Steak dinners are never bad

Sorry about the poor photo quality....But had a great steak (one ribeye, shared, $10), shrimp (4 prawn at $5) mushrooms and baked potato with fresh garden chive for dinner last night.  Felt we deserved it after sanding/staining wood all afternoon and Todd helping Elliot at the farm.  Plus not eating beef but once or twice per month.

Paired the dinner with a really nice Napa wine from our local grocery store, Pierce's. The wine was a beautiful, full nose/mouth taste of Napa.  Highly recommend!

Kitchen cabinet redo

Am working on the sanding and staining the recycled kitchen cabinets which were the infamous honey oak color from the 90s. These cabinets, reclaimed from a remodeling job, will be in our downstairs kitchen.  The sanding was easy-peazy because the original stain was so light.

Now I'm onto the color portion of this project.  I'm going for a darkish brown color on the oak wood.  The middle panel has one coat of my mix, while the bottom one has two. I mixed two parts glaze to one part paint and the two coats seem to do the trick with a finishing rub of walnut Watco Oil.  I am looking for the warmth of a rich color while still showing some wood grain.  Working with the glaze/paint method gives me more color choices than just staining alone.   I got the idea to "paint" the cabinets from a cute little DIY blog called anythingpretty.com.  Just a few more doors to stain and they will be ready to put back on.

Best garden producers this year

Looks like the Chard and bird-house gourds are the winners in this year's garden.  The tomatoes flopped, the rabbits got the peas and the arugula, while awesome has totally gone wild.   The Chard is just delicious this year and I have tons more to harvest.

Pickles make the world go 'round

One jar of sweet pickles is what came from our garden this year.  Alright, I confess, we do have two other jars of dilled pickles, packed by Todd.  

But these babies are mine....

My favorite pickles are the kind you get at multi-generational potluck dinners.  Those butter pickles, sweet and full of warm summer memories.  This is what I've attempted to created.  

Recipe: 10 smallish pickle cucumbers from your garden - sliced, water, sugar, cider vinegar, dill, a little more sugar, pepper corns and a few red pepper flakes to spice 'em up a bit.  I'm sure there's some salt in there as well - a good pinch - and then marinated in the refrigerator for a while.

   They will go quickly at the upcoming Wedekind family reunion. 

Remodeling project updates

 

The granite counters were just installed yesterday for our on-going DIY project downstairs.  We've been slowing building out a second kitchen area to use for parties and summer outings in our backyard and pool.  

We started the project about two years ago, with salvaged cupboards, and a gently-used dishwasher and refridgerator.

Now all we have to do is finish the drywall, hook up the water and heat vent, install the wall tiles, paint the walls and FINALLY we'll be pretty much good to go.

Summer flowers

August and September are proving to be great months for my backyard flowers.  Here's a link to some more photos - if you'd like to see some color!

Seattle was a treat

Spent last weekend in Seattle with our good friends Scott and Terri who live just north of the city.  Our good friends Mary Kay and Paul also came - so we had a full house and a great time!  Just have to say, if I had to live somewhere else, Seattle would be high on the list.  Ocean, mountains and a great temperate growing climate for flowers.

We spent our first day, up at 5am to beat the tides and head out into Puget Sound at 6am.  It was stunningly beautiful that day.  Blue skies and amazing views.

We dropped five crap pots into the Sound while we wandered all around the islands.  The salmon had started running and we were going to fish for Lumpies and Chinooks.  Fishing didn't turn out too well - we only caught two - but the crab pots (loaded with salmon guts and chicken wings) got us 13 crabs for dinner.

I also got to check off "See Orca whales in the Puget Sound" from my bucket list.  The Orcas were stunning and we saw about 15 of them following the salmon.

We played tourists all weekend with our friends and visited Port Townsend, downtown Seattle and a great sunny day at Lake Baker at the foot of Mt. Baker.

We'll definitely be back!  Here's some more photos from our trip -