Hosta Queens

This was a week of 'finishing touches' for The House at Fellows. Up til now, we've been kinda 'Big Picture' people when it came to tackling this house's To-Do list (repair the walls, repair the eaves, dehumidify the basement, get the furniture in - especially our bookshelves - throw up some paint) - but it's amazing how taking care of some of the details can start to pull it all together.

The dining room is probably now the closest to being COMPLETELY done. We've got a beautiful ceiling fan up, curtains that are beautiful AND functional, and light sconces up on the walls. Everything in there has a rich, textured feel to it now - just what we were looking for in the space where we'd be entertaining!

The kitchen got a nice mini-makeover as well. We opened up A LOT of space by installing a permanent dishwasher and moving the oven (with a lovely new hood! Now when I burn the sausage all the smoke can go outside instead of us having to open windows all over the house!) over as well. We ended up losing a lot of cabinet space for our pots and pans, but Jesse is reorganizing things and we'll probably put some kind of pot rack up on the ceiling as well to keep things accessible. Pictures of the kitchen will follow just as soon as I get my camera back in the mail - left it up in Maine! Nal's is sending it through the mail (in TONS of bubble-wrap, right??!!) - thank you!!!!

Probably one of the most transformative projects we tackled this week was the front yard - Jesse and Stevo built us some raised beds - three tiers! Momma Margaret and Stevo had brought up a truck-load of day lillies and hostas and even a lilac bush (!) so we were able to get those guys into our newly constructed beds. I must admit, though I've always loved the idea of raised beds, I was having trouble seeing Jesse's vision for the front yard - and it came out beautifully! An immense amount of work went into hauling/shoveling/spreading the dirt needed for those beds - not to mention then nailing them all together like link 'n logs! Multiple tools plus some lengths of rebar did the trick :) So basically we've got this tiered system of beds, plus a couple of wavy ground beds on each side of the house to keep things asymmetrical. Definitely a fun WORK IN PROGRESS. (**We are always willing to accept any extra pesky perrenials clogging up your yard**) We've already had one of our green-thumb neighbors stop by with his van to drop off some asters, a flax, and a rose of sharon (my secret favorite mysterious plant that is all over Syracuse that I've been trying to identify!) - thank you Kevin! We do depend upon the kindness of strangers . . . and neighbors! ;)

Well, that's all I'm going to post for now. I'm starting Clinic I tomorrow and can't wait to share it with you all!

Lotsa love
Caitlin

Mid Week Report

Hey all - reporting to you live from sunny Syracuse (um, did I say sunny? I meant sticky, stagnant, simmering, scalding Syracuse!). Yes, we are back from living it up on Frye Island in Maine with the fam - we believe we've officially turned Lois into a Catan addict (and she agrees - Seafarers is da bomb). This week we are hosting Margaret and Stevo and . . . Mocha! Or Mochalicious as I like to call her. She's a four month old chocolate lab with honey colored eyes and big, big paws. She loves her treats and just being near people :)

Our projects this week are quite ambitious! Margaret and I have already put up curtains in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. They were all cheap, cheap but very lovely. I think we surprised ourselves a bit with how well everything came together! The curtains give the rooms that (next to) last polished touch - and a bit of privacy. I say "next to last" because we DO still have a couple light fixtures to put up in the dining room and some 3-prong outlets to place throughout . . . but we do finally have a ceiling light/fan up in the dining room! It looks fabulous AND was a blessing at dinner last night as one of the few rooms with circulating air! (Our bedroom, however, DOES have A/C but we'll keep that on the DL for now . . . )

We've got cabinets being sawed off, dishwashers slid in, ovens being shoved over, holes blasted through brick, oh my! Hostas and (black-eyed) Susans and Lilacs, oh my! The boys even got in 18 holes yesterday morning, on the very beautiful, very hilly Green Lakes course.

Additional grand plans for the week? I'll be doing a bit of studying each day this week (leaving for 8 weeks at Fort Drum this Saturday!), but we've got a whole day planned out for the Ithaca/Finger Lakes area tomorrow, Dinosaur BBQ at some point (really, we never need an excuse to go there), hopefully a day of sculpting some flower beds/grading away from the house so the weather stops ending up pooling on the floor of our oddly-tiled basement!

