4.) Lilacs!  We added two lilacs and are trying to prune the one old lilac that is way too leggy.  It's not a total success yet as the lilacs we planted aren't super bloomy yet, but I didn't kill anything.
5.) Coral bells!  AND bleeding hearts!  These comprise the only effort I've made at shade gardening near the trees in the back of the yard and I'm so pleased to see that they haven't died.  The hostas I planted last year are either on vacation in Mexico, sleeping it off, or totally dead.  TBD!

Note: I am not gardening anything edible except herbs.  I love flowers.  I figure I'll grow flowers first and then if a great spot for a vegetable plot presents itself, I'll move on to vegetables.

Today we got a great start on the 2013 garden tasks.  I think I may have already done better work for the beds than I did in all of last year.  Fred tackled rebuilding the rose arbor and did it in one day! 

What we accomplished:
1.) I weeded all the beds.  So much weeding!  This enables lots of things like earlier/better plant placement planning, which will hopefully spur a good cycle of keeping the weeds down.

(OK, not perfect (ugh, that fence!), but a vast improvement.)

2.) I spread a layer of compost in the beds.  I failed to get enough compost, so it probably needs another coat, but I think it was a good step in improving our soil.  I splurged on the soil amending compost for clay-heavy soils so I'm excited to think the soil will only improve from here on out.
3.) Fred rebuilt the pergola.  Arbor.  Whatever you call the thing that roses grow on.  It looks SO. MUCH. BETTER. 

Pergola and freshly weeded stepping stones.

And of course, because he is WonderCarpenter, he did it in two hours.  Le sigh.
4.) Scariest of all, we tore out the two ugly climbing roses that had been on the arbor.  (I know, I love climbing roses and did not think there WERE ugly climbing roses until I saw these.  Two blossoms a year each, which were reddish-pink and such a boring wood rose shape they weren't even worth cutting for vases.) 
5.) We replaced those roses with a climbing Joseph's Coat rose and a Peace rose AND planted two more.  We planted a Nicole in the front bed (worried it will be too shady!) and a Dreams Come True near the auxiliary back porch.  Planting roses is backbreaking work and I'm nervous I didn't do it correctly. But I followed the information sheet from the nursery and soaked the roots, dug a giant hole (OK I let the husband help,) amended the soil with compost, mounded a dirt cone, spread the roots out on the cone, refilled the hole, watered deep and then composted over the top. 

 

The Peace rose in its new home

Ta-da!  Whew!  I'm tired just typing it.
6.) I gave the jasmine something to climb on.  This jasmine is an underachieving climber.  It doesn't seem to have any chutzpah for getting up anything.  I gave it some twine today and tried to wrap it securely, but I may have to resort to some sort of trellis stripe or something if it doesn't take.  However, it already looks a billion times better.

Grow jasmine, grow!

7.) Killed eleventy billion slugs.  I found out yesterday that slugs have been ravaging our daffodils.  Noooooooooooooooo!  I unearthed and mercilessly slaughtered a horde of slugs today but I'm sure there are more hordes waiting.  This means war.
8.) Made slug traps.  Otherwise known as solo cup bottoms filled with beer.  I felt like a frat boy, but I'm excited to see if I can save the tulips!  Wish me luck as I do battle with the evil slimers.

The pictures are a little uninspiring (especially because I didn't take before pics) but to me, they already look so much better than last year that I am truly inspired. 

 

(Red Solo cups make everything classier. Right?)

 

So happy to have the garden feeling like it's cared for before it is even April.  Yay for spring!

10 For February Wrap Up

OK, in this post I will level with y'all.  100% honesty and showing the soft underbelly.  I woefully failed at most of my 10 items for February.  I did make some progress on most items!  But per the usual, I underestimated how many steps each item had.  The list:

