Squirrels & Pumpkins

now that fall is here we had to chop down the sunflowers since they were looking pretty droopy. the squirrels were loving meal time at my house. christopher caught an amazing photo of a squirrel hanging upside down from a flower and enjoying a nice meal of seeds. unfortunately, he was a messy eater. i have seed shells everywhere.

next year i will wait a little longer before roasting so the sunflower really dries out. for roasting, i just soaked them in salt water overnight and roasted for 40 minutes.

next up on the agenda....pumpkin carving!
we have all three of christopher's kids this weekend so it was time to carve pumpkins.

 Elizabeth's on the left, Megan's on the right.

William's on the left and Christopher's on the right.

i have a small corner in the family room with my pumpkin assortment. of course, i had to go for the white pumpkins because they are tre chic.

on the home front, i have been busily decorating the family room walls. i bought 5 prints from society6 and framed them with ikea frames. i just need one more large print to finish off the gallery wall. i included two canvases i did myself in photoshop. i saw this hilarious statement and knew it would work well. "Kindly Refrain From Whining." So appropriate!

 i even used my chevron washi tape for the canvas border. love how it turned out. the other canvas was a nice dalai lama quote.

here's a pic of the fire place mantle. christopher hasn't complained too much about the amount of pink i have brought into the room. when i saw that pink peony print at society6 it was a total must have. since then i check back often to see new work at society6. you should check them out. they have great prices! i also think the bull skull on the wall helps to counter the feminine feel of the room.

i don't think i ever posted my birthday present from dad. it is so cool. a four horned ram skull. i think it kinda freaked christopher's kids out, which is good so they don't touch it. elizabeth has named it charlie.

keeping my eyes peeled for a skeleton of a small animal perhaps a squirrel to add to my collection.

on the crafting front, i am making good progess on christmas cards. my last craft day with victoria and adora proved to be very productive. we all came away with 9+ finished cards.

i will post those shortly. hope your fall season is off to a good start :)

Check off the to do list, woot!

Back when we lived in Seattle, I had these two chairs I wanted to reupholster. Having never done anything like it before I just hoped for the best!
Here is what we started with.

Once we undressed it, we got it to look like this.

I wanted a fun pattern and bought a tan colored zebra print. Wasn't sure how Christopher would feel about that, but he seemed not to mind.

After months of letting it sit on the back burner, we finally made the final push to complete the 2 chairs.

Here they are now or here is one now. We finished both I just didn't photograph them together.

Sprayed painted her white and backed it with a tan colored velvet. I think I should have gone with the darker color in the zebra print, but it's too late now since I am done with her! I think sewing the cording was what took me so long to finish. It seemed a little daunting, but once I started it wasn't that bad. I originally had planned to do a double cording, but I didn't have the right presser foot for it. It's not perfect, but these hands of mine and Christopher got the job done which we are proud of!

Yes, I still make cards.....

It's been awhile, but I still love to make cards especially birthday cards.
Here's Adora's 51st card

and Yolande's birthday card

I bought a pack of banners made by Pebbles and combined it with stitching, a vellum bag of cheer, a dotted background using Heidi Swapp's stencil and Color Shine and some sprayed seam binding made for a fun day of card making.

Here's some more...

and here's a picture of my desk...

 which will stay like this for some time, yawn!

Welcome Autumn!

Linda gave birth to her 3rd and final child! Welcome Autumn Rain!

Shed Mahal

With so many projects on our to do list, Christopher can finally cross off build a shed, woot woot!

Here is the spot where we envisioned Shed Mahal.

 progress, progress

may I present Shed Mahal! not only do we have a shed built by Christopher himself, but we also have some enormous sunflowers that attract hummingbirds or so I am told by my neighbor.

Oh, I also must share my purple mountain grass that I love so much planted back in May. Check out how fast they grew!

and here they are today...

While I am on a roll, here is another corner of our backyard. Remember this is what we started with.

and here we are today...

we are getting closer and closer to our end vision. next up garden beds and trellises.

Vacation Rocks!

