I have "Spring Fever"...

Hay fever, that is.  And a case of poison ivy. So this is pretty much an everyday thing. Who knew there was clear Calyadryl? (Not me! Sooo nice.)

I can't believe I got the poison ivy, which, despite being a rather small patch, itches like NOBODY'S BUSINESS. Urgh.  I made the mistake of pulling what I thought was a small tree out of my holly bush and found myself with shiny leaves of three in my right hand.  I washed up right away with Dawn, but I used hot water instead of cold, and the oil from the poison ivy got into the pores on my forearm all the same.

Since then I have noticed a LOT of poison ivy around the edges of my yard as well as the patch growing in the holly and even in the front island. It wasn't there last year, so I have been spraying pretty much everything with three leaves with weed killer, EXCEPT anything with three leaves and thorns because those are wild black raspberries!!!  YAY!! Now I just need a PI-free path to get to them.

"Call Mr. Plow, That's My Name. That Name Again is Mr. Plow."*

The first winter I lived in my house, I shoveled after every snowstorm. It wasn't my favorite thing to do, but it was good exercise and I enjoyed being out in the cold air.

Until this happened:

Opening the Garage February 9, 2013

Excavating the Walk February 9, 2013

Let me tell you, four foot drifts are KILLER to shovel through. It took me the ENTIRE DAY to get shoveled out, and a kind neighbor ended up snowblowing a path between our houses because we couldn't find the sidewalk.






So after that debacle exciting adventure, the second winter I lived in my house, I hired a service to snow plow my driveway and to snow blow my front walk and sidewalk. But as I was a new customer, despite the fact they were based just around the corner from me, I was on the bottom of the list, and they sometimes ended up coming HOURS after a storm would end. A lot of the time, I would end up shoveling myself out, because the waiting was driving me nuts. And then the city plow dumped a mountain of snow on the sidewalk in front of my house (a side effect of living in a cul de sac that no one mentions when you are buying the house.) The service wouldn't touch the mountain so I had to chip away at it day after day until I reached the sidewalk. Time for a Plan C.

February 9, 2015

So this winter, I sucked it up and bought myself a snow blower, and it was one of the best investments I have ever made. I have been clearing my driveway, my front walk and the sidewalks in storm after storm after storm.

February 15, 2015

It's actually been really empowering to take on the snow this year.  It's me out there after every storm with all the husbands on the block.  A bonus is that I have been able to do the sidewalk and the apron at the end of the driveway for my fabulous neighbor MJ, who only has a shovel.

But I honestly won't mind when it is time to put this fun new household toy away. Until next winter.


*from The Simpsons.  A work colleague has taken to calling me "Mr. Plow".

Subtle Changes

Since becoming a house owner in 2012, I have worked on a lot of projects at my house. It's a lot more responsibility than condo living in Boston. Most of the projects involve painting walls, but I also had the wall to wall carpet upstairs replaced, had repairs made to the screen porch, installed central cooling, had the roof repaired where ice dams had caused damage and had heat tape installed so that ice dams can be prevented.  I have planted (and then moved and replanted in better spots in the yard) plants, vegetables, herbs, and flowers (including the previously non-existent spring bulbs).  I have relearned how to mow the lawn and learned how to use a snow blower!   

My next big repair is getting all of the windows on the house replaced. (Not one of them is well sealed, and none of the upper panes stay in place without the help of dowels. This problem was identified on the home inspection, but carpeting and air conditioning took priority. And then the roof pulled a whammy on me.)

There is one project that I had been bumping down in priority on my "Things To Do" list and that is window treatments. Based on my extensive watching of HGTV, I know what an impact they can have on a room, but I never made it a priority, neither in Boston, nor here, AS YET. (Friends can attest that in Boston, I had one room where the "curtains" consisted of a tension rod, a folded flat bed sheet, and those little clips for curtain rods.)

