Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy New Year

64 degrees - enjoying the global warming here in Hampton Roads.

Lighting the Welsh lantern.
I do not have a good excuse for not working on the Pointed Playhouse and updating this blog for almost a month so I will spare you a long list of reasons that are factual and just say that I had to wash the cat again and water the Christmas tree.  But it has been cold here during the month of December and I had to do a lot of thinking about how to shovel the snow when it comes.

Christmas was very nice this year.  My mother came out from California after a very difficult year of having had two back surgeries and a move from Colorado to Santa Barbara.  She is doing very well getting around and helped light the Welsh lantern that we installed to the right of the front door.  She was able to walk out to the playhouse with Devon and get the complete tour.  It was fun for her to see it in person after only looking at the pictures from this blog over the past few months.  Jill and Bobcat came down from DC and made Christmas special and an old friend Mike was here for a couple nights just after the holiday.  We went out to lunch in Williamsburg one day, toured the Mariner's Museum and Mike and I went to a little German restaurant up the street and had a couple Hefeviesen beers and talked about the old days when we all lived in Europe.  It was a full house and we all had a good time.

Clams to go on the Linguini.
A Mexican Christmas tree this year - Devon and Lauren played "Feliz Navidad" during the December piano recital in Williamsburg.
Clams over the pasta.
Santa brought the girls an electric "wood burning" stove for the playhouse.
A new tradition - find the pickle on the tree.
Comfy slippers.
One of the cannons from the Monitor - at the Mariner's Museum.
The turret from the Monitor sitting upside down in a bath for probably ten more years.
With the recent nice weather and time off from work I finished installing the skirt board around the base of the house and then began work cutting, nailing and gluing and fake beams ends that jut out of the second floor on the far ends of the playhouse.  Once that was done I cut more of the pressure treated one by material for the second floor exterior corners to make it appear that the house was built with large timbers.

Welsh lantern hung at the door.
Skirt boards all done.
End of the beams installed on far and near sides.
Corners wrapped in pressure treated wood to look like full timbers.
Other end - still much more work to be done.

I believe this was just a short break in the normally very cold winters that we have here and so I plan to lock up the Pointed Playhouse for the season and concentrate on indoor projects.  I still need to finish building a cabinet in the service room between the washer and dryer, a cabinet in the den and cabinets in the cedar closet in the master bedroom that I failed to complete last Spring.

Happy New Year to everyone out there!