Hello there!
I am finding myself blogging less, but popping in month to month.
Christopher and I took a short vacation last week which started with the BECU Zoo Tunes Concert. I love Loreena McKennitt and whenever she stops in Seattle I will be there. This was our first time at the zoo for a concert and it had its ups and downs. She was great, but we had 2 couples next to us talking thru the songs which I wanted to slap them upside their heads!
Loreena's voice is so spiritual and pleasing to the ear. She is able to reach deep into my soul making me tear up. She played all of my favorites- Stolen Child, Old Ways, Bonny Swans, The Lady of Shalott, Caravanserai, & Penelope's Song.

Not the best photo, but at least a pic to remember.

After the concert, we spent the next day shopping and awaiting the arrival of Woody who would be hiking with us on the following Saturday.
Christopher and Woody had been planning to climb Ingalls Peak and I decided to go about a week before. I had hiked up to Colchuck Lake a couple of years ago and it was one of those hikes where I said to myself, "Why am I punishing myself?"
I punished myself again on this hike, but in the end it is so worth it. I hiked a total of 9 miles roundtrip to Ingalls Lake and Christopher and Woody continued on to the top of South Ingalls Peak totaling 12 miles roundtrip.

When we returned to the parking lot I looked up and couldn't believe I just hiked up the mountain. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment.

 Resting point at Ingalls Lake.

Pic of Ingalls Lake taken by Christopher on the summit. I am down there waiting for his return.

 A smooch to let him know I missed him!

 Always after a hike, we find a place to grub. Woody and I are big fans of the 90's tv show Northern Exposure which was filmed in Roslyn, WA aka Cicely.
Roslyn is one town over from Cle Elum so of course we had to stop by. When I entered The Brick I couldn't believe how packed it was. I knew it was going to be a long wait for our food and we were starving, but we waited it out and thankfully the food was tasty. It would have sucked to wait for crappy food. Thank you Roslyn for meeting our expectation!

Will be back shortly to post pics of our newly finished shed that Christopher built from scratch. My baby is handy :)

I Mustache You!

Happy 4th of July

 I was talking with Christopher that we needed to get away from working on the house which is what we do every weekend, so he planned a trip for us out to the coast. I thought we would go back to Shi Shi, but we ended up going to Cape Alava where we would camp just south of the Ozette River.

What I liked most is when Christopher said the hike to the beach would be 3 miles! Music to my ears! We haven't done a 20 miles hike in awhile and I kinda like that.

We saw at least 3 different parties in the parking lot with dogs only to turnaround and leave because pets are not allowed on the beach. It was a heck of a drive in and I can't imagine having to turnaround.

We brought fireworks only to come across this sign. It was a bummer not to light our rockets, but we were good law abiding citizens :(

The hike to the beach went by quick and we scoped out the best perch for our camp site. After we were all set up, our main concern was eating and resting which we did for the next 48 hours! We like to say we did a whole lotta of nothing! Each evening we would roast corn on the cob in the fire and prepare tortellini on Christopher's jet boil then watch the sun set. 

Day 1 Sunset

Day 2 Sunset

It felt good again to put my pack on and take step after step until you hit your destination.

When we entered the beach it was covered in dry seaweed. Thankfully, our camp was further north where less seaweed was to be found. The smell was pretty foul and I can't imagine why folks would want to camp next to that, but sure enough people did.

Our perch is right thru that trail. I like that we picked a spot where people wouldn't be walking thru our camp site.  Here we are sitting on a log doing a whole lotta of nothing!

Hope you had a happy 4th of July! We sang God Bless America and gave extra cheer when we sang "To the oceans white with foam."

Until next time...

A Sizzling start to Summer

Here is the start of two retaining walls that will form the entrance to the garden. My coworker gave me some railroad ties, but still need more to finish. If you know anyone in the Seattle area that has railroad ties to get rid I would be happy to pick up!
Last weekend, Christopher worked his arse off. He picked the hottest day of the year to go up in our attic and finish installing the flex ducting. It was crazy hot, but he got it done! We also picked up pompas grass from his coworker and planted it in our backyard. No easy task either! Once he dug around it, they chained it and towed it out with a truck. He then took an axe and cut it into quarters. We hauled it in his truck and my job was to clean out all the dirt! I hope they survive. They are huge and first of mature plants in the backyard. Photos of pompas grass to come :)