frost!

3 weeks ahead of schedule we're supposed to get our first frost tonight!

I picked everything that was ripe and some things that were almost there that will get ripe inside. The fall crops will survive and some, like Brussels sprouts, will even taste sweeter. We're going to cover some of the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and let the rest of it go.

I'm a little sad that the plants I started from seed all the way back in February are on their way out. Except the zucchini, the zucchini I'm glad to see go. (note to self: plant less zucchini next year!)
photo from Life.

skirt the issue

I've had this book lying around for awhile and finally decided to put it to good use.

Sewing projects usually intimidate me for some reason, but so far making this skirt has been super easy.
I'm already thinking of other things I could make in the same way and everyone I know might be getting applique tee shirts in their stockings this Christmas. Or maybe I'll make everyone applique stockings, who knows?

I'll post more photos when I am done, and maybe even add them to the Alabama Stitch Project flickr pool.

Mr Brown

Tonight we're going to see a lecture by Alton Brown of Food Network fame! I am sure there won't be a noodle making demonstration, but this video is amazing so I am posting it anyway.

paper chase

We went to the Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum this weekend and it was amazing.
According to Wikipedia, "Greenfield Village is considered the largest outdoor museum in America. Patrons enter at the gate, passing by the Josephine Ford Memorial Fountain and Benson Ford Research Center. Nearly one hundred historical buildings were moved to the property from their original locations and arranged in a "village" setting."
The Village includes buildings from the 17th century to the present. There are so many things to see!
An old pharmacy,

Thomas Edison's factory,
a real working steam engine that you can ride on (Jackson would love it!) and a train depot,
Model T's driving around,

And I was really taken with the wallpaper.
The wallpaper?
Yup, the wallpaper.
They custom make the wallpapers of the old buildings, printing them in the traditional way with traditional materials using traditional patterns.
I love the way people were not afraid of mixing patterns.

And the use colors.

best laid plans

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I am amazed by how much planning this took. Incredible.

magic bean!

Blogging is just about the last thing I should be doing right now as my in laws plane is about to land, but I'm so excited I can't wait.

I planted a fall crop of fava beans in August even though I wasn't sure that it would work. I hadn't been paying much attention to them, but today I was weeding a little bit and found our first beans! And there are tons more on the way.

Have you ever had a fresh fava beans? They are heavenly!

Now my in laws really won't notice the house is a disaster. (disaster is a slight exagerration. ok, a pretty big exagerration.)

Off to the airport!

daunted

My in laws are coming to visit from France tomorrow and I am feeling a bit cranky that I didn't get everything I wanted to done. Everything always takes longer than it should because unexpected things come up.

So, much of the art work is still leaning against, instead of hanging on, the walls. The planters the roof top corn was in still need to be cleaned out and there are fall bulbs to plant. The bedside tables I was making for the guest room are still gluing, and the love seat we are making for our bedroom still needs to be stained (did I mention we're making a love seat? It's beautiful. I'll post a photo later.)

But so what? Are they coming to see the house? No. They are coming to see their son and they haven't seen him in 3 years!

So I'm giving up. I'm going to make the bed, work out and then have a glass of wine. Sometimes you just can't get there, and most times that's ok.

in treatment

I'm still trying to figure out what to do about window treatments for our sun room, but I ruled out Emma Jeffs window film because it's pretty pricey (would cost about $75 per window and there are 10 windows in the room!). I had some Japanese lace paper and wondered if I could use that, so I decided to try it out.

It sticks great with just water and peels off so easily it doesn't even damage the paper. It was a bit of a pain to put up because I need one and a half sheets per window and I had to cut it so the over lap wouldn't show, but I think it'll go faster now that I've got the hang of it.

Best part, it costs about $3 per window.

What do you think? (sorry the photo is so crappy, you can see it better if you click on it.)

carted off

remember the cart I got at Property Disposition, took to the auto repair shop to get un dented and then had powder coated?
Here it is!
Do you like the yellow?

photo tag

While I was away The Lost Earring photo tagged me!

Here are the rules of the game:
1. Open your first photo folder
2. Scroll to the 10th photo.
3. Post the photo on your blog and tell the stroy behind it.
4. Tag people to do the same.


Here's my photo and the long story to go with it.

Whenever we decide to do anything to the house it's like pulling a thread on a sweater, what we think is a small problem becomes a bigger and bigger and bigger one. Needing a new roof and to paint the house can quite easily lead to residing the house and getting a new front porch and walkway. It's a very slippery (and expensive) slope. My photo is of the cement truck pouring the footing for the new front porch we put in last year.

When we moved into our house it had "widespread paint failure". It was peeling and cracking and it was beige. (I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who thought that it was the beigeness that really made it a failure.) In order to really fix it, and not just have to repaint again in 4 years, the painters recommended that we scrape down to bare wood and start over, but they also said that it might not work and we might have to paint again in 4 years anyway.


It was going to be expensive and we found out we had lead paint, so, rather than spend a ton of money on something that might not work and send chips of lead paint all over the yard and neighborhood while we were at it, we decided to replace the siding. It wouldn't be any less expensive, but it would work, and would give us the chance to pump insulation into our uninsulated house! We did tons of research into whether to use hardiplank or some other synthetic or wood, trying to figure out how to balance our desire to have it look good, last forever (or as close to that as possible) and be green. Eventually, after weighing all the options we decided to replace the old cedar siding with new cedar siding.

