Holiday Letter for 2010...

News of 2010

Greetings, Y’all!


Hope this finds you and yours ending your year in happiness and good health, and living in open defiance of the burdens and troubles of these times.

2010 was a year of big events in our immediate and extended family. In January, we celebrated our 15th anniversary and Clark’s 48th birthday. In February, we went to New York City with our travel friends Maurice Cottingham and David Schairer, and celebrated the 5th anniversary of our friendship with a group of amazing women (Mary Beth, Patty, Marlene, Rosemary and Kathi) who we first encountered, by chance, at a Broadway show in 2005, and who, as luck would have it, also live in the DC area. This ‘merged’ group of like-hearted souls, which we dubbed “The New York 9,” spent a long reunion weekend of shows, museum-ing and lots of good food and wine! In May, Clark’s brother, Jason (aka “Dr. Goose”), received his PhD in botany from the University of Mississippi. On the same day, and several hundred miles away, his niece, Kristian, received her bachelor’s degree in business at the University of Alabama. We feted both at a major cookout at Clark’s brother Keith’s house in Bessemer, AL. In July, Mike hit the big 5-0. We celebrated the event with Maurice and David at VOLT, the restaurant of “Top Chef” finalist Brian Voltaggio in Frederick, MD. It was a meal to remember! In September, Clark, Keith and Jason hosted a golden anniversary party for their parents, Bill and Christine Chesser, at the Bright Star restaurant in Bessemer, a place where Bill and Chris had dated back in the late 1950’s (and still looking much the same, according to them). Nearly 30 close friends and family members came to share stories and celebrate this milestone anniversary. Our Thanksgiving was huge, with the two of us, plus Clark’s parents, Mike’s mom, Ann, his sister, Katie, brother-in-law, Bryan, and nieces Jenny and Amanda, along with Maurice, David and David’s mom, Mary Anna. It was a 2-turkey event! Our Christmas will be comparatively quiet. Mike’s mom is visiting, and we’ll spend time with Katie, Bryan and the girls, and with as many friends as we can squeeze in.

Our travels this year were all domestic and mostly close to home. Our graduation trip to Mississippi and Alabama included several days in Memphis, TN, where we made the required pilgrimages to Graceland and Beale Street, visited the ducks at the Peabody Hotel, had some outstanding Memphis BBQ, and toured a marvelous and little-known museum dedicated to the artists of the STAX record label (which included Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers, among others). We traveled to Colonial Williamsburg and other historic sites in Virginia’s tidewater area with Maurice and David in May, and Mike took Katie and Ann on a trip to St. Michael’s, MD, and the eastern shore of the Chesapeake as an early celebration of Ann’s birthday in August. Day hikes in the mountains of Virginia with our friends Tim Thornburg and Steve Conrad were a highlight of the early fall.

Our vegetable garden largely flourished this year, thanks in part to our phenomenally wet winter, featuring back-to-back 2 ft. snowfalls that were locally dubbed “The Snow-pocalypse”. We had good harvests of peas in the spring, and tomatoes, peppers, okra and sweet potatoes in the late summer. Clark also won a victory over our tomato-thieving squirrels by enclosing the tomato bed in a 9’x9’ cage, which we called “the tomato room.” Once we plugged a few ‘holes’ in the superstructure—and soaked the rodents with a garden hose—they gave up.

Mike finished his third year leading a software analysis team on a defense contract with ATS Corporation, and was instrumental in writing the proposal that won them a new 4-year contract in September. Mike also completed a training course for obtaining a Project Management Professional Certification, which he’ll take the exam for in early 2011. Clark’s job as a telecom engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton continues to be challenging and rewarding. He managed two major projects from start to finish and got kudos for each. He took three courses during 2010 to prepare for the Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) Certification exam, which he also hopes to take in 2011. We continue to be active in our church, Clarendon Presbyterian, with whom we have been able to participate in projects to feed the homeless and to help feed and house the working poor. In September, Clark joined a 100+ member a cappella singing group, The Alexandria Harmonizers. He had his first concert in December, and hopes to go to a singing competition with them next year. So we already have lots to look forward to!


We wish you, our dear friends and family, a happy, peaceful and healthy 2011!

