Shakespeare

Just to show we do things other than paint rooms and work on our garden, I wanted to post a shot of Azra I took last week when she and I went to see a performance of a Shakespeare play in a local park. It was fun and actually not too hot to sit outside that evening. She has to go see three plays for her communications class, so we need to find two more to attend in the next two weeks.

Megan's Shower

I just got back from a wonderfully relaxing week-end in Staunton. The purpose of the trip was to attend (and help cook for) my cousin Megan's wedding shower. And that was fun. But I also got to spend a lot of time with Cecilia and the twins, which was also great. Its always wonderful to see them, and really get to know their two very different personalities.

Below are a few pictures from the trip. I actually had lost my camera through the whole shower, and only found it again as everyone was leaving, so I got a shot of the guest of honor, Megan, and her brother Patrick in the driveway afterwards. Then comes Dad's great shot of the sisterly love followed by my shot of the same scene ... which was a little later when their natural smiles had turned into their silly "say cheese" smiles. The last shots are of Maggie and Ingrid enjoying licking the beaters after while we were making cupcakes for the shower and of Mom and Dad in the herb garden.

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.