When they got to the front of the house with the new siding and were working on the area around the front porch the workmen noticed that the roof of the porch was "squishy" (I'm pretty sure it's not good to have any part of your house be described as "squishy".)


We decided it would be a good idea to replace the roof on the porch, but when they pulled the roof off all the rotten wood and carpenter ants they discovered made us think it was best to replace the whole porch.

(you can only kind of see it in this photo, but for about a month we had a piece of plywood nailed across the front door with "Please Go Around" spray painted across it. Classy.)


This is what the house looks like all done. (that photo was taken last fall, our trees haven't started losing leaves yet. Actually, it's going to be 85º today!)

Ok, after all that, I'm tagging

Molasses Candy
Kreeger Pottery Blog
and
Gulping Beauty

city so nice they named it twice

I'm going on a very brief trip to New York tomorrow to install a piece at a collector's house (that sounds fancier than it is). But more importantly, I am going to get to see these little guys, Jackson and Baby Cade (and their mom and dad)!
Could they be any cuter?
I don't think so.
Can't wait.

windows

how do you feel about window film like this by Emma Jeffs?
Is it cheesy or brilliant?
I'm looking for something that will offer us some privacy in our sun room, but won't make the plants unhappy by blocking out too much light. I thought about putting this in the lower pane of the double hung windows, but I'm not convinced.

I've also thought about fashioning some cafe curtains like in this tutuorial from Martha Stewart, but I'm worried they'll look too Holly Hobby.
Window treatments are impossible. I don't even like the phrase "window treatments" makes it sound like the windows have a disease.

great merriment

I try not to watch too much tv. I even try and avoid ever seeing shows I think I might like because I don't want to get hooked. (Our friend Andy insisted for a long time that we'd love 30 Rock and got so tired of waiting for us to watch it that he finally dropped off the dvds at our house - we loved it. One rainy afternoon we watched 8 episodes in a row.) But the other day I heard the creator of Glee on Fresh Air and decided to see what Terry Gross was gushing about.

I loved it.

I haven't broken it to Steven that I am newly addicted to an hour long show about a high school glee club with multiple musical numbers in each episode, but maybe it'll be ok if I agree to watch more soccer.

wrap it up

I'm trying to find ways to cheer myself up about the coming of fall (and eventually winter) and think maybe having one of these cute scarves would do the trick. (for about a minute.)
available here.

bird on a wire

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Jabas Agnelli saw a photo of birds on electrical wires and wondered what it would sound like if the birds were musical notes. (no photoshopping involved.)

beautiful.

small world

Images like this abound on the internets-photoshopped found images. I never really gave them much thought until today when I saw this image on ffffound and realized I know those people!!

How did whoever wanted to put them next to meat mountain end up with their photo? Do they know it's out there? Do the grandkids know it's out there? Do they still have those awesome outfits?

Weird.

wish I was here

Halloween

As far as I am concerned it's way too early to think about such things, but how cute are these baby Halloween costumes from Oeuf?

I usually have a hard time getting motivated to get dressed up on Halloween but always feel lame for showing up to parties without a costume. I think I could handle putting on a hat and some socks so I kinda wish these came in adult sizes.


I think I could fashion something for myself because they remind me a little bit of the little bear outfit I knitted for Jackson a couple years ago when he was a baby.

I still have the card Chiara had made on my bulletin board because I love it so much.

eggplant

see this little guy? Well, it turns out it's the best tasting eggplant in the entire world. It's an heirloom Italian eggplant called Prosperosa and it is so good it could make even eggplant haters decide it's their favorite food.

The skin is thin, the flesh bright white, the seeds surprisingly small considering the size of the fruit, and the taste is sweet and nutty and just darned good.

Steven and I had this conversation after I cooked it on our panini press (one of my favorite kitchen tools):

S-"What's on this eggplant?"
A-"Nothing."
S-"No, I mean what's on here that tastes so good."
A-"Nothing."
S-"Nothing?"
A-"Nothing."
S-"You mean it's just the eggplant that tastes like that?"
A-"Yup."
S-"Dang! That's good!"

seeds and image from Park Seed.

back to school

tomorrow is the first day here in Michigan for pretty much all universities and schools. I am not teaching or attending but Steven is (he's a professor of architecture), so I can't fight it anymore, summer is coming to an end.
It's harder for me this year than most-probably because it was the first year I've gardened and I loved it so much, and because we never really had all that summery weather.
Oh well. There's much to look forward to this fall, a trips to New York, the Netherlands, Connecticut, pumpkins, Steven's birthday, down comforters, fires in the fireplace, Halloween and new boots.
image from Life

testing 1, 2...

so what do you do if you like a lamp but aren't sure the size will work where you plan on putting it?

You get some paper, masking tape and a couple of garden stakes and mock it up!

let there be light

I saw this photo over on Pink Wallpaper and fell in love with the light fixtures,

and when I asked her if she knew where to find them, she kindly recommended I check here.
I'm thinking about something like that for our bedroom, one day.
I'd love to find some antique ones (that didn't cost the lord).