Concrete Pathway!

This weekend was GORGEOUS! I have the slight sunburn to prove it. 

Today, David and I decided to finally attack a project that we've been talking about for over a year: a concrete pathway going from our driveway to our front door.  What sparked this decision? Concrete was on sale.  So, we took the truck down to Home Depot, picked up 7 bags of concrete and a mold, came home, and got started.  I thought we'd be working on the pathway all day, but it only took about 3 hours to do...way easy! Now I'm looking for an excuse to put another pathway in somewhere.  Here's some pictures:

This is me digging up sod where the path will go.

Here's David, finishing digging the sod up.

                                               Mixing up concrete

This form thing is so cool! You just fill in the holes with concrete, pick it up, turn it a quarter turn, and repeat.  Presto-change-o, cobblestone pathway!

All done!



Water Spigot

I have to admit...this one's a David project, not a Hannah project.  I was on standby to fetch tools and stuff.

Last year our outdoor water spigot for the back yard froze and burst.  This bursting was definitely our fault; we forgot to turn the water off during the fall.  Still, it brought the spigot to our attention, and, gung-ho homeowners that we are, we had to find a way to improve it!  In all honesty, the old water pipe wasn't in the best location.  It ran along the top of our basement stairs and hung with the shut-off valve right at forehead level in the basement, high enough that you couldn't see it, but low enough that it hurt when you ran into it.

As a solution, David decided to re-do the plumbing, moving the spigot over to the other side of our outdoor basement entrance.  In the process, he got to learn a yet unexplored technique in our home-improvement adventures--soldering pipes together!  Lesson one: soldering plumbing is very different from the soldering I did in Jewelry class in high school.  Lesson two: if you do it wrong, the pipe leaks.  Lesson three: hot solder hurts when it drips on you.  It may have been a bumpy journey and included an unplanned trip to Ace Hardware for more couplers (and corn seeds), but by the end of the day, we had a brand new spigot, in a spot that makes sense, with a fancy new frost-free valve thingy that won't burst...even if we forget to turn the water off again this fall.

Here's David drilling a hole in the side of our house.

Copper pipe sticking out of the aforementioned hole

David, crawling into the cramped space beside the basement stairs and underneath the pantry floor, all so he can feed the pipe through the floor rafters as he drills the holes one by one.  I'm glad it wasn't me, as this is one of the more spider-y places in our house...

Trimming a piece of pipe

Voila! Water!

I'm very happy to have water available to the back yard again!  Now I don't have to tote my watering can back and forth from the greenhouse to the kitchen sink; I can just drag the hose out to where I need it (appreciate the little things)!

As for the greenhouse, here are some new pictures.  The tomatoes are starting to get big!

Tomatoes...the one in the forefront is a monster!

Broccoli, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts.  These guys are all related, and I love the heart-shaped leaves they have when they first pop out of the ground.

Peppers in the background, snapdragons in the foreground.  I planted an absurd amount of snapdragons this year.  Pictures of the front flowerbed will certainly be in order :-)

Finally, my daffodils are blooming!  Nevermind the ugly fence...that's another project for another day.

Book Club

That's right, folks. The book club is back on!

About a year ago, my friend Alyssa and I started a 2-person book club, mostly because we're both book nerds, and it would give us an excuse to hang out more often.  We had other people join for a meeting or two, but in the end it remained just a 2-friends-reading-the-same-book kind of deal, and it got us through the summer.  At some point, school, life, and work got in the way, so the book club was put on hiatus, and ever since then, I've missed our meetings.

Fast forward to today.  Alyssa and I met up for coffee, and pretty much the first things we said to each other were "I just read this book that was so good.  You have to read it and tell me what you think."  Just like that, the book club is now back in session! I'm so freakin' excited!

We decided that we are each going to read the other person's suggestion, and our meeting (in 2 weeks or so) will cover both books.  Then we'll decide what to read for next time. 

Alyssa's suggestion for me is The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. When I browsed the back of this book at the library earlier today, I was surprised to find out it had won the Pulitzer. One of my life-long goals is to read all the Pulitzer winners and all the Booker Prize winners, so I'm always glad to find out that what I'm reading won one of those.

My suggestion for her is Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. This is a recent favorite of mine told from the point of view of a woman suffering from dementia. Her best friend has been murdered, and she is the prime suspect, but she doesn't remember if she did it. It is brilliantly written, and I'm so excited for Alyssa to read it, so we can talk about it!












Has anyone else read either of these books?  You should...and then tell me what you think!

Spring Break

Happy Easter, everyone!

Tomorrow will mark the end of Spokane Public Schools', and therefore my, spring break.  It has been a fun, eventful week, so prepare yourselves for a lengthy post :-)

My spring break actually started the Wednesday before last.  Christy invited me to go to her family's vacation home on Camano Island with her for the weekend, and I took 2 days off before we left to prepare for the trip.  It actually only takes me about 15 minutes to pack my duffel bag, but in an ambitious burst of energy, I decided to finish the T-shirt quilt I've been making for Christy for her wedding.  She's been married for a year and a half now.  This quilt is seriously overdue, and I can only thank her for her gracious patience,waiting for me to get my butt in gear. 

