First Harvest

The other day Miran picked the first vegetables from his garden ... one zucchini and an enormous cucumber. The second shot with me is for scale - its bigger than my forearm! And the last shot is so you can see the size of our sunflowers, quite a bit taller than Miran!

Curtains and Doors!

Here is a view of the upstairs hall doors now that they are black. Miran still hasn't rehung our bedroom door, but you get the idea from the two guest rooms. The next shot shows the curtain panels that we hung in the bedroom. It looks a little funny because you can still see the squares of the windows behind. I used leftover pieces of the curtain panels to make inserts for the closet doors, which turned out really nice.

Master Bedroom Progress

For the past few days I've been working on the master bedroom and bathroom. I made an elaborate design plan, and so far all I've done is paint and order a bed from Dad's workshop. The bed should arrive later this summer so we need to make a decision about the whether we are refinishing, repainting or leaving the carpet on the floor sometime before then.

Here are the before and after painting images (Miran still has to rehang the bedroom door, its black, of course):

Here is the design for the room that I made in photoshop:

This version of the design includes the floor painted a dark grey. The lighting, artwork, throw pillows, accessories are all likely to be a little different in the final version depending on what we actually find. For example, the throw pillows in my drawing have been discontinued at Macy's since I choose them earlier this week. And we bought the sconces for either side of the bed but decided we don't like the cords and I'll be returning them and looking for something else. I also plan to inset panels with the same fabric as the curtains in the closet doors. In any case, the next step is hanging the curtain panels, which I've bought and put together and Miran promised he'd help me with tomorrow.

Crazy Plants and Other House Projects

We still haven't harvested any vegetables but the plants in our garden are growing like crazy. Here are some shots of the sunflowers, which are taller than we are, as well as the zucchini and cucumber end of the garden, which is so massive the access path is no longer accessible. At the bottom is a shot of a cucumber in formation. Its the first sign of something that actually looks like a vegetable so we are excited.

Sorry to keep posting about the garden, but not much else is going on around here and I'm trying to be better about posting more frequently.

I did start on some painting projects this week-end. Now that school is out I want to make some decorating progress. You'll never guess what I was doing ... painting more things black! I finally started on the upstairs hallway doors and also finally painted the last cabinet for the new office. Here are some in progress shots - when they are done and in place I'll send after shots! I've also finally started stripping the wallpaper border from the mini master bath. I bought paint for the master bedroom and bath the other day. That might be next week-end's project - if I get the doors finished. I only got 2 1/2 of 5 done yesterday.

Welcome Michael!

Congratulations to my sister Margaret and her husband Matt, who welcomed their new son Michael Salvatore Aresco into the world yesterday at 5:59 pm. Here is a shot of Anthony getting a first look at his new baby brother!