Vinting

For Christmas my father got Daniel and me a home wine making kit (coolest gift ever right?). It's no secret that we love wine (hello, we devote an entire meal to it once a week) and we've always been interested in the process so it was the perfect gift for us.

It got put on hold for our Mexico trip but when we came back we got it going. The process is pretty involved so I wont tell you all about it, but so far it has been pretty neat. Last week we racked the first fermentation in to our carboy. No idea what that means? It looked something like this

Yes we are making bathtub wine.  The pets found it pretty interesting. Apparently wine is as fascinating as water.

Norman just wanted to drink it. We've got about 28 days until bottling and then 2-3 months before the wine is ready to consume. I still need to come up with a label and all of that but I can tell you now it will be Cabernet Sauvignon wine when we are done. There are some seriously cute labels out there so I've got some fun ahead of me on that.

I'll keep you posted on how the wine is turning out. We plan to do half sized bottles as well as whole to easily do taste checks as it ages. Anyone know of any pitfalls I should be looking out for? So far we are just following the directions and hoping for the best.

Cheers!

When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloom'd

I'm not a huge Whitman fan but his Lilac poem always sticks with me. Yes, yes, I know it is ostensibly a poem about death, but to me, lilacs mean Spring. I always forget in the depths of winter how much I miss flowers and every year Spring seems almost miraculous to me. Things that I thought dead are now alive again (thankfully I'm a lazy gardener and don't pull things out just because they look dead). But I digress. Really this post is about my little window in the stair-well.

Since Spring has been springing I've been keeping flowers here to brighten my days and today the lilacs stole the show.

I love their delicate fragrance and the cute little milk glass vases. The stairwell is tight and they fill up the space with such a beautiful perfume (this is how I found out daffodils smell good). I love seeing them there as I go up and down for the laundry. Sometimes even the smallest detail can brighten a space. Need a pick-me-up? Put some flowers wherever you have space. They will most certainly brighten your day.

Cheers!

Hole No More

We are still inching along but I can now say that we have finally removed the last obstacle in the kitchen. The final remnants of that horrible beam are gone! What used to look like this

Now looks like this

No more holes, no more post, no more strange ceiling beams. Now I just have to finish my spackle job (obviously) and we can finish painting! I am so excited to hopefully get the shelves up and get my dishes out of the bed room. We are trying not to rush anything and do it badly so this may seem glacierly slow to most people but we are getting it done. We only plan to remodel this kitchen once and I want whomever has this house next to feel like it was done well. I can definitely understand the desire to pay someone else to do it though.  It is so hard to do things right when you've never done them before. So kudos to all of you out there who've done this before. My hat is off to you!

Cheers!

Reclaiming Some Space

The front porch was one of the selling points of this house, but, for the last few months it has looked like this

and then like this

Not exactly peaceful or useful. This weekend it was so nice I just couldn't take it any more. I finally took charge (in between spackling and sunning) and moved the last bits of drywall away.

 Much better right? Now I can finally show off the planters I finished last weekend.

Now on warm days we can sit and sip wine and watch the sun set.

Perfection.

Cheers! Linking to

Frugal Friday

 

Stalled

I wish I had more progress to show you but our kitchen has stalled out a bit. We've gotten to the point where I need help with all of the next steps which means, waiting for Daniel to not be at work. Luckily, since he works from home there is more of a likelihood that he will be able to help, but it is never something to count on. It is finally starting to feel like a kitchen though.

Whenever I get down on how much there is still left to do I remember that it looked like this two weeks ago.

I'd say that's an improvement no?

There are still a few glaring holes but we are getting there. Obviously since we are adding space to the kitchen we need a few more cabinets. I finally figured out what style they were and where to get them and there is even a 30% off sale right now! We did the calculations and decided what we needed and put the quote together.  After the discount it was $849. Not bad. Not small change but not bad. Then I proceeded through the check out only to find that there would be $300 in shipping charges. WHAT!?!?! No dice. I was not going to spend $1,200 when we have three perfectly good cabinets laying around. I think I've come up with a plan to modify/make what I need. If that doesn't work I'll lay down the $$$ but I figured it doesn't hurt to try right?

So there you have it. An update on our kitchen. Slowly but surely we are getting to the finish line. We've been spending so much time working on the house we decided to take a break this weekend. Arcade lights is Friday (a food fest) and then I think we are heading up to the tulips. Can't take things too seriously right?

Cheers!

Curb Appeal

Not going to lie, we still haven't touched the front yard. It is going to be such a huge project that we are still budgeting and planning for how to tackle it all. Clearly this is not going to happen before the kitchen is done. But, it has been too nice the last few days to stay inside so I figured I'd get a little closer to bringing that much needed curb appeal to the house.

Remember last fall (on my last planting binge) when I worked on the curb strip? Well some how over the winter it went from this

to this

Apparently this is what happens if you don't weed. Live and learn right? I wasn't even sure what was still alive under all of that but a few hours later I had found my original plants. Then I added more (because more is better right?)

You can see my original plants didn't get very far. I added a few Euphorbia (top left) and some more gound cover type plants. The tree is still in the pot because I wanted to be able to keep using it at Christmas on the porch. Here's to hoping with some regular weeding they will thrive.

Anyone have any luck getting rid of crab grass? I swear that stuff has roots to China!

Cheers!
Emily

Busy Busy Busy

Hope you had a great weekend. Ours was very productive. We tidied up, uncovered a few secrets, found out how to save $1,200 and even enjoyed a few sunny days. I've got work things to do today but I thought I'd leave you with a taste of how our weekend went.

I'll be back to tell you more later.

Cheers!