Fall daze

It's officially been fall for two days now, and I've felt it in the air for a little longer than that. The weather has been warm, hot even, on some days, but it's a golden sort of heat, not the searing silver-white hot of July or August. And we didn't really have that this year.

For a few weeks, I've been glancing at the maples outside the office window and thinking they looking slightly tinged with lime green that was headed toward yellow, but then decided my eyes were playing tricks on me. But it's unmistakable now, the yellow is coming.

I'm good with that. It's been a coolish summer (which I'm also good with) but fires kicked up all around Bend and it turned smoky, which always makes me immediately ready for fall.

In the meantime, we're looking at buying a second house in Bend, which is exciting. It'll be good to have a little more space so people can come visit and we can not spend all our time within 8 feet of each other.

New addition

It was a bit iffy whether the now-yellow dresser was going to come back to Bend with us, but I ended up doing it. The paint, for some inexplicable reason, was still kind of gummy, despite having had three weeks to dry and harden in 85+ degree temperatures. Consequently, the finish ended up a bit crappy, after getting jostled around in the back of the Q.

(And the "reveal" pic is craptacular, thanks to the impromptu hailstorm we had while I was taking pictures. It's much cuter in person. Whatever.)

But I'm overall very pleased with how it came out, mainly because of one little secret ingredient: Floetrol. It's a paint conditioner. It extends the wet edge and helps reduce drag. It's like pouring magic into your paint. Somehow, without diluting the color (which is good, because yellow is a sucky color to paint with and requires a lot of coats) it makes painting worlds better. I highly recommend you snag a bottle for your next project. I will never paint without it again.

The dresser takes up a bit more space at the top of the stairs than I'd expected, but it's ok.

It also doesn't particularly matter, because we're thinking we'll be changing places in Bend soon. We're kicking around the idea of buying something that's the exact opposite of our Hillcrest house...NOT a short sale or foreclosure, NOT with a yard that wants maintenance, NOT a fixer-upper, and probably more like 1500 square feet or less. Or renting something bigger. In any case, our 600-sq-ft studio days are numbered. And the dresser will have a new home.

Burn, baby, burn!

Excited to report that we FINALLY got a grill. Early last summer, our grill tried to blow up our house and kill Todd, so we stopped using it. Then we moved. And still grill-less, we ate no grilled food all winter. Then we decided it was time to find something new. Most of the grills in the $100 range are best described as "rickety" but luckily, Costco came to the rescue.

This little baby is almost normal-sized (plenty of room for two people, anyway) and also perfectly deck-sized. I'm debating whether to build a little table for it to sit on. In the meantime, we had grilled chicken the other night for dinner, and it was great. And I highly recommend the grill (so far).

Odds and ends

I am sooo excited for the new camera I picked up on Saturday--bday present from my parents. Technology has changed a little, since we bought a little Nikon point-and-shoot four and a half years ago (I think it's four mp and 3x zoom). The new toy is 14 mp and has a 7x optical zoom. It can see things I can't, which is amazing. Kind of like taking pictures with a microscope.

Anyway. My parents also picked up this mini hummingbird feeder while they were in Florida a while ago (they've been going so frequently I can't keep track of when it was--mark of Midwesterners with an eye toward retirement). I love hummingbirds and don't really have a good place to put a feeder on my dinky balcony, but this little guy is perfectly apartment sized. Note the suction cup, which will be stuck to my sliding glass door come summer. LOVE.

Speaking of summer and studio living...it has been killing me that I'm not going to have a big garden this summer. We've nearly polished off the stockpile of frozen pesto I made last August, and it just totally bums me out that I might not be able to grow my own (basil) this year.

The earliest of the early-spring plants are showing up at stores (hyacinth, pansies, daffodils) and I have a pot of pansies on the deck that the still-chilly temps haven't wiped out yet. But it's not the same as having a yard. (Then again, I suppose I should be glad I still have a house, even if I'm not living in it. And I am.)

Lastly...love this blog, In Praise of Leftovers. I found it while in search for a tomatillo salsa recipe on the weekend, and I'm a new fan.