But I wanted to remedy that so this weekend, I bought some simple, neutral color curtain rods at BB+B and VOILA! HUGE improvement!! 

This photo shows the newly installed curtain rod on the left, while the old curtain rod carried over from what the previous owners had is on the right. While the old rod may have worked with their sheers, it just made my curtains look like they had been slapped up on the wall (they were, so I deserve that criticism). The new rod looks so much cleaner and installing them above the window frame makes the windows look bigger too.

Check out how the new rod improves the way the curtains over the slider look. My mom HATED these curtains because they were all puddled on the floor. (She mentioned it every time she came over for dinner.) Well, Mom, you can't complain any more!! (They *just* clear the floor.)

I honestly don't know why I waited so long to hang new rods, but I am glad that I had thought through what I wanted and didn't just buy something to have new rods. Even though I had seen this on TV many times, it still surprised me how much more sophisticated the living/dining room looked once I made this small change. Every time I go in there, I smile at the improvement.

Now I am going to get new rods and curtains for the rest of the house (definitely need new curtains in the guest room and office - the ones currently there are leftover from my bedroom growing up!). Hanging the new rods has been a great wintertime home improvement project.

On the Eve of Epiphany...

So here we are in 2015. ::looks around:: Seems okay thus far.  2014 left something to be desired for me, which is definitely reflected in my lack of blog entries for the year. My plan for 2015 is to get back into blogging so I am setting a personal goal of 30 posts for the year, a little over 2 posts a month. That isn't a lot. (Actually, it's a little lame, but the frequency of my posts for last year was so pathetic that 30 actually is a reach target.)

2014 in Review: 
On the downside, my health was pretty rotten. My friend MEM had made up this joke about me being her "Sickliest Friend" (which sounds like the title of a song written by either The Smiths or They Might Be Giants), because I kept getting colds, which turned out to be an allergic reaction to winter! But this year, starting just before Memorial Day, I came out with an (as yet) unidentified serious digestive ailment. It ruined my vacation planned in June and spoiled my summer. [I have had a string of tests with no conclusive results, although the big diseases have been ruled out, which is good.](Sorry if that was a bit of an over share. It does explain A LOT about last year though.)

On the upside, I made a new friend (which seems sort of silly to get excited about, but it's difficult making friends outside of work when you are over 35, single, and childless - this isn't just my opinion; it was in the New York Times), and not one, but two, new nephews joined my extended family. [Both boys are cute, but only one is smooshy. The other is a solid little nugget. Henceforth, he will be know as the "Nugget". I don't know what I will call the smooshy one yet; he is the younger brother of the "Sweetpea" so maybe he could be the "Sprout". Need to think on that.]

Big Purchase:
I bought a snow blower, which is new for me as a relatively new house owner. Back in Boston, the condo association handled the snow removal. My first year in Connecticut, I shoveled my own drive and walk. Then we had 4' of snow dumped on us in one storm; if I hadn't laughed about it, I would have cried. Last year, I hired a service plow my driveway and snow blow the walk, but I'd find myself waiting quite a while for them to get to my house and would end up shoveling a lot of the time anyway. So now I have an Ariens' snow blower for this year. I was given a demo by the man who delivered it, but probably should read the manual before the Alberta Clipper scheduled for tonight and tomorrow comes through.

Luckily, the snow we have had up until now hasn't really amounted to much. But it was still pretty to look at.

Sage Garden Advice

If you are looking for a low maintenance bang for your buck in your garden and need something that will thrive in full sun, then look no further than pineapple sage (Salvia elegans). I got mine at Home Depot in a herb sale in mid-July (when people are apparently not buying a lot of herbs). The plant started small, the same size as most other herbs, but has grown in my front yard to nearly five feet! And the leaves really do smell like pineapple, which is really nice when you walk past it or when there is a breeze. But the biggest payoff are the beautiful scarlet blooms, which started opening up about the same time as my chrysanthemums.

