Sentimental Sandwich

One of many amazing European meals on our honeymoon.

I hate to brag, but Chris and I had pretty much the best honeymoon ever. We spent a week in Italy, and a week in southern France, enjoying lots of great food, delicious wine, beautiful sights . . . it was amazing. We occasionally try to recreate parts of the trip, and our latest is the caprese sandwich. It's delicious, and very easy to make.

Start with good bakery bread, a good tomato, fresh mozzerella cheese, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Fresh basil is optional. Lightly toast the bread and add thick slices of the cheese and tomato. Finish off with spices and dressing to taste and eat. That's it!



This sandwich is all about quality ingredients, so I recommend a good home grown or farmer's market tomato, great sourdough or French bread and high quality mozzerella, which is usually either vacuum sealed or in fluid in the deli area of the grocery store.

I recommend enjoying your sandwich with a nice cold stout! Bon appetit!

New Linen Shade

Front door with new linen shade

As much as I love our six glass panel front door, it does not provide much privacy from the street. If you drive by at night, you can pretty much see into the entire house from the front door.

We had to get creative with a solution that was not too boring or stuffy. Becca picked out a nice yellow linen for the fabric. We found something call "gallery rails" at Van Dyke's that could function as the mounting piece.

We are happy with the results. And +1 for Becca's nifty sewing skillz.

View from outside. Orange + Yellow = fun

Plaster = Mess

This is why you don't see people using plaster and lathe anymore. A total mess.

Sanding made a mess that took weeks to clean up. I suppose a master plasterer would not need to sand their finished surface — that they could simply apply a perfect smooth finish. But as the picture shows, I needed alot of patience and sandpaper to get my wall back to normal.

Guess I won't be poking into our wall carelessly anymore.

New Mantel Plans

Our fireplace and mantel

Our current fireplace is, well, just kinda boring.

The rest of the living room has been nearly perfected, but we don't really dig the dirty old brick mantel and hearth. It's time for an update — and I can't wait to get started on it in a few weeks.

Until then, I am perfecting the design plans, which you can see below.

Initial mantel design with marble tile

My initial photoshopped solution is super simple. I made the design last winter, which carries the look of our house's millwork through to the mantle. Kinda a shaker/craftsman style.

Updated design with future fireplace insert.

The second design(more recent and to scale) is where I am heading with the look. We added some more details, changes in the profile and a ornamental footing.

Our plan for the area between the mantel and the firebox is to use Grecian White subway tile marble. For the hearth, similar subway tile, but in a dark Saint Laurent marble.

Saint Laurent and Grecian Marble

If you have any suggestions or ideas, let me know and maybe I can incorporate it into the final plans.

Quick Refinish

Our new and improved entryway table.

A few years ago my grandmother passed along her 1970's Viking sewing machine to me. With it came this sewing desk:



When it's folded up it looks like this.



We keep it in our living room right across from the front door, so it's the first thing you see when you walk in.



I love having the sewing machine so accessible in the living room, and the size of the desk is nice for an entryway table, but we've never loved the look of it. So I attacked it yesterday.

This project was completed overnight, and cost a whopping $12 for these pulls:



to replace these tired ones:



I used gel stain leftover from our handrail project.





And this is what we ended up with:



I'm really please with the results. My favorite part is that the details really pop with the nice dark, uniform finish.

Holy Handrails

Sometimes I wonder if I am ocd. I will get fixated on a project, and build it in my mind a hundred times before I actually make anything.

I have been thinking about doing this project for two years now, so its been meticulousy considered - probably too much.

Well, the timing was finally right to update our staircase with some classic handrails to match the rest of the dark oak trim in the house. The process went like this:

Buy/Order all the parts ($200)

Prep the plaster and remove old ugly handrail.

Measure and assemble handrails. (this was the hard part)

Sand and stain oak to a dark walnut finish

Install with railing hardware

Pictures below document the entire process.

Original staircase had no handrail. Boo.

Handrail endings

Rail bolts and glue makes the wood turn magically

Two 90º turns with rosette endings

Stud finders don't really work on a plaster wall

Bare wood test on wall

Sanding smooth

Staining with a gel, really nice to work with.

Downstairs handrail, finished

Upstairs handrail, finished.

Detail of turn and rosette

Wrigley wishes he had thumbs

More angles

Detail

Trial run. Approved by Becca

In the Meantime

So, Chris is in final stages of this impending project. We hope to drag out the suspense (which I'm sure is just killing you!) no more than another day or two. In the meantime, here's what I've been up to:


We call this one "Hear No Evil, See No Evil" - monkeys are eyes and ears from being finished.

I made my first sock monkey a few weeks ago. They're a bit time-consuming, but pretty easy and irresistibly adorable, right?

So, my 3rd niece Phoebe Jane Elliott was born in Grand Rapids last Friday. This weekend I couldn't resist making her and her sisters each a monkey, that I can give them when I visit in a few weeks.



Best of all, as we took these pictures we realized that my nieces' initials spell "ape" - how appropriate!


Annabel, Phoebe and Emma - in no particular order!