Buildin', buildin', buildin'

Progress is moving rapidly on our new fence, with just one (expected) day to before the fence is complete. Pretty impressive given that we just hired the company on Wednesday and they don't work weekends. Here are a couple of pictures to show the progress (first from Thursday evening when J arrived home, and second from this evening which show the two finished sides). As long as the weather holds, they will finish tomorrow!

The other big news from the weekend is that I survived my second Thin Mint Sprint at work. Both races exceeded my goal number of participants and we received several compliments on how well organized both events were. Despite making May a stressful month here at the Melton Point, the success and praise totally re-enforce my job satisfaction! Here is a picture of Thin Mint Millie, the race mascot, which I made. Not the greatest job, but I'm pretty pleased with her. You can see the picture I modeled her after at the race website http://www.thinmintsprint.org/

This week we're getting the house reorganized (tough when parts haven't been organized to start with!) in preparation for a visit from J's mom this weekend.

Title: my version of Rawhide

Stand by me

Just a quick post (with a picture! I know you've been starting to wonder if I'd lost my camera) to show off the TV stand we bought and put together last night. As you know, we set up our 'new' tv on our card table last fall. By Christmas, we were debating how it would look to stick a 2 x 4 under the sagging middle (we didn't), then we spent a couple of unsuccessful weekends searching for an entertainment center/tv stand. By the time the basement flooded a couple of weeks ago and all of our electronics were displaced, I had been ready to give up on a sturdy option. As we prepared to put everything back together this week, I realized that if we put the card table back up, we might never find another tv stand. Luckily, J agreed that we should do a little shopping first. Feast your eyes on our much more supportive tv stand from Target. Not necessarily a permanent solution for this room, but definitely one I can live with!

In other news, J and I managed to 'just say no' to the resort folks, and happily collected a new golf club and visa gift card. We also enjoyed a couple of beautiful days driving the back roads of Kentucky with the top down, which made for a great weekend away. Next up on our agenda is the second Thin Mint Sprint (this one in Corbin) this weekend and a new backyard fence in the next couple of weeks.

Title: "Stand By Me" by The Temptations

Lookin' for adventure

One afternoon when I was a little girl, my mom took me on a road trip that she titled "a wild goose chase". Now, I think I'd heard the term before, but to this day when I hear the words "wild goose chase", I picture riding in the car with my mom across the eastern shore of Maryland. I don't remember exactly where we were going, but I do remember that we went to hear someone selling timeshares at a resort in return for a 'free' gift.

This weekend, J and I are headed out on our own wild goose chase. Last month, I attended the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event, where I found a booth promoting a new resort in Western Kentucky. Through a brief conversation with the sales rep, I learned that for visiting the resort for just 45 minutes, I could receive a new driver (golf club), and that J and I would receive Visa gift cards for our time and effort. Ever my mother's daughter, my eyes lit up at the prospect of a 'free' golf club! I quickly signed us up and have been looking forward to our visit ever since.

Fast forward to this weekend. I quickly realized that the trip to visit the resort was halfway to J's folks home. The drive down is typically too long to do a trip home in a regular weekend, especially if we planned to kill few hours on our wild goose chase, but the prospect of the three day Memorial Day weekend made perfect sense.

So we're heading out on our adventure this evening, with a visit to Rough River State Park tonight and our resort tour in the morning, followed by the drive to Poole tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward to digging into their family history with J's grandmother and a visit with my best friend from college, and J is looking forward to a round of golf with his dad. We'll be back Monday, hopefully with my new golf club in tow!

Happy Memorial Day, and please take a moment to remember those who fought for our freedom!

Title: "Born to be Wild", by Steppenwolf

Do you know the Omelet Man? He lives on Winthrop Drive.

I'm sure you're wondering where on earth the Melton Point has disappeared to; fact of the matter is we've been incredibly busy doing nothing exiciting enough to take pictures of and write about. We've finally gotten through our busiest weekend, and I'm taking a day off to recover, so thought I'd get a post up (though, admittedly without pictures).

