Kitchen Enlightenment

Sparks and I went over to his house first thing this morning to demo the kitchen. The first thing I have learned about home renovation is that you need to tear things out first, then sit back and think about how you’re going to put them back together. I had had a fancy IKEA plan [...]

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Mackinac Island

Okay, pretend you didn’t read the title of this post. From just this picture, can you guess where we went on Sunday?

Mackinac Island! Situated between lakes Michigan and Huron, between the lower peninsula and the upper peninsula, Mackinac Island is still today free of motorized vehicles (excepting an ambulance, a fire truck, and one police [...]

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Expeditions

It’s our second day here in the woods, and both mornings the men and the women have split up to go on hunting expeditions. The men have gone after morels, and had success…

And my mother and I have, of course, gone after quilting fabric. And had success.

I heart this egg fabric.

And I heart this [...]

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Rosie’s Diner

Yesterday Sparks and I made the long trip North to visit my parents for a few days. As we cleared the congestion of the last major metropolis on the way, it occurred to us that we’d better stop for dinner because, seriously, we may not have another chance. We began looking at exit signs, hoping [...]

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No-nonsense living

I have bemoaned, before, the fact that I work a full-time job which entails sitting at a computer, staring at the screen, all day five days a week. If I look to my left, I see a big green wall. If I look to my right, I see my bulletin board. Looking ahead, I see [...]

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Sita Sings the Blues

My plan to paint the master bedroom was made of fail, as it turned out. Sparks went ahead of me to sand some places on the wall where fuzzies had stuck in the primer, and when he did, the old paint began to show through–and the old paint was a dried-blood-red color. So spots had [...]

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The media room

Welcome to Saturday, May 16! Several momentous things are happening today:
1) My dear old dad turns 60 today. Happy 60th birthday, dad!
2) Wolfram Alpha unofficially launched last night. I know a lot of people who have worked on this project for a lot of months, weekends, and sleepless nights. Good luck, guys (and somebody PLEASE [...]

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I have arrived

Two evenings ago, I came home to discover a big, heavy package on my front porch. Ohhhh yeah.

Behold my “new” Huskylock! I scored it on eBay for $99. Sweet! I’m so excited, I can’t hardly stand it. Garment sewing will be so much more appealing now. I can alter things so much more easily (Sparks [...]

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Mother’s Day

We spent Mother’s Day weekend at Sparks’ sister’s house, with her family and also their parents.
On the guest bed was an antique quilt made by their great-grandmother. Tasha says that she rescued it from the great-grandmother’s attic right before the house was torn down. Yikes!

Like the antique quilt my grandmother has, this one seems to [...]

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Rainy day

We are having tremendous thunderstorms, this morning. I am sipping my coffee–not at all looking forward to going in to work in this mess–and wondering what schools do about mornings like this. Are kids allowed to stand outside in electrical storms, waiting for the bus? I have searched my own memory, and honestly can’t remember.
Thanks [...]

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Pink or green?

Sparks is attending a vintage records show this Saturday, so I have the very bestest intentions of going to his house and painting the master bedroom. Before then, I need to figure out what color to paint it.
Is there anyone here who remember that my bedroom right now is pink? Here’s a picture from August [...]

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Dreams & realities

Two nights ago, Sparks reported his very first wedding anxiety dream. Last night, I had two separate renovation anxiety dreams: one in which my friends came to visit and everything went beautifully, the other in which I discovered a HUGE expanse of closet space in the master suite that we had neglected to consider in [...]

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Paint problems

I am having *the* hardest time finding the right color for the Big Orange Wall.

My first choices, picked with previous room-painting experiences in mind, were so cautiously pale that they looked like a mistake with the white walls–quite as if I’d simply picked up the wrong shade of white paint.
These six I picked out next, [...]

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Stuff

Moving into Sparks’ house (when it gets good and ready for us… and looking at our calendar this summer, I begin to wonder when that will happen) is going to be a big shift of gears, for me. Ever since I left home to go to college eleven years ago, the places I’ve lived have [...]

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The bathroom nightmare

The kitchen at Sparks’ house is, in its current state, perfectly nice and usable. Any changes we make to it will be purely aesthetic… purely to make ourselves happy.
The bathrooms, on the other hand, are dire. They have working fixtures and all that but… well, let me show you.

The guest bathroom. This 5′ x 10.5′ [...]

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The garden

While I’m busily scheming for the new house, and yes… the new garden I’ll have there, my old flower garden is doing its thing admirably. The hollyhocks are growing faster than the rabbits can eat them, and they’re scheduled to bloom this year. Also…

This picture may not look like much, but is very significant to [...]

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