Pineapple sage bloom, detail

Pineapple sage with golden and silver sage

It's stunning. I am sorry that these photos don't do it the justice it deserves. And I love having something so dramatic in my yard this time of year now that the daisies and coneflowers are cut back for the winter. (That area of the yard looks so BARREN now.)



Last year, I started planting both golden (Salvia officinalis ‘Aurea’) and purple (Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’) sage as a border around my front walkway. I had gotten the idea from the kitchen gardens at Kew Palace, which I thought were even more amazing than the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew (probably because the kitchen gardens were more achievable at home than the rest of the place). I hadn't realized that the pineapple sage was going to get so big until I got home and read about it, but I really think it is a nice addition to the walk up to the front door. (And planting it allowed me to pull out this really awful shrub that grew over the walk and was full of aphids and that I just HATED.)

I really hope it survives the winter.  It's so hard to know with herbs in New England. The fact that it will get sun all winter has got to help. Next year, I think that I am going to get a couple more and plant them in the front circle with the echinacea and daisies so that part of the yard will also look nice next fall. Even if they don't make it through the winter, I think something like this is worth replacing.

One Month Into Springtime Round Up

The snow has melted. Finally! Unfortunately, it has left behind some unpleasantness ::shakes fist at damage caused by ice dams:: but that is going to get fixed in the coming month or so. Hopefully before June because I would like to be able to use my guest bedroom and right now I can't because the carpet is all pulled up. (If you look at the photo to the left, that was the ice that was flowing down the exterior walls of my house like a glacier. I had no idea that was possible.)

The bulbs I planted this fall are in bloom and seeing the bright pinks, purples, and yellows when I pull into the driveway at the end of the day makes me ridiculously smiley. (It's also a surprise to see where everything ended up because I started late and by the time I was done, I was throwing bulbs hodgepodgedly into whatever holes I could make in the ground.) Ocean State Job Lot, FTW!

I am frustrated with my iPhone since the iOS update. I have a 4, and I really wish that I hadn't installed the new software. The phone hasn't been really right since. (I JUST WANT TO SYNC MY PLAYLISTS AND PODCASTS!!!)

Shakespeare's birthplace

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare, who was born 450 years ago today in this house in Stratford upon Avon, which I was lucky to visit 5 years ago! I love that people find value in saving the houses of famous writers. I really want to go visit Mark Twain's house in Hartford this summer; I haven't been to the house since junior high school!

The grass at my house may need to be mowed in the next few weeks, which I am not looking forward to because of my allergies, but there is something really satisfying about how the lawn looks when you finish.

I promised Sister B that I wouldn't post any photos of my nephew on the internet. So I won't. But trust me when I say he is really cute, like blonde with dimples cute. Which is a good thing (for him) because he is about to enter the Terrible Twos. On Easter, he pushed me and told me to "Go away, Amennie!" (which is how he says "Aunt Melanie".) Of course, he changed his tune when he realized I had chocolate. Two can play at that game, SweetPea.

And because it wouldn't be a post from me without a Brit telly roundup: lots of good programming on PBS recently. I am hooked on both "Call the Midwife" and "The Bletchley Circle". I don't think that it is possible to watch an episode of Call the Midwife without reaching for a Kleenex, and I love the smarts and camaraderie of the ladies of Bletchley Park. Not loving this series of "Mr. Selfridge" as much as I did last season; the characters are far less likeable. Even the charming Henri has lost his allure, and Agnes needs a boost to her confidence and creativity. I hope it will rally in coming weeks, but I am not watching it real time any longer, watching "Game of Thrones" instead.

Before and After... House Decorating

My house has a first floor bedroom that the previous owners referred to as the Library because it has built-in bookshelves. They also had their comfy chairs and tv in the room, and they had stashed a small desk set-up in the closet.

Here are some "Before" photos from the listing and when I was doing my home inspection. The room was simply decorated, and the walls are blue with a sueded sand effect on the top and solid blue below the chair rail.

