Why I Oughta...

I put 2 coats of stain on (and wiped them off!) yesterday and the color still isn't as DARK as we'd like it.  We're awfully close to matching the bookcases, so I think one more coat will do the trick. I'd like to be putting the first coat of polyurethane on tonight in order to meet the strict deadlines Nat has imposed.  After all, we still have the family room mantel to get done before Thursday!  Yikes!

We installed the dentil and I think it turned out great.  Used our front door as a template and at first I wasn't sure the scale would translate.  But stepping back and peeking at it, I'm pleased with the look.   Tonight, I started to fill the holes and think about stain/coloring - going to try to match it up to the bookcases as best as I can.  Couldn't have done ANY of this with Nat's Dad both in terms of his skill set and tools!

Thanks to Nat's Dad, we made A LOT of progress on the front living room mantel.  Charlie found some old oak boards at an estate sale and after a bit of sawing and planing we managed to make something pretty neat. It isn't done, but the Thanksgiving deadline is fast approaching.

The day has finally come:  we're going to finish off our fireplaces.  Nat has given me a Thanksgiving Day deadline.  Fortunately, I'm taking some time off which allowed me to get to the store to buy some wood to begin the project.  We're going to simulate the look of our front door with a pretty large dentil design. 3.5" blocks with 6" spacers is what I've laid out in the photo above.  I'm *hoping* that the scale will work once they go up on the wall.

I told you the Owl was getting lonely. The cat turned out the best, but I think that's because he has chompers.  I have yet to decide if these are worth keeping in storage for next year or if now, since it is November, these should get chucked.  Maybe they'll join our owl pumpkins in the compost bin?

Now that you've properly been introduced to our dog, it is time to tell a little story about her personality/smarts. Last week, we came home to find our air conditioner had stopped working.  (No...it wasn't the storm that flooded the Palmer Underpass, it was a different one.)  Well....actually, it was the furnace fan that failed (again) that caused the problem.  We were getting cold, conditioned air, but it wasn't going anywhere because the fan couldn't push it anywhere. Our house is set up like a traditional bungalow - 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 bedrooms downstairs.  Normally, we sleep upstairs along with the Babe and Maisy sleeps in her bed in my office (one of the bedrooms downstairs).  The A/C had failed earlier in the summer, so we had borrowed a window unit from my folks.  Fortunately, that happened to still be in our basement.  After a bit of consultation with my dad, we settled on putting the window unit in our dining room - which would (hopefully) cool the w

With no classes at Kellogg to keep me busy, I began to look around at some craft projects that I'd wanted to give a try and began to organize my thoughts around them.  Some of them are pretty seasonal - gardening, jamming, pickling , but I also wanted to try to take on some non-seasonal projects like cheese making and woodworking.  With a fiesta planned, cheesemaking came first.   It started - like a lot of my hobbies do - with a trip to the Elmhurst Public Library where I checked out a few cheesemaking books.  After a few thumb-throughs, I settled on making Queso Blanco.  This appeared to be the easiest cheese to make (maybe Ricotta is up there, too) and one that I could cut my cheesemaking teeth on.   We choose to go organic this time with both organic whole milk and organic apple cider vinegar.  Add salt and you have the three ingredients needed to make Queso Blanco.   I started by heating the milk to 185 degrees.  (Pardon the electric stove, we were in Michigan at the lake w

Say hello to my Saturday. Seriously.  This was (for me, at least) a pretty serious DIY project. Since we've moved in, one of my "to do's" has been to work on "sinking" a drainage system that diverts the water from our gutters away from our house and to a low spot in our yard.  When it rains hard, we get a little bit of seepage into our basement.  Not a lot of water, just some dampness.  I am hypothesizing that it was because the water would run from our downspouts and into the ground next to the house.  because of grading, the land contoured back towards our foundation. I went to Menard's early this morning and bought 10 10-foot lengths of sewer pipe and a whole series of joints and connectors.  I have put in a "T" in the middle as I'm planning on putting in a surface curtain drain - right in the middle of our new vegetable/victory garden.  The trench still needs to get filled in, but I'll get to that after I ensure the system '