Addicted

So the saying goes, "you can take the ____ out of the ____, but you can't take the ___ out of the ___." For me, the fill-ins would be girl and project. I can't help the fact that I love Home Depot (more on this at some other point. I sing along with Home Depot commercials and inform Todd that More Saving and More Doing is the Power of the Home Depot, while he cringes, imagining astronomical AmEx bills and unfinished projects littering our miniscule living space.)

Then there's this other detail: my under-the-bed boxes don't fit under our queen-size bed. Todd's do, but mine sit next to the bed, which is making me crazy due to how ugly they are. Also, it is a bloody pain to live out of a box. So I started my hunt for a small dresser to fit into the narrow space we have for it. It took a few weeks of craigslisting and a drive to Redmond, but I came up with this little guy.

Of course, that kelly green had to go, but I had peacock blue plans for it from the beginning. The wall to the left in the picture above sticks out only eight inches, so this dresser, at 14 inches, is just perfect for the space.

I originally planned to spray paint it (in the bathroom, which was an ill-conceived idea from every angle I can think of) but decided to paint-paint it instead. (Still in the bathroom so it can stay ventilated and cure properly.)

Anyway, I have to put the second coat on one drawer and the frame today, but then it'll be finished!

I'm hoping to replace the hardware with something snappy at some point, but right now, I'm just really excited to have a dresser (and to have painted something peacock blue -- I've been wanting to do that for a while).

Update to follow on this. Bonus: it will give me one more surface to decorate for Christmas. Which will bring my grand total of Christmas-y spots in the house to two. Not enough, but better than one.

I don't like thift stores. Sorry.

I'm not really a big fan of thrift stores. I don't particularly like digging through piles of other people's unwanted crap without the guarantee that I'll find what I'm looking for, plus they always seem kind of...unsanitary. And one that I went to smelled. This is probably very elitist of me to say.

(I'm also completely amazed by the plain old junk in these places. I know all about the concept of trash into treasure, but WHO buys these tacky little statuettes of cats playing with balls of yarn or garden gnome pitchers in the first place? And is there anyone out there who wants used Tupperware? Ew.)But I'm in need of a few items, and resale shops were/are my best bet. Items needed: a dresser for the apartment (those under-the-bed boxes ...I'm over it. Especially since mine don't fit under the bed.) and some trays for those little pots I got for the windowsill.
Being very picky, I struck out on the dresser. (I'm still stalking Craigslist daily.) But I did come up with some nearly perfect metal trays for those pots. So now, I just need some plants to complete my sweet little windowsill garden!

Items not needed: this silver-plated Paul Revere bowl. But for $4... It's amazing what a little silver polish will do. (That's the "before.") Right in time for Christmas decorations. Also, there was a lady who saw me eyeing it and chatted me up for 10 minutes about how she'd gotten one as a wedding present, it was perfect for everything, blah, blah, and I felt guilty about putting it back after that. So here we are.

Tabular conclusion

Turns out that table had it in for us. "That table" being the one I refinished several weeks ago and brought inside last week. The polyurethane finish was still curing, which means it was stinking up our house (room) and keeping us from sleeping. We are feeling very thankful that our friend who teaches shop at one of the high schools is letting us keep it there over the weekend. Hopefully by Tuesday, it'll be dry. What a pain!

Chocolate zucchini cake, take 2

So the cake overflowed, which is lovely. But it has redeemed itself...

Because that is a very good way to spend a few minutes in the afternoon. And it just might be my new favorite chocolate cake recipe. Next time, though, I'll use my springform pan and avoid the spillage.

And hopefully those jagged edges that looks like I bit around the outside of the cake. (I didn't. Though I did eat some of those pieces.) This would be a great cake to layer, because it's so tall. It'd look like three layers with the work of two. (Three-layer cakes are my nemesis: one layer heads east, another west, and pretty soon it's just a disaster.)

Coming up later: reaction from our landlords (who pay our utilities) when they find out I left the windows open and the heat running all day to air our apartment from a) burnt cake and b) the fumes from the table I refinished, which we suspect are trying to kill us while we sleep.