Nick found a pole for hanging bird feeders and a giant empty bird feeder in the shed, left behind by previous owners. This worked out very well because our seed feeder got wet and moldy and I couldn't get it clean, so we needed a replacement. Yesterday we put that out, plus a nyjer feed seeder for finches his grandfather gave us, plus a pretty new hummingbird feeder we bought at our local hardware store. So now the view from our kitchen window looks like this:
It didn't take long to start attracting customers, either - we have both seen a hummingbird at the feeder this morning. Huzzah!
We also saw the entire deer family this morning as they ate our backyard grass for breakfast:
I took this shot through the bedroom window blinds.
For our anniversary I offered to buy Nick a household tool/utility item of his choice. Hey, he bought me our counter stools - we're being practical. So he has purchased a Craftman workbench for himself, since the quasi-built-in workbench in our garage has actually very little utility. We are still putting it together but eventually it will look like this:
He also bought the backstop with light overhang - will post a photo once it's all put together and ready-for-use. He realized he needed one so that he could finish putting a base piece onto my bookcase; in related news, the bookcase isn't finished yet. The bottom has a cutout aspect to it that makes the whole thing a bit unstable so Nick wants to fix it. Hence the workbench, though he will obviously use that for many things.
We realized the other day that this kitchen we like so much is actually an Ikea kitchen. It never occurred to us during the house-hunting phase, or after we first moved it. But during out trip to Ikea last month, as we wandered through the store, we saw our sink. The exact same sink, the deep double-basin.
Yep. Definitely our sink. So we took a closer look at the kitchen section and all they have to offer, and then looked at our kitchen more closely when we got home, and it sure looks like it could be Ikea! They don''t have the exact style that we have in our kitchen, so perhaps they don't make those any more. Or we're wrong altogether. But it was entertaining nonetheless.
In other kitchen-related news, it has been used very heavily for our first canning adventures in the new house! A coworker of mine has a fair amount of acreage and she and her retiree husband are growing more tomatoes than they can cope with. She invited us out to pick as much as we wanted. We picked for many 20 minutes and walked away with this:
Those are standard-size fabric grocery bags, both full of Italian tomatoes. Plus some basil they threw in for good measure. Many late nights and a heated kitchen later, we have 6 pint jars of pasta sauce (three of chunky and three of marinara) and 4 pint jars of mild salsa. Plus I made a batch of tomato basil soup but that was not for canning - just eating. The chunky tomato basil sauce was good but a smidge heavy on the vinegar - the salsa is delicious. Nick did most of this while I was at work or late at night. He is amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment