Monday, May 31

Our Memorial Day Weekend

How exciting to have a three day weekend! It started out with pancakes and finally getting to work on our wedding blurb book - a gift from a friend. It's almost done, then we have one more wedding book to put together.
Today I sanded down these letters to cover them with pages from old books. Still in progress.


Colin put together this porch swing that he got from craigslist free. He also made a canopy from a straw mat that I found in the garbage. Love getting things for free and putting them to good use!

Our garden has a few quickly growing sprouts! Some of the squares haven't sprouted at all, though, so we might be doing some fill in planting later. As you can see, the garden doesn't get as much sun as it probably should, but we're experimenting with it anyhow!

Tuesday, May 25

San Diego

We took a Saturday trip to San Diego two weekends ago, starting out the day with something I'd been wanting to try for a while - stuffed french toast. The Korean bakery across the street from us sells this wonderful egg bread that I cut a thick slice of, then put a slit in it and stuffed with ricotta and strawberries. (The recipes I saw call for cream cheese, but I didn't have any.) Then dipped it in an egg and milk mixture and served with just a tiny bit of powdered sugar, maple syrup, almonds, and blackberries.
We enjoyed it outside on our mini patio. Yum!

We are always suckers for a thrift store, especially one with good books. (We are still on the hunt for a set of bar stools, which draws us in.) We have an extensive collection of books in at least two countries, but that doesn't stop Mr. Thorne from hunting for more.

We spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo, which my parents tell me I've been to before. My new favorite animal is the otter. Pretty much worth the price of admission to watch those little guys play.

When I was little, my favorite animals were pandas and koala bears. We got to see both!

On the way out, we saw male peacocks courting the females. That was pretty great, too. They not only open their showy feathers, they shake them!

We finished the day by taking a ferry to Coronado Island and having a lovely dinner at the Del.

Monday, May 24

our garden

We planted our little garden about a week ago. Some of the plants we'd started in pots before that since we didn't have the ground ready, but most of it we just planted straight into the ground. It's about 24 square feet. Colin even marked it all out and is following the square foot gardening technique that tells how many of what plant you can put in each square. We have three different kinds of tomatoes, cucumber, watermelon (which Colin tried to keep me from planting, but eventually gave in), bush beans, three kinds of onions, squash, and I forgot what all else. We planted marigolds and chives along the edge because they're supposed to help keep pests out. He made a little plot of what went where on his graph paper before we put the seeds in. Such a planner. We have no idea how it's going to work out because it faces east and only gets between 4-6 hours of sun each morning since it's on the side of our apartment building. But, we're hoping for some good things to come up!

Thursday, May 13

Community Supported Agriculture

We got our second CSA box yesterday.
And I used the radishes and parsley from the box to make this last night after we went to get a little extra stuff to finish out our garden.
Yum! Yay for a box of random in season vegetables that takes us out of what we'd normally eat!

Tuesday, May 11

Fringe Cards

These are up on lelabela.etsy.com now!

Wednesday nights

We watch one tv show a week: LOST. Wednesdays on Hulu because we don't have TV reception. Our new ritual is making dinner and putting it on a tray to eat in bed (that's where the TV screen is). Sometimes a glass of wine. Rituals are nice.

Tuesday, May 4

hanging the metal trays

A friend asked me how I hung the metal trays, and since it was a matter of trial and error, I'm posting it here for you guys in case you want to try it. I used the same method for these metal trays painted with chalkboard paint that we bought for the video guest book at our wedding.

Hanging them was harder than expected. I tried those stick on hooks that you put one strip on the wall and one on the object. Didn't work. I tried picture hanging wire attached to the tray with duct tape, which worked for a week or so, but then the trays eventually succumbed to gravity as the duct tape slipped up the tray.

The current solution is picture hanging wire made into two squiggles and a loop and attached with super strong glue made for metal. It seems to be working well, and they've been up for a few weeks now.