Revisiting Summer

Seems like most people are experiencing pretty cold weather these days. It might even freeze tonight in Oakland. So looking through some pictures today, Patrick and I found this squirrel enjoying the fruits of summer. Here's looking forward to that Spring thaw!

Squirrels and insects probably ate more strawberries than we did this year!

Updating the Bathroom at 669

Patrick and I decided a while ago we would like to have a medicine cabinet in our full bathroom. We didn't exactly love the mirror that was in that room and wanted to hide things like our toothbrushes and contact lenses. Not too much to ask!
So Patrick did a little browsing at Urban Ore and after a few tries found a wooden medicine cabinet that was in good shape and just needed a coat of paint or stain. After sanding and sanding to get the varnish off, we decided it would be nice to paint it a bright orangish-red color. The color would brighten our bathroom without having to paint the walls.
Next up was inviting Dad over for a little contracting job to be paid for in lunch and a beer. It was actually not very hard, but deciding to poke a hole in your wall is a bit intimidating. Baby steps before deciding to remodel something bigger, I guess!

I can't find a before photo, so here is a shot of the mirror from the staging before we bought our place. And you'll notice it's actually the mirror image (ha!) of our bathroom because it is from Katie and David's house. The first step of course was removing the mirror. Unfortunately the anchor/screw holes were not covered by the new medicine cabinet, so there will be patching and painting in our future.

We were able to place the cabinet between two studs in the wall.

Patrick checks out the hole with his two advisers.

Eventually it was a perfect fit. A right angle drill would have come in handy here, but Dad and Patrick worked it out and screwed in the cabinet forever!

We added new hinges and were done!

Our Halloween House

10.31.12

We don't get trick-or-treaters because we live on such a busy street and the business district gives out candy, but it was still fun to decorate for Halloween.

 

Sunday Harvest

Just wanted to share what I harvested today! I sauteed the Swiss Chard with onion and garlic (also from the garden). Patrick cooked up the jalapeno with onion and rice to go in our tofu burritos. We also threw in some homegrown tomatoes. We'll have to have the yellow squash tomorrow!

 

Longfellow

We happened to buy our house in the Longfellow Neighborhood. We had never heard of Longfellow, our real estate agent certainly didn't mention it although it does show up on google maps. The second weekend we lived in our duplex, there was a walking tour of the neighborhood and we met Leslie, the president of the Longfellow Neighborhood Association. Perfect timing to meet new neighbors and learn about all the activity around our new home.

One thing I love about the LCA sense of community is the generosity of time and goods. Since getting involved with LCA, we have been offered a piece of drywall to patch our wall, traded lemons, spent time learning about neighbor's chickens and gotten rid of landscaping rocks better used in someone else's yard. Right now I'm borrowing Amanda's food dehydrator. We'd never even met Amanda before, but when I asked the LCA group if I could borrow one, she offered!

I recently learned about how easy it is to dehydrate fruits and vegetables at a City Slicker Farms workshop. So of course I wanted to try it at home. We grew these cherry and sungold tomatoes and now we'll be enjoying them all winter! After dehydrating, you can either store them in a jar packed with olive oil or simply put them in a jar or ziplock in the freezer.

Our friends have great neighbors too--neighbors with an apple tree. I dried about a dozen apples including some dusted with cinnamon. They are tart but tasty. These will definitely not last all winter!

Our '60s Hutch

Awhile ago we decided we wanted a wooden hutch for our kitchen eating area. Since mom is retired, she had plenty of time to peruse Craigslist for us! She found this great Ethan Allen hutch for us. An older lady used to have an antique store, Lucy's Antiques, and is now getting rid of her surplus furniture so we got a great deal.

Since the solid wood hutch is over 50 years old, there are a few panels that have started to pull apart. But we can fix that! You know we love the Oakland Tool Lending Library, so we borrowed some clamps and got to work. Here is the first round of glue.

 

Kitchen Second Round

Patrick and I finally finished painting the kitchen over the weekend. The pictures don't really show the colors best, so you'll have to come visit! But the walls are called Moonlight. I think it goes perfectly with our Lemon Shine and Cayman Blue panels.

Picnic Table

We had out-grown our "pallet table" and I have always wanted to build a picnic table for some reason. I found an old Redwood picnic table top at my favorite place, Urban Ore and my neighbor had some old Redwood fence posts. I belt sanded off all the red paint and assembled the table using tools borrowed from the Oakland Tool Lending Library. A few coats of water proofing and we have a nice table to seat six. Come over for brunch sometime!

Underneath shows what the top looked like before. I left the red paint on the bottom.

Kitchen paint job

We decided that we needed some color in our kitchen eating nook. Phase one was to paint the panels of the kitchen door and the door to our spice cabinet. We took off all the hardware and polished them down to the bare metal. Looks better than white. See what it looked like before.

Closet shelf

Not super exciting in the photos, but this one simple shelf is making my closet so much better. Patrick cut it for me out of plywood from our neighbor, then I sanded & painted it. Just a little wood glue, a hammer to snug it into place and voila - more clothes space!

Before.

After.