Fence? Check.

It's official. After this morning, we screwed the handle on our new gate door-- our new fence is OFFICIALLY finished. Huzzah!









After the last week of craziness, it was nice to relax this weekend-- even if it was because of our poor puppy being out of commission. Yesterday Walter left the realm of the 'studs'... and has been laying the guilt on pretty thick. It's definitely working. Yesterday he spent five solid hours laying on one of us... (that's my foot in the pic below, looks a tad odd) but its well worth it. He's not as drugged looking today but still pretty slow-moving. Poor puppy!

Out with the old, in with the new.

Sometimes the weather has a huge part in dealing with what goes on the to-do list next. Like last November, when a windstorm showed our tired, gimpy fence who was boss. And also showed our brand-new puppy how to escape after the wind blew out enough boards for him to get through. And also just like this September, when the sun finally decided to start giving us a fabulous summer, and enough time to build a new fence. Huzzah!

Behold! Our sad, sad fence (notice the emergency puppy-containing patchwork):

So, a bit of destruction ensued (thanks to Bryan, our neighbor with a Bobcat, and a bit lot of help from my parents):

Pouring concrete and replacing the doors in the fence-- we've decided that no one should ever park in the backyard. No bueno. Not going to let it happen in the future either.

All day Saturday, and all day Sunday. What we learned?:

1) If the previous owners of your fence have planted their 4x4's in a row of concrete, do NOT try and dig out the 2+ feet of rotten wood out of, well, cement.

2) September in Washington is hot. 90 degrees outside of manual labor? Yewch. Still convinced I'm made of part moss.

3) HGTV is nearly always right. Projects never finish as quickly as you hope they would!

Documenting the headache that is trying to dig out old boards out of concrete:

So, a weekend's worth of work to show some unevenly planted 4x4s, but many lessons learned! (Ok, more than listed, but still! +3 homeowner points for us. Woo!) Tomorrow? 2x4 horizontal boards and the actual fence goes up... wish us luck!

Second year? Cotton. Translation? Let's make no sense and go paint pottery instead.

On August 7th Bryan and I celebrated our second anniversary; I can't believe it's been that long already (In fact, I'm still in the assumption that 1990 was 10 years ago; where has the majority of this decade flown off to?!). When we were dating we had a tradition of painting pottery every year at The Painted Plate in Olympia (fantastic Chai tea and quite adorable in itself), and stopped when we got married. Why? Not sure! Busy perhaps?





So this year, instead of painting things separately, we painted a tea pot together. Symbolic much?







Keeping with tradition we painted things that have happened throughout the year; this case being marriage in general, getting our house and our first puppy. Last year we weren't able to spend our anniversary together so we had to commemorate the occasion!



(Oh yeah. And of course we had to paint the puppy too...)

Getting his (water)wings.

A year old, and finally Walter has conquered the water. To say our puppy was a bit timid to take to the water would be an understatement; however this turned out to be quite entertaining. Instead of jumping in the water (say, like most puppies do) ours would bury his nose in it, then face, then reach as far as his little front legs would take him into the pool before slithering in. It was all rather funny.



After a few dips he had decided that the floatie was more his style. I can't complain, I've always loved water-puppies; and ours is no exception. +2 retriever points, my dear Walter. Now if he could only conquer the car...

Yes you, Naan bread.

Apologies for the title, the Mighty Boosh have warped me in the ways of naan bread. After years of buying frozen naan from Trader Joes, I decided to give it a try myself (after a powerful craving for Indian food this afternoon!) Also, I've been moderately obsessed with the website Budget Bytes, as it has encouraged me to try English Muffins, and now this!





It turned out alright; next time I will cut those pieces in half and make them thinner-- a few of them turned out a bit like flatbread (which I happily saved for breakfast Saturday morning to make breakfast pizzas out of).

I'm quickly discovering that making bread doesn't often end badly. Flat bread? Good. Thick bread? Good. Carbtastic deliciousness no matter what? GOOD.*

*Note to self: Seriously. Start running tomorrow.

Let there be light-- OFFICIALLY.

Seriously though. Our light situation in the house has substantially changed for the better now that our solar tubes are finished! It's hard to express in photos how much brighter the center of our little casa is (Especially in the afternoon when all of the sun officially leaves our 4.5 windows). Overall, I can't imagine our hallway without them now.






Alright, so the pictures are a bit anticlimactic-- you'll just have to take our word for it. (Thanks again dad for coming over and being amazing, we really don't know what we'd do without you!)

Just one more time. Just because:
Before:


And after:


Take that, creepy fluorescent lighting in the bathroom! We hardly need you anymore. Mission accomplished.

Let there be-- wait-- light?

Alas, as July is almost ending, we've started (finally!) tackling our giant home-to-do list. Last weeks task? Starting our solar tubes! We had the fam over (thanks again handy father!) and Bryan and my Dad tackled the only thing the weather would allow, which was installing the inside portion of of our solar tubes.

Oh! Notice the dark hole we call a hallway? That's half our house. Eep!



Oh, also week two of my breadmaking adventures included this no-knead loaf, which turned out to be tasty! As it was my first it wasn't the prettiest... but that just means more breadmaking, right?




My dad has been sweet once again and was teaching Bryan more homeownery-type things, +2 more points for the husband :)






Step one, done! More pics to come soon of the after!