Is that burbling water I hear? One can almost imagine...

See that old hot tub in the background? Looks a little worse for wear, no?

Well, look what we've been up to:

Last weekend we cleaned the wood with deck wash (twice), Mike spent hours sanding it all down, and then I started to tackle it with the wood stain. We're using Behr Solid Stain in "Redwood". It's only half done, but looking pretty good. It's still not functional (has to be moved, hooked up to electricity and filled with water) but we're one step closer.

Shhh, be very, very quiet...

A month late, I finally gave Mom her mother's day gift: a little felted bunny. She has this great little collection (about 4, I think) of rabbits in different materials (bronze, glass, pewter, ceramic), so I thought that this would make a nice addition. It's smaller than her other rabbits (about 2.5" nose to tail) and since it's head is a little larger than I hoped for, it has more of a "bunny" look than a "rabbit" look. But no matter - she's a mom so she loved it anyway.

Dig Monkeys, Dig!

So lucky to have had both Sara and Papa in town this last weekend, and to have the clouds part and the sun shine through!


In return for the pleasure of sleeping on our couch and eating my pretzels, they graciously volunteered to help dig out the largest of my front garden beds.

Drama king

She-Ra

Even hard workers need to take a break sometime.

We also fired the pizza oven up again, and even ventured to invite some guests over to enjoy with us.


Enjoy we did! Along with Anja, Alan and Lilly, we also enticed Remi over before her shift at the hospital. She had to leave before the full pizza consumption began, but we did send her off to care for our sick with a plate full of mini slices.

"Burr"

This is Burr; so named for the look of her hair.

This is my third doll (Doll #2 has found a happy home, and Doll #1 never made it onto the blog, as her proportions were a bit out of wack). I'm pretty happy with the general pattern that I'm using, so now I'm experimenting with creating clothes patterns.

This doll already has an extensive wardrobe, including a jacket, sweater, tank top, shorts, denim capris, ruby slippers and a book bag.

She won't be able to keep all those clothes to herself however.

Soon she will be joined by a couple of friends, at which point they will pack their bags and head across country to their new home!

Cob Oven: Let the Baking Begin!

Memorial Day weekend was such a bust weatherwise, but we were determined to get out there and try our new cob pizza oven. We're hoping to put it to good use this summer, but thought a trial run would be a good idea before we started inviting people over. While it's not completely finished (still needs a decorative layer and a door), it's definitely operational (with a little trial and error and a lot of pizza dough).

Mike preps the oven (ie: lights a fire, removes the hot coals and sweeps the ash out).

Test #1: a small piece of dough (we put cornmeal on the oven floor so that it wouldn't stick).

It was actually quite tasty (albeit a little on the crunchy side).

Test #2: Pizza!

While it looks beautiful, the oven was not hot enough so I ended up finishing the baking in the oven inside.

Mike rebuilt the fire (no photo, but imagine fire), cleans it out again and rechecks the oven temp with our new infrared thermometer.

Test #3: At 1000 degrees, we figured it was hot enough to try again (we waited til it cooled down a little).

Since we don't yet have a pizza paddle, this time we baked on the pan (with cornmeal between dough and pan) for ease of getting the pizza in and out of the oven.

Third time's a charm! At this point I was too full to eat any of it, but it did make for a very nice lunch the next day.