When I moved in, I knew that this was going to be the room that I set up the tv in (it was the only room on the first floor with a cable hook up), but I also wanted a place for my British stuff and for the bar that used to be in the dining room in my old apartment, but which would not fit in the dining room of my new house.

So this is what I came up with (and I know the photos are not fabulous, but I wanted to show what I had done now that it was finally done.) The Union Flag was a housewarming gift from Sister K, and on the opposite wall are my photographs from different trips to England (two of London, one of Bath, and one of Stratford). The carpet was from Restoration Hardware Baby & Child. (Sister B had the catalog at her house, and I just happened to flip through it.) I think it is great because the pattern isn't symmetrical.

In the closet area, I took out the closet doors and the clothes rod. The space was more than deep enough for the bar, and the shelf was a nice place to display some of my glass wear. The vintage Tube print is actually a tea towel from the BBC America shop that I framed which was far less expensive than getting a reprint of the poster from the London Transport Museum shop. The sign with the glass wear was a housewarming gift from my friend MEM. It says "Keep Calm and Drink Champagne". As fine a motto as I can think of...

On the bookshelves, I have a lot of my favorite books (as well as the cookbooks that I have been trying to learn to use recently) and much of the Anglophilia bric a brac that I have accumulated over the years: tea tins and trays, commemorative tea mugs, the TARDIS (sadly, only a replica), and my solar powered waving Queen Elizabeth (a birthday gift from PunkRockMom). I don't love the curtains, but as they are blackout curtains, they do the trick until I can figure out something more attractive and equally effective at blocking out the light.

(You can click on the photos to make them easier to see.)

So this is my "Lounge"; a bit different from the "Library" of old. It really suits my style, and I love that I was able to tie together the existing paint in the room with all my stuff. I had to buy new couches for this room, and I ended up getting a couch and a love seat in a deep navy corduroy. I had the ottomans in Boston; they flip over to be trays so I didn't have to buy a coffee table. Much of the rest was repurposed from various rooms in my Boston apartment or the stuff I had stored in my parents' attic (with the exception of the Victoria Eggs tea towel that I framed which I won from Smitten by Britain and The Bee's Knees.) Not too shabby!

Spring has Sprung!

This past fall, I planted a bunch of early spring bulbs up the length of my front walk and outside my front door, and, finally over this weekend, the first ones opened up!!  It is my first spring in my new house, and I am really looking forward to starting up the garden.

My first crocus in bloom!

Definitely going to be planting roses and hydrangeas - it doesn't seem right to me to live in a Cape Cod style house without hydrangeas!!

Style Council

The next time I go to the hair salon, I think that I will need a product intervention beforehand.

(Not that I purchased all of these today, but I have managed to accumulate these products at a much faster rate than I am consuming them. Does anyone else have this problem!?! I swear it is because the stuff just smells so darn good!)


Good house thing: I have finally recycled all of my boxes from my move!!

Could be better house thing: I am going to need to buy new a new clothes washer and dryer sooner rather than later. (I knew they were on the older side, but I was hoping to make it through the spring with the ones I had. Suggestions welcome...)

My Humble Abode

My House! (It is less blurry in real life.)

So in the interim between my last post and this one, I bought a house! And I moved into it!  Both of which have been very exciting and new and different and challenging.

Buying a house can be really stressful/emotional because you are walking a tightrope across a chasm of personal (someone's home) and professional (a real estate transaction). I was SO lucky to have a wonderful Realtor who helped me ask the right questions, advised me on price, and negotiated the deal. I was initially disappointed to have deals not come together on two separate houses before finding the one I bought, but it was my Realtor's guidance that protected me from dropping a lot of money into properties that (based on comparable sales in the area) just weren't worth the asking price. The house I bought was more affordable than either those earlier properties and is WAY nicer.  Third time's the charm!!  And it is just what I wanted: a Cape Cod house in a really New England-y part of Connecticut.

