It's cold now. That's right, it's even cold here in the South. We turned the heat on in the house, we found most of our hats, mittens and scarves. I put the down comforter on the bed yesterday and it's awesome. Our bedroom used to be a porch and it's the only part of the house with the original, single-paned, wicked drafty, with slightly-cracked-glass-in-them windows. It's difficult enough to get out of bed when the floor's cold in the first place, but trying to get up when the floor's cold, the air's freezing and it's still dark out is not how I want to get up.

We've got a new trick in our home-winterizing bag this year: bubble wrap. Our friend, Taft, originally turned us on to the idea when it was still hot here and I've been biding my time to try it out. It's just as simple as it sounds: put bubble wrap on your windows. It takes a little time to cut the pieces to size, but that's the most time consuming part. To adhere it to the glass you simple spray a mist of water on then press the bubble wrap on. Magic! For more info and step-by-step photos check out Build It Solar's write up.

The wrap we used we bought at Staples, I've read suggestions of trying to get some for free from furniture stores, and there's also a type of bubble wrap made for greenhouses that's a little thicker and sturdier. We opted for the larger bubble style wrap which is supposed to work a little better than the little stuff, and every little bit helps. In addition to bubbling the windows I'm also going to put the plastic shrink stuff over them to help combat the extreme draftiness.

Other than winterizing things have been quiet, we're both gearing up for the winter Big Crafty and are looking forward to spending Christmas in Vermont for the first time since we moved away 3 years ago. I know we've been neglecting this little blog, but I've been a little better about keeping up with Petit Dejournal which is the other project I've been working on.

Fancy meeting you here.

Dying
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

Today I've had three cups of coffee. It feels like it's been overcast and raining for weeks (months), there was a brief reprieve yesterday afternoon and it might clear up by Saturday only to turn gray and cold by Monday. I think I deserve my three cups of coffee. It was even gray and chilly while Cynthia and Leland were here which made us cancel our trip to Chimney Rock and spend most of the time in coffee shops and puttering around the house. On one of the only sunny days George managed to talk them into helping dig up our garden space, which is pretty much just solid clay, and then into getting a load of compost and shoveling it off the truck. (The convincing wasn't all that hard - someone in the group is mere weeks away from being a Harvard-educated landscape architect.) The morning before we shipped them off back to Cambridge we dyed some Easter eggs. It was pointed out to us that all the eggs we had for dying were brown, not white. We decided to dye them anyway and, as you can see over at Flickr, they turned out surprisingly well. I think if we'd been prepared with more rubber bands and a little more of a strategy they all would have been incredible.

There's only one more piece of furniture to move in and the house will be fully functional. Unfortunately it's the biggest, heaviest table IN THE WORLD and I'm too short to be of any use moving it. OH! I lied! There's another piece of furniture: a bed frame! Asheville craigslist finally came through for us and Saturday we'll go pick it up and (assuming the mattress is dry from the thorough bleaching it's going to get - mold, again) then we'll sleep on a real bed like real people. When you get down to it (or up off it) it's not the sleeping on the floor that I don't like, it's that sweeping the room is a huge pain and seriously, how great is it going to be to have space to store things under the bed? Wicked great.

We told you about the biofuels grant, right? Our blogging has been so scattered and inconsistent I can't remember. George and our friend James have applied for grant to start a biofuel refinery in Vermont. Word on the street is that they're one of three finalists and hopefully will find out if they got it or not late next week!

Meanwhile, my sweet job at the cake shop is totally sweet. Not only literally, but in that hip slangy way too. Jodi and I joke about how it seems I was thrown in the deep end - handed a recipe, talked through it, and left with the mixer. While it may have been a little jolting (my last job I spent a week, literally - a week, standing and watching someone before I was allowed to do it myself, and even then, supervised) it turns out: I know how to bake. I can confidently use my judgment and experience. One of the best parts is that Jodi trusts me and when time allows would rather I sort of figure it out for myself. (Because either a) she's pretty sure I'll get it or b) she's confident that it'll turn out at least acceptably, which is fine because she has at least one million other things to take care of) Regardless: my job rules and I'm going to kick ass at it. Honestly, there have been a couple little stumbling points for me, but I think they're being ironed out. The most important thing to remember: cake can smell your fear. It's not even a joke, if you don't assert yourself as the alpha that cake will dominate you.

Be bold little bakers.

Worst Thing Ever.

Worst Thing Ever.
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

This is what it looks like from the dining room, through the office to the bathroom. The yellow (Lemon Pound Cake) was the last color we chose for the house and it's clear it was made in a hurry and without thinking it through completely.

