Gone with the Wind

Boy, was it windy this weekend! Saturday was nice and warm, generally, but Sunday was ridiculously windy. So windy in fact, that my clothestree (partially loaded with damp clothes) collapsed into a heap of aluminum, cord and laundry AND we had to cancel our hiking venture to Auburn.

On Saturday we went to Home Depot to buy some decorative trim to put on the guest room wall where the paint color changes. My dad suggested that we install "picture hanger" trim there, which has a notch cut along the top edge where you can put a nail, onto which you can hang a wire-suspended picture frame. HD did have that sort of trim but we decided that at over $2 a linear foot is was too expensive; plus it was too fancy for our humble little room. We finally decided on a less fancy, less expensive design for the wall and chose a narrow crown moulding for the ceiling. The crown moulding is made of foam, which is nice because it is super cheap (Dave calculated that it would cost us only $200 to crown-mould the entire house), already coated with primer (makes painting it easier), and very light (essential for installing this stuff above your head).

At the end of each visit to HD, Dave insists that he have some time to wander through the HD "tool corral" before we check out. Sometimes he finds some little tool or gadget that he ends up buying. (Lately he's had this hammer fetish that I just find so funny. He picks them all up and swings them to get a feel for how balanced they are and then carefully inspects the head design. I keep reminding him that we already have THREE hammers, plus a two rubber mallets and a sledge hammer. Not to mention that the stock of hammers at a place like HD rarely changes so he's just playing with the same hammers he played with the week before. He also has a pen fetish; when I clean out his work pants pockets I often end up with a handful of them. When we go to Costco he'll wander down the office supply aisle and fondle all the super-packs of pens before he hears me saying "Dave, honey, we ALREADY have about 8 trillion pens at home so let's not get anymore." I swear, I'm only slightly exaggerating. He's actually gotten better about the pen thing since now he can stock-up on pens at work.) My dad has taught me to be wary of impulse shopping because without "prior planning" you can get into financial trouble. But we justify Dave's tool corral habit because, as every handman knows, having a well-supplied workshop is more valuable than having enough pocket change to see a movie every weekend. That's something we've both learned from our dads: having the right tool at the right time is priceless.

This weekend Dave decided to get himself a Dremel tool kit, which we've both been wanting. It is his early birthday gift (mine will probably be an order of plants from a catalog nursery). His brother, Michael, was over for dinner last night and Dave dragged him into the garage to show him all the neat-o attachments that came with it: a planar, a router guide, a blade sharpener, plus a slew of buffing/grinding tips. Michael (who downright abhors home maintenance) came back into the house rolling his eyes and said to me "Oh. My. God. He's just like our dad with those tools!" Haha, he sure is and I love it.

At Ikea on Saturday we picked up another supply of laminate floor tiles for the office and the master bedroom. We also bought a cute little hutch thing for the kitchen to replace our beverage cart--it was too crowded with the coffee maker, electric kettle, and coffee grinder. The new hutch is taller so we actually have more storage space. The doors are especially handy so we can avoid having dog fur on our tea boxes. Since it is narrower than the cart I can finally walk through that doorway carrying a laundry basket without having to twist my body. Our laundry baskets are HUGE. We gave the cart to Michael so he and Bernie can use it to store towels and whatnot in their master bathroom.
We'd also intended to get a carpet for the kitchen-end of the dining room to reduce the grit load on the new laminate floor. That end of the dining room gets a lot of foot traffic since the dogs use the sliding glass door to go potty in the yard and we are always going in and out of the garage. We need a runner carpet that is about 9 feet long to reach from door-to-door. Of course, after perusing all the carpets at Ikea, the only one I liked was $400! It is a persian wool rug that has a little bit of the same peach color as our walls. But there was just no way we could justify that. So we ended up getting two cheap bathmats with rubber on the bottom so they won't slide around on the floor. The large loops of material are great for trapping all the paw and foot gunk. Even though they are bathmats they look okay in there.

For lunch yesterday we had blackened chicken sandwiches on homemade bread with spicy chipotle mayo, cheddar cheese, and spicy lettuce from the garden. For fun, I also made cream filled chocolate cupcakes. For a wedding present we were given a Williams-Sonoma mechanical pastry bag (it is a canister rather than a bag) with a filler tip. The cupcake directions say to use a filler tip or the smallest tip you have for your pastry bag. Well, I tried to use the filler tip but the hole is so small that the path of least resistance for the frosting is to just squeeze past the plunger inside the canister. Phooey. I ended up putting the biggest tip on and filling the cupcakes from the top almost to the point of burst each cupcake. When I frosted the tops with chocolate icing they looked flawless (except for my sloppy frosting job). These would be super cute for Easter with pink or green cake filled with yellow or purple frosting. Maybe I'll have to try that...

For the sandwiches I slathered the flavored mayo on each slice of bread, layered one with the sliced chicken, topped it with cheese and threw all of them under the broiler until the cheese was melted. When broiled, the slice with only the mayo turned a little crispy but stayed moist from the mayo--sorta like garlic bread.