First, how does our living room look? Worse than the last picture you saw. Our first two plans for getting rid of the old furniture fell through and I've been too busy to call Habitat to come pick it up. Then last weekend, J stepped off the steps into sqiushy carpet in the family room. The sump pump failed and flooded the entire basement, which then required that we take all of the electronics upstairs (to the living room) and bring in a water mitigation team to dry the place out. The family room is dry now, but we still haven't cleaned the carpets, so nothing has been put back in place.

What else have we been up to? Well, two weeks ago, I spent a weekend at Girl Scout camp, where I rapelled down an 80 foot cliff, ascended a rope to about 30 feet in the air, and zipped off a 35 foot tower. That weekend of fun ushered in two weeks of frantic planning and work for the first ever Thin Mint Sprint sponsored by our council. J, it turns out, has a future in data entry if this lawyering thing doesn't work out. Every night for the last week before the race, he entered race entries for a few hours so that I would have an accurate check in list. We ended up with 400 participants and a beautiful day to run the Thin Mint Sprint, and I've just about caught up on my sleep!

And finally, do you know the Omelet Man? The church that J and I attend serves breakfast (Soul Food) on Sunday mornings between the early service and the Sunday School hour. While we don't usually make it on time for breakfast, we have attended a couple and have been overwhelmed by the welcoming and hospitable nature of the folks who do attend. We decided last month that we would like to do something to re-pay this generous nature of the church, and after Easter, hit upon the idea of serving breakfast.

A little back story--J comes from a line of great breakfast cooks and he certainly does the same. After our wedding, we bought a set of Calphalon non-stick pots and pans, which includes an 8" omelet pan. Together with an ancient spatula from my first apartment in college, these tools turned my husband into Omelet Man. He regularly cooks omelets on weekend mornings for us, and in January, he took his show on the road to Cumberland Falls for our camping trip with friends.

When we learned that you could sign up to do an egg dish for Soul Food, J suggested we try an Omelet Bar. We had no idea how it would work out, so the woman in charge of Soul Food offered to bring an egg casserole and let us do the omelets as a quiet test. In the end, we had 12 toppings to choose from and served 18 omelets (probably about half of those who attended Soul Food took us up on the omelet bar) to rave reviews. We're pretty excited about the results, and J is pretty excited about having a second omelet pan and gas burners to carry it all off with!

Title: My version of "Do you know the Muffin Man?"

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I mentioned in my last post that J and I were on the receiving end of much of my grandmother's furniture as she has now moved into a nursing home in Texas. My folks drove it back from Texas in a rented U-Haul and we met them at home this weekend to bring the U-Haul the rest of the way to Lexington. While we were there, it seemed logical to pick up the two trunks and pie safe that I've been talking about bringing up for years.

Our living room is packed tight with our old furniture and our new furniture, as well as everything else on the truck that hasn't found its permanent home in our house yet.

The pie safe, which belonged to my great-great-grandmother and was left to me by a great aunt years ago, has found a home in our guest room, where it will now keep quilts and blankets safe. Because it was an inch wider than I thought, the pie safe did not slip right into the place I had picked out for it. J pitched in and re-arranged everything with me, and we're now going to 'live with it' for a while to see how it works out.

Apologies for the huge mess in the pictures--I just wanted to show you how it looks now! The white chest of drawers will not be staying, but it needs to be emptied before moving into a new home in my office upstairs. Art needs to be hung, too. Maybe next weekend...

Title: Changes, by David Bowie

How much is that teapot in the window?

This post has two pretty different topics (because let's face it, I can admit to not being the most frequent poster lately), and I had two songs competing for the title role ("I'm a little tea pot" and "How much is that doggie in the window?" if you can't piece it together yourself!).

First up, the centerpieces using the logs out of our yard that I discussed in my last post.