1.) Look for a bedroom door
Some progress?  I looked!  But I failed to bring one home.
2.) Make or find a zesty shower curtain
Utter fail!  Couldn't find anything the husband and I could agree on.
3.) Work on a bed skirt
I came up with a creative solution, but did get rid of the initial irritation.  I think that counts.
4.) Finish stripping window frame
SO close on this one.  Read on for a full dramatic telling of the lead paint issues.
5.) Find a stool for the secretary
Fail!  Not so easy to find something that works with antiques but isn't Grandma-style.
6.) Figure out cushion for reading nook
Some progress...by which I mean calling the foam store and finding out that my cushion size would cost the earth.  Time to ponder how we can modify those couch cushions.
7.) Make Goodwill run
I put this one on here just to make myself feel better if I failed at everything else.  I think it's working.
8.) Make coasters
Some progress.  This one should have been drop dead simple, except that I decided I wanted to laser cut them out of felt.  I did get the felt and plan the design but I haven't actually made them yet.
9.) Rearrange the girl alcove
Some progress, although progress is hampered by the husband getting all up in there with new molding.  I'm throwing a party about the new molding, so I don't feel too bad about getting this one only halfway.
10.) Clean the craft room
Some progress.  Read on for the saga.

TWO out of 10?  I suck!  Ah well, fodder for next month.

1.) Bedroom Door.  Welp, I looked.  I looked on Craigslist, Second Use, EarthWise, at the ReStore, and nothing.  I finally found these:

And as noted they're on sale!  The size was perfect.  From the inside they looked like this:

I was thrilled with the Art Deco design.  But.  Orange and red are at the very top of my LEAST favorite colors.  The husband thought the wavy glass (a little hard to see here, but the bigger panes of the window) was super 1970s tacular.  And up close:

Someone had done the worst job of painting that ever happened.  The husband says you should need a license to paint things.  He could be right.

In the end, I turned to the husband and said "the only good things about these doors is that they exist."  Hardly a glowing recommendation, so we passed.

2.) Shower curtain - big fat nothing!  Must work harder!

3.) Work on a bed skirt.  Otherwise known as Compromise, the Art of Figuring Out What You Actually Want.  See the husband hates bed skirts.  Thinks they help crap accumulate under the bed.  He's not really wrong.  Unfortunately, our bed NEEDS a skirt, because when you walk down the stairs you are greeted with this view:

That would be the hideous blue striped ticking of our ancient boxspring.  The ticking has yellowed and there are these weird hangy-downy straps...ok, file this one under can't-see-how-irritating-it-is-until-you're-in-the-house.

When I really evaluated what I wanted, it wasn't that I wanted a bedskirt so much as I never wanted to see that ticking EVER AGAIN.  So!  Starting from there, I thought about covering the boxspring with fabric.  Then I realized that these really smart people came up with these pieces of fabric that cover mattresses...called a fitted sheet.  I bought a blue fitted sheet, bribed my friend Christyne with some PBR until she agreed to help me play Jenga with mattresses, and rocked it out.  Now we have this:

 

Hey-yo!!  Not amazing, but definitely better than 100-year-old boxspring!  The level of ickiness you spy on the way down the stairs is dramatically reduced.  

OK, I think that's enough progress for one post.  Stay tuned for the window stripping or Lead Paint, Am I Crazy Yet?

#4 - Stripping Like Diablo Cody

OK, not really stripping like Diablo Cody (the author of Juno and the hilarious oeuvre "A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper".)  Stripping paint off the trim is faaaaar less glamorous than anything Diablo might do with a pole and some heels.

The origin of this project was that the paint job on some of the trim in the living room is terrible.  At some point in the misty distant past, someone obviously needed a fast paint job, and slapped paint over severely chipped areas.  Exhibit A:

Almost two years ago I experimented with using a heat gun to strip some of the trim in the living room.  So for two years we've been living with this:

Ugh.  The heat gun worked pretty well, stripping off years of paint in one go.  It's not perfect, it does leave some marks behind, and it isn't incredibly fast.  However, I think it is actually cleaner, easier and faster than chemical stripping. 

So I finally got on it already.  As I described in my earlier post on the stripping method, you basically hold a heat gun at the paint until it softens or bubbles, slide a putty knife underneath and peel the paint away.  Heat and peel, heat and peel, heat and peel...

Hmm.  I kept at it.

I finally got the whole window stripped!  (Sorry for the incredibly dark picture but you're really not missing anything.)

 

And...it looks worse than before.  Whomp whomp.  This sort of thing happens in renovations.  Two steps backwards, one step forwards.  

The husband says it just needs a coat of chemical stripper and it will instantly look perfect.  (No, that's not exactly what he said, but that is EXACTLY what I heard.)  I hope he's right, because otherwise I have been torturing myself of hours of putty knifing.  

I'm crossing #4 off the list, even though it isn't perfect, it is done.  And as we know: DONE IS BEAUTIFUL!  On to the next!