Happy Birthday, Josh!

Here's an early birthday wish, babe! There's a couple dozen of these waiting for you when you get home. Love you!

Honey buns!

Nope, not talking about Josh. Here's a good recipe worth checking out for a sweet breakfast treat. http://www.marthastewart.com/354671/honey-buns

Jake update

Jake really likes soft toys that squeak. We discovered this when we bought him one of his first toys: a sock monkey. He loved this toy a little too much, and though I tried to mend Monkey several times, he's since departed the Christensen homestead. Sorry, Jake! Monkey had to go!Monkey with a mended butt.

Here's Monkey. At this point, he's lost an arm and an ear.

Here's Jake recently (underneath my feet, as usual). You can also see the banister-railing sanding project is still going on. A good improvement since September!

The inner hallway - a work in progress

You may be asking yourself, "what have the Christensen's been up to?". Yes, faithful reader, it has been sometime since we created a blog entry. That's not to say that we haven't been doing anything blog worthy; on the contrary!

The last 2 months or so have been a focus on the inner hallway, downstairs and upstairs. When we moved in, there was a beige paint color (surprise! more beige!), and perhaps one of the worst pain jobs Josh and I have ever seen. Here are the before pictures to give you a vague idea:

Now with the high walls, and an ever decreasing amount of time, we decided to call in the professionals to help us get this done. The day before the painters were to arrive, I discovered that our banister and railing "only" had 1-2 layers of white paint covering the original wood. Well, one thing led to another....

And well, you get the idea....Needless to say, we are still sanding the last bits of paint off the railing. Josh has wanted to kill me several times since we started this, but I hope that once this is done we can enjoy how beautiful it will make our home. It looks much better than this right now, but we'll post a big finale picture once the work is complete...hopefully soon.

Here's the nearly final work product: crisp, glacier white walls. Surprising that we went with white, after all, but there was something so classic and clean (and bright) with choosing white for this space.

This weekend we hung a little collection of frames. We still have to fill most of them with family photos, but we've got it started with a couple of wedding pictures and my baby picture.

Here's the downstairs entryway: nice and bright with a new rug and greeting card holder that Josh made himself (with my urging!) with a salvaged window frame. He did a fantastic job, right? Now you all know that when you send Josh and me a greeting card, it will grace our front entryway as an ever changing piece of art. Can't wait until Christmas cards start rolling in...

Josh, Renee & Jake Go Hiking!

One month ago, we were lucky to adopt a great dog from the Washington Animal Rescue League. So please welcome the newest member of the Christensen family -- Jake!

In an effort to tire Jake out, we decided to pack up the car and head out of town to the beautiful Shenandoah National Park. It's a relatively short 75 miles from DC. Little did we know, these are some serious trails! We took most of these pictures before we were dripping in sweat. One or two might even make the Christmas card this year.

Fried green beans and other ways to ruin perfectly healthy vegetables

We had a successful crop of green beans this year. For most of them, we boiled for dinner, blanched for salads, or froze for later. But for the last half pound of beans, I decided to try something a little different: deep-fried green beans! I found the recipe in Country Living. Surprisingly good - though I never quite got over the idea that I completely adulterated a completely nutritious vegetable.

Despite Josh's expression here, I am pretty sure that he enjoyed these...

There is more than enough zucchini to go around this time of the year. I didn't plant any zucchini in our garden this year, primarily because it is a vining plant that would have taken up all of our garden space. But then my friend, Diane, recommended that we try training them up the side of the fence, and take advantage of all of our vertical space in our backyard. Fantastic idea, right?! I'm excited to give this a try next spring, and I'll probably attempt with zucchini and cucumber.

I bought some zucchini anyway, just so I could prepare some of my favorite dessert recipes (and some new favorites). Last week, I made Mom's chocolate zucchini cake. There are lots of loving memories with this cake. I also love having an excuse to use the bundt cake pan. Whenever I pull it out of the basement kitchen storage, I go into predictable pattern of reciting my favorite lines from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. At least I laugh; I can't guarantee anyone else will find my one-man movie amusing.

This weekend, I tried a new recipe: zucchini nut bread cookie sandwiches.

If you like carrot cake, you'll love these cookies. The frosting is a homemade cream cheese frosting! Josh liked 'em, of course.

Curtains - at long last!

No one ever tells you how much money custom window treatments will cost you when you first buy a house. I have my theories about this phenomenon (probably because everyone banishes that horrible memory of paying that bill), but that is really only a side issue to this post. Here's the important news: we've got some curtains!

If you remember from our last post about the dining room, we were still waiting on those curtains to arrive. They arrived early this summer, and they really worked to soften up the space. They are a cream color with a criss-crossing twine (yes, twine!) pattern.

Just before the 4th of July, we had our master bedroom curtains installed. What a difference! They really change the look of the room, but they also have an incredible amount of function. Before the curtains arrived, we had a lot of stray light coming in from a street lamp. No more! These curtains are blackout lined! Not only do they provide light control, all of the extra fabric in the room really absorbs sound. Not like we had a problem with an echo before (this room isn't that big), but it definitely makes it feel more cozy.

The other window treatments (roman shades) are in the pictures posted for the living room. We were also extremely happy with how those turned out. In all, worth the wait.