Seeing Stripes

The first round of stripe-painting was last weekend and we were surprised at how fast it went. We also painted the ceiling a pretty pale blue. So by the time that was done our arms were tired and we decided to post-pone the second coat to this weekend. Stripes should be done today but sadly the paint store was closed on Saturday due to the holiday so we couldn't get more blue for the ceiling. Hunter Paints is the only store for hundreds of miles that sells the Mythic Paint that has no VOCs (bad for breathing) and is non toxic. By the time we realized we could order it online from Mythic, it was too late to have it for today.

But that's OK because stripe painting will be just enough painting for one day to wear us out and will also give us time to do other things like relax and enjoy the Monday off! It gets really hot in these rooms when you are working hard and there's no ceiling fans to help. Even setting the air conditioning down lower than normal didn't seem to make much difference, so painting was done with as few layers of clothing as possible.

The dark green stripes outlining the medium green stripes is one of the types of tape we are using to keep our lines straight, but will be coming off once we are done.

Happy Labor Day everyone! :-)

Ship Out and Shape Up

We had a case of uninvited guests lodging in our pantry for a few weeks. It was probably longer than a few weeks but it became very noticeable that the lodgers were multiplying and fast becoming a daily occurrence. I bought a few pantry pest traps which were moderately effective by trapping the male moths so they can't reproduce, but then some days I found that there was still some mating shenanigans going on on the ceiling. So I ended up vacuuming twice a day until we had a weekend free to tackle the pests. Upon closer examination last weekend, we had cocoons and caterpillars allll in the nuts and flour and grains in our pantry. At least they were picky eaters so it was easy to get rid of the few infested items. But the bigger problem was that there were cocooners lodged in the lips of cans and under the ledges of bottled water, lunch bags and weaseled under box flaps that were sealed. What I thought would be an hour project of sorting through our food and cleaning down the floor with vinegar, ended up being an all day event of hauling everything out of the pantry and checking each item carefully before putting away and also wiping the whole pantry down with vinegar. Some things that were very questionable went straight out onto the deck for closer investigation..
while the less susceptible things were piled up onto the counters. Finally we got rid of them all. But even after the clear out, we were getting one moth every day for four more days until we were moth-free.

This last weekend we started painting the baby room to begin sprucing it up and making it more cozy. The primary color is a beautiful key lime pie color and I have to say it was the best paint I've ever used- Mythic Paint. It has no VOCs so it is virtually odor free and is safe from off-gassing toxins into the house, plus it is non-toxic so breathing was easy for me, the painter and it will be better for the baby. But even connoisseurs of paint that don't pick a paint primarily for the health/environment reasons would pick this paint for it's exceptional quality. It applies evenly, smoothly and I only had to do one coat.

Nesting

Our fledgelings have left the nest, but before the whole family flew the coop, I managed to snag a blurry picture of Mom and Dad hanging out on a nearby branch to catch a breather between feedings. On this particular day I was working from home at the kitchen table and had the chance to notice the comings and goings of these hard-working parents as they made their way back and forth to the nest with worms, caterpillars and miscellaneous flying bugs. After each feeding, they would fly back to this same branch outside the kitchen window and preen, side by side. The next day, the whole family was gone. I'm glad I had a chance to watch the these tireless little wonders!

With all the bird activity, I decided to start one of my back-burner projects and make Clementine her very own indoor tree perch. Not being a very confident bird with her footing, I'm not sure how she'll take to something so jungle-gym like, but we'll see. I thought it would be nice to keep her big old cage in the office and have the tree out in the family room for her to sit on while we are home. It takes less space and it would give her a different place to be so it's not the same old, same old. I used one of the fallen branches in our yard and bought screws and bolts to construct this tree of perches. I had to strip the bark and will give it a douse of bleach water to kill all bacteria, fungi and bugs.

The tree was still not completely debarked because the outdoor temps soared again, so it had to remain outside. But after the neighboring birds got used to it being on the deck, some adventurous ones came by to make sure it was sturdy enough.

It's been turtle-nesting season, I'm thinking, because they are on the move just lately. Sadly, many get run over on the roads because they are trying to get to wherever they are trying to get to on the other side of the road, and they are not quite fast enough. Plus, they just ball up in their shell when a car comes their way. I have had to pull over and hitchhike a few to the other side.

This guy was cruising the perimeter of our veggie garden and was making a hasty retreat when I came by. Luckily, even at his fast pace, I was able to tap on the window to get Paul, he got his shoes on, found the camera and came out to grab a picture before the turtle could make the large 10 foot journey to the underbrush.

