I'm Sorry!

I'm sorry my long lost blogger friends! Normally I'm a very good poster, but we've been SOOO busy over here lately, I haven't had time to post, or really do any housework.

With the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend I've been holed up in my art room all waking hours (that I'm not at work) trying to get everything done in time. In addition, Chris' cousin came to stay with us this past weekend. He helped Chris with some work around the house, but more time was spent just hanging out and visiting.

I will return to your normally scheduled program next week (that is non-stop housework instead of non-stop art), but in the meantime, wish me much success at Renegade! And, if you're local, make your way to SF and come visit and peruse or purchase some wonderful art and crafts!

WONDERful

I've finally gotten around to insulating the whole bathroom (both from cold air from the outside and for noise from the rest of the house - no one wants to hear anyone do their business)

And with finished insulation came wonderboard on the walls!

And the beginning of greenboard! (although, now it's purple....so purpleboard?)

And on a very happy side note, one of my good friends Krislyn gave birth to her CUTIE PIE baby boy yesterday morning! Landon James, and he is SO ADORABLE! (and, I'm not going to lie, normally I think newborns look like little aliens and they don't get cute till they're a couple weeks old, but Landon was pretty damn cute - and only about 6 hours old when I met him!)


Why hello there!

I can't help but love this picture, it was time to be with mommy and daddy

A Toilet Problem

Warning: we will be talking about toilet issues.

Our bathroom renovation is moving along SLOWLY at the moment. But someday, we'll be installing a toilet.

Chris bought one at Home Depot today with the intention of making sure our plumbing fit correctly and that the toilet actually fit (we'll return it sometime this week, I know, bad manners). But one thing I noticed is that the toilet bowl is REALLY close to the tub

So here is the problem: does this give us enough room to sit on the pot?

I never actually used the toilet in this bathroom (for many reasons we just always used the one in the back before we ripped this one all down), so I don't know if the old one fit this snuggly when your tushy was sitting on it.

I like elongated seats more than the round ones (more seating room), but I think we may have to go with a round one because I fear someone may slam their head into the shower enclosure when they sit down (we'll be getting glass sliding doors)

So! Here is my question (or, I guess questionS) for you:

Should we go with the round toilet? Less bum room, but more move-around-the-toilet and don't-slam-into-the-shower-enclosure room.

Or

Do we go with the elongated toilet? More bum room, but fear of bruises on the forehead from repeated shower enclosure smacking...

A Much Needed Door Knob

The art room has been "done" for MONTHS now, but like many things with this house (as I've expressed before) the finishing touches haven't been completed yet.

I've been art-ing away for months without a door knob. I don't really care, but it is something that has to be completed in order for us to check the room off the list

The original knobs in the house are glass, and I eventually want to replace all the ones that aren't glass with ones that are, but, well, they're a tad expensive so I've been a bit of a procrastinator. 1 point for procrastinating --> our friend Luke gifted us a great Baldwin door knob from his house! (he likes brushed knickel, his girlfriend likes oil-rubbed bronze and he has apparently won that battle).

Over a month ago Chris installed the door knob

But after installing the new one we were left with a gap that needed to be filled. So out came the bondo


After a quick sanding and some more minimal patching, I whipped out the primer and ultra pure white and fixed that baby up


Now we've got a great door knob to complete my great art room (at least I think it's great). You'll just have to wait another 2 weeks for a "Before and After" (I think my first one actually, pretty pathetic) because there are art projects ALL OVER THE PLACE in preparation for Renegade and I thing "Before and After" pictures are supposed to look nice and put together...

The Bad Worker Girlfriend

In two weeks I'll have a booth at the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco (July 31st and August 1st at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion from 11-7 if you're local!!!), so I've been pretty busy churning out baby toys...

...and hand-drawn shoes...

...to sell while I'm there. (and really, if you are local, come by and check it out, there are over 200 artists who sell ALL SORTS of stuff, it will be AWESOME!)

I've been trying to keep up my end of the bargain of working on the house at the same time (as well as training for our family's 52 mile relay in Hawaii in September), so we've had a pretty busy house over here for the last few weeks.

With Renegade so close, Chris was an AMAZING boyfriend this weekend (well, he's amazing all other times as well, but particularly so this weekend), and told me to go work on art while he worked on the house (and helped build my booth for the show. I know, I told you he's amazing.)

So while I was painting blocks and drawing on shoes (and getting high from the fumes), Chris laid down the wonderboard in the bathroom to prep for tiling. We (and by "we" I mean Chris) started with this:

And ended with this:

He did a dry-run to make sure all his cuts were correct, laid some thinset...

...and then after tape, the wonderboard was lookin' good!

Plumbing the Bathroom

We had to wait a while until all of our shower plumbing parts came before we could continue work on the bathroom. But once the valve came, it was back to work!

