What A Week

Last week started horrible.  First the storm swept through our yard and took the greenhouse and all our summer veggie seedlings along with it.  If that wasn't bad enough, on Sunday the drive belt on the riding lawn mower busted. Here's a photo of the greenhouse from last summer and what was left of it after Saturday's storm. We were lucky though, a lot of people lost homes and lives.

Aaron was on Spring break last week so we decided to tackle the kitchen cabinets. His folks were out visiting and we had warned them we would need to be working on house projects over the break. So with their help we got started on what we thought would be a couple of days' work. First we sanded down to the wood, then painted and added new hardware . . . that was the easy part. We then spent two days rehanging and adjusting them to fit back where they came from. All told it took five full days to finish the job and by the end of it we were ready for it to be over! But we're really glad we got it done, it's like having a new kitchen.

Here are the before shots. The first one is from when we came to look at the house before we bought it.

Out in the garden all the spring stuff is growing great, but it's going to be so hot this week we're afraid all the greens will bolt. We've put lattice over the lettuce and spinach to try and keep them cool. On Saturday we headed over to J & B Plants and traded a couple of pieces of pottery for a bunch of plants, both summer veggies as well as lot of flowing herbs for the butterfly garden and a Japanese maple. I had met John, the owner, last fall at a show and he suggested bartering, so glad we took him up on it. Now we need to find the time to plant everything!

On Sunday Aaron fixed the lawn mower and got the grass cut.

The week ended well.

Huge Improvement and New Pots!

The floors upstairs are done... Yay! These floors were never finished at all and were covered with paint splotches and stains. I wasn't so sure they'd come out good but man, they look awesome, they glow. They should be much easier to keep clean too.  Here are before, during and after shots, ignore the duct tape covering on the fireplace!

So I just unloaded the kiln and the blister problem I've been battling and babbling on about to anyone who would listen is almost solved. On the advice of John Britt, I basically slowed down the firing and bisqued a little higher (I reattached the vent to my electric kiln, too). I also tried different clays and may just switch to a different clay altogether. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the last firing. I was starting to get really bummed about it, almost afraid to put a lot of energy into any one pot just to have it get ruined in the firing.

Here are a couple of shots we took since the last post.