Fancy Birthday Cake!

 Had a friend trying to start her own baking business bake me a cake for my birthday. I told her I liked purple flowers, guitars and labrador retrievers. Asked for strawberry filling. I think this was wonderful and tasted great, too.

A Working Front Door!

 Well, it's been working for about a week. We've lived here just over 2 years now but the door has been nailed shut because the first year there was no porch and last year though there was a porch the door wasn't square and it wasn't a priority. But today Hal finished all the trim which I stained and varnished in the last couple of weeks while he was working on shimming and squaring. Here it is.

All that is left is a threshold which we will have to make to hide that half inch white riser, so we don't trip on it in the future. I think it looks pretty good.

Another Very Late Quick Update and Finished Windows

Well, we've been busy! In a nutshell: My sister and M hung out till mid-January, in late February Hal tapped 16 trees but the weather didn't cooperate much, and we only got 2 gallons of syrup. We had to quit early because we took a road trip at the end of March all the way to Texas. We left on a Wednesday afternoon because we wanted to stop in Fort Wayne, Indiana to visit the Sweetwater music store and look at some guitars. (I had a list.) And yes, we each bought ourselves a guitar. I got an acoustic and Hal got an electric bass. We spent the night there and left just after noon on Thursday to continue the trip to Texas. 

I will, hopefully, I'm so busy I may or may not get to writing more, but I'll try to go into more detail later.

We returned home a day early as our SIL had to rush off to see her middle daughter who had a baby a week early up in Fort Worth and got home 2 days later. We thought about stopping at Sweetwater again but figured we'd spent enough money for now.

I also picked up the dogs from our friend John's house because the dogs didn't go to Texas with us, they seemed to do okay while we were gone but I didn't get the "happy to see you" reaction I was expecting, maybe because they like John and his dogs.

We took a week off to do "stuff": unpack, wash clothes, decompress, organize Hal's walk-in closet by buying some short shelves he placed under the hanging rod. And we bought a pellet smoker. And we went back on the keto diet as the low fat one we were trying before the trip wasn't getting great results and we gained all the weight we had lost while on vacation.

Second week back we started on the house. I began staining and varnishing window trim and Hal installed it. The 3 windows we had left (not counting the 2 in the garage, those are not a priority) are now finished, 2 in the TV room and the one in my room.

A TV room window

My window

Now that these are done, we've started on the front door. As of yesterday, it is squarer in the frame and has a deadbolt so now we can finally go through it. After the lever handle goes in Hal will start on the jamb extensions which I will then stain, etc. I already finished the trim for it. Not sure which door we will do next, possibly the one into the main bedroom, that door still needs to be stained. A big job.