Wish List

On this gray, chilly, winter day, when Nick and I are exhausted from hosting company yesterday and I am trying to keep the gloom of the outside from coloring my mood, I thought it might help to put together a list of the upcoming projects I would like to tackle in the coming months.

On the one hand, this is a little depressing because all of these projects will cost money, and between the new puppy and the holidays, I don't have any.  On the other hand, it's something to look forward to....eventually.

So in no particular order, here we go:

• Repaint the guest room.  You remember, the bubblegum pink room?
  
  
  
  Yeah.  That's gotta go. That's getting repainted Hollingsworth Green.

 

• Obtain an actual guest bed for said guest room.  All we have to offer our guests now is a queen inflatable airbed, and I am getting the distinct impression that if we don't replace it ASAP people are going to start declining our invitations to visit.  Nick's parents have a four-poster full wooden bed frame they're not using that they have kindly offered to us; now we have to get the mattress.

• Paint furniture for the guest room.  My lovely mother-in-law invited me to peruse her attic for unused furniture, and there was a wooden chest of drawers and little side table that will be as good as new with a fresh coat of paint.  I think I will be experimenting with Annie Sloan chalk paint for those, since there's a store in Old Town Warrenton that carries it.

• Repaint our bedroom Yarmouth Blue.

• Turn the cheesy "pantry" and "laundry" decal door insets in the kitchen into useful chalkboard door insets. 
  
  
  I'm planning to have a calendar and to-do list on one door, and a menu planner and shopping list on the other.  We'll see.  Still exploring the various options of chalkboard paint versus contact paper versus whatever-else-is-out there.  Am also hoping it won't make the room too dark, but I think we can avoid that.  Besides, I can always paper over the glass inserts with black construction paper first to get a feel for what it would look like.

 

• There are some other projects we'd like to tackle, like painting the bathrooms (stark white is not my style).  Additionally, Nick found a website that shows you how to build a beautiful farmhouse dining table, and if he can score a Kreg Jig for Christmas, I think he might do that.  Or he's going to build us an entertainment center.  I forget which one is going to be first.  And then...built-in bookshelves in the front room!

Mezuzah

Thanks to my parents, we now have a gorgeous mezuzah adorning the front of our home.  It serves as a reminder that the home is a sacred space of love and respect, where we can enter and leave the rest of the world behind.  In today's world, that is a very, very important thing.

Holiday Decor

Since we live in a multi-faith household (me the Agnostic Jew and Nick the Agnostic Quaker/Protestant), winter holiday decorations can be a fun chance to mix and mingle traditions.  Right now we have a few winter items (garlands), and my Chanukah decorations are out.  Once Chanukah is over we will phase in a few more Christmas-y things.  For example, I splurged at Crate and Barrel a while back on votives and bought three different colors.  So right now, the votives accompanying the mantelpiece garland are blue and silver (Chanukah); in a couple of weeks they will be red and silver (Christmas).  It's fun!

 

 

 

My peace garland - made it myself!  It's a pretty blue color that didn't photograph too well.
It's reversible, so the "peace" message is also visible from the front of the house.

 

 

Broccoli!

We have bebbeh broccolis!

That is all.

Setting Boundaries

Nick and I have been talking for a month or two now about having a portion of the backyard fenced off.  Not to provide privacy or wall the neighbors out, but to provide a safe place for a dog to play off-leash (we did not have a dog at the time).  Many folks out here have beautiful paddock or split-rail fencing, and we really liked the look of both.  We had a large local company come out and give us an estimate, but it was significantly higher than we were looking to pay, even with interest-free financing.  We were feeling a bit discouraged, but once we adopted the puppy we had extra motivation to start looking again.  A coworker of mine recommended Triple-K, a smaller local company that she had used and was pleased with.  Their estimate was significantly less, and Nick liked the guy they sent out.  So they came out Tuesday morning, and by the time I arrived home from work at about a quarter to seven Tuesday evening, we had a fenced backyard!

It is three-rail split rail fencing with galvanized mesh wire along the inside so that animals cannot go between the rails.  From a distance you cannot see the mesh, and close-up it still looks pretty good!  Along the left-hand side of the home our neighbors already have a fence, so we ran ours across to meet theirs but did not double-up on the fencing.  There is a gate at the back of the fence that opens to the rest of the property.  Facing the street, we have a single-width gate on the right side and a double-width gate on the left.  The double-width gate is so that our tree guy can get his cherry picker into the backyard the next time we want some work done.  The fence comes up to about halfway along the house; between that, the large front yard, and the slope down to the street you can't see much of the street from the fenced yard, meaning that if and when we do leave Westley (the pup) alone in the yard he won't find much in the front to bark at.  Not that our cul-de-sac has much traffic anyway.  In the back the fence does not block the view of the trees or the little creek at the back of the property.

We (and Nick especially) are very excited!  He's already planned what scrubby areas we should clear out to open them up for additional sunlight, gardening, and a potential chicken coop.  Westley loves being able to be off-leash, and he has already figured out what the gates are even though they've only been there for four days!  He and I were in the front yard this morning and when he wanted to go to the back he trotted right up to the gate and sat down, which is what we are making him do any time we go in or out of a door.

I grew up used to fences that were five or six feet tall and blocked any view.  This is very different.  I think I like it better.  This sort of fence wouldn't work in Los Angeles, though - it works better when you have a larger, more rural property.  Good thing that's what we've got!