All in all, we are having a lovely time working and playing (and blogging). Love to you all!

Vote for Mocha!!!

Ok folks - meet Mocha, the lovey-dove googly-legged chocolate lab from Barnegat, NJ! Vote for her in the Cutest Dog Contest and Mocha could win a million clams! Bones! It could go towards replacing the 'puppy-proof' leashes she's been chewing through . . . Make Margaret and Stevo proud and vote once per day - you'll be glad you did!

Mocha will give you kisses. That's right, she's not above bribery.

Who could resist kisses from a face like this?

Week in Jersey

We were so glad to get to see so many folks on our trip down to Jersey - mostly thanks to Miss Nally's Graduation party, but we'll get to that in a minute . . .

Our vacation week started off with an overnight stop to Lauren and Dan's house in Nyack - we are so lucky that they are not sick of us yet, popping in whenever we head South (isn't EVERYTHING South of Syracuse??). We had a lovely dinner of salmon and asparaguy before preparing for the evenings main event . . .CATAN! No wait! Not just plain old CATAN - but Catan SEAFARERS!!! Yes, you know you have reached an entirely new level of dorkdom when you start searching out and playing the boardgame equivalent of a spin-off tv series . . . however, playing Catan ONLINE, I would say, is even dorkier (ahem, LAUREN!).

Seafarers is, by the way, WAY cooler than regular old Catan. You get ships and gold and . . .and . . .ok, I'll stop now . . .

We were glad to get to see them off before they headed out to Comicon 09 in San Diego, CA. Dan is a die-hard fan of all things comic/graphic/pop culture related and Lauren wanted a picture with Pacey from Dawson's Creek (he's now on a scifi-like show called Fringe). It sounds like they had an awesome time - can't wait to see pictures, you guys!

Next we headed to good old Jutland, NJ to help get ready for Miss Nally's Graduation/Birthday party. Dad's Bday was on the 17th so after spending the day cleaning (and watching the neighbor boys haul weeds and mulch around the yard) we had a quiet dinner - Miss Tiz was there too from the City - and made Dad open his present - the complete series of West Wing! I'm not gonna lie, we were just as excited for it as Dad (and we spent a lot of the following week burning through the first 2 seasons!).

Nally's party was wonderful in that it brought together so many people! We had the cousins Margaret and David (plus Margaret's leading man Greg AND Greg's brother Matt!) plus family from both sides, PLUS Margaret and Stevo (and their chocolate lab puppy Mocha!!) up from South Jersey, plus some of Nally's friends we hadn't seen in a while, the 4th Steeves child: Patrick, Jilly and Tom, AND loads of church/neighborhood friends we hadn't seen since our wedding - the VanArsdales, Mrs. Carvatt, George and Judy, Aunt Sandy, the Pellis's - forgive me if I'm forgetting anyone right now, but it was so great to get to catch up a bit.

And our adventure continues! The next day we headed into the City for Jesse's uncle Scott's 60th Birthday brunch (devout readers may remember we had attended Scott and Beth's wedding in the City back in February!) - and got to see Jed and Laurie as well! The brunch was lovely - it turned out Beth had made all the food that looked so good I had thought it was catered - and we were all briefly glued to the tv, watching Watson lose steam on the 72nd hole of the British Open. A lot of grown men were near tears following his loss - so we took Jed and Laurie on a brief jaunt through Central Park! Near the fountain, I know Jed got some great pictures/footage of Thoth - the ponytail-wearing, bell-clad, surprisingly buff man who frequents the park with his violin and his unique vocalizations! I've seen him before - he had a pink fairy-costumed friend with him this time! (Laurie and I got a semi-scandalous peek at how TRULY buff Thoth is when we passed by a second time to discover he had stripped down to nothing but a gold-lame [pronounced la-may] loin cloth - plus the bells, of course.) Our sojourn with Laurie was brief - she had to hop on a plane that afternoon - but we hope to make our way out to Chicago in the not-too-distant future for a proper visit :)

We were able to have an extended visit with Jed when we all trooped over to Jesse's Dad's house in Saddle Brook. Pops was feeling a little under the weather so we kept it an easy night with pizza, wine, and Balderdash!