Have you ever walked by your neighbors yard and saw something that looked like this and wondered what the heck they were doing?  I admit, when I was younger everytime I encountered grass that had been aerated, I always thought that they were a bunch of turds.  They kinda look like it. Well...guess what?  We're now the house on the block with a lawn that the kids in our neighborhood will think is full of turds.  Late last week, we had a company called Pluggin A Lawn come out and aerate the yard and parkway.  They say that the benefits of aeration include enhanced root growth through moisture and air circulation which all lead to a greener yard.  This will be our second summer with the yard and while many of our neighbors have companies come take care of their lawns with maintenance and fertilization products, we're going to go it alone.  We won't have the best looking grass right away, but hopefully we'll get there with steps like this. I'm not totally sure that

Along with the flowering tree we planted out front last spring , we also bought a few different fruit trees - they were cheap, too, at $5.00 a tree.  I didn't have much hope that they'd last the winter, but surprisingly enough...they've come back strong! Here's (what I'm pretty sure is) our Pear Tree.  We planted it on the south side of our lot and it took in plenty of sun last summer.  It shot up and is now thriving. It has some quite pretty blooms on it - hopefully they'll pop open with flowers.  The documents that came say that it is fast growing and doesn't need an opposite sex tree in the area to produce fruit.  Nat's mom has a Pear Tree and I believe it fruits every-other-year.  We'll see what happens with this little guy. Here's to " creeping " this summer! (Note:  due to the bark on the tree - and it's simliarlity to the "Cleveland Pear Flowering Tree" in the front yard, I'm pretty sure this is a Pear Tree

I've started a bit of a tradition in our house.  For the past two years, I've given Nat a new frontdoor mat for Easter.  Not the most romantic of presents, but one that helps usher in Spring in our house.  And frankly....When was Easter supposed to be romantic!  There's death, rising, bunnies, candy etc...but no romance!  Anyway....By the time early April rolls around, our mat from the previous year looks pretty bad.  What we've done is taken the old one, put it by the back door and rotated the one by the back door into the garbage can.   Worked pretty good so far. This year, I picked up the mat at Target.  It is from the Smith and Hawken collection.  I believe that they went out of business this year ( stories here ), but for some reason they have a bunch of their stuff in our Target on North Avenue.  It tends to be pretty nice stuff, so hopefully they'll keep this "line" going while shuttering all their owned/operated stores.   The mat is a pretty cut

If you know Nat, I don't have to tell you about what she thinks of peonies . In late 2008, right after we closed on our house, we planted a peony plant that we received from Nat's aunt - which I believe was split from a plant she received from another relative.  Last year, we bought a few other peony plants including a transplant of a big peony plant from my sister's yard in Hinsdale - but the original plant from Nat's Aunt was clearly the prized possession in the yard. Last summer, the plants bloomed, but were NOT spectacular.  And...if you garden at all, you know that peonies can really be spectacular.  We hosted my niece and nephew last summer for a few months and they gave our backyard a workout - including trampling all over most of everything I've planted.  I bought a few small tomato cages to put the plants in, but that just slowed the kids down, it didn't keep them away from them. Fast forward to this Spring and as some of our bulbs started to emer

The plans for the garage are moving forward fast.  The topographic surveys are done, the blueprints are in with the city, and the permits are applied for.  Hopefully, we'll hear from the city this week with the go-ahead.  We've come this/close to settling on a garage builder - and hope to sign a contract within the week.  Once the permits are approved, we'll break ground! In addition to the fence (from earlier this week), we're also going to put in some pavers for a patio, a new driveway, and a bunch of landscaping.  There's also this "pavilion" that I want built above the patio.  Pavilion you say?  Yep.  You got that right.  See the picture below for what we're looking for.   Nat HATES the idea, but I want shade.  We're facing straight west (in our backyard) and the sun makes the yard **almost** unusable on a hot day.  With this free-standing structure up against the garage, I think we'll have a really comfortable area to have a nice aftern

We get print subscriptions to both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times everyday.  Like most folks, the Sunday papers get the most attention in our house.  I buzz through the Trib everyday and read the S-T, but Sundays brings the circular ads.  For me, there's really only one ad that is a must-read every week:  Menard's. This week's ad brought a nice surprise on the back cover:  They now have gift registries!  Srsly.  Umm...too bad I'm married.  I would have fought tooth-n-nail to get a wedding registry at Menard's.  I would have - undoubtably lost that battle - but still would have waged it nonetheless. Who knows...maybe I can sneak a registry in for the babe's first birthday.  If that doesn't work, my birthday is coming up you know.

