ReDecked

Is it weird to say how sore I am? Those muscles underneath your armpits, you know, where you (women) sort of get that bra bulge – those muscles are killing me! To preface, I am a little lazy with the exercise, but do get a decent run, long walk with the dog, or some kickboxing in my routine a couple of times a week. But, scrubbing, painting, yard work, and all sorts of other manual labor are hard. Hard, I tell you! Oh, but the end results are well worth how old your body makes you feel. I need to toughen up anyway if I’m going to be a farmer’s wife.

One such result was transforming our worn and ragged (and sort of boring) deck into a nice extension of our dining room.

Check out this old guy. He’d seen several winters and spring rains and was looking worse for the wear.

After sweeping away mountains of annoying helicopters, scrubbing it down, putting one coat of gray stain – in a solid finish so it almost looks like paint, filling cracks with wood putty, and staining an additional coat, the deck looks like this.

Exterior Update

Our house has had peeling, white exterior trim for way too long. Obviously, that is not an awesome look and not what we wanted the first impression of our house to be, but our funds were always funneled elsewhere – the old AC died, our plumbing needed updated ASAP, our French doors had a leak that had to be fixed. You all know how that is. The pretty comes after necessity.

Since our old house has been treating us pretty well lately, we decided to slowly invest in the aesthetics a bit more. We’ve mentioned that we have a photo shoot coming up and there’s no better kick in the ass than a magazine scheduling a shoot of your digs. It seemed like good timing to actually pull the trigger, so we finally got it painted!

This it what our house looked like last summer. We had just started to work on the landscaping (hence, Christopher strutting his stuff in the photo) and notice all of the white trim with a white front door.

This what it looks like now! Trim painted black (by our contractor Gus), mulch around the tree with a bench (we did that), some hosta are now around the front porch (help from Christopher’s parents), nasty shrub was hacked out of the front yard (Christopher and his dad), and now the front door is bright red (me). I’m pretty excited about these developments. We still have to either replace our garage door or paint it the same black as the trim, put all the storm windows back up, and stencil our house number to the front stoop.

There is always something, right? But, that’s part of the fun.

The 2012 Garden

With this mild (so far) winter we’ve been having, we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re going to be doing with our garden once the weather actually turns. Those of you that follow Jessica on Twitter (which should be all of you) may have noticed that she’s been talking about living off the land in a bigger way.

Our first step was getting a copy of The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, from Edward C. Smith. Love that hat, man. Besides now having an excuse to buy a completely garish hat to wear in the backyard this summer, now we’ve got some real instruction on how to get the best yield from our garden. This book is fantastic, giving great instruction to all levels of gardeners. Jessica’s all in on this project as well; I know this because she was actually talking about manure in a favorable way the other day.

Last year, we succeeded with tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos, romaine and herbs. We failed with scallions, carrots and celery. We’re hoping to add some new heirloom tomato varieties, more lettuce varieties, and an even greater variety of herbs. We’ve already started rosemary, basil and parsley inside, with dill, chives and mint this year.

All of this is just a trial run, really, until we can get more land to hopefully have one of those Martha Stewart-sized gardens.

Maybe not that big.

Point is, there’s nothing quite like cooking with fresh ingredients that you’ve grown or created yourself. Whether vegetables, fruits, or even baked goods, you’ll never want to go back to store-bought. (Although, that’s inevitable, living with the weather we do around here.)

Stay tuned throughout the year for more updates.