The pitchers, from Bybee Pottery, remind me of squatty little teapots and had me singing the song incessantly! I highly recommend a trip to Bybee for those of you in, or even passing through, central Kentucky. It's located 30-45 minutes south of Lexington off I-75 and the prices at this 200 year old shop are amazing!

Now, on to topic 2--no, we're not shopping for another dog! Zeppelin turns 8 this week and is happy to be an only child in our house! Nope, the song came to mind when I used Zep to model my latest craft project. I saw this craft described last fall and hadn't managed to try it out. This evening, I found myself with an hour to kill and a fabric shop in sight, so I knew I needed to give it a shot! Presenting--a handmade ballet/princess skirt, ready for dress up. Unfortunately, I wanted to share pictures with a few folks before shipping it off to my neice E. Not having a handy small child around to pose for me, I used the next best thing--Zep--who did a great job posing for me!

This skirt is light pink and lavender, with pink and lilac organza ribbon at the waist. This can be made of any color tulle and ribbon you can find, and I'm happy to whip one up for anyone who'd like their own (about $10-$15 in materials).

J and I are headed to western KY this weekend for a super-quick trip to pick up a U-Haul that my parents are driving up from Texas with some "new" furniture. My grandmother (Mur) has moved into a nursing home and has a ton of furniture that she's been kind enough to share with us. This means that my current living room furniture (nearly 35 years old and has lived with two generations each of Mulinix's and Hiters, not to mention being the furniture that J said would NOT be moved into his house) is moving on to a new home with another college student. Sniff...

Title: "How much is that doggie in the window" with some license, by Bob Merrill

He's a lumberjack, and he's okay

J is a very supportive HODAR (Husband Of a DAR), and has learned to chip in as State and National Conferences approach to keep me operating with some level and sanity and reason. A few years ago, he and a buddy stayed up late building risers for Miss Molly's clothing debut (this after sending me to bed with some sort of medication to 'chill out'). Last summer, he made a last minute run to Lowe's for a more powerful drill and oak dowel rods to build clothing racks (again for Miss Molly). Last night, he labeled bottles of water and stuffed gift bags.

You might notice the theme here--I get a great idea (I ike to call it a vision) for something that "ought to be easy", buy half the materials really needed to do that job, make an attempt to create the vision in half the time necessary to come close, and burst into tears when it fails. J then goes into "super fix-it man" mode and makes it happen. He's really gotten quite good at it.

This year, I am the co-decorator for the meals at our State Conference. A couple of weeks ago, I made an arrangement with Bybee Pottery to borrow pitchers to use as centerpieces. Almost immediately, I realized that the pitchers wouldn't be tall enough to really be on display and decided that we needed small logs to place the pitchers on. This would be in keeping with the frontier theme for the evening, and there are trees everywhere--surely finding four to six inch long logs would be a cinch! When my search for conveniently pre-cut logs didn't turn anything up, I hired someone to cut down a couple of trees in our yard (see previous post) and had tree-cutter go ahead and cut my logs while he was at it. As we prepared to load the logs in J's car tonight for transport to the hotel, I decided that a few of the logs were just too long to make good centerpieces.

Enter "Mr. Super Fix-It Man". J went to Lowe's, threw money at the nearest sales associate, and came home armed with a chainsaw, oil, gas, gloves and some pretty nifty safety goggles. (I swear, walking into Lowe's with a frantic wife on the phone is worse than grocery shopping hungry when it comes to impulse buys!) Our first attempt didn't go too well--J and I were both scared by how close the chain came to my hands and arms--but perserverance and quick thinking resulted in a better plan, a jig, and several neatly cut, size-appropriate logs.

I'll post pictures of the centerpieces later this weekend. And for those of you questioning the wisdom of letting J near a chainsaw given his many unfortunate run-ins with knives--he did well. I'd almost say he's conquered that knife trouble. Almost.

Title: The Lumberjack Song, by Monty Python