It happened

in 2009

Some of you were concerned when you did not receive our 2009 holiday letter.  Actually, we didn’t send one.  The reason we didn’t may be summed up in three words: MAJOR… HOME… RENOVATION.  Eight years after our realtor first recommended it, we had the layout of the main level of the house reworked, added a new living room at the back, moved the dining room to the front, created a new kitchen between the two that is open, larger and more utilitarian, and created an entry hall and a new powder room.  The design-build firm that we hired was amazing, finishing on time and on budget, so we could not have asked for a better experience.  Despite that good fortune, we were still without a kitchen from April 20 – August 7.  Clark cooked our meals in the garage and we grilled (a lot!), Mike did the dishes in the utility sink in the laundry room, and we ate on a tiny patio table set up in our den.  It was quite an adventure, but so worth it!  It inspired us to work on other rooms with our own labor.  We installed a “floating” bamboo floor in our den and repainted.  It has completely transformed the room.  Fortunately, the year was not completely consumed by construction projects.  We spent an amazing week in Ireland a month before the construction started, and shortly after we moved into our “new” space, we had a long visit with our friends Craig Cowden and Kurt Laidlaw at their beautiful home in Tacoma, Washington.  While there, we ate like kings (they are fabulous cooks) and visited the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Kubota Gardens, Pike Place Market and the Space Needle in Seattle, Mt. Rainier National Park and Hood River, Oregon, from where we hiked to about a half-dozen spectacular waterfalls along the Columbia River Gorge.  And those were the highlights of our 2009!

Christmas on Beachway

Hey Campers, long time no post.  I decided it was time to show you our new house all dolled up for xmas.  Below you can see the fireplace with our odd metal creche.  M's Mom gave us the 3 wise men two years ago, and we found  Mary, Joseph and the Angel at Pier 1 this year.  M got the red grasses and the vases from Marshalls.  It looks great in the daytime.

Below is our tree,  not a great picture, but not a great camera either.  We decided to put it next to the door to the deck, and it works fairly well there.

This is the dining room, over exposed but you get the idea.  In the center is a wire ornament tree that I found to display our White House ornament collection, M and I have one for every year we've been together, so we have 15 total.  This tree will hold 40 ornaments, so we'll have to split up after that.  Oh well.

Here's the kitchet space, we don't have any wall space in the kitchen by design...every square inch is used!  We hung those bows on the door pulls to make things more festive.

Heres' the kitchen from the dining room.  I have been pleasantly surprised at how spacious the kitchen feels.  It's got plenty of room for everything!

Here's one of th display nooks, with a creche we found in Old Town Alexandria a few years ago.  We will need to look for things to display in these nooks that are more in scale with the space.

This is down stairs in the den, we fixed up the mantel downstairs with shiny things.

Here's the wider view.    M and I got that small artificial tree years ago to display the White House ornaments, but they got 'lost' on the tree.  We're just using it for a little sparkle down there now, and it works pretty well!

Anyway. There you have it!

Merry Christmas EVERYONE!

S'all for now

cc

Stay Tuned for the BIG REVEAL!

M and  I are just past the 3 month mark of the end of the project (which was officially the end of August, when the punchlist was completed).  I took before pictures and will show before and after pictures in the next few days.

Since the project has ended, we've installed a bamboo floor in and painted the walls in our media room, hung pictures, and Friday (Nov 20th) we're having wooden blinds added to all front facing windows in the front of our house.  We are deeply grateful to my parents, who are giving us an extremely generous gift to help us pay for the blinds.  THANK YOU.  The blinds will make the house much more cohesive from the outside, with all front facing windows having the same window treatment (a design pet-peeve I inherited from my Mom).  Our windows have been a mish-mash of sheers, mini-blinds and (ugh) vertical blinds since we moved in 8 + years ago...it's a matter of $$$ and focus.  ;-)

Stay tuned!

cc

A busy, frustrating, exhilarating, exhausting weekend

On Saturday, I attempted to finish the quarter-round moulding on the bamboo flooring we installed a few weekends back.  M's task was to refinish the unfinished mantle piece that had been on our fireplace since we moved in.  We decided to stain it a cherry stain like the cabinetry upstairs, and give it a polyurethane coating.  We had a brainstorm about the credenza piece that we had in our entry way, a display case with sliding glass doors.  It's a piece that my mom bought for me at an estate sale about 23 years ago, there used to be 2 of them, and Mom gave me one and my brother the other one.  Mine survived, but my brothers' kids broke the glass in his, and then it was destoyed in a freak flood that happened in their townhouse.  We were looking for a replacement for it and couldn't find anything we liked, so we decided to try to update this piece.  Do you remember this?

M spent a lot of the day sanding it, and we have a plan to make it integrate with our new foyer.  Stay tuned.

Here's the scary rickety legs we removed from the piece.

Here's the Mantle piece that M stained...looks good doesn't it!  We polyurethaned it on Sunday, and can put it back up tomorrow.

