Dare to DIY

My nephew got married in September of 2012.  My two nieces gave to his bride for her shower a basket of wine bottles with tags on them, when to drink them, etc.  One of the bottles was a beautiful snowy scene that they had to share on their first married Christmas Eve.  They celebrated Christmas Eve with us and brought the bottle of wine with them.  I saved the bottle with hopes of doing something with it for them for Christmas 2013.

My husband drilled a hole in the back of the bottle using a special drill bit for glass only.  I bought a small string of battery operated LED lights at the Dollar Tree (only $1 - good price for that store wouldn't you say???) and I picked up a wine stopper with a Christmas tree on it at Pier 1.  Below is our finished product:

We love the way they turned out and can't wait to make some more! 

A week at The Cape

We just had our annual family vacation at "The Cape".  We rented a house with Rich's sister and niece in Chatham, MA.  It was a great weather week, we hit the beach every day except one, the boys chartered a boat and went fishing:

They ended up catching fifty-one (51)!!! bluefish!  They didn't keep them all, the first mate used some for bait to go shark fishing. 

Christopher rented a paddle board on Friday.  Started off really good, but there was a land breeze that day so when he attempted to return to shore he couldn't fight the breeze.  He had to be rescued by two wonderful people in their kayak.  I think I lost 5 lives that day. 

Scout's tricks

This is Scout - Jonathan likes to do "odd" things with him.  He thought sitting up at the kitchen counter was a good thing.  It is until he's all alone and thinks it's okay to get up there and destroy what's ON the counter. 

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July to everyone! 

First Fire

We had our first fire in the fire pit - so fun! 

We sat and enjoyed some wine, some S'Mores, good wine and great family!  We can't wait to do it again!  Hopefully the nights will cool down again soon, otherwise it's way too hot to sit around a fire pit...

Dreaming

Whenever life gets busy, I start dreaming about places I'd like to be at instead of work, home, car, etc.  This is a favorite spot:

This is in Little Sebago, Maine - a very relaxing, enjoyable spot.  We do a lot of this:

and love to water ski and tube, sit by the fire.  Here's a picture of Rich and I celebrating the 4th of July, I think in 2010:

Looking forward to some days to relax next week! 

Crazy Life!

Life has been on fast forward lately - working & playing!  We've had numerous parties to attend, family get-together's and trying to keep up with the outside work and inside work!  I have some pictures to post, I'll get them posted later.  Hope everyone is keeping cool today! 

Peonies & Poppies

I love seeing all my perennials bloom throughout the spring.  Here are my peony bushes.  The smaller one is much older than the larger one and for some reason it doesn't have as many blooms as in past years. 

This is the larger peony above.

This is the smaller (older) peony.  I took these pictures BEFORE a huge rainstorm last week.  The larger bush is pretty much beat down, the smaller one fared much better and I can still see some blooms ready.

Here is a closer picture of my poppies.  I love the poppies - I wish they lasted forever.  I used to have some icelandic, but they seem to have stopped blooming, all I have now are the orange blossoms:

I have a large Hydrangea, that has so many buds on it, we can hardly wait for it to bloom.  That blooms until late October/early November.  Looking forward to sharing those pictures with you!

We have some weeding and mulching to do - hopefully this weekend if there's time - we run out of time every weekend, we need to have 3 or 4 days off all the time to get it all done!

Pictures of the Fire Pit

A few hours of work - the patio was already there.  Rich and Christopher dug out the middle of the patio, laid the stone and cleaned up the cover and spray painted.  I need to get some plants and flowers, we have a large patio umbrella and some more chairs to put out for visitor's but otherwise it's ready to light!  Just need a bit cooler night for the fire.  And the smores fixings are all bought! 

A fire pit!

The boys have wanted a fire pit for a while - today Rich built one for us! 

I bought a great wicker furniture set at a yard sale and it looks great (a good deal - $35 for the three pieces and the cushions too. Then the owner of the set said I had to bring home the table, no charge!)

Pictures tomorrow...

Day Four - Smithsonian's

We spent Tuesday at the Smithsonian and Air & Space Museum - took our time at them and got a ton of pictures.  We even ran in to some of the students from our hometown, the 8th graders travel down and do the tour.  This is from the Air & Space museum - that place is awesome!  So much history and amazing all the planes that are in there. 

 We then went to the Smithsonian - another very cool place. 

Day three - Washington DC - Crime Museum & Spy Museum

Monday April 15 - we visited these two museums (these aren't free, you have to pay to visit).  They were Christopher's choice to visit and we decided to visit them early in the week. 

Here's Christopher in jail - let's hope it never REALLY happens...

And then they did the line up - aye yi yi - let's hope THIS never happens! 

Bonnie & Clyde's car.

This was definitely Christopher's favorite museum of the week.  Lots of fun things and a ton of stuff to read and learn about.  He was very happy! 

While we were in this museum, we got a text that the two bombs had exploded at the Boston Marathon - it was pretty surreal.  Of course we were concerned for Jonathan, knowing that he was going to be there, we just didn't know where he was going to be.  My first call was to him, he picked up right away and announced he was fine and already back to the UMass Amherst campus - we were relieved.  Then we got information about what was going on back in Boston and we were heart broken.  We couldn't believe that something could happen there - so scary.  Our thoughts and prayers are still with all the families and runners.  But, we remain

Day Two Washington, DC - White House Spring Garden Tour and Nationals Game

Our second full day in DC we had tickets to the White House Spring Garden tour.  It was amazing how close we got to the White House!  And so many people were there and we had the first tour of the day, I think there may have been two or three more after ours.  Here are some pictures from the tour:

From there we had a very long walk to the Nationals Park to see them play the Atlanta Braves.  The ball park is beautiful and everyone is so friendly.  The Nationals lost, but it was fun to be in a different park than Fenway.  Here are a couple pictures:  

We took the Metro back to King Street and then the shuttle back to the condo.  Patrice & Christine packed their stuff up and headed to Christine's apartment.  We hung out, got dinner from Cadillac Ranch (AGAIN!) and fell asleep pretty early - so much walking! 

We spent April vacation in Washington, DC.  We drove down on Friday (took us 9 HOURS...)  We stayed at the Wyndham National Harbor, a beautiful place to stay.  There was a complimentary shuttle from National Harbor to the King Street metro station in Alexandria/Old Town.  Here's some pictures from our Saturday in Old Town/Alexandria.

Christopher rented a bike to ride around and have some independence.  Rich and I walked around, visited some shops, went through an art gallery, sat at the water and people watched.  Patrice and Christine arrived later afternoon and we did some more walking around and visiting.  We saw a couple brides and grooms, one group was having their reception on this boat:

it looked so cool.  We had taken the shuttle from National Harbor to the King Street Metro.  From there we took the Old Town Trolley down to the waterfront - that was so cool!  Christine had her brand new car(!) and drove us back to the condo at National Harbor.  Patrice and Christine spent the night with us on Saturday - we went to dinner at Cadillac Ranch.  It was delicious!  We went back to the condo and hung out for a bit and went to bed, we had a busy day planned for Sunday!