I need suggestions as to what color should replace this yellow. Things to know: the room will be an office/studio space, it gets TONS of light, and the rooms it connects to are blue and red (as you can see), and white is not an option. Help!

It's Thursday.

Whenever I talk to my parents they remind me that some people actually read this blog.  

Most of the big work on the house is complete and by Saturday night we should have all the kitchen appliances installed and running.  Cereal and sandwiches have been our staple meals this past week.  The tiny cooler from my childhood (the one with the teal green top that my brother wrote my mom's name and our phone number on that's big enough to hold a six-pack of cans) has been chilling our half and half, sandwich meat, and cheese.  The stock pot with one handle we got from a yard sale (or Goodwill, I can't remember) filled with ice has been chilling our milk and mayo.  The lettuce is on its own.  

We're sleeping on our real mattress again and have even unpacked our clothes.  The clothes that aren't in desperate need of washing (those are properly piled in a corner) are becoming rarer and rarer - there are rumors the plumber is hooking up the washing machine tomorrow.  (Honestly, this plumber: unimpressive.)  There're shower curtains around the tub and after several afternoons of hunting and pawing I found a sizable cotton bathmat at a reasonable price.  

Our office got it's first coat of paint, lemon pound cake, and man - it is IN-TENSE.  It's like walking into a glowing lemon.  I finished the first coat at night and as I stood in the blue bathroom and looked through the office to the red dining room I knew the yellow was a mistake.  It felt really...primary.  It's been yellow for about a week and I still don't like it, some people thought the color would "settle down" or we would "adjust" but they were obviously and instantly wrong.  The color we're pretty sure we're switching to is a grayish tan called Haze.  I'm going to do a little more scouting around for a similiar color with a different name, I'm not so down with "haze".   It doesn't sound like a very productive office.  

There'll be some pictures soon, maybe even as early as tonight. Maybe.

It's the little things

bathroom
Originally uploaded by lady grey cupcake

I highly recommend this wall color to everyone for their bathroom. It's "Provence" by Behr (How awesome is that bear at the loading screen?  Wicked awesome.) , available at Home Depot. We have yet to install the shower curtain rod, a mirror, and any sort of shelving, but then again, the light switches aren't full fastened to the wall yet.

Tonight we're installing the lower cabinets in the kitchen and by the end of next week the counters, sink, stove, fridge, dishwasher (!!), and upper cabinets should all be in place. I can't really express how excited we are to not be living out of a suitcase and cooler in one room with two cats, a litter box, and an air mattress. SOON.

George is attending his last Bee School class today, maybe he'll win a hive in the raffle at the end. (He's hoping for bee books instead.)

I've started doing a little itty bitty bit of work at this new great cake shop, maybe I've mentioned it: Short Street Cakes. It's extremely close to our house, it's super small, and adorable. The cake is delicious and the owner, Jodi, is great. If you're in Asheville and are hankerin' for some sweet next Sunday you should stop by her graaaaaaand opening! I'll be there making cake.  (225 Haywood Rd. Be there.)

Living

After three days without a bathroom, we have a bathroom.  Best of all - it's gorgeous.  Seriously, just wait until it's clean and I get some pictures, it's by far the nicest bathroom I've ever lived with. The last three days have also been very long days, tiling and painting into the wee hours of the morning, sleeping on an air mattress, waking up and feeling as though we just went to bed.  Last night we started assembling the kitchen cabinets and hopefully by early next week we'll have the lower set installed.  This afternoon I tried to put one together by myself and parts ended up inside out and backwards.  C'est la vie d'Ikea.

The cats are handling living in one room very well: Girl spends most of her time under the loveseat and Boy spends most of his time on top of the loveseat.  Some time in the near future they will go to the vet for some shots and will not handle it very well. 

Almost

gothic amethyst
Originally uploaded by average lavender

The floors have been sanded and the first coat of finish is on! Man, those floors are great. See the color they are in that picture up there? They don't look anything like that anymore - they glow! It turns out they're made from heart pine so the grain in them is really amazing. The next coat of finish will go on sometime this weekend, I think. Consequently, we've decided to rent the house we're in now for another week. It was either that or stay at a hotel or hostel...with the cats.

We've begun moving things into the weird industrially, garage-y building behind the house. The cats are getting wise to our plans and are unsure about it all. They've decided to cope by going in and out of the house as many times as they possibly can in a day. We're exhausted.

Progress?

Progress
Originally uploaded by average lavender

This weekend is all about insulating. Next week is all about floors and drywall. And moving everything we own. And camping out in our "new home." Hopefully there'll be a floor in the bathroom and a toilet. And no gaping holes in the house. And heat. Follow the picture to Fickr and I've sort of explained what's going on. Too much painting, more sleeping.

