saturday seaside

we only live like 45 minutes from the ocean, so why don’t we go there more often? this summer i swear i’ll go to the beach more!!
this is Scarborough State Park beach, we went over there one Saturday morning because our usual dog walking trail through the woods got so yucky with punky crusted snow, seas of mud and lakes of snowmelt. So the beach seemed like the best place to let the dog frolic off-leash without having to slog through crusty snow and mud. Beach was indeed perfect, Laika had a great time, made new friends, played with lots of seaweed, chased gulls, jumped on surfers, and only drank about 2 gallons of sea water.

beach = best cure for cabin fever

laika met a lab puppy and they frolicked in the frothy waves together.

Local Attractions: Mid-Coast Maine

 

I wish I got to spend more time in Maine’s mid-coast area; it’s beautiful and filled with interesting stuff to do – nature, history, art, craft, food, museums, concerts and festivals, antiquing and flea-marketing, beaches and boating, hiking, rugged and remote stony coastlines and pretty little seaside towns filled with victorian mansions. Here’s a quick overview of the region from Downeast Magazine. The Maine coastline is a convoluted fractal landscape of fjords and islands and peninsulas, and a lot of the interesting stuff is way down at the end of peninsulas so it can sometimes take a long time to drive a short distance. Route 1 is the coastal route that heads from Portland all the way up towards the Canadian border; it passes by some gorgeous scenery, salt marshes and busy harbors as it hugs the contours of the coastline and passes through dozens of amazing little seaside towns and tourist stops, but it’s a two-lane road that tends to get brutally congested during summer weekends and basically for the entire month of august and anytime there’s some event going on, plus especially backed-up at all the bridges where it crosses from one peninsula to another – we’ve sat in some epic traffic jams on both sides of the bridge in Wiscasset. So either bring some snacks and good tunes and be ready to take it slowly, or else consider strategic use of 95 or 295 to get up to Augusta and then head east to the coast. You’ll miss some lovely scenery but in the busy season it’s often the faster way to go. If you do pass near Augusta, it’s seriously worth stopping for a meal at A1 Diner in Gardiner, a cute and colorful classic diner with excellent eats including some great sweet-potato fries.

Read the rest of this entry »

Local Attractions: White Mountains

Franconia Ridge / Crawford Depot / Lake Chocorua / Franconia Ridge / Imp Trail / Rattle River Trail / Jackson barn / Diana’s Baths

kitchen inspiration

we’ve been thinking hard about how to put the kitchen together… we realized that we both really aren’t into the look of a bank of store-bought cabinets, thinking about open shelving instead, not sure what to do under the counter. So anyway we came across this photo that we both love. Of course our kitchen doesn’t have brick walls, and luckily we do have big windows and lots of light, but anyway, i just dig the open shelves and the way a large open kitchen space becomes cozy and simultaneously tidily organized and informal. They have an island too, just like we’re going to. No idea where this image came from. Anyway now I want all those orange (red?) pots and pans!

Kitchen hearth

We’ve started laying the kitchen hearth!!!!! The weather has started getting crisp and cool, and now that we’re living here it feels like time to focus on getting the woodstove in. Evenings are feeling pretty chilly around here. Before we can set up our woodstove we just need to build the hearth to set it on.

So we have these beautiful blue penny tiles that we got back in may. First we looked up size requirements and clearances for our stove. Drew up plans, then taped out the hearth plans at actual size on the floor using green painters’ tape. Ripped out the yucky vinyl flooring in the spots where it was covering up the hardwood flooring. Measured, cut and screwed down cement board.

laying down cement board. with some help from pups.

We were lucky enough to have some handy visitors at this point, so Gaurav’s partner Caroline pitched in and helped out a whole lot! Before mixing the mortar we had to build a temporary wooden frame to keep the edges of our hearth nice and neat. We did a dry run first, just to figure out how all the tiles fit on the hearth. Then mixed the mortar and slathered it all over the cement board, trying to get an even layer all over, which turned out to be a little harder than expected.

Caroline measuring tiles

spreading mortar!

And then laid down the tiles! This also turned out to be a little tricky, and we didn’t get them quite perfect, but we did a pretty good job for a first time. We had to let the mortar dry for a while (we gave it a full 48 hours since the weather’s so rainy) and then mixed up the grout. We picked a greyish color called Sahara Beige. It’s a pretty good match for the tile color, I think. Grouting was fun! The whole project was fun.

laying tiles on the mortar; tiles all set and waiting for grout!

spreading the grout

wiping off the excess

It’s really our first project actually building something finished, rather than just demolishing or doing behind-the-scenes stuff like wiring and plumbing. (that stuff is fun too but the results aren’t quite as spiffy.) Now the fancy-looking hearth looks wildly out of place in our messed-up, gutted old kitchen. I still haven’t really worked out what our kitchen will look like, haven’t decided on paint colors or anything. So I’m a little unsure whether this fancy hearth will fit in with the rest of our kitchen, hopefully it won’t stick out too much.

