dominion

When we moved to the Little Gray House (eight years ago now), I bought all sorts of gardening books. It was our first time not living in an apartment or condo, and I thought gardening might be my thing. Turns out, not so much. I like being outside. I like plants and planning things for the yard, but I'm not passionate about it. I don't have the knack. Neel does. It's his place. It took him awhile to figure it out, but our yard and building our garden has become his passion. I was all too happy to hand over the reins. Turns out I'm the house person. We tend to do things pretty much in conjunction with each other (e.g. In Ikea last week I desperately wanted a gorgeous cream shag rug, but bowed to his better judgement and didn't get it. We do have three dogs and an almost 12 year old boy, you know.), and I don't think there's a thing in the house that he hates or a thing in the yard that I don't love. But still, the yard his his space and the house is mine. Where we each call the shots. Where we each have dominion.

That doesn't mean I don't get to come play along sometimes. Right now, Neel is in the process of building us a patio, based on an idea from this blog. In addition to the 2x2 squares (and lordy there are a lot of those to pour), he decided to also pour four 4x4 squares in the center of the patio. My dad helped pour the first, which was clearly the most arduous (sorry, dad!), and our neighbor Tyler showed up in time to pour the second (it went a lot faster...sorry dad!).

Yesterday, Callum managed to go golfing just in time to pour the third. That left me.

Each 4x4 requires about 12 or 13 bags of concrete, which Neel pours one at a time. That part comes after  excavating and placing and leveling the mold. I helped dig. I helped square the mold and level it too. Then I was in charge of watering the concrete and scraping it out of the wheel barrow into the mold. It didn't take long for us to get a rhythm going, and it was fun! Hard work, sure, but so satisfying too. The concrete part took us less than an hour, and all told, I think we worked on it about an hour and a half. Not a bad Labor Day's labor.

Three down with one more (big one) to go. It's exciting to see Neel's vision take shape, and it felt so good to be working on it together. I think we make a good team.

last day

My dad got us a gorgeous faux fur throw for Christmas (no dogs allowed) to make it bearable to watch tv in our chilly family room. Yesterday was Callum's last day of break, so after a trip to Target where he spent some of his Christmas money on Nerf gun # 9, we came home and bundled up underneath it to knit a hat for Neel and watch Despicable Me (twice). I felt safer knowing one of us was fully armed.

ottoman empire

I've had this ottoman for ages that I dearly love. (Do you recognize it Mark? It's from that chair and ottoman that Fern gave us) It came to us from a friend after a serious envy problem I had. The chair is no longer with us, and I'm still missing it. And now the ottoman. Serving as seating and end table for years can do a number on a piece of furniture. A cinder burned a hole in the top and a beagle got a hold of a corner. Who could that have been, I wonder? Anyway, we were in need of a recovering, big time.

So I ordered some fabric and assembled my tools. I realized after I started that I should have taken a "before" photo, but at that point there was NO WAY I was going to undo the work I'd done. Apparently I have little patience for projects such as these.

Still, I muscled through, and look! A whole new piece of furniture. The colors seem really vibrant to me after the faded stripes of the ottoman of old, but I have enough to cover a floor pillow, so hopefully after that it'll be less jarring. But hey! After a major drought, I made something.

(some of) what I've been doing lately

I know I told you guys I was taking a Photoshop class. It's fun, but tricky too. It's taking awhile to assimilate all this information, and I don't have much time to practice. Maybe someday. On our second class we made this franken-person, and after that it got really quirky and fun.

In this photo, I leached out all of the color and added back in the green of the cans. I can't remember how.

Same cans, only this time I added a layer on top of them. See if you can guess what it is.

Remember those artichokes Callum and I had for dinner a couple of weeks back? They're there. Under the big blue sky. Yeah, I think this is going to be fun.

next in the queue

A colleague of mine is having his second daughter in a couple of weeks, so I jumped right in to knit up some baby caps for his soon-to-be TWO little girls.

More beret than baby cap. Raspberry Berets! Pooh says, "oh la la!"