Mat & Amie Levine

To celebrate Mat’s birthday, we had a shish kebab barbecue.  It was a lot of fun, so much so, that this is the only photo I took.   I was too busy enjoying myself!  (Look at those fantastic shish kebabs that some friends brought.  Note to self: cut veggies and meat larger!)  We were lucky and the 60% chance of rain in the forecast didn’t present itself.

The next morning, we put together Mat’s present from his family and made Maddy test it out.

Maddy looks excited, doesn’t she?

We couldn’t get her to willing get in, so Mat had to place her in the cart.

Trying to make her feel comfortable…

Maddy really isn’t sure what to think.

Mat is doing some convincing that it’s going to be fun.

Maddy really doesn’t like it when it’s rolling.  She still doesn’t know what to think about this thing we’ve got her in.

She’s getting ready to bail.  But we sure enjoyed the entertainment.  This cart’s real purpose is to move yard debris and dirt to other parts of the yard.  Mat and I are pretty excited for it.   After moving a truckload of mushroom compost with a bucket, this will be a VERY handy addition to our yard tools!

I am so happy that the farmer’s market had the fuschia hanging baskets when I checked yesterday afternoon after my class at the Arboretum.  I love watching the hummingbirds come up to get the nectar.  Now I just have to wait for my first hummingbird sighting of the year.

Maddy is pretty excited for spring time and hanging outside.  She rolls around and around and is happy as can be!

We finally finished the ceiling work in our spare bedroom aka Maddy’s room.  She was pretty happy to have her futon back.  I love how she hangs out in there with her head on the pillow!  Isn’t she looking good?

Since it was the first dinner club of the new year, we decided on a theme that we’d each bring something “new”, something we’ve never made before.  Mat and I made vegetarian potstickers from the cookbook that Juliette gave us as a wedding present.  They were delicious and we’ll be making those again.  Others made turkey noodle soup from scratch, an italian seafood soup, a blender pie and a mayan temple cake.   It was all delicious and amazing!  We are lucky to have such creative friends who are willing to experiment with food!

We had Gram over for a salmon chowder and freshly baked bread dinner the other night.  She was the first guest to sit at our new dinner table.  Thus the historic photo.  The salt and pepper shakers are really taking over the photo, but it was nice of Gram and Mat to let me take a photo.

So, my allergies have been going ballistic. Or I am just fed up with them and always having to take allergy medicine and going through a box of tissues a week.  One of the ways I’m trying to take down the level of allergens in our house is I have know kicked Maddy off the bed. It’s been about a week. She doesn’t really know what’s going on because she’s always been allowed on the bed.

This is to help us all remember that she’s not allowed on the bed.  Every so often, we find her crammed into a little spot and we have to tell her to get “Off” the bed.  And she just gives us a confused look (or what I interpret as a confused look) not understanding what she did wrong.  Hopefully, it will all make sense soon.

It doesn’t help that the room that has the futon she sleeps on at night is in repair mode.  We are taking the acoustic tile down in the back bedroom.  We did this is in our kitchen and living room last January and looking to complete the project now.

One morning I woke up and decided that we should paint our kitchen cabinets all the same color.  We’ve been talking about it for awhile, but I haven’t really wanted to have white cabinets because they show dirt.  I changed my mind.  This after we’d been discussing how we need to finish our ceiling project.  We did the living room and kitchen last year about this time and we need to do the bedrooms.  But in my mind, in that moment, I decided that we should do the kitchen cabinets first.  One reason being I thought it would be a quick project.  Little did I know that it would require 4 coats of primer and 2 coats of the actual paint!

The fun begins…I’ve been priming for a day and it’s still not over.  There is lots of dry time between coats that I didn’t think of when I thought that this project would just take a day or two!

Finally, the project comes to an end 5 days later!  Not the greatest photo, but it shows the end product.  I am excited to have knobs on the doors and drawers.  Hopefully, that will help so we won’t have lots of dirt/grease smudges where we open the doors and drawers.  We are still recuperating from the project, but soon we will begin our ceiling project.