Now the grout’s dry, I think we need to put on a sealant. Then take up the frame and then set up the wood stove! Hoping to have our first fire by Sunday, when the weather’s supposed to turn cold again. And soon we should put some molding around the edge of th hearth. We’re thinking it should be hardwood so we’ll have to make it ourselves, in my dad’s workshop.

walking in Mike’s woods

walking in Mike’s woods, Laika in the big meadow

Our next-door neighbor Mike owns almost 40 acres of land out behind our house, and he’s always encouraged us to go out and explore his land. There’s a dirt road leading out behind his house, and a network of paths all through the woods, and a huge meadow that he’s been working hard all summer to keep mown and cleared. I can’t believe it took us until mid-summer to finally get out into the woods behind our house and start exploring, and I’m so glad we finally did. I’ve been taking the puppy out for walks most days, it’s easy to pass a whole hour or two wandering and looping around all the paths and splashing in the stream and exploring the woods.
In other news, I got a “polaroid” type app for my iPhone so that’s why all my iphone snapshots are now fake-polaroided. Its kinda silly but… since my iPhone photos always come out smudgy and cruddy-looking anyway, it’s funner if they at least look old and cute…

the new puppy

what a photogenic little peanut

Here’s Laika! she’s so cute!!! We couldn’t survive for long without a dog. I didn’t want to rush to replace our lost pups too quickly, but we realized that summer is really the best time to start out with a new dog, and we just fell madly in love with Laika’s cute face on petfinder. Right now we are just fostering Laika, we haven’t formally adopted her yet. She has a really tenacious urinary tract infection that hopefully will be all cured after a few more weeks of antibiotics, and then if all goes well, we will finalize the adoption. She seems just as healthy and happy as any puppy, she’s been a crazy little monster all morning and now she is napping sweetly at my feet. Laika is around six months old, she’s a rescue puppy and she was brought up to Maine from a high-kill shelter in Arkansas. Nobody knows what she is, she was billed as husky and german shepherd but we’re thinking she could also have some australian shepherd, maybe even a little bit of beagle? for sure she is 100% puppy. She’s only been with us for a day and a half, but so far I can tell that she is CRAZY about food, any and all of it, she is smart as a whip and busy busy busy all the time. She seemed to fall in love with us just as quickly as we fell for her! She’s an expert counter browser, she knows her name and usually comes when you call, she’s very very curious, she likes chasing butterflies and chickens and trying to climb into the dishwasher, she doesn’t know how to fetch yet but I’m trying to teach her.

visiting friends!

Andrew and Vickie (and Shea) from Troy, New York, AND Drew from Montreal, all came up to visit for a weekend and we had a great time and got lots of work done! It was just great to see them at a moment when we were feeling really sad and needed to be cheered up.

andrew & vickie at diana’s baths

We spent some time in Limington, had a leisurely lunch at our favorite spot, Krista’s in Cornish, and finally explored one of the hiking trails in the local Francis Small nature preserve. Next morning everyone helped us drag off a few loads of junk to the dump and then load up the truck with firewood to bring up to Intervale. We had a really nice day and night in Intervale, cooked good food and relaxed, unloaded and stacked that firewood, dragged an old washing machine out from the basement and off to the dump, then went to visit Diana’s Baths for a lovely splash in the very cold river. Not quite swimming season yet! Back to Limington the next day, Andrew helped Mike and Richard install extra support beams above the kitchen doorway while Vickie and I laid waste to the upstairs apartment in the ell, dragging out years of garbage and debris and ripping out the shower stall, then moving on to my studio, where we did some ceiling repairs and then to our bedroom where we ripped out a bunch of particle board from the floors! Thanks to all for the great help and good company!

Midge’s Ice Cream

just opened for the season!

This cute little place is right down the street from our house in Limington. Perfect for biking over there on a warm summer evening. We’ve driven past it a few times and I always think “I can’t wait til they open!” So as soon as we saw the lights on, we stopped in for a taste. I had a “moose on sugar,” that is, Moose Tracks ice cream on a sugar cone. I believe Midge herself took my order.