I know, I know.  I’ve been a bit quiet lately.  There’s a great number of reasons why, but the main one is that my job has kicked into high gear for a bit of a “season,”  so I’ve had next to NO time extra to even think about blogging.  Sad day.  Not only that, but we’ve made pathetic progress on so many things I was hoping to check off my list.  Still to do:

- build a bench

- paint our house

- get our roof replace

- PICK a roof color and paint colors

- finish installing bathroom hardware

- patch the wall in our master bathroom

- paint the hideous red room

- shop down a bunch of bushes I hate

But, lots of non-house stuff has been happening that is WAY cool.  For instance, my husband went to Turkey!  How cool is that!?!  I was majorly jealous, but it was a quick work-related trip and would have been a huge sacrifice for me to go in terms of money and work.  But, he brought back fun stuff – a pillow!  Yay!  And a fancy hand painted bowl.

Cool thing number 2:  I was asked to photograph another wedding!  And with that, I am now seriously SERIOUSLY investigating starting my own business. SCARY.  I love the idea of it, and I love photography, and the more I learn about business, the more I’m actually excited about it.  But.  It’s hard to go through that much transition and change.  You have to be pretty sure.  And I’m still not at 100%.  Any words of encouragement or advise from anyone who has started something new, taken a big risk, or just understands business would be MUCH appreciated!

Cool thing number 3:  it’s fall!  And that means tomatoes and peppers and CANNING!  I need to learn to can first, though.  Ha!  Perhaps this weekend I’ll try pickles since I have about 30 cucumbers in my fridge waiting to be used…

Is the big day!   I think after tomorrow, I’ll be able to really call myself a runner.  At 8 am, I’ll get ready to run 13.1 miles.  Crazy!

Wish me luck.  I’m excited, and nervous.  I’m really hoping the weather is good

I’ve been busy the last week – hosting a bridal party for a good friends wedding, arranging bouquets, and photographing the big event.  Here’s a few pictures of the celebration, taken by yours truly.

I’ve seen a few blog “friends” do this recently, and I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon.  Kristal did a series of posts where people asked her questions and she answered them.  The responses were so fun to read and I felt like I got to know her so much better!

So now’s your chance!  If you have a question that you’re dying to ask or there’s a question you wrote in a comment that I never answered, write it in the comments.  Now is the time!  I’m not sure I”ll answer EVERY question, but I’m pretty open about most stuff, so ask away!

We have some recent additions to our kitchen that have increased our collection of countertop appliances that I want to share with you!  I’d say we have an average to small-sized kitchen – it’s probably 120 square feet if I had to guess, so counter space is a bit limited.  When my husband begged for months to get an espresso machine, I cringed at the thought of adding yet another “permanent” thing to our countertops.  I already felt like I was fighting for enough space to cut vegetables!

In the end though, I lost the battle.  And now, we welcome “Silvia” into our home.

That’s her on the left, next to the coffee grinder named “Rocky”.  And to complete our own in-home coffee shop experience, you can see our tea kettle and the french press as well.

I have to say, they all look sleek and stylish hanging out together, don’t they?  Like they could be best buds.

I’m pretty sure with the addition of the espresso machine, my husband has an internal debate each morning – “coffee? or cappuccino?  or maybe latte?”  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Unfortunately, I get next to nothing out of the whole deal.  I’ve never liked coffee.  I tried really hard when the TV show Friends was popular and coffee shops suddenly became THE place to be in 1998 when I was in high school – but I remember gagging on my first latte and swearing I’d just swallowed arsenic-laced mud.  Coffee and me just weren’t meant to be.  Luckily I can handle the smell, but I doubt I’ll ever become a coffee drinker, much to the amazement of every overnight host whose jaw drops when they ask if I want my morning coffee and I politely explain my lack of interest.

In college, I discovered tea and chai, so at the very least I can now have a lovely homemade vanilla chai latte  But first, I have to learn how to USE the thing!

How about you?  Are you a coffee drinker?  Or maybe married to one like me and don’t quite understand the morning ritual?

And what is on your countertop?  Do you have any prized appliances that have a permanent home there? (I’m thinking a countertop tour is in order!)

Like I said a few posts back, we’re in the process of changing the exterior of our house.  The top priority is our roof.  Back in April, we had a pretty severe hail storm that damaged our roof and some of our gutters.  Thanks to good homeowners insurance, we’re pretty well covered to have a full roof replacement.  At the same time, we also have a few lingering exterior issues that have been on the to-do list – most important being fixing some of the soffits (that’s the underside of the roof overhang) that a few birds have taken a liking too.  We’re also going to be fixing some gutters and hopefully solving some water/ice issues we’ve had in the past.

