Rain, The Symphony, Bookshelves

There have been oh, 4 or 5 blog posts rattling around lately, but just can't seem to get myself to sit down and type them up.

We had a really lovely rainy weekend.  There hasn't been any rain to speak of since June, a few showers that fell in Austin but never here.  We hit the jackpot this weekend though - nearly 12 inches when all was said and done.  It was a great opportunity to just sit and watch it rain, so lovely to do that.

We did venture out Saturday evening to hear the Austin Symphony perform. They did the show "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony".  Long story short, the symphony provided the sound track to a bunch of looney tunes cartoons.  It was fabulous.  Not sure if it was more fun watching the performance or the kids.  They were so excited, laughing hysterically, and totally into the whole thing.   So fun.  Here's a link for more details, it's a great show:

http://www.bugsbunnyatthesymphony.net/concert.html

And that brings us to the bookcases.  Lots of progress.  Pretty sure the router is my new best friend, or at the very least my very favorite power tool.  We disassembled the library last night, I painted today and hauled the base cabinets inside.  With Mike's help tonight we may actually get those cabinets installed and the top in place.  The shelving units are ready to assemble once the base cabinets are done.  Then it will be on to all the mountains of finishing work that needs to be done.  All of it is a bit scary at the moment, moving things into the house and actually taking off baseboards and painting walls and such makes it much more real.  It is exciting though and hopefully it will be finished sooner than later.  I'll miss my self imposed end of Oct. deadline, but the wait is worth it.

Router Fun

There have been so many distractions/delays in my bookshelf project.  One little hangup has been the router.  At some point in the planning I decided that cutting grooves in some parts of this project would be necessary.  So I bought a router.  But it has been sitting in the garage untouched for quite some time.  I didn't actually know how to use a router, Mike had never used one either. So, long story short, last night we got some bits and today I found my courage and went to it.  Some youtube videos and piecing together of crummy instructions later I fired up the router and cut the first groove (in a test piece of wood).  It was terrible!  But, it only took another try to figure it out and in no time I was cutting very pretty grooves that won't be seen.  Anyway, the router is lots of fun and now I know what I'm doing with it.

I actually made some good progress on the shelves this weekend, and maybe, just maybe they'll get done before forever!

Birthday Fun!

I started this post way back in July to celebrate my milestone birthday.  Never got around to finishing it, we were headed out for vacation just after my birthday.  I'm not even sure where I was going with what I had written, so I scrapped it all and here we are.  I'm revisiting it because we just celebrated Mike's birthday and birthdays seem like a happy thing to post about.  Soooooo....

Turning 40 was grand.  Apparently my friends think it's a huge milestone to be celebrated.  Lots of people helped me celebrate in many ways.  The best part though, was getting to spend the day with my little family.  They were so sweet and spoiled me rotten.  I made myself one of those awesome milkbar cakes with a gazillion layers - it was a mint chocolate chip cake.  Best birthday present - Alex recorded a CD for me of him playing the piano.  It is so sweet.

On to Mike's birthday. I tried to convince him to take the day off work to spend at home with us. It just so happened that the boys were off school on his birthday.   His computer crapped out Sunday night, I figured that was a good excuse! But, he had to go into the office to get his computer fixed if nothing else.  That's ok, it gave me time to make him a gazillion layer milk bar cake (german chocolate). The birthday gods decided he shouldn't work too hard though, the power went out at the office so he got to come home early in the afternoon and spend half the day with us.

Lots of presents and cakes later, I think it's safe to say we both had great days. Ben's big day is next and he's already making plans.  To finish things off, here are pictures of the cakes.  These are directly from the milkbar website because I'm too lazy to load my own pics at the moment.  But, my cakes did look just like these, and tasted amazing!

  

Signs of Fall

Yay for October!  In my book October is the best month of the year, for many many reasons which I need not go into.  Except, I will point out that it's a milestone month for Mike and me, we met in October, fell in love in October, and somehow or other through all of life we are still together this year, in October, and plan to be next October and every October after as long as we both shall live. So, it's a happy time :-)

October means fall.  We get our share of cool-ish weather.  It's all relative.  Instead of highs in the mid-90s, we get highs in the upper 80s - low 90s.  That 5 degrees makes all the difference.  More importantly, we get some slightly cooler mornings, which is just lovely.  I smiled to myself yesterday morning as I saw all of the neighborhood walking their kids to school, not just the dedicated few that do it everyday.  That's how you know fall has arrived here.  No leaves to change colors, no "crisp, cool, autumn days", just a few degrees cooler in the morning making it enjoyable enough to walk the half mile to school.

Then there is the pumpkin-everything craze that seems to grow crazier and crazier every year.  That's fine by me, I like pumpkin-everything.  I usually don't have pumpkin anything though until Thanksgiving.  But, we stopped to get ice cream after a bike ride over the weekend and they had pumpkin cheesecake ice cream.  It was pretty darn awesome.  Now I do want more pumpkin-anything.

The kids are planning their halloween costumes.  Looks like it's going to be another easy year on mom. Ben keeps changing his mind, he has been counting down the days and says he doesn't have to decide until the day of Halloween.  I reminded him that I needed at least a two week heads up so I can make his costume.  Ohhhhh....  didn't think about that!  I think he's all set now.  Going to keep quiet on what they plan until the day of though!

The bookshelf project is coming along.  The cabinets are very nearly done, close enough for now, just a small bit of paint on one side, and repaint the door that needed some corner repair work.  It's time to start constructing the top shelves.  Pretty sure we have that all worked out.  Mike helped me get the very large board cut this weekend, now it's up to me to actually assemble some shelves.  So very many things to do before this project will be done.

So, happy fall. Enjoy some cool-ish weather and lots of pumpkin everything.