Even I am nesting. It kicked in and my gosh the projects that can be accomplished when focused! Curtains for both family room windows are nearly done after a few weekends of hard work (I've had the fabric for about a year), and wow are they orange! I love the color but they are orangier hanging than they were flat, so I'm working on ways to blend the colors in with the rest of the room and I think painting the walls will be key, along with some accessories.

Home Projects Galore!

The weather is cool and inspiring here right now so we have been busy bees doing our respective projects. Since I covered Paul's major project last time, I am only including one picture here of him working on the same project. Now he is sanding and painting, hoping to complete this weekend.
I have been doing field work the last two weeks in Kinston, NC. So I stopped by my favorite antique store: Some Like it Old. I bought the cute blue table, coffee pot and oil lamp shown below.

And also the table behind the couch here..

And a piano bench and lamp. The deals were too good to pass up.

But yesterday, we had the most unique, impulsive experience. A furniture distributor showed up on our street with his 18 wheeler, selling boxed furniture right out of his truck. They had cabinets, coffee tables, dressers, couches and these beautiful grandfather clocks which excited me very much (I love clocks and old pocket watches). Well, we bought one, and I didn't even have to plead with Paul too much. The guy brought it in, got it started and gave us some operating instructions and we were proud new clock owners in about 15 minutes from start to finish.

Another exciting thing that has happened is that I finally finished the bedroom curtains. I have been working on them each weekend, doing only one curtain each week, and only portions at a time. For example, I did the side seems on one curtain each week until that was finished. Then I added the heading tape (which I had to buy online from England because I couldn't find it here) to one curtain each week. And lastly, I hand sewed the hems, one curtain each week. Finally a few months later, they are done!

Yesterday, I started painting the basic outline of my tree design on the dining room ceiling. I have been designing and contemplating this for a long time, and with the curtains finished upstairs, it was time to get started. I had drawn out the basic forms on graph paper to the scale of the ceiling and so it was pretty easy to get everything sketched on (last weekend) and then painted. I decided to do a rough outline in dark brown first, and then next available weekend I will do a blue wash of the sky with clouds. I'm hoping the brown trees will show through so then I can pick back up with the trees once the background is in. I didn't think it would work to do the sky and then try to sketch the trees over the paint.

Yesterday, after painting, I went to pick up a bushel of apples from a lady I know through church. She had taken orders from anyone that wanted some and was taking a trip up to an apple orchard to bring back everyone's apples (out of the kindness of her heart). So, being that this would be a big event, I also borrowed Shauna's steamer again and apple peeler/slicer/corer. Paul helped me with the peeler contraption and together we canned 14 quarts of apple slices for apple pie. The blueberry pies have turned out so well from our spring blueberry-picking extravaganza, we decided to give the apples a shot.
Earlier yesterday I put all the jars and lids in the dishwasher. Once I brought home the apples, Paul peeled, cored and sliced.

Then I had to blanch the apples for 3 minutes, one batch at a time, in hot sugar water to stop discoloration and preserve flavor.

The next step was to pour the water used for blanching into the jars.

Then, the lids that had been simmering in water had to be placed on the jars with the rings tightened finger tight. 7 quarts at a time were placed in the steamer and steamed for 20 minutes. The jars were removed and the rings were tightened all the way. Lastly, the jars were flipped upside-down on a towel, as per Marie's secret advice. She says this is the trick to making sure that none "pop" overnight (or become unsealed).

The last project that has been ongoing for a few weeks, is I'm spinning my very first 5-ply yarn. The yarn is a blend I've created on my drum carder from Merino wool, opossum down, yak down and soy silk. Each batch I've blended on the carder consists of 3 grams of the Merino/opossum blend, 1 gram of soy silk and 2 grams of yak down. I bought all of these from The Woolery online. I've spun a very fine yarn and wound onto 5 toilet paper rolls. I learned from my online research that to keep the yarn strands separate you need to use a template with 5 holes or a spice jar lid with the holes. I was excited about this because who doesn't have one of those in their kitchen? So, I have mine placed between my fingers on the right below (you can't really see it), and I'm gradually spinning the strands together while keeping a firm grip on the strands to keep them from tangling.

A few weeks ago I had fun time volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Charlotte. My company was provided half the labor of volunteers and a local bank was providing the rest of the volunteers.
I was assigned to help with the roofing crew- very scary. The floor of the roof wasn't up yet, just the trusses. So my job was to partner with Joe to put the plywood flooring onto the trusses.

Joe was a banker and so none too experienced in roofing either. So we had some good laughs.
Actually, I was the only one from my company that was able to make it that day so everyone except me was a banker. But once Joe and I got the first row of the roof down, the rest was much more comfortable. The rest of the day was just swinging a hammer to get the rest of the kajillion nails in. I was moaning and groaning all the next day since I hadn't been this sore since I ran a half marathon in 1998ish.