All my stuff got moved into the house on the last day of August, despite the fact that I swore that I would never again move on August 31-September 1, but moving on those days in CT was infinitely more easy than that particular turn-over in Boston. I still have some clothes left at my parents' house, but for the most part, I am moved in and am about 80% settled. I still need to repaint some rooms and get a new carpet upstairs (it has seen better days), but all but four of the boxes are unpacked and things are making their ways into their new homes.  It was awesome to get all my stuff out of storage! There were things there that I'd forgotten that I owned and was pleasantly surprised to see them again. It was like going on a major shopping excursion, without having to pay for it all at the end!!

Of course, there are household projects that I want to accomplish in the near future, but the house is in really great condition. (The previous owners already had updated the bathrooms and kitchen, which is SO MUCH bigger than my previous kitchen that I know that I am going to become a much more enthusiastic chef going forward. If you don't count the fact that I have been eating pasta and yoghurt most nights since I moved in.)  And I am going to have fun with the yard. I have already mowed the lawn. (I hadn't mowed a lawn in 20 years! It comes back, just like riding a bicycle. My dad was so proud.) ;-)

Slowly meeting neighbors, but the ones I have met are really friendly. I am very optimistic about it. Everyone on the street waves at each other, which was what I was hoping for in a neighborhood. It is a HUGE change from my old neighborhood in Allston, and I am still adjusting to that. (And to having a house with an upstairs and downstairs instead of a flat condo.)  It is really quiet at night; all I hear are the crickets. And while I don't miss the drunken students or the loud music from a car, I am used to hearing traffic or the train so I still have to put on my white noise machine to help me fall asleep. (Then again, I don't miss waking up to the front door of the building slamming at 2am or hearing noise from other residents' apartments.) It isn't far to go to the supermarket or get gas, and, while CVS is no longer right across the street, it is within a five minute drive. (There are also two really charming old, local cemeteries which I am dying -bad pun, sorry- to visit with my camera.)

So hopefully I will be back to blogging with more regularity in the near future. (If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw all my snarky comments about the craptastic Olympics tv coverage, and you will know that I have been watching Masterpiece Mystery quite a bit. "Doctor Who" has just started up again and "Downton Abbey" starts in the UK this weekend so I will try to avoid being spoiled for those two, at least until my curiosity gets the better of me.)  If you have any tips for a new HOUSE owner, please feel free to share them in the comments. (And if I come up with any good advice, I will share it with you!)

My Absentee Note

So I wasn't around much on line during the month of May. Was on Twitter a bit, but no posts whatsoever on the blog, which isn't really like me, but I had a good reason. Well, actually, several good reasons.

1. I started a new job on 30 April. It is going well so far, and I like the people I am working with. I am coordinating special projects, which is something I really wanted to transition into after 12 years in event management. (Perhaps I'll even lose some weight now that there isn't a ready supply of cookies or hors d'œuvre two or three times a week.) It has been a long time since I have had a new job, and I had forgotten how frustrating it can be not being up to speed in the beginning.  But I have been in the position for a month now, and I have definitely become more comfortable with the office and what I am doing. I do still feel like a "newbie", but not like a fish out of water!
2. I have started house hunting in the greater Hartford area, which is a bit more challenging than I thought it would be, despite the whole "buyers' market" buzz you hear on the news.  (Buyers' market does not automatically mean "lots of awesome things to choose from" and/or "Going Cheap!") Looking through all the listings, weeding out what you want to take a closer look at, and then visiting the houses is like a second, full-time job!  Fortunately, I am working with a FABULOUS Realtor, who is making the process loads easier than it would have been if I'd tried doing this on my own. Can't even begin to fathom house hunting on my own. But as much as I miss all my friends in Boston, I am really happy to be in CT and closer to my family because...
3. The best thing that happened last month: Sister B had a baby!! I am an auntie!! It is all very exciting. I'd post a photo, but I have a feeling that she and her hubby would not be very keen on that so I will just say that the baby is a boy, and he is super cute and very squirmy. I just love him to bits. I predict a lot of babysitting in the future.