We’ve also known for a while that our house needs a new paint job.  Don’t get us wrong, we’re not trying to go overboard – we know this is a lot to take on at once!  And we knew it would need to happen within a few years of when we bought our house in 2009, so we’ve been mentally prepared  and having conversations about it for a while.  But, that doesn’t mean we have a CLUE what our house will look like on the other side of all of this!  Ha!

We’ve taken many walks around town looking at similar Victorian homes, googled endlessly, and considered paying for a professional color consult!  I’ve even spent some time fiddling around with virtual painting on various websites.  And yet, we still are more confused than ever about what colors to choose.  Since we’re hoping it will last a long time, we want it to be JUST RIGHT, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

Call us color confused if you want, but we’re truly at a loss.  I’d love to enlist your help!  Here’s a recent photo of the front of our house.

Our house currently has 2 siding colors (the top scalloped gable is a bit lighter than the main siding) and 4 trim colors (white, plum, a darker grey blue that you can see best on the front steps, and a lighter shade that’s on the soffits that is close to the main siding color).  And then, of course, we have the red roof

At some point, we may get rid of the enclosed porch and have pillars and a railing, which would be more period appropriate, but for now it stays.  One big constraint we have is our windows.  Some genius thought it would be perfect to replace all the beautiful functional wood windows with cheap vinyl ones.  Thus, we cannot paint the sashes of our windows except for the fixed pain windows on the third floor, and even then, it’s only the smaller rectangular ones.  Because of this, and because new windows are not in our new future (even though we’d LOVE to do it) the window sashes will have to stay white.  This bums me out since Victorian homes look BEAUTIFUL with painted sashes.  *sigh*

Other constraints we have in terms of color scheme: we don’t want all white since two of our neighbor’s homes are white.  And if we go more neutral/tan, we’d like to jazz it up with some fun trim.  Other than that, we’re pretty open to ideas!

We’re also quite happy to ditch the red roof, even though it is helpful when giving directions to friends.

If you have ideas, please let me know!  For now, here’s a few fun inspirational pictures we’ve found that have some color schemes we like.  In general, I think we’re gravitating towards greens, blues, and grayish colors for the main color.

Porch is for the house below.

Another angle of the same house…

• @bellebeandog thanks for the invite to the 30DS group – I still need to get the video *slaps forehead* in reply to bellebeandog #
• finishing up some afternoon work, then it's the weekend! #
• admin email? DONE #
• I have internet again! yay #
• lame sauce. Safari just crashed. boo #
• dinner time – lemongrass grilled beef, corn on the cob with some sort of butter sauce, and cucumber salad #

Sorry to be a day late, but I’ve been a bit busy  You’re only getting a partial week since we’re receiving our CSA share early next week, so I only planned until then.

Wednesday:  leftover mac ‘n cheese CSA corn bake, leftover CSA cabbage Asian slaw, CSA cucumber salad, and yummy mushroom-rice-CSA cabbage-cannelini bean soup!

Thursday:  Cumin rice with CSA eggplant and peas

Friday: CSA potato and CSA leek soup with CSA greens for a salad

Saturday: we’re headed to a wedding reception, so I’m sure there will be some yummy goodness there!

Sunday:  Smoked pork on the Big Green Egg, roasted CSA potatoes

Here’s a picture of the mushroom cabbage bean soup from the website – I used brown rice instead of barley, and it was absolutely DELISH.  We’ll definitely make this again!

At last, at last!  I can reveal to you the compost bin!   It’s been finished for a couple of weeks, but I finally got my lazy butt out there and snapped a few photos the other day and uploaded them.  Sometimes I wish this could all happen magically, don’t you?  :-)
Here it is!

It took my wonderful husband a few days to finish it.  The directions we found online weren’t 100% followable, so we had to improvise a bit as we went.  We also had to dig up some dirt and some old pavers so that the bin had room to “breathe”.

It’s made of cedar, which is rot resistant.   The wood is a little pricey, but we know it will last, so it was worth the investment.  The sides are made of some type of metal chicken wire fencing we got at the local hardware store.  We’re still deciding if we want a lid for the bin yet.

We’ve already started loading it up with some leaves from last fall, and kitchen scraps.

The heat from the sun, and moisture from hot humid Iowa weather, will lead to natural composting of the materials, hopefully resulting in a nutritious compost we can use in our gardening next year.

We situated the double compost bin on the back side of our garage along the alley and next to our strawberry patch.  That way it’s out of site and also get’s a good amount of sun.

For a while we had been collecting kitchen scraps in an old ice cream bucket and stashing it on our back porch until it was full and ready to be taken out to the bin.  But this was both inconvenient and smelly.  After a little research, we bought one of these to make things easier, a bit more stylish, and less smelly

Seriously, it’s the best $35 I’ll ever spend. It’s got a filter to cut back on the smell, and the lid hides any gross old food you don’t want to see. Plus, it looks kinda snazzy, doesn’t it?  I definitely highly recommend it.

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There’s are most recent fun building project.  What have you built lately?