Learning to take Breaks from Hard Work

This being the third summer of working on our house, Steve and I are finally learning how to take just a few breaks from work and getting smarter...and poorer in the process. While we still do the majority of the projects ourselves and at least part of every project we hire out to cut down on costs, we have learned that we need to leave some time for fun as well as work. In addition, we probably would have truly killed ourselves by now due to amount of work and 107 degree heat over the past two weeks if we had not hired a wonderful contractor to help rebuild our front porch...did we say that it's over half way done and we've only done a couple hours of demo work?

At Stef and Marc's wedding, July 4, 2009


Cannon Beach for Mitch and Erin's wedding, July 18, 2009



Ben grandma's lake house on Mason Lake, July 24th, 2009
*note the cute wet dogs and Porter's silly little life jacket (he is not exactly fond of the water)


Bones and Brew Fest August 2, 2009
August attempting to get his first taste of beer (John & Jess' adorable baby boy)...he already recognizes a good beer

Summer Harvest

We have shared a garden with our next door neighbors for the past 3 summers in the grass (now dirt) strip that divides our two driveways...it's the perfect use of space and gives us some super yummy summer-time food. I am still wondering if we will be daring enough to try some winter crops this year as well.




Picture of the garden...a great use of virtually unusable space

Our first large crop of the summer includes:

• walla walla onion (a left-over from last year, funny being that none of the onions grew lat year-this one was supper tasty)
• lettuce (we just planted the 2nd crop)
• green beans
• zucchinis
• cucumbers-they are amazing and super easy to grow
• tomatoes, all varieties, probably ready to start picking next week
  
• carrots-they are only a couple inches long right now
• cilantro-it died, I did not cut it fast enough
  
• mint
• basil
• blueberries, these we just planted on the north side of the backyard so we'll see if they survive the 107 degree heat we have today! A Portland tie record