Trail of lights - 2007

Ok, I'd only gone through the Trail of lights when I did the 5K run a few years back. Me, Tom, Rachel and Rebecca went over to do the full experience this year. Being the last night, the hoards were out in full force. The trees are a sight to behold. It's fun to get swept along with the sea of people and also to have mouthfuls of kettle corn.

So with this set of pictures, you can both see some of the sights in the trail of lights, but also some interesting attempts at photographing lights in the dark, and some weird long exposure 'accidents' that turned out pretty well

Trail of Lights 12/25/07 8:40 PM

Tasty Dosai

We took Rachel to introduce her to the Dosai - the most perfect Indian food (at least in my world). It's not subtle in it's size

Dosai 12/25/07 8:35 PM

Shiny new garage floor

To cover the nasty 40 year old concrete, we got one of those shiny epoxy coatings. It's beautiful. I might become neurotic about keeping the house clean

New Garage Floor 12/25/07 8:32 PM

Mom get's a camera

Stacy and Kim, Gramma, Aunty and Tom and I got Rebecca a camera. She was excited

Mom Gets a Camera 12/25/07 7:53 PM

Gingerbread Houses

I've never made gingerbread houses before. I thought it would be fun. So I invited a few friends over and we went ahead and made some houses. Baked from scratch, and decorated with all sorts of sugary goodness

We had one roof failure (bad icing consistency), and that caused the house to turn into a church rather than a cabin. Monica used the few bits of gingerbread scraps to make a modern house (it was modeled on a famous house, but I can't really remember the name of it)

Gingerbread Houses 12/23/07 3:57 PM

Almost done!

No pictures just yet, but the house is getting very close to done. It's been beautiful and sunny the last two days, so the spraying is finished, and they are going methodically around the house touching up the details. The front door might be purple by the end of the day. But I'm not entirely sure.

Rachel is here

And she's hanging out doing very little as any self-respecting college freshman should.

House, continued

Tom is sad. It keeps raining. However, we had one brief day of respite and the painters managed to get most of the eaves and trims painted, and part of the house painted. Sadly, they were painting the house basically in the dark, so there's a fair bit of weird overspray.

House Paint, Continued 12/16/07 11:14 AM

On Friday, it rained again, so the guys were back inside working on the garage. It is now a lovely shade of blue, and with everything, and I do mean *everything* else in there covered in blue as well. Painting a garage with sprayers seems silly - I mean, sure it goes fast, but you have to keep the door shut, so you basically gas yourself while doing so. The house stunk for the next day, and in the process of trying to get the door open the next day, we munged up the bottoms of 2 pairs of shoes by stepping in still wet paint.

And now, 8 days later, we are still living inside the quarantine zone. Plastic covering the windows. As I said before, it makes Tom sad. Here is also some of the crap that got taken off the house that needs to go back up as well as newly purchased items to replace those that had disintegrated in the years they've been used.

Garage Paint 12/16/07 11:21 AM

Tasty cupcakes

Edible flowers on cupcakes. How fabulous

Heather's Birthday cupcakes 12/13/07 12:07 AM

House paint, Caulk, Masonry, Carpentry, Masking, Priming...etc

Riiight. So our house is deceptive. It looks nice and modest from the street, and when you get inside, it feels rather cozy. But what each and every contractor working on our house finds is that it's deceptively large. This go around. Exterior Paint.

Step 1. Power wash. i don't have pictures of that, because the house looked the same, but just had less dust and cobwebs.

Step 2. Caulk. It took 2 full days of two guys working full time to caulk the house. Tom estimates that they used upwards of 50 tubes of caulk. Afterwards the house looked pinstriped

House Paint, Caulking 12/12/07 11:35 PM

(click picture to open the album)

Simultaneously we also had some masonry work done. When we first bought the house and had it inspected, there were all sorts of hazardous brick situations. Getting rid of the curry scent was a higher priority in our world though. Tom found a lovely mason to fix the decaying brick around the house.

Sadly, the brick is still ugly, despite now being in good repair

House Paint, Masonry work 12/12/07 11:45 PM

(click picture to open the album)

Also simultaneously we had the lovely Craig fix the rotting woodwork around the back of the house that had been damaged by sprinklers, and something unknown on the side of the house. We managed to not have to buy any new cedar, which is great, because it's special order, so you have to get a bunch, and it's a real pain.

House Paint Carpentry 12/12/07 11:54 PM

(click picture to open the album)

Lastly in the "prep" phase, the house got masked and primed. This all got done in one day - a Saturday. There was a period of time when all the doors had been masked off, and they were priming the front door and garage door, and so we truly were trapped in the house.

As I type, it's been raining since this was done, so we still have all of our windows masked and covered. It's VERY weird to not be able to see out of the house. Tom keeps having to run and open the front door or walk around the house to see what the cause is of a noise he's heard.

The house however has made the all important transition away from being "poo brown". Now, since the house has a light white primer coat, it's "frosted poo brown"

House Paint, Priming 12/13/07 12:00 AM

(click picture to open the album)

Lucy's scarf, and the new couch

Here you go. First the scarf you made for me

For Lucy 12/12/07 12:36 PM

And the new sofa:

Sofa 12/12/07 11:18 PM

Lucy i promise I'll post more pictures

I have the nifty camera, and I take the pictures, but I don't ...share....the pictures.

I promise to be better

Stepho 12/12/07 12:26 PM