So with all of that, my time has been rather occupied; I didn't even get a chance to watch all the Queen's Jubilee coverage at the beginning of the month! (Scandalous!)  But I have had a couple of cool blog ideas in the meantime, which I hope to execute sooner rather than later. So keep this space book marked or follow it with Google Friend connect or however you read blogs.  There will be some good stuff coming soon!

"Turn and face the strain"*

The first Friday of this month was my last day in my office of the past 11.5 years, and I moved out of my home of 12.5 years a week later. It was a pretty emotional time, truth be told, and I wasn't sleeping well and coudn't really eat that much either. I thought it would be easier to leave as I wasn't very happy, but there were still a lot of goodbye tears shed that last week. Fortunately, I was able to leave on a fairly "up" note at work. And even though those last two weeks had a frantic feeling to them, I was happy that I had "ripped the Band Aid off" and wasn't drawing things out over an extended period of time. I had really great movers who packed me up and moved me out, leaving me to do a final broom sweep before leaving "home" for the last time. There was something eerie about how empty the place was. The only other time it had ever been that empty was the day that I moved in. (I made sure that I left the unit a lot cleaner than I found it that first day!)

I took this final photo and said goodbye to my condo, thanking it for all the fun times I had there and wishing it luck with its new owners, and walked out the door. Now I am on vacation and trying to find some "inner bliss" before starting the next chapter in my life. So far, so good: I have started sleeping better, eating healthier, and even getting some much needed exercise! (I have also gotten back my ability to stay focused on one thing a time, gotten two books read, and started taking photographs again.)


* lyrics from "Changes" by David Bowie

The Good Earth

A recent episode of "CBS Sunday Morning" featured a piece on terrariums. They looked really cool, and I thought to myself, "I can do that."

And so I did...



The plants are from Winston's Flowers on Route 9 in Chestnut Hill (a little more expensive, but the plants looked really healthy and I was spoiled for choice). The fishbowl, gravel, and charcoal came from PetSmart. (I had the other two containers already; one of them is a trifle bowl I never use.)

I got my directions from an article in Yankee Magazine (written by the woman featured on "CBS Sunday Morning"), but I modified them by using bright light loving succulents instead of shade loving dwarf plants. (My living room gets a lot of sunlight.) In my experience, a cool thing about putting succulents in a glass container is that you can easily monitor the moisture level of the soil, making over-watering less likely.

ETA: If you are going to do this, DON'T put river stones in your succulent terrarium. They prevented the soil from drying out (which the plants like), and the succulents started to rot! I had to pull all of the stones out and pulled out a bunch of dying pieces along with them. Hopefully I did this soon enough to stop anything else from dying, but talk about learning a lesson the hard way. Yeesh!

Dorm Room Karma

One of the few things in college that I seriously dreaded was the annual Housing Lottery. Held at the end of the academic year, you and your roommate were subjected to the anxious anticipation of having your housing for the following year be determined at the whim of fate. I never knew where the number came from. Was it pulled out of a hat, the roll of the dice, or one of those ping pong balls being suctioned out of those air machines? It was a mystery. And, unfortunately, for two years running, my friends and I had the bad luck of having bad (high) housing lottery numbers, which meant living on the far end of campus. We desperately wanted to get a 6 person suite for our senior year, but there weren't a lot of them to go around, and a lot of our fellow juniors also had entered the lottery for those rooms.

