simple

now growing...

dwarf sugar snap peas (pink blossoms), baby kale, columbine, black-eyed susans, raspberry bush, parsley, iris

floor!

In case you are just tuning in, last summer we ripped up our living room carpet and we were thrilled to find beautiful pine underneath it. The house was built in 1889, so if it is original, it is in excellent condition. You can read more about ripping up the carpet here.

Last month, we painted the border of the floor to cover up the lead paint; David had found traces of lead when he did a test last summer. Here's the link to our border painting adventure.

We've been working hard to finish our living room floor this weekend--
We started by sweeping, vacuuming, and scrubbing:
We then put down one coat of polyurethane and already noticed a big change.


Then we sanded the first coat a bit and cleaned up the surface with tack cloth. We then put on a second (and most likely final) coat of polyurethane. You can see the difference between the first and second coat pretty clearly in this picture.
Shiny!
We really like how it turned out!
Now we just have to wait a few days for it to dry.

5.8.11

apricot
creeping thyme
herb portion of the garden: on the right side of the path, we have chocolate mint, peppermint, oregano, thyme, and lavender and on the left side of the path, we're growing basil, parsley, and cilantro. The plants with the long and pointy leaves are black eye susans, which I thinned out believe it, or not!
chocolate mint
paw paw tree leaves with david in background
norwegian spruce
purple flowers on the hairy vetch, which is a cover crop we planted last fall
we are still trying to build up the soil
dandelion

freshly spun

hmmm...not quite what I had in mind...
well - these certainly look alright next to one another...

ooooh!
lookin' good!I think I'm in love!

hobbledehoy's 100% merino (Hosta)
+ dream in color 100% merino (Into the Mystic)

april showers

japanese maple, lettuce (growing everywhere), dwarf sugar peas, raspberry bushes are getting some leaves, tulips, and thinned out the lettuce, which means we'll have a tasty salad for lunch and it also made a pretty bouquet!

We did some weeding today, transplanted some of the black eyed susans around the garden, and planted more seeds, including more peas, lettuce, mesclun mix, carrots, kale, sweet peas, cilantro, cosmos, cockscomb, and jerusalam artichokes. All three of our rhubarb plants have come up and our asparagus is a bit on the tiny side, but it came back this year. The weather reports are predicting a lot of rain, so don't forget your umbrellas if you are heading out!

fixin' up the living room floor!

Last summer, we ripped up the carpet in our living room. This weekend, we finally got around to moving along with the project by finishing the border of the floor. We still need to finish the center of the floor, but we're pretty happy with how it looks so far.
This is a picture from last summer after we ripped up the carpet:

David sanded the part of the floor that wasn't covered in lead paint; he plugged the holes and patched them.
Since the border was covered with lead paint and we didn't want to sand or scrape nasty lead paint flakes, we decided to just paint over it. The above picture is David drawing a line for our border.
Then we put some primer on. I'd like to also point out that it might seem like David did all of the work since I'm not in any of the pictures; I'd like to let the record show that I did in fact help out with this project. I just happen to be the one who remembers to take pictures.
We spent all of 25 seconds in our local Home Depot paint aisle and picked out a garden sage color for our border.
After two coats of paint, this is how it looks so far!