Up: date & a tree

The schools in the area are closed today, for a brief moment I thought maybe it had something to do with the inaguration, but as it turns out they're closed for snow, the whopping inch that fell last night.  

We've got two weeks until we need to be all moved out of this house and, boy, is it going to be close.  It means we've got two weeks to finish the other house, today is inspection day for wiring, plumbing and framing, the paint arrived last night, there's no floor in the bathroon/laundry room, the kitchen should be arriving from IKEA today and the drywall that's up is still drying.  We're hoping the floors will be refinished as they're cleaned up and not all in one fell swoop.  George has gently argued for the floors to be refinished with some nice, friendly stuff from Vermont Natural Coatings, and as of this morning he's succeeded!  It doesn't smell as awful, it can be recoated in two hours, it's made from whey!, and it's made it Vermont.  

We've recently rediscovered our one friendly, neighborly neighbor who is (surprise!) also from Vermont! and who's looking for a new job!  She lives with a great golden retriever, Indigo.  We've been taking Indigo out for walks since we got home; it urges us (read: me) get out of the house, it lets our neighbor get out to continue the great job hunt, and Indigo gets to run around twice as much.   

Yesterday afternoon Boy got himself up the biggest tree in our backyard and it took at least an hour of coaxing to get him down.  In the end, I think it was jealousy that Girl was getting all the cat treats that got him down.  (Something to remember for the future.)  Since it's only about 20 degrees this morning he's content to stay inside and no up a tree.  Girl is content to take a bath directly in front of the space heater. 

For real

Legwarmers
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Slowly I've been making progress on a pair of legwarmers and a hat, both gifts, both should have been done ages ago.  I'm finally getting lace knitting down - I knew it couldn't be that difficult, I mean, other people do it.  

Acupuncture is beginning to help again, last week was one of the absolute worst - the elbow, the shoulder, the neck, headaches all day.  It was another episode of Self Pity: My Life is Over.  It's not so much my life anymore, just maybe ... this shitty job is over...when I find an awesome new one?

Happily, we rearranged the house! I no longer need to search for a room divider and it feels much more comfortable and homey. There are pictures, explanations, etc. over at Flickr.  We consolidated the desks and the coziness, the dining area is on the mend.  

I cut my right pointer finger across the first knucle with a serrated knife at work on Sunday.   Barak Obama was in Asheville this weekend, he gave a speech over at the high school and apartently got some ribs at the local rib joint, 12 Bones.  I wish I'd been there seeing him speak instead of slicing my finger open--they happened at approximately the same time.   

Our contract with Verizon has finally ended and we're shopping around for a new cell phone company. Front runner: Credo Mobile. I think deep down they're all evil and no one is better than another. Better to go slightly cheaper or lesser of two evils?

I leave you with this:  Cuppie Capers: Pastry Politics

Soup & the decorating scoop

While Asheville is suffering through the gas crisis George and I marvel at how little it's effecting us.  So far as we can tell, there's no predicted shortage of biodiesel and the little single gallon tank on the scooter is full, but mostly we don't go very far even when we do drive.  I thoroughly enjoy my life revolving mostly around home right now: knitting, cooking, baking, attempted home decorating, garden watching are all at my disposal.  

The latest food craze around here is carrot soup.  Now that the weather is cool and we're both working with little time to make lunches, soups are our new best friends.  Yesterday I made the Herbed Carrot Soup* from the Moosewood Cookbook and after George snatched it away for the pot luck Wednesday at work, I started in on the Gingered Carrot Soup from the previous page.  The herbed soup was lacking something and I'm pretty sure it was enough herbs. And lemon juice.  In case you'd like follow along at home:

Gingered Carrot Soup

from "The Moosewood Cookbook"

2 lbs. carrots

4 cups water

1 Tbs. butter or oil

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

2 medium cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbs. freshly grated ginger

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp each: cumin

                        ground fennel

                        cinnamon

                        allspice

                        dried mint

3-4 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

1 cup lightly toasted cashews

1) Peel and trim carrots and cut into 1-inch chunks. Place in a medium-large saucepan with the water, cover and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer until very tender (10-15 minutes.)

Meanwhile...

2) Heat the butter in a small skillet.  Add onion and saute over medium heat for 5 minutes.  Add garlic, ginger, salt and spices.  Turn heat to low and continue to saute for another 10 minutes - until onions are very soft.  Stir in lemon juice. 

3) Use a food processor/blender (or swanky immersion blender you got for Christmas) to puree everything together (including the toasted cashews.)  You may need to do this in multiple batches.  Transfer it all back into a dutch oven and heat gently before serving.

