Home improvements

We try to do at least one home improvement project each summer, and this year we decided to tackle our balcony. We have enough room out there for a table and chairs, and there's a nice view of the city, but it's a little... bland.

Table & chairs removed to show you the plain concrete floor.

We bought deck tiles at Ikea, and it took a grand total of five minutes to install them. They just snap together!

Ben is so handy.

After I stained and sealed them.

The following weekend we went to a nursery and picked up some window boxes and flowers. After getting them all set up, and bringing the patio furniture back out, now it looks like this:

(We still have to get real pots for the basil on the table)

 To recap, with a few hours work and a couple hundred dollars (almost all for the decking), we did this:

Before

After

Take that, Tim Allen!

Woohoo!

In case you didn't see it on facebook, my cross stitch submission to my favorite fantasy author's book trailer competition was in the released trailer! I'm pretty sure this means we're best friends now. And it also means I'm friends with Neil Gaiman and Patrick Rothfuss, two of my other beloved fantasy authors.

Fun Fourth

Since we aren't in California this summer, Ben and I were able to spend today with friends doing our annual Philly Fourth of July Tradition: the Super Scooper All-You-Can-Eat Ice Cream Festival!

I didn't eat a cup from every single booth as in past years, which I guess means I'm getting old. I still ate a pretty ludicrous amount of ice cream, though.

After sufficient gorging we walked over to the harbor park, where we discovered something we had missed last time: giant cargo nets stretched over the water that you can hang out in!

We are rule breakers.

Adorable rule breakers.

The weather was gorgeous - warm but not hot and just a bit of breeze coming off the water - and we spent a few hours just lounging around chatting. At one point our friend got a phone call from another friend who asked what she was doing, to which she responded "not much, just drinking beer with friends in a giant water hammock after an ice cream festival." Hearing it all together like that made me realize I am quite possibly the luckiest person in existence.

Pop Up Harbor Park

We live on 13th street, and if you walk down to where 0th street would be, you'd be at the Delaware River. Usually the waterfront is pretty boring - there's a hotel and some old boats there, but that's about it. Still, when the weather is nice Ben and I like to walk over to stare at the water for a while, just for a nice walk. However, as of this week the waterfront is now home to a pop-up harbor park!

None of that is usually there - just the brick walkway and the stone wall with the posts and chains are permanent. The entire boardwalk thing, including the trees and the floating garden, are new and just for this summer. There are a bunch of repurposed shipping containers scattered around - some selling food and beer, others with small arcades inside of them.

The stretch of lawn between the road and the river, which is usually just home to some trees, is now a "hammock lounge" with tons of color-changing lights strung up.

There's also a bocce ball court, ping pong table, and a bunch of games everywhere (like an oversized chess set and giant jenga). The whole thing is extremely hip - they've even livened up the boring old flag poles by wrapping them all in knit cozies.

When we went yesterday it had just opened and so, while still fun, was also extremely packed. We're planning to go back on a random weeknight in the hope that it will be less crowded, so we can grab a hammock and hang out for a while. There's so much fun stuff that happens in Philly over the summer, I wish I still got summer vacation...

Good job Ben!

Ben ran a triathlon today! It was his first time, and he did it with a group of friends from his lab. His goal was to finish between 3 and 3.5 hours, and he ended up finishing in 2 hours 57 minutes - woah. Here is him looking like the champion that he is:

And here is me being proud of him, but also reluctant to hold him too closely because he was super sweaty:

Blackwork Orange

The first wedding in our year-of-seven-weddings was this past weekend near Plymouth - our hotel was literally across the street from Plymouth Rock:

It's a rock! An underwhelming rock!

The wedding itself was fun - we got all dressed up and had a great time hanging out with friends.

We look like grownups!

The couple met in Philly, and she's a huge Jane Austen fan, so this was the sampler I made them:

I bought a book on blackwork recently and was excited to try it out for the first time in this project - except I didn't want to do it in black since I thought that would be too dour for a wedding sampler. I picked orange because it is bright and happy, and also so I could make the pun in this post's title.

Ooooh.... ahhhh....

It was a fun technique to learn, and my book has a bunch more patterns I want to try out - good thing I have a bunch more weddings to create samplers for!

Colorado!

After our mini college reunion on the cape last weekend, we headed to Colorado for a week of vacation. Happily two of the college friends who weren't able to make it to MA last weekend live in CO, so we could see them this week instead:

Yay, e-friends!

Ben's parents own a cabin in Winter Park which they graciously let us use - it's like living in a post card. Seriously, this is the view from the deck:

We spent most of the week reveling in doing not much of anything - just sleeping in, reading, watching movies, eating, and generally being layabouts. But we did get out a bit - Winter Park is right next to Rocky Mountain National Park, so we spent a day there driving along Trail Ridge Road and gawking at the views.

Park entrance

Ben at the bottom

Me at the top

Look how much snow is still there!

Panorama of the top Ben took with his fancy phone

Believe it or not, Ben even convinced me to go hiking one day. And I hardly complained at all.

Hard to complain when it's so pretty

Finally, Ben wants (and deserves) credit for capturing this enormous bee that was in the house:

We're both bummed to be going back to the real world tomorrow, but happily we've got more fun stuff coming up this summer (so many weddings!) to look forward to.