I was taking an introduction to Buddhism class that semester. I was extremely interested in the religion, and I had become fascinated by karma and its different properties; in particular, the fact that good actions can draw good karma towards you for future goals or intentions. So, with that in mind, I came up with this plan that I would go around making good karma (by holding open doors for people, letting people go ahead of me in line, and just being a generally positive person) and would focus the intention of this good karma I was "accumulating" on getting a good (low) number in the housing lottery. My friend RECK went along with this plan, quite possibly to humor me, but it really couldn't hurt our chances. We didn't broadcast that we were doing this; we just went along our way, trying to incorporate this behavior into our routines.

The morning that the results of the housing lottery were posted, I was in the student center doing my Latin homework while having my usual late breakfast of coffee and a bagel. I anxiously ran through the translation exercise halfheartedly, checking my watch at regular intervals. I wanted desperately to see the results, but at the same time, if we drew a high number, I really didn't want to face the disappointment of not getting a suite. The time of the posting came and went, and I reluctantly picked up my backpack and headed down to the floor where the list would be.

There weren't many people there at the time, so I was able to look at the list without an audience. The list was split into men's and women's, and starting from the bottom of the list, I scrolled my eyes up. Well, we weren't at the very bottom; that was a good thing. That meant we had a strong chance at actually getting a suite; maybe not the best suite, but a suite all the same.

But where were we? We weren't in the middle either. Huh. Well, maybe we would get one of the better suites. When my eyes finally hit the first entry, number one on the list, with the first choice for a six person suite (because girls go before boys), I finally came across the names of the people in our group. Not only were we actually going to get a suite, WE HAD WON THE HOUSING LOTTERY!!

There may have been a shriek and some jumping up and down, but my memory is a little cloudy on the details after that. I know that I ran to one of the campus phones (in the pre-cell phone era) and started calling all of my future suitemates to tell them of our good fortune. Most of them were in class so I left voice mail messages for them, and when we got together at lunch, we celebrated the success. JeGilde went to the housing office and got floor plans for us to make our selection, and we did end up checking out a couple rooms in person before making our pick.

In the end, we picked a corner suite on the first floor of Alumni Hall, which became our senior year home, not just for ourselves but for a lot of our friends as well. I have so many memories of fun in that room: watching "Days of Our Lives" or the OJ Simpson trial at lunchtime, dancing on the industrial/indestructible furniture, playing cards, Jesuit "roasts", Sauce & Frank's ongoing B.F. Skinner debate, post-party debriefs, the contraband Christmas tree, the "Egg & Sugar" boys, the freezing cold study room/the blasting of the heat, B.Ricca's top ten voice mail lists, mac and cheese in the hot pot, 100 "screaming lemons", listening to music, talking about life and always having the door open to anyone who wanted to pop their head in. In the end, was it karma, or was it just luck? I prefer to think that it was karma, good karma that we built on and carried through that year in that room with our friends.

In the Good Old Summertime

This past weekend, I went down to CT to celebrate Father's Day with my family. Just before lunch, Sister K and I headed into Hartford to check out the Elizabeth Park rose garden, which was hosting its big rose festival. If you are in the Hartford area at the beginning of the summer and have never been to the Elizabeth Park rose garden, you are missing out on a real delight. The two and a half acre garden is the oldest municipally operated rose garden in the country and has wonderful sights, smells, and sounds to delight its visitors.

The fragrant blossoms permeated the fog in my head brought on by a summer cold, and we had a delightful time. Naturally, I brought my camera with me. While I got off a good number of shots, it was such a sunny day that I feel many of my shots didn't do the garden justice. You need to get out there and experience it for yourself.

"Everything's Comin' Up Roses"

Remember how back in April, I went back home to help with the planting of the rose garden at Walnut Hill Park?

Well, the roses are finally in bloom, and the city celebrated the formal dedication of the garden earlier this week. It is kind of crazy to see how much has happened in just two months to turn the garden from this:


into this:


And it's only going to get better!

