Michigan welcomed the arrival of August with daily thundershowers, storms and even some hail. What was left of the raspberries have long blown off as the season for our plants end. Luckily some late planted dahlias are growing like there's no tomorrow. DIY projects are starting to roll out, finally having space to air revamps of vintage furniture means I can finally get my hands dirty. As we mark the first month of house ownership and the year creeps further through, here's the little things of the last week or so.
- Reading everything between our Detroit Metrotimes to the Paris Secret, the reading bug that I mentioned last time has stuck around
- Watching it rain, a lot. It's like being back in Yorkshire. Great for saving water and therefore keeping that water bill down, great for the flowers and unfortunately the weeds enjoy it too
- Eating some fish n chips at Dino's in Ferndale to celebrate my British Yorkshire roots on Friday for Yorkshire, while the fish in it's tempura batter were delicious, the fries were far, far too salty ugh
- Pinning - cleaning ideas for vintage tiles to ideas for our bathroom revamp and record inspired decor.
- Crafting, well if DIY counts - repainting the bathroom and kitchen window frames and stills, repainting and updating the house numbers, revamping a vintage laundry hamper (post to follow). It's about updating and revamping. I'm more hand with a paintbrush than I ever thought
- Going to the Home Depot (a hardware store basically like B&Q if you're British and need a reference) far too often - it's like we live there. It's like a twice weekly thing
- Loving the cocktails from The Oakland (Ferndale), they might cost $10+ but they are worth every cent
- Hoping that the rain clears up, I have a garden to tame before I can plant all my spring bulbs
- Enjoying the odd non rainy evening spent on the deck drinking beer or eating ice cream with the husband
- Listening to some lady right behind us in the queue for getting into an estate sale complaining about foreigners, i don't think she was picking up on my English accent and Joe did well not to start ranting about how insulting she was being ...
- Thinking that even though I need to tame the garden this week needs to be more about work and less about gardening, sadly
- Finishing all the unpacking of out record collection, only took me four weeks to get there. But not that it's in any form of order ...
- Finding a great bookcase from an estate sale for $6 that's already filled with vinyl
What little things have been making up your world lately?
Bowie rocks! We chose Heroes as our first dance, I'm hoping to get the vinyl framed in our bedroom :) it's good to see you settled in a new home. xxx
ReplyDeleteAwesome choice!
DeleteSeeing David Bowie in someone's blog always makes me happy. He's the best. How lucky were you to find a nice shelf for your vinyl? Do you still listen to it? We have loads of vinyl but no record player anymore!
ReplyDeleteCaroline
Www.puttiingyourlifeinorder.blogspot.co.uk
Yeah we have nearly 1000 records and a vintage record player, in fact the records have a room all to themselves these days. Best way to listen to music.
DeleteIt looks like you're really getting settled ^_^ We've had so little rain here and none of the big storms I was anticipating, I'm hoping the fair weather holds out so that when we have to move we don't get rained on!
ReplyDeleteYeah nothing worse than a rainy or even a super hot day for moving. The weathers been weird, we'll have a sudden downpour for 30 mins to an hour and then back to sunshine for another day. Makes a lovely puddle in the back that's for sure, ah well i'm sure the plants love it!
DeleteI think we spent just about every evening at home depot when we first moved into our house! Once we finally got settled it felt weird not having any reason to go there. Haha. It's been raining a lot here too!
ReplyDeleteHaha I know what you mean, I have to write food shopping lists and home depot shopping lists. It's like we never have enough plus then you see everything else and get super tempted to redecorate everything in sight!
DeleteSo first of all, I could spend hours upon hours in Home Depot...and if you take me to Lowe's, dear lord it better be payday :) Also, is it just me or do a lot of people around Detroit tend to complain about foreigners? In all honesty, I don't get it...the only reason I can think of is because of the auto industry...foreign cars = detrimental to business (and even that's a stretch). People are weird!!!!
ReplyDeletePS This rain is driving me bonkers. It's like Dublin, but all day instead of just for a few hours!
~ Samantha
samsamcherie.blogspot.com
I think you might be right there with the cars, it always surprises me when we're in Pittsburgh and every car there is a Toyota, but around here it's like you *have* to have a Ford or GM or something. That and I think in part it's still the leftover racism of the white flight days when everyone left Detroit for the 'burbs alongside the increasing Arabic and Lebanese American demographics of cities like Dearborn - some seem to still use race and nationality for all the ills of the world yet along within Detroit itself.
DeleteFor a nation built from immigrants, some American's have a weird attitude to it at times!
Currently my little things involve my trains. I will also concur with the coolness of Mr. Bowie...
ReplyDeleteAny hendo's on that Yorkshire roots meal? And I'm almost on first name terms with the staff at B&Q and Homebase. I think they are worried I have a gloss problem!
ReplyDeleteAnd what's that ladies problem? Although, don't all all the people who say alumINIUM wrong love the British accent, so maybe you aren't the 'wrong' kind of foreign to her? Silly lady!
Yeah I was too white to be a proper foreigner probably! Haha the aluminium thing - that always brings up interesting rants about words around ours. While I might adopt other ways of saying words, never adopting the American wa of saying alumninium that's for sure!
DeleteIt's such a bummer to have disappointing chips. They rave about the chips here, but they aren't that great... but shhh don't tell anyone, I might get deported ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to see how you are going to store all those records!
Urgh work! I went back to work today, boo! Apart from the sadness of going back to work my life has been homemade puff pastry and left over pizza the last few days! :)
They over salt "fries" here and i'm yet to find a fat chip, they are all stick thin. As for the record storage well pretty lady you are in luck because I have a room tour of the record room coming on Friday(ish) if I get my act together and take the final photographs for it.
DeleteFirst day back at work is never fun after a break, it's a day of constant catch up! I hope you come to share your adventures of making that puff pastry, i've always relied on the shop made variety, sounds complicated!
Ugh, rain! It seems as though we are copying Michigan, although to a lesser extent, with all this rain. Summer has well and truly deserted us after the first. Thank goodness the sun stuck around long enough to give us a nice sunny day for the wedding! Hope you don't work yourself too hard and the weather is better so you can get back to gardening!
ReplyDeleteDebi x
This weather doesn't hold out much hope for winter that's for sure. Although can't grumble too much, cooler weather means working in the garden isn't so much of a work out in the heat.
DeleteThe weather there sounds and awful lot like the weather here - are you sure you're in America??
ReplyDeleteBookcase sounds a bit of a find, do we get to see it?
M x
Man this summer has been so odd weather wise, it's crazy!
DeleteThe bookcase can actually be spotted in the record room post in the very last photograph - it's the bookcase against the very far wall as you look straight ahead!