Catching Up on Life

Our house guests have vacated. It was lovely to have them and know that the house (and yard)can happily handle 5 adults and 2 dogs! It also reminded me why I want to finish the basement so much - ie, so we'll have two living room areas and two tv's for entertainment. (A downside of open floorplans on the first floor, is a lack of different areas for people to visit and hang out. If the TV is on in the living room it tends to dominate the whole first floor.)

While out on a walk/jog with Reese this past weekend, I ran into our lovely neighbor who has just brought home a little dog of her own! A 5 month old cocka-poo named Lily. I still can't believe how tiny she is! Kathryn says she's about 5pds!

This is clearly not a picture of Lily, but of Kathryn's dining room getting a bit of an upgrade with faux stone on the back wall to add a bit of character. Kathryn said she loved the original 1-wall look that she saw all over Europe and wanted to add a little something to the small dining room area. She's also replaced the dining room and bar fixtures.

If you look closely, you can also see the crown molding she has added in the room above the windows. She has carried this everywhere in the house with the exception of the stairs - we have funky walls/ ceilings going on there.

I loved my little visit, because our homes are mirror images of each other with slightly different finishes. Somehow, without discussing it, we chose a lot of similiar colors for the inside of our homes! Her downstairs blue, which you can see in the above photo, is very close to our master bedroom. Our hallways are both a shade of creamy off-white/yellow and Kathryn put in a pale green backsplash in her kitchen! :-)

It still surprises me how much our homes are alike but feel completely different! The visit gave me so many ideas for our home - but mostly I think I drooled over the light fixtures :-)

Next up will be some smaller finishing touches in the study and maybe some organization in the basement? :wink:

Montreal?

We've already covered the topic of my lazy photog state of mind. And since I lost a whole bunch of stuff, I tried to take a few when I was inspired this past week. Granted, the Montreal trip this past weekend has more photos taken by family which I haven't received yet so that will be another update at some point.

This is BB reveling in the delish meal she made for us! Very yummy! Olives, roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts, hummus, a cucumber salad, a yogurt type dip, carrots, warm pita bread, couscous with mushrooms AND a plum cobbler for dessert!

Here are 2 pictures of Reese sleeping in my lap on the way home from Montreal. He finally has learned the belly crawl to scoo-tch close enough to get where he wants to be. It was pretty cute and I welcomed the company in the back seat since I didn't drive up or back!!

Please note that if you are ever taking a dog to Canada and back, the Canadians don't give a hoot about it and the Americans will practically quarantine your dog if you don't have all his medical ppwrk with you. We got a pass this time after answering all sorts of questions down to when he last ate and if the food came from the US or Canada. I can't even imagine having to leave this guy to drive home for his papers and then drive back to get him!!

This weekend we are off to The Cape and RI for birthday Celebrations, a Baby Shower and seeing more family!

I'm a Lazy Photographer....

Yep. I am. I have a good camera and I have a point and shoot. But my cell phone has a camera too. And it's so good now that it's kinda taken the place of my point and shoot. Most of the photographs on this blog are from my camera.

But what happened this morning? My phone went on the fritz and deleted all of my photos. Lost. Granted, most of them I had already transfered over to the blog so they are saved on the server and in my picasa album. BUT. The latest photos of Matt with Reese? Lost. My favorite pictures of friends, family, Two Lights and Reese? Lost..... All lost.

But really? My phone is meant to make phone calls. My camera takes and stores pictures. Sigh.

So much for combining techonology.

July 4th

I know I'm late on this post...... and with no pictures either. But, July 4th was pretty low-key for me this year and I loved it!
BB is home from the Peace Corps (has two years EVER seemed so long before?!) - she landed on July 3rd. Kelly is back in RI on vacation for a few weeks. And while they weren't AT the house while I watched the Boston fireworks on the TV with my hubby curled up on the couch, it was incredible to just know they are close by again. Safe and close by. Enjoying the 4th. In New England. There is truly no other place to be on July 4th but New England.
Hugs to all!

Traveling Cross-Country in Style!

If you ever wanted to cross the country by camping out and not sleep on the ground..... ask my brother about this genius tent mounted on the back of his truck!

I think I had mentioned earlier that he and his Fiancee, Melissa and dog Ladybird came up to visit for a few weeks. They didn't fly, but traveled up by in his Toyota truck camping out and visiting family and friends on the way from southern Texas to New Hampshire.



Here is the truck out in our yard after being washed - Oliver was cleaning everything out before folding everything back down into storage. I don't have a picture of that, but the tent all folds down onto the platform for travel.

There is a metal platform mounted on the back of the truck above the truck bed, so you don't loose the truck bed for storage while traveling. I think it's one the coolest things I've seen! I'm not saying I'd be good to spend my nights in it crossing the country (Brava Melissa for doing it!) but I still think it's better than sleeping in the truck bed itself or in a tent on the ground. You don't even have to worry about animals prowling since you're *UP* and can pull everything up after you!

They both report that it's not super roomy inside but does the job!

In Between House Guests

Oliver is at an Airsoft game for the weekend and BB is landing tommorrow!!!

This means cleaning, laundry, and small projects around the house and making sure we are ready to go! (We did have a lovely little date night last night. We saw Green Lantern and it was honestly better than I thought it would be!)

I don't have pictures of everything we did, I plan to get more this week, but here are some of the bigger things we accomplished:

Freshened up the living room with two new throw pillows in navy and white stripes. I love how they all connect in the center rather than just being just stripes in all one direction - which is the back. But these also have button closures so the cases can be removed and washed! Love that!

Guestroom got clean sheets and a white light blanket/coverlet with quilting for a bit of added texture.

My study was cleaned up and we added a raised aeromattress.

You might recognize the yellow pillows, I brought them up from the downstairs couch to add a bit of color to the grey and white room.

I know it's silly, but that clean desk is just so awesome! It hasn't been that clean since I brought it home!! BTW, the lamp on there is 1 of 2 I purchased from Home Goods. The other is in the hallway on the lowboy.

AH, the long awaited doors on the IKEA cabinets!! They looks great don't they? whew! Lemme tell ya, they were NOT easy to put together and I'm not sure I would EVER purchase furniture from IKEA ever again, but that being said, I hope these last because they look fantastic in the room.

I did finally (I waited a ridiculous 2 months!) get the paper to put on the back of the bookcases, I didn't have enough time to complete that before guests. So that will be another little update a bit later on.