This has turned into a monster of a post - I think I'll leave you all in suspense! What DID happen to our fearless travelers at the Russian Banya? Who saw Harry Potter, finally? Exactly how many consecutive hours of West Wing CAN you watch before permanently being molded into the couch?

All this - AND MORE - will be revealed, next time on: Week in Jersey, Part Deux!


luv luv
caitlin and jesse

Wally Turns . . . 100,000!!!!

Yes, we love our car, Wally - enough to name him Wally, and enough to document for posterity his 100,000th mile anniversary.

Yes, we are dorks. But you love us.






Dork-lovers!!

Ahem. Here it is.

Indoor painting done!

After 6 days, we're done with the living room! We convinced ourselves that we've gotten more efficient at the process, but it still took us almost a week to finish a room. Given, we had to repair some walls, and it was a big room -- we finished the trim last night at midnight - so much of it! By 11pm we were so delirious we began questioning our color decisions.

The kitchen and dining room are so bright with fresh colors, we were getting worried that the neutral tone of the off-white and the dark of the chocolate brown were going to be downers. Cait had chosen a lime green as an accent that we didn't add until this morning. That final burst of brightness saves the room from the complete lack of color.

Our basement got a minor facelift too this week. All five of the windows were replaced with glass block windows. The basement is enormously less creepy then it was a few months ago. Light pours through all day long and when you're down there the blocks look like shimmering ice cubes. So much more enjoyable then the rotting wood, rusty metal, grody glass we had before.

So - a bunch of pictures to enjoy!

Adventures in Faux-Finishing

And so the saga of 211 Fellows continues! Our next manual laborer/guest was Miss Nally Steeves, aka The Littlest Sis of the Steeves Clan, aka Faux-Finish Frannie (ok, I made that last one up). Even with her bad back, she was a chipper go-getter and painter extraordinaire! Our mission: the dining room. Her task, help us tackle a "Tuscan" faux-finish. We thought the dining room would be a fun place to experiment with some warm colors and some texture. Jess and I had spent the better part of the past two days doing our now-familiar sand-and-spackle, sand-and-spackle, sand-and-prime routine - so we were ready for Nals!

The faux-finish was pretty neat - we applied a base coat, let that dry, and then Nally and I painted on the 2nd paint in large swathes of "X's" over sections of wall, smoothing them a bit to blend. Then, after letting that section dry for about 10 min (to the point where it was more 'tacky' then wet) we used a "smoother" (basically an expensive piece of hard plastic attached to a wooden handle - we will make our own next time!) to break open the small blobs of white paint that had been blobbing about in the paint - it made the white bits streak a teeny bit and created a kind of marble-like effect on the walls. Subtle - maybe too subtle to be seen in these pictures - but we loved the look! A coat of our 'soft cream' on the trimwork - with Nally's steady brush for the tricky corners - and we were done! It felt so good to have that space turn out well - and to see the results so soon! It was not long, however, before we loaded up the newly painted dining room with ALL THE FURNITURE from the living room - TO BE CONTINUED . . .

We were so glad to have Miss Nally up in the 'Cuse - in addition to putting her to work on the dining room walls, we did take a walk around Barry Park in the rain, introduce her to Dinosaur BBQ (we all managed to stuff ourselves AND bring home loads of leftovers), and enjoy plenty of movie and snuggle time. Nally does come from a long line of champion snugglers, as some of you may know.

Oooh ooh! Also, while Nally was here, our neighbor brought us over a cake - a cherry whipcream cake! I think it was kind of a thank-you for the thank-you muffins I had sent over a month or so ago after they had mowed our lawn several times! Anyway, the cake was delicious. In fact, we've been hauling it out every few hours ever since to steal forkfuls on our way in and out of the kitchen . . .I dont' think I've ever had a pan cake like that that was so moist and good - it is a mystery . . .

Well, that is our post for this go-round - we hope to see some of you the week after next when we come down to Jersey for Nally's Graduation/Bday party!

Love to all
Caitlin and Jesse