i spring cleaned my little heart out.  added a handmade (knitted?  crocheted?) throw to our buffet.  part of the latest shipment of family memories from my dad, consisting entirely of handmade items from my grandmas unknown.  i think it brightens up the room more than the old sari i was using in its place.

i ate the food i wanted to eat (mostly leftover tofu tacos and tons of fruit, ahem).

i made this little cinnamon bread recipe.

i read my next book club book (the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society).  hard to follow.  consisting entirely of letters back and forth between what seems like an endless slew of characters.

i ran some errands, and got this little gem for free at my favorite dog store, prairie dog mercantile.  who can say no to a free 5 pound bag of $19 dog food?  not me.  and maybe it will even help the sophster with her itchies (this will be dog food #4 we’re trying…).

and finally, i made this a while ago, but just had to share.  asparagus pesto.  i love asparagus, mr. halloran loves pesto.  a delish dish we both enjoyed.  make it now.

<3

i spent a little time gardening in my toms.

while mr. halloran raked the bejeezus out of our yard and cleaned our gutters (<3 him).

angus was my little gardening buddy.

and i took some little seeds.

and added them to my new windowsill containers.

cross your fingers that we see some sprouts soon!

<3

mr. halloran is in our laundry room attempting to fix the beast that is our washer as we speak.

fingers crossed that buying a new washer is not in our future.

amana, you are on my poo list.

And also at long last, we are getting new windows.  Here is Mr. Halloran contemplating the various bids we received (and eating cookie dough).

We’ve been really torn about this whole new window thing.  You see, we live in a 1911 craftsman that has beeeeeeautiful single pane windows.  While they are beautiful, they are damn cold.  And it costs a small fortune to replace them.  So how do we weigh our comfort/energy efficiency against maintaining the beauty of our old home?  One would say storm windows I guess.  But these are expensive, do not qualify for the tax credit, and would make it so we can never open our windows because we have no place to store said storm windows.  We were very torn about the decision, but Leigh put it nicely when I told her yesterday when she said that putting efficient windows in our home will open the doors to more people who may want our home in the future.  Which is true.  I think there are more people who like to be warm and not spend a ton of money on heating the home over those people who want to maintain the historical beauty of the craftsman.  Particularly in our neighborhood, where there’s a mix of old and not-s0-old homes.

So we took the plunge and devoted a good chunk of our savings to the project.  We spent more to use a company that manufactures the windows locally, and bought windows that are replicas of our old ones (by replica I mean just with the type of grid and size of the grid – we can’t afford those oh-s0-amazing Pellas with the wooden grids).  We’ll see.  Hopefully we made the right choice.

Matt replaced our rotten front steps (which are now temporarily steps from our backyard up to the patio – please ignore the ugliness of our patio for we need to cover it with a tarp so the garage underneath doesn’t leak)…

With absolutely beautiful big sturdy steps to better welcome people to our home.

Aren’t they great?  Lucky girl.  That’s me.  Right here.

And while Matt was busy with his man project, I made some bags.  This first one is for our friend who helped us tremendously with the wedding – decorator/flower arranger extraordinaire.  Amy Butler pattern and fabric.

And this one is an early birthday present for my niece.  It may be a little big for a 4 year old, but it’s supposed to be a child’s messenger bag.  One Yard Wonders pattern.

Fall makes me happy.

In other news, I’ve discovered a new joy for antiquing.  The shelf and chair in the bathroom came from a local antique shop – I’m digging them.  And I found a couple of little Matt-approved guys to decorate the new bathroom shelf with.

We have been enjoying fresh herbs since I potted our little herb garden.  But now our peppers are getting ready too!

I couldn’t really resist in partaking in some of the bounty.  Delish.