We were driving the last stretch home to Asheville when it started sleeting in Knoxville.  We had heard from Mat’s family that there was a winter storm advisory going on that day, but we weren’t worried as we’d done lots of winter driving out West.  As we got about 10 or so miles from the turn-off for Johnson City traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped.  We forgot about the “other driver aspect”.  So we spent 4 hours going 7 miles to get off at an exit.  We passed by many cars that had slid off the road and weaved through jack-knifed trailers to make it at least to a gas station to get an update on the road conditions and found that they had closed I-26.  (We were only 1 and half hours or less from Asheville.)

So we went to some hotels and found out the ones that allowed for pets were full.  We went to the only restaurant at that exit, had some dinner and then slept in the parking lot with a nice street light in our window.  Luckily, we had our down sleeping bags to cozy up in while sitting up in our seats.  We were packed so full that we couldn’t recline.  Maddy was a trooper though and just slept.  We woke up in the morning and headed to Mat’s parents house because most of Asheville was without power.  We spent the night there enjoying the heat from the fireplace and then went to check on our house the next day.  And lo and behold, the power had just come back on.  Yay!  So we were able to unpack and be home finally.

Going for a walk in the snow out at Mat’s parents house.  They were without power for over a week!

Home sweet home.  Now we have to wait for it to warm up and melt all the snow off in the mountains to go ride.

On Thursday we were planning to go either backpacking with some friends, canoe down a river, or to go mountain biking on both Friday and Saturday and then check out our co-worker’s band play at the Barnardsville community celebration. That sounds like a good time, right?

Somehow, between Thursday and Friday morning we decided that maybe we should just quick fix the leak on our back porch, which we knew required taking the old shingles off and putting on a new roof.

Good times, eh?  How do you like the 1×4’s underneath the roof?

By the time we finished pulling off all of the shingles and getting all the nails out, it was time to call it a day.  We had Mat’s family over to grill out to help reduce the amount of zuchini and yellow squash that we’ve picked from our garden.

Definitely one of the highlights of the weekend!

The next day we were at it bright and early…but not too early, since we do have neighbors.  We started at 8 a.m. and by mid-afternoon when our neighbor Brian & Kim called, we were only too grateful that they came over and brought us fruit bars and cold drinks!  They supplied us with a much needed break and entertainment.  AND then Brian stayed and helped with the roofing project!  We owe them big time!  Especially since his wife went into labor Sunday morning.  Mat’s dad came over too and really helped us out.  (All on the 4th of July).   Aren’t you glad that you don’t live near us?

About 7:30 p.m. we were finished and we were able to make it out to Barnardsville to hear our co-worker’s band play at their 4th of July celebration and then watch the fireworks.   Which were actually pretty amazing!

I don’t think I would recommend to anyone getting into a roofing project on a holiday weekend.  It wasn’t really the most festive way to spend the weekend!  But it is done now and we don’t have to worry about that project any longer.  Phew.

it’s here, or at least it sure feels like it.  The rest of this week the lows are supposed to be in the 50s.  Doesn’t really feel too much like winter around here.  The trees are all blooming, tulips have bloomed and we have planted half of our garden.  We are hoping to plant the rest this weekend.  It’s been raining quite a bit, so our yard is quite green and we’ve had to mow twice all ready!  I seem to recall that happening last spring and once it hit June we mowed about two times throughout the summer.  Hopefully, we don’t have a drought again this year. 

We have enjoyed having Mat’s gram living close by and being able to hang out with her at the family dinners.  She’s a great addition to the gatherings!  On Monday, she and I had a lovely girls day out.  We shopped until we dropped and then went out to lunch.   Funny thing is, I don’t think we actually bought anything!

Gram is hanging out on her porch enjoying the nice new bird feeder.  She also has a hummingbird feeder that has had several visits all ready from hummingbirds.  Lucky her.  I’ve got my fuchsia hanging plants out and although I haven’t seen any hummingbirds at them yet, I enjoy looking out the window at the plants!