The directions wanted you to solder everything in place with the blocking up. When we got the valve in place with the blocking we could NOT figure out how soldering was possible with that set-up, so we took all the blocking down and brought all the plumbing stuff out to the garage and soldered our hearts out.

We hooked up the water and shower supply lines, as well as the tub faucet line



Once we got everything hooked up, we brought in back into the waiting bathroom...

...and installed it

(see that blocking that's holding the valve in place? How oh HOW were you supposed to solder all the piping with that in place????)

Next, we attached the hot and cold supply lines

(this pic isn't uploading properly, what is with blogger?)

Once the plumbing for the tub and shower was done, it was time to move the tub BACK into the room. Without my brothers and dads here to help out, the task for Chris and I was a little difficult. But, we pulled it along through the house on a few towels and it didn't take us TOO long

But it did take 3 lifting and setting it down attempts to put it in the proper place so the plumbing lined up. That was NOT fun.

Once the tub was in, it was time to check and make sure that all the plumbing worked and that nothing leaked

We had a small leak at the drain that just needed Chris to tighten some things up (though we still haven't checked the overflow...). But things are looking pretty good! If only we could do something about how SLOW the tub drains...

A Home for a Hose

Our front yard leaves something to be desired

(now, imagine this, plus a lot of dead grass now)

It was on our 2010 list to redo (or I should actually say DO) the front yard landscaping. But...other things have taken priority. We decided to a do a LITTLE something about it this last week though.

We used to have a super crappy hose that was not easy to move out of the way and coil up whenever we needed to move it. We got a "kink-free" hose from Home Depot a couple months back for the side of the house, and it worked out pretty well (and is surprisingly kink-free), so we decided to get one for the front of the house too. And a pretty hose caddy to boot

So we took our new pretty and functioning watering accesories and took them out to front yard to figure out where the hell to put them

(see our gross old hose?)

Once we figured out where we wanted it to go, we drew on some pilot lines and dots so we knew where to screw into

(did I mention we are in desperate need of a full house repaint as well? Yes, that's on our endless list too)

We got out one of our long bits to make sure our pilot holes went through the stucco and wood siding underneath

We hoped it hit a stud, but alas, we were thwarted. So when we fixed the hose caddy to the stucco we used masonry screws for extra strength (we wanted to use toggle bolts, but the ones we had lying around weren't long enough)

Once we were finished screwing in the hose caddy I wrapped up the hose onto it

At least now the hose home is somwhat attractive. Now if we could only get some curb appeal...tack that onto the 2011 list! (yeah, we're starting that list already)

Eating Some Veggies

This won't be an exciting post at all as I feel like I'm about to fall over from our hard run earlier this evening.

But Chris and I had a pretty tasty dinner that I did find somewhat exciting. We picked some of our peas

Mixed in some veggies from the fridge

And made a scrumptious stir-fry

(this damn picture won't upload correctly)

It was a yummy dinner. But now I have to go fall over.

Our 2010 Vegge Garden

Last year Chris' mom came up from LA in April/May and housewarming gifted us a vegge garden in the backyard. She helped us build it from scratch, and it was plentiful!

This year the weather has been pretty weird in the Bay Area. We had an El Nino winter, so there's been rain into June, and it's still not really very hot. It's warm during the day, but it has been starting off very foggy and cools down early as well (normal for areas a bit closer to the Bay than we are - we're at the border of the flatlands and hills - like Albany where I grew up). As a result, our veggies haven't taken off like they did last year.

You of course have already heard of our exploding artichoke, but here is how all of our other plants are growing:

In April we planted our tomatoes (in the background are onions that did not fare well, so they were pulled out)

Some time in May, Chris planted seeds of carrots, beans, and peas to accompany our tomatoes and artichoke. By June some of the carrots had started poking out...

...and our beans and peas were too


On our Memorial weekend anniversary trip one of our friends gave us a pumpkin plant, so I planted that in June as well


We also planted an upside down tomato plant that hangs from a bucket. It's seems to be all the rage right now in vegge growing, so we thought we'd jump on the bandwagon and try it out

Because of the weather, things have been growing a bit slower (this time last year we had A LOT of tomatos to pick and eat), but things have finally started going.

We've got quite a few of green tomatoes, and one that's even turning red

The pumpkin has gone absolutely insane

As have our beans and peas, which we trellised (with rebar and string for the beans. I know, VERY classy)

I LOVE how the pea tenticals crawl all over the trellis, it's super cool

And a VERY recent discovery, PEAS!

I snapped one of those suckers off the plant and it was pretty tasty!

It was a little disappointing that our vegge garden took a bit longer than last year to start producing some tasty treats, but I'm glad that time is finally here!