The changes I made included: omitting the fennel and mint because I had none, adding a potato, and sauteing the onions & co. in the bottom of the big pot and then adding water, carrots, etc.  Will it be delicious?  Perhaps.  Next on my list of soups are the Brazilian Black Bean and Susan's Easy Woodbury Chili.  

Now I'm going to share my home decorating woes with you.  Number one is that what little wall-worthy art we have is all miniscule for these walls - I don't know how to hang these without them swimming in a vast sea of wall color or without the walls become wicked cluttered.  Number two is that I'm still searching for an awesome room divider.  After dreams of a big Ikea bookcase turned to nightmares I'm finally moving on.  It would be great to do something so hip and so DIY like ladders with planks - but where do people find those oh-so worn and loved magical ladders?  I'm still considering the curtain divider which has potential to be neat, but also potential to be torn down instantly by Boy.  C'mon personal think tank, give me some ideas!

I leave you this afternoon with my next culinary task: Pine Nut Tartelettes.

*An interesting note:  while making this, the simmering carrots, onions, and potatoes smelled exactly like my grandmother Jane's kitchen.  

Toxic slick: coming to a beach near you...er.. us.

Last Wednesday a container ship ran into the Bay Bridge, dumping 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil into the bay. As for the cause, it's being attributed to "human error," which is believable and there was some serious fog that morning, but honestly--it's not like those pylons are tiny and they're equipped with radar. It's scary to think of what the marine life is going to be like around here in the coming years. In the meantime, officials seem to have everything under control.

George continues to pluck away at the Rabbit without much luck. The fuel lines have been replaced with stronger, clear tubing so it won't degrade as quickly from the biodiesel and we can see if the fuel pump is actually getting fuel, which it is. This afternoon his focus is on the fuel pump and whether something is amiss with it; he bought the pump used, but (supposedly) resealed from a fellow on ... ebay? craigslist? and has since emailed him to see if he can shed any light on the subject. Or find out if he got ripped off. Whichever. We're hoping it'll magically get fixed by Tuesday night when we have to head to the airport to pick up Jesse!

Yesterday we spent our rainy afternoon listening to Agatha Christie podcasts. Last week I painted the underside of our loft (which is the ceiling for the dining area) and it ended up a greenish yellow that Geo describes as glow-in-the-dark paint that doesn't glow in the dark. That's pretty accurate. This week I'll paint our new window shelf and then take a few pictures so you can watch the evolution of our weird apartment.

Part two: other stuff

Saturday night was a 40th birthday party for George's boss at the local winery. His wife is good friends with the owner, so he closed it down so we could have dinner there which was provided by the Puerto Rican restaurant Sol Food. Usually hanging out with the Coutures is entertaining and enjoyable, however this time is was the Coutures and the rest of their friends, who--aside from the other guys in the office--are all about 40 and from Marin. It was an awkward evening that with every "oh what do you do?" conversation drove home the feeling that we don't belong here. We don't have kids, we don't own a home, have a modern car, I'm not a contractor nor a designer, George isn't a business wheeler-dealer or wear a tie, we don't watch sports or even have TV, we know nothing about wine, we haven't traveled much, and we don't care about any of these things. We had a pretty nice conversation with one woman who'd grown up around here and seemed to understand that a lot of the residents in this area are completely intolerable, we liked her.

Sunday night we were psyched to be going into the city to have dinner with George's cousin, Iran, but didn't get to go because the Rabbit developed a fuel leak. George spent the whole day trying to fix it and when he thought he'd got it the car wouldn't start at all (instead of starting and sputtering.) We're both becoming more and more frustrated with this car, but probably will never part with it.

We finally found a place in the apartment for some bike hooks and got the bikes up off the floor! It feels a little less like we're living in a garage. George built a fancy new shelf to go under with window by the table, which replaces a skinny, ill-attached shelf the cats would sit on. Today I'm hoping we can agree on a color for the new shelf and for the underside of the loft, because while I can't put my finger on it I'm convinced that painting the right thing the right color in this place will magically transform it into a more comfortable, homey living space. Or I'm crazy and fickle about interior paint colors.

What we're really excited for is the middle of November when Jesse comes to visit! He'll be here for a whole two weeks around Thanksgiving, which we'll be celebrating at the 2nd Annual Fat Angel T-Day Feast. Maybe we'll get to take an exciting trip to some other part of this God forsaken state, or at the very least have a few days where we can all hang out with anyone having to go to work.

Today's fascinating lunch: mac & cheese with tuna fish. Tonight's fascinating dinner: sweet potatoes and chicken.