Sailing Baby Blue

Our new basement is finally complete. It took about five months but we substantially increased our square footage and added a third bedroom and second bathroom. We also added more functional storage, including the absolutely essential wine rack. The next photo is meant more to show the floor than to give you a peek at our new toilet. The wood-look ceramic tile on the bathroom floor is one of my favorite features.

We just returned from a vacation to San Francisco and our latest renovation is now under way. The view from our sunset sail to Alcatraz. Jon took an additional week off from work to start on our basement remodel. Though our basement was finished when Jon bought the house, we needed to add an egress window to make the bedroom legal and we decided to add a second bathroom in addition to the laundry room (which is becoming a laundry closet). As usual, I don't have any before pictures, so in-progress photos will have to do.  After cutting a hole in our bedroom wall, the new window is in and getting close to being finished.    This is the old laundry room which will soon be our new bathroom. Our cave-like hallway that leads from the stairs to the bedroom. ...and proof that I do my part of the dirty work. Or at least proof that I wear this mask sometimes.

We finished our bathroom remodel at about the same time as our Thanksgiving dinner was ready. It was a little bit stressful cooking a huge meal while construction was going on and company was due over within the hour. The only before photos I could find are these: Then these are the next shots, right in the middle of demo:  It was an interesting week or so, being intermittently without a toilet. Here you can see we've made a little bit of progress:  Our bathroom expanded into our office. Along with all of the tools in the house. Sometime around 1:30am on a Thursday night while we tried to finish grouting our new shower tile, I started crying. But I kept working anyway. Even Penny fell victim to the construction chaos this time. As always it was well worth it, and looks ten times better than it did when we started. But since there is no evidence to offer of what it looked like before, you'll just have to take my word for it. ...

As part of our 2011 plan to pursue some short-term goals, I signed up for and just started yoga teacher training. From what I can gather about the requirements of training, I will be at the yoga studio whenever I'm not at work or asleep.So, that thing I said about starting an Etsy shop to occupy myself and make some extra money? Forget about that. Maybe teaching yoga is something I will be able to do as we travel to feed the cruising kitty, or at least can provide additional funds while we're preparing to leave. Yoga has been the only form of exercise I've found that I actually enjoy. Or to put it a little more accurately, I absolutely hate working out, and yoga is something I enjoy that happens to be considered exercise. Instead of feeling like a chore, it reminds me of how much I used to love ballet. Since we've been focusing so much on saving money, we had enough to cover the training. It's a rather impulsive decision, I admit, (let's spend all the mon...

In November of last year we created a budget and have been keeping track of our expenses since then. I must say that I'm doing a great job keeping track of how much we spend, and not such a great job actually sticking to the budget. Each month so far we've come up with some reason to go way over budget. I guess we do a pretty good job staying within the limits of the categories we've created, but something always comes up that we haven't planned for and we easily convince ourselves to spend. In December it was Christmas presents. Next year we will definitely set a limit on that. Yeesh. Also, we decided to take a trip to Strawberry Hot Springs for my birthday. It was wonderful, but expensive. In January, we took a snowboarding trip with friends. In February we bought a new printer, new glasses for me, concert tickets, ballet tickets, and a bike trainer for Jon. However, the amazing news for February is that we'r...

A couple of weeks ago we finally found the motivation to build the cold frame we'd been thinking about since October. It took about 10 minutes to build and probably cost about $5. We used the PVC pipe we had left over from hoola hoop making for the wedding, clear plastic sheeting, and pipe clamps. Last week I planted it with a crunchy winter green mix, two varieties of spinach, and mustard greens. I also started some onion sets in the other garden beds. The cold frame has been getting up around 20 degrees warmer than outside temperatures, and I've been opening it in back to vent it most mornings so it doesn't overheat. It definitely helps with moisture retention and I've only had to water every 3 days or so.

Jon's still hanging in there with biking to work everyday. There were a few days at the beginning of last month where the temperature dropped to 20 below zero. I gave him a ride on those days, because even my car was having trouble. The antifreeze actually froze in the lines and my engine overheated! Luckily it wasn't anything major (knock on wood) and the car was fine after the thaw.