Overdue though it may be, it was still unrealistic for me to try to finish the quilt in two days, even if it would have been a nice surprise for her on the trip.  The quilt has two sides (the fronts and backs of the T-shirts), and I still had to cut and sew another border to each side, lay out the layers with the batting, tie the quilt, cut and sew the binding, and then hand-sew the binding to the back of the quilt.  In other words, more than two days' worth.  I managed to finish tying the quilt at about 11:00 pm Thursday night before admitting that I probably wouldn't be able to give it to Christy at 7:00 am the next day.  Take a look at some pictures...

All laid out for tying

Sewing the binding strips together

Sewing the binding to the quilt

At 7:00 Friday morning, Christy and Pepper the dog picked me up for the 5-hour trek across the state to Camano Island.  It rained the whole way there, but we kept ourselves entertained with Road Trip Bingo.

The Corvette square, in particular, gave us trouble.  It seemed like we saw a million Mustangs--enough that we started playing a Mustang version of "Slugbug"--but no Corvettes.  That and the train square.

By the end of the drive, we were really eager to get there.  I wanted to stretch my legs (super sore from being on the floor all of the day before, tying the quilt) and finally see what all the fuss of the beach was about.  For years I've been hearing Christy's stories of love about the beach at Camano Island.  Even Pepper was excited.  She knows the word "beach" and gets all excited and tail-waggy when she hears it.

Well, the beach was everything it promised to be.  The house was cozy, everything smelled good, the scenery was gorgeous, the weather (in true Western-Washington style) was rainy.  Most of the time, we just hung out at the house with the rest of Christy's family.  Her niece and nephews provided hours of entertainment, especially when sugared up on Swedish fish and given green foam Hulk fists to play with.  Good times and delicious meatball sandwiches were had.  Saturday morning, however, Christy and I got out of the house for some breakfast and shopping in the rain.  Breakfast was diner food at the Duck-In Diner.  After that we drove to La Conner, a tourist town known for its Tulip Festival and good shopping.  I picked up a crossword book and a book of short stories, Christy picked up a Sudoku book, and we both picked up a single scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone.  On the way back to the house, we took the marked tulip route.  None of the tulips were in bloom yet, but we saw fields of daffodils (my favorites!) in full bloom.

Can you spot the--erm--misspelling?

Sunday morning came too fast.  The drive home was sunny and gorgeous.  We kept ourselves busy by playing the celebrity name game where one person names a celebrity and the other person has to think of another celebrity whose first name begins with the same letter as the previous celebrity's last name.  That actually kept us busy for at least 100 miles.  It was on this return trip that we finally saw a Corvette and, as we were coming down Sunset hill, a train.

This Wednesday brought my mother-in-law Margee to town.  I always love when she visits because she's wickedly funny and energetic, and she knows how to have a good time.  For her visit from Wednesday to Saturday, we only had 2 things on the agenda: go see Hunger Games and throw a snobby wine and cheese party.  We managed to do both of those things, as well as do a bunch of shopping in Coeur d' Alene and a bunch of yard work today.

Our wine and cheese party has been in the works for a long time now.  It all started with my Great-Aunt Marie.  She hosted my bridal shower 2 years ago where she served a stilton cheese with apricots in it.  This cheese was delicious enough for me to imagine it paired with other foods and wines, something I don't normally do.  Thus an idea was born.  Invite a bunch of friends over for an excuse to pretend to be a fancy foodie snob and get hammered in the process.

On our wine list:

Merlot

Syrah

Pinot Gris

Riesling

Gewurztraminer

On our cheese list:

Stilton with apricots

Triple cream cheddar

Cheddar with caramelized onions

A cheese made with ale and mustard seeds

One called "No Woman" that Margee kept calling "Beat the Woman"

One called "Beehive Buzzed" that I don't remember what had in it

Mozzarella balls in marinara

And a couple others I don't remember

Clearly I'm much more in my element with wines than with cheese.  We also served fruits and cured meats to go with the wines and cheeses.  We accomplished the task of getting hammered.  Here are some pictures:

wine selection with info sheets

cheese and other food layout

David sporting the "Wine Yoke" (available at World Market), the ultimate wino's device

Let the feasting begin!

yummy wine...the Syrah was my favorite

yucky chocolate wine...also available at World Market

Whit and David

pass out!

The wine and cheese party was a huge success!  We had a ton of leftover cheese and BAD hangovers Saturday morning, but it was so sunshiny and beautiful outside that, after some much-needed coffee, David, Margee, and I made our way outdoors to work in the yard.

we dusted the cobwebs off the mower and trimmer

Seamus found an old cow-ear treat he brought outside sometime in the middle of winter...mmm

a sight for sore eyes.

Thus concludes my spring break.  Have a great Easter everyone :-)