I've chronicled our quest to build a garage (we have finished drawings!  and topography surveys!), but there are a few other companion projects going on at the same time.  We currently have a VERY ratty chainlink fence circling our backyard.  When the garage is done, that will change.  I've been getting bids from various fence companies on this style of fence:  board on batten.  It will be 6 feet high! I took this picture at my sister's new house.  I'll post some photos when ours is going up.  I'm pretty excited to get the fence put up - almost as excited as the garage.  In my sister's yard, the fence looks great and has a very clean look to it.   You're probably wondering why it'll be 6 feet high.  No...we don't hate our neighbors.  They're actually very nice.  We just wanted something high - for privacy and to keep the coyotes out!  Srsly.

This was the view looking out from our family room up until last Friday.  Lots of Blue Spruce in the way.  It was pretty, too.  In the winter, snow would pile up on the strong branches.  We'd have some wildlife making their home in the trees.  We liked it.  Unfortunately, they had to go. The tree company made quick work by cutting out the bottoms of the trees and climbing up them.  I was surprised by the size of their saws - they were small - but I suppose that's because they're dangling from ropes as they climb. They moved fast.  The first tree was toppled in 10 minutes or less.   Removing all the branches makes sawing the stumps off easier, I suppose. After the "back" tree was done, they went to work on the larger "front" tree.   And like that...they were gone.  The crew cleaned up the yard while one member ground the stumps. They were good trees.  They'll be missed.  We'll replant something similar in some portion of our yard.  

On Friday, we cut down two perfectly healthy, magnificent Blue Spruce trees in our backyard.  We pushed this day off for almost a year, but it finally came.  Based on the previous owner's recollection, the twin Spruces were planted sometime in the early 1970's.  For some reason, they planted them directly in the middle of the yard.  From our deck, the view looked liked this.  We had no yard because of them. They're both were perfectly healthy.  However, we needed to start clearing the yard for our garage.  For the past year, we've tried (probably more than we should have) to find a home for both of these trees.  First, we looked at Big Trees Inc - a company that specializes in finding mature trees and providing them to folks who want large trees immediately.  Big Trees Inc comes over, digs the whole tree out with the roots and all, scoops it on a truck and pays the tree "owner" a few bucks.  They then take that mature tree and sell it for thousands!  Sounds

Last week, I shared my "vision" for our new garage - based on another simple garage I saw across town.  It was mostly 'dreaming' - but now we're moving into the 'action' stage of the process.  Just yesterday I received the preliminary drawings for the garage.  Some things need to change a bit - like the roof pitch and window locations, but for the most part we're on our way.  Equation Boy/Man has received his preliminary drawings as well and is making some modifications.   Up next is the yard preparation and bidding of the job.  We're going to bid them together (ours + Equation Boy/Man's) because we live 7 houses away and there **should** be some economies of scale that can be captured by the good guys - us.

We have a big chalkboard up in our kitchen that we post various things on.  From invitations to coupons - it seems to be the hub of our offline activities.  There's a bunch of magnets that hold the various items up.  We have had a few get-togethers at our house over the past few weeks and the 'board' was purged.  Just about everything that wasn't baby-related was removed. For the past few months, I have had this comic from the Duplex strip up.  Apparently the humor (after 6 months) was lost on her because I found it on my desk.  (at least she didn't toss it!) Every time I read it, I get a bit of a giggle.  For me, it is too good not to share.  (if it is too small to read, click the comic for a bigger version!) It won't need to go back up on the board - as it will live on here forever!

We've decided to move on to building a garage this summer.  Yeah...our house DOES NOT HAVE ONE.  Somehow, when we bought the house, there were so many glaring issues/problems that the fact that there wasn't a garage didn't seem like that big of a deal.  When ceilings in a few rooms are falling in, I suppose the lack of a garage doesn't jump out at you as a huge issue. Now that we've remedied **most** of the issues in the house, my thoughts turn outdoors.  This was our first winter in the house and getting in cold icy cars every morning isn't fun, so a garage it shall be! Both Equation Boy/Man and I are going through the process together (they need a garage, too!), and our garages are going to be fairly similar, but with some minor modifications.  They have a driveway from the front of their house, whereas we'll use the alley.   They have a wider lot than us. They want some dormers to make it pretty, I want height to protect the yard from the sun.  (I'