Here I am above, and here is the house we were working on. The future home-owner was also there working on the house.
Oh my goodness, I forgot about these pictures. Well, this is one of our new dinner combos: Yorkshire Pudding by Paul and Zucchini cakes with tomato sauce by Yours Truly, compliments of the internet for the recipe. I had some zucchinis that weren't going to last long and Paul was wanting some Yorkshires something fierce, so we comboed the two into a surprisingly tasty dinner! As I've been blogging for a fair bit of time, I'm not going to post the recipe now, but I'll try to remember for next time.


An embroidery project that I'm working on for Darla. I'm making a sweatshirt with cheerleaders and football players for her dad for Christmas and this was a practice run of a few of the characters to figure out where the problems might be. I'm learning heaps on this project!

Fall Is In the Air

We have been doing loads of projects and having fun around the house the last few weekends starting with a long Labor Day weekend. The weather has been cooler and so it has been more fun to be outside than it was in August. Even the critters seem to be enjoying it!

My plants have been thriving too...

The "Trifids" have been catching lots of bugs in their pitcher-like mouths and have been multiplying like rabbits.

The two redwood trees I got in the late spring have each grown about a foot (behind the bear)!

Tracy's birthday was last weekend...

and we've done a bike ride or two...

Yep, it's still humid.... see hair.

... but that didn't stop Paul!

He poured his own sweat into making some shelves for the Star Wars room, even learning to use 3 new power tools: the router...

Table saw and lastly a bisquit-joiner (not shown).

He covered the garage and himself from head to toe in sawdust in the process.

... and then collapsed.

Maybe next week I'll show what projects I was working on. For now, it's dinner time. Goodnight!

Backyard Camping

Well by Thursday Paul had a bad cold, I couldn't stand the smell of the polycoating and it was too hot and germy to sleep in one closed off bedroom even with the windows open, so we improvised. I went to the grocery store to pick up some NyQuil and food we could BBQ since we still had no access to the kitchen. For dishes stashed in the laundry room I had two bowls and spoons for cereal- no forks and knives. So I bought some bamboo "sporks", a few bamboo plates, and skewers for shish kebabs. The butcher was kind enough to cut up some steaks into shish kebab size since I didn't have my meat knives handy, and also offered to cut my veggies too! He asked that I keep him anonymous as he isn't allowed to cut veggies.

The potato salad and green beans with garlic and sesame sauce were from the deli and were fabulous

We had a delish dinner and decided to enjoy the whole night out by bringing out our Mosquitogazebo, air mattress and floor fan. Although it took us an hour or so for us two to figure out how to assemble the Mosquitogazebo with all the poles and pipes (we nearly gave up), it was perfect with the breeze of the fan, the sounds of the frogs and crickets and to watch the millions of fireflies blinking as we dozed off to sleep. The only foil to the plan was that in addition to the regular humidity, a fog bank floated in in the middle of the night, moistening the sheets and bedding. Paul woke up towards the tail end of the fog to say, "Oh look at the mist everywhere." We had to turn off the fan because we were suddenly cold and had to bring out a few more blankets.

After Thursday we stayed at Tracy's house while they coated the last coat over the entire downstairs floor. We couldn't go in the house at all until last night. The floors look great! Other than one small area that looked like a towel got dragged through the coating. Hopefully they don't have to sand it all down and start over with the last coat! Yikes.

Snow Today!

Charlotte was all aflutter yesterday with the news of impending snow throughout the night. My office was one of those threatening not to open if snow stuck by this morning (oh darn). But poor Paul and company had no such luck.

Paul and I woke up several times last night due to snoring, restlessness, snow anticipation, bathroom breaks and cold feet. I think either one or the other of us was up every hour for something. Each time I got up I checked out the window to see how much snow was on the ground and it did begin to pile up an inch or so as the wee hours of the night began to fade. This meant not going out to do field work at the crack of dawn because we all decided to wait till mid-morning for some of the roads to loosen up. In the end, the crew couldn't make it down from Greensboro and with my office shut down, I could either work from home or take the day off (I chose the latter as I will be making up the hours later this week).

I watched Paul leave the driveway, very nervous. Thankfully he made it there and back, but he did have a scare from some ice on the country roads around our house. After he left, I ran outside to take some pictures.

Our house

Our street

Backyard neighbors' houses

The part of our backyard that is the North/South Carolina border. The trees in the distance are in North Carolina!

This is not a lot of snow compared to what other places in the country are experiencing but it seems to cause a lot of upheaval in Charlotte as the city is not equipped for it. All the schools shut down in our area, and so it made for a nice long holiday for the kids, with the Martin Luther King holiday being yesterday.