What Jeremy did this weekend

He started Saturday morning at around 10:30 with a trip to the lumber yard (the colored plastic had been acquired earlier in the week), and worked until sundown.  

Our kids (and one or two others) lent him a hand.

He screwed the roof on around 8 p.m. and called it a night.

Sunday afternoon was spent installing the front door, a drop-down table and some shelving in the corner.

As of Sunday evening at 6 p.m. the house was fully functional.  Future plans include some sanding and painting, a door latch and perhaps a plywood floor.  I guess that subscription to Family Handyman came in handy (ha ha) after all!

Blackberries

A friend found a few blackberry bushes on the hill where the cows graze behind our house.  So last weekend the girls and I went on a mission to gather enough to make some ice cream.

I didn't manage to get any photos of our haul (or of the millions of burrs and thorns that we pulled out of our clothes and fingers, or of the kids' purple faces - mama fail), but we did make some ice cream.  It was pretty good.

I thought maybe I'd go back there wielding some pruning shears, and appropriately attired in my Xtratuf boots and gardening gloves.  But then today I picked up 8 kilos of blackberries at a nearby produce market for 22 lari, or $15.  So maybe not.

T-shirt mania (and cool things Jeremy has done, part 2)

I've been watching what I eat and working out (a bit, anyway) for a couple months now, and I'm down 15 pounds.  As a result, all my post-partum clothes are too large, but my pre-pregnancy clothes are still a little too small.  This prompted me to search the Internet for some easy patterns for summer staples.  I hit the jackpot.  In the last 48 hours, I sewed three tops and one skirt.  My serger and I are very close now, and my confidence sewing with knits is way up.

First up is this totally awesome tutorial for a knit pencil skirt.  It was so easy to make and it really does fit perfectly.  I envision many more.

I made the top using Maria Denmark's Kirsten Kimono Tee pattern - free! This navy is my first effort, made of a slinky rayon jersey I picked up in the $2.95 section of G Street Fabrics in Virginia.  It was much too big at first and I took it in twice.  I also lowered the neckline to make it more flattering to me.

This is my second attempt at the tshirt.  I drafted a drape neck for this one.  I love how it turned out, but it is a hair snug on me (which is why it's being modeled by the Lady In Red - Jeremy's birthday present to me and the cool thing referenced in the title of this post).

And my third effort, which is the best yet:

I need to bring in the neckline a little on the sides to keep it from slipping, and I think I could still take in the sides a tiny bit, but how cool is it that I made my own tshirt?  I'm pretty excited.

Garden update (and cool things Jeremy has done part 1)

I spend a lot of space on this blog showing everyone what I do with my spare time, but rarely do I show you what Jeremy does with his.  I have a few of my husband's projects to show off but I figured I'd start off with this garden update.

With temperatures routinely in the high 80s and 90s, my garden has wilted down to nearly nothing.  The downward spiral occurred not long after Jeremy built me a trellis for my spaghetti squash.

I was all excited because I had one fruit starting to grow - but after it reached about four inches long, it just stopped growing and then its vine withered and died.  The vine on one of my plants is still growing but not producing many blossoms (or any female ones until this morning).  The other three plants are decidedly stunted. Here are two of them.  Their leaves are quite small, though they don't seem to be as afflicted with the browning and yellowing around the edges that I'm finding on the more robust plant on the trellis.

This morning I finally saw two more female squash blossoms  - one on one of the stunted plants, shown above). As there is still a dearth of pollinators in the area, I pollinated them myself.  Hopefully they will start doing something.  My suspicion, though, is that the soil is out of nutrients (since it was pretty crummy to begin with) and that they won't bear any fruit.  There go my fall spaghetti squash plans!

Daytrip to Gori

My sister came out to visit recently and we took a day trip to Gori, birthplace of Stalin and home to a museum in his honor.  I had been to the museum on a trip to Georgia eight years ago (almost to the day, actually!) and it hasn't really changed much.  There is still virtually no mention of the atrocities committed under his rule, but if you were curious to read his schoolboy poems, the Stalin Museum's got you covered.

The house in which Stalin was born, preserved under a
Greek-inspired temple-like structure.

His private train car.

After we'd had our fill of Stalin, we headed to Uplistsikhe, a nearby cave city.  We didn't get a guide or anything, but the girls enjoyed scrambling up the rocks and exploring the caves.  This is an easy day trip from Tbilisi and a good one for kids.