This Old House

I am completely obsessed with houses, probably because I live in a flat, although my love for houses, especially old houses with great lines to them, started long before I "went condo". There are some wonderful old houses in New England to fuel my imagination: living in my own house (with a yard. and a garden. and a window seat in the living room.) So when I am out and about I like to take photos of cool architectural details on people's houses in the hopes that some day I will have a cool house of my own, with lots of neat little details and nooks and crannies (and yet still with central heating and cooling.)

These are some great houses I saw last weekend in Providence.

"I never promised you a rose garden"

This weekend, I went home to help out with the planting day at the Walnut Hill Park Rose Garden. Nearly 200 volunteers came together at 9am on a cold and windy Saturday morning to put nearly 800 rose bushes into the ground. (I was first on registration and later on rock removal duty.) About an hour or so after we started, the clouds blew away and the sun came out. It turned into a beautiful spring day for making the community just a little more beautiful. The garden is at the top of the park by the WWI memorial with a beautiful view of the city and neighboring communities. When it is full of fragrant roses, it is going to be that much nicer.




I can't wait to see how the garden looks in bloom in June!

You cannot escape from Martha at the holidays! (Or, at least, I can't)

This past Sunday, I hosted Easter for Sister K and the Aunties. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work, especially since 1. it was the first time I had ever hosted a holiday, and 2. I had never had to cook a ham before. (I spent the entire day Saturday inside cleaning and doing prep work because I knew I wouldn't have time on Sunday what with Mass and all.) Fortunately on the ham front, I bought a Buddaball ham, which was precooked, and I just warmed it up in the oven for about a half hour at 350F with some pineapple slices and that was all it needed. Served it up with some horseradish and mustard. Delicious! I love ham, and now I have enough left over to make croque-monsieurs!!

We also had St. Germain cocktails to start, and they were a BIG HIT! I just think that they are the nicest aperitif, especially for spring, because they are so light and refreshing. (Plus, St. Germaine and champagne just go together in the best way.)

For favors/placecards, I modified an idea that I had read about in the April 2010 edition of Martha Stewart Living. I filled Mason jars with a layer of jelly beans (Munson's, of course) and a layer of Cadbury Mini Eggs with a Cadbury Creme Egg nestled on the top. (Oh, how I do love my Easter candy.) I used Mod Podge to affix a fun paper print to the top of the jar and then glued a spring patterned grosgrain ribbon around the center of the jar, which I then tied into a big bow. I slid a place card that I had hole punched at one end onto one of the loose ends of the bow and then put the jar in the center of the place setting on the table.

For one of our desserts (Aunt T made a carrot cake), Sister K made Easter egg-shaped cookies, which she then decorated using Martha's royal icing. These cookies tasted just like these awesome PacMan cookies that we used to get when we were kids from Deeter's bakery in Berlin (which sadly no longer exists, both the bakery and the cookies.) It was a little bit of childhood recaptured.

Things were too crazy for me on Sunday, so I took a few photos of our special Easter crafts yesterday after work. (There should have been more of the cookies in the photo, but I had eaten them for breakfast. I may have also had a good number of the jelly beans.)

How DOES she do it?

This past fall, I repainted my guest room (sometimes referred to as "The Detox", but I won't tell you who calls it that.) It is a small room (8'x12' at the most), and I had painted it a very light green when I moved in ten years ago. Very light green can get very dirty and faded even in a room that gets limited use, so I took down all the pictures, moved out the furniture, and gave the room a sprucing up. When I started to rehang the pictures, I thought I would try something different with the big wall.

So yesterday, inspired by Martha Stewart and Sister K, I hung up eight of my photographs in matching frames. What I didn't realize was how difficult it was going to be to get all the photos to line up (both horizontally and vertically) in two rows of four. Even though I had a tape measure and two levels, it took me nearly two hours to get the wall right. (I really don't want to think about the number of small nail holes in the wall that are under these pictures.) But I really do love this final effect. It just wasn't as easy as Martha made it look; but really, when is it EVER as easy as Martha makes it look???