Furniture !

Its been an exciting two days at our house. Miran put our new table together yesterday and so far he's assembled 6 of the 8 chairs. We really like it and are very happy - I've included a detail shot so you can all see the pattern of the veneer. It was so nice to eat dinner tonight with Mommy and Dad at a decent sized table with matching chairs! This room now just needs the last two pictures framed for the city prints collage, a light (we have a hanging wire above this table), and maybe a rug. Miran's not sure if we need a rug though.

And today we also assembled our new bed that Dad so wonderfully built for us. Its just fabulous. So tonight we won't be sleeping on a mattress on the floor for the first time in over a year! I still have to paint something on the canvasses I bought for over the bed, but I went ahead and hung them to take the picture. Our bedroom is almost done now ... just sconces, something to put the TV on and a chair and its finished.

Farm Tour

Today Miran and I went on a farm tour. Local farmers and farmers markets organized this second annual 2-day event where over 40 local farms were giving tours on a single ticket. We only made it to four. The first was kind of a bust, it was really just a family that was growing their own vegetables and meat and dairy products. But Miran did feed carrots to their goats.

The second farm was a larger scale produce operation and we took a hay ride tour of their whole farm and it all sounded wonderful until the tour was over and we asked about pesticides and they use all sorts of stuff and don't claim to be organic. We bought some veggies from their shop anyway, but were reinvigorated in our home garden plans for next year because its the only way to ensure nothing gets put on our veggies.

The third place was a mushroom farmer - the only one in North Carolina. It was bizarre, but somehow inspiring. This guy just loved mushrooms and decided to try growing them. He bought an old mill building and is just growing mushrooms in the ruins. It was a pretty small scale place, but the process seemed pretty simple. And he is working to have his business have zero waste (right now he just throws away plastic bags), and also to produce his own electricity so he consumes as little as possible. He was building a wood chip oven to fuel an engine, but that was just a prototype, he hasn't taken his building off the grid yet. The mushrooms grow out of the side of bags full of wet straw. Here is Miran and the mushrooms:

The final farm was kind of what we were looking for. They raise cattle, pigs and chickens and all our 100% grass fed with no hormones and no grain.We took another hayride tour of the farm and saw the cows and pigs grazing and enjoying their lives. We were a little disappointed in the living conditions of the chickens, they were in pens that get moved around in the field, and though they weren't packed in on top of each other, it did look kind of crowded and not really "free range." So we bought some beef and some eggs and Miran is going to think about the chicken and see if he can bring himself to eat it. This farm is kind of far away, but every 2 weeks they come to Charlotte and you can place orders and they'll deliver to a parking lot where you meet them. That drop off place is not too far from my work so I think I could handle it every other week for chicken, beef and eggs. While we were there Miran also rode a horse and the last picture is of Miran and I on the hayride.

The Fests are Back!

Fall is our season for fests ... the renaissance festival, international festival, Greek Fest, and of course, Oktoberfest. We decided to skip Greek Fest this year because it is so popular that there are so many people there that you spend all of your time in line for food or literally packed into a crowd. It would probably be great if half as many people were there because the food is good and they have dancing and stuff.

In any case, we started fest season last night by going to Oktoberfest at the Waldhorn restaurant. It will happen the next 3 week-ends as well so I'm sure we'll be back more than once (maybe with Matthew and Scott in two weeks?). The first shot is us, obviously, and the second one I tried to get a picture of inside the beer hall tent, but it didn't come out too well because of the lighting.

And here is a picture of Azra yesterday playing with the neighbors dog that got out from behind the fence. You can see her new blue cast nicely ... its a little smaller than the one she had for the first 3 weeks and her fingers are a little freer.

Dining Table, Part I

Today our new dining table arrived. I ordered it less than a week ago and it said 1-6 weeks for delivery so we were very excited when it came today. I feel so grown up to have a real dining room table and eight matching chairs for the first time. My old desk from college has served us well for many years though.

Because Miran has class every week night until 9;00, we probably won't get the table and the rest of the chairs assembled until this week-end. But here's a picture of it in the box - you can see the checkerboard veneer pattern on the top. In the back-ground you can see one of the chairs assembled.

Happy Bajram!

The past few days we have been celebrating the Bosnian holiday of Bajram. Thursday Azra made Baklava, the traditional dessert for Bajram - it tastes great. We also had an extra large family meal that night, though since it was just the three of us it didn't feel that different. We did use a tablecloth though! And Miran and Azra have both been busy calling all their family members to say hello. We were a little sad for Milada celebrating at home alone ... but then she decided to go to the beach for a long week-end with a girlfriend and now we are all jealous of her!

Berlin trip exhibition

On Wednesday night in the gallery in the architecture building an exhibition opened displaying student work from all study abroad trips last year. So my Berlin Spring Break students and I had a display we've been working on for the past few weeks. A couple of students took the lead and built a "Berlin Wall" in the middle of the gallery, which you can see in the fuzzy picture taken through a reinforced window on the floor above. The other picture shows one of the displays on the other side with photos the students took alongside quotes about those buildings from other students' journals from the trip. The exhibition will be up for two weeks.

Floor problem

Last week-end I started a project I've been planning all summer. Refinishing our bedroom floor before our new bed arrives in a few weeks. I moved all the furniture out of our room. I started to pull up the carpet. The closet floor looked great. Then I encountered a huge problem ... a HUGE chunk of the hardwood floor has been removed and replaced with cement board. I felt tricked because I'd peaked in every corner and seen wood. Needless to say the project got a whole lot more complicated and more expensive and so isn't going to happen this month. I carefully and disappointedly put the carpet back down.

Tubing, Part 2

Last week-end Miran and I went tubing again. This time with friends instead of Azra. Unfortunately, she couldn't come with her broken wrist. We remembered the camera this time though.