Anyway.  My job was to finish the moulding.  I made my first trip to Home Depot at 10am, and I bought an electric nail gun, and some brads for it.  Long painful story shorter, the nail gun didn't work.  I threw a total of about 8.5 hissy fits and a truly awesome tantrum that M was concerned would summon the police.  The carbonized bamboo quarter-round was so hard that nails would not penetrate it.  So I tried to pre-drill holes in it with a 1/16" drill bit, and the eff-ing bit eff-ing broke!  (Queue tantrum, minus sirens) M was calm (only one of us is allowed to phreek-out at any time), he called Lumber Liquidators, and explained the predicament, they said someone would call us back shortly....and they actually DID!  The young man said that the last few batches of this product had been extremely hard, and they were using an epoxy to apply the quarter round.  I thanked him....Hung up...then Cursed them for not letting us know that when we bought the hateful stuff!

My second trip to Home Depot was at about 2pm.  I returned the nail gun, and bought epoxy and liquid Nails.  I must have looked scary.  No one would approach to help or see how I was doing. 

The liquid nails did the trick.  I first miter cut all the pieces to fit, then enlisted M to help me glue everything in place.  Here's the pics from  Sunday morning.  It work pretty well actually.

Here's next to the fireplace, this was one of 3 places in the room where it sort of gapped away from the brick.  I'll try using a sturdier drill bit and hold it in place with a wood screw.

Here's the other corner of the room.  On Sunday, I hid those speaker wires, so they're not on the floor anymore.

So here's the exhilarating bit....Our furniture arrived!!!  The guys delivered it from BiF at about 6pm on Saturday.  I'd honestly forgotten what it looked like since we ordered it in MAY!  But, the delivery made our room look like the Furniture Barn: 

COME ON DOWN Y'ALL, WE GOT VALUE, VALUE, VALUE.  THIS SUNDAY ONLY WE GOT HALF SMOKES ON THE BARBEQUE AND SAVINGS FOR U!  BRING GRAMMA, BRING THE KIDS...HECK BRING THE DAWG, TOO!! CAUSE, FOLKS, YOU DON'T WANNA MISS THESE SAVINGS!

See what I mean?

Here's some detail...2 love seats in a tan leather..it's hard to tell in the picture, but the arms have a slight curve to them.

And 2 arm chairs, of the same style in a ruby leather.  Its not this red, when you see it in person. 

After some manuvering (big ass captains chair upstairs, ugh, disassembling the table we cannot sell), here's what we have.

'Scuse the mess on the coffee table, we're still working an maintaining order.  Here's the other side.  The dark brown/black chair in the corner, will have to find a new home. It's not staying there, but its where it is now.

Now, the other 2 chairs went to the den.  We'd originally thought they'd be upstairs in the new space, but they work better in the media room.  You can see the sekhsi curve on the chairs here.

When we get the couch cushions re-covered in something else (Mom...be thinking of options), it will all work together much better.  Doesn't that "Ruby Red" on the walls work well with the new chairs?

So thats' what we did this weekend. 

THOUGHTS?

S'all for now.

cc

A Fireplace Painted, a Media Room Reborn

Last week, we bought paint at the Benjamin Moore place over in McLean.  Our colors we chose for the den are the Ruby Dusk (henceforce, referred to as RD) color we used as a 'pop' color in the New Space, and 2 colors that are really close together on the Ben Moore Palette one called Twisted Oak Path (henceforce, referred to as TOP), which we used in the foyer and hallway, and the other called Marble Canyon (henceforth, referred to as MC), which we used in the Dining room cove space and the wall of the peninsula in the Kitchen.  Our vision (after much deliberation) was to paint the wood paneled walls MC in a flat latex, the wall behind the sofa and on the wall where the TV nook is RD also in a flat latex, finally on the blah brick fireplace, we would us a satin semi-gloss finish of the TOP color.  Now, I am really not a fan of painted brick, especially when it's interesting brick, but our fireplace was placed in the corner of the room, so it's not a focal point and never can be, and while we use it occasionally, its a highly inefficient gas fireplace that we will have to replace eventually, and it's really hard to light...so it's practically unused.

We spent all day on Saturday painting, M focussed on the fireplace because it had to be primed first, and I started on the walls.  We finished up at about 5pm and went to a neighborhood party.  It was a Miami themed party replete with Cuban food and a Latin jazz combo!  They even played my favorite "Girl from Ipanema"!  

I bailed on church on Sunday, thinking that Providence would forgive me because I had a goal in mind...even though I was working on a Sabbath.  I was able to finish the walls and apply a first coat to the fireplace before noon when M got home.  After lunch (a squash and pepper fritata with the last squashes and peppers from the garden this year :-( [sniff]  ), M went to work on a second coat on the fireplace and I spot painted and started putting the speakers and the room back together.  One caveat that I didn't discover until I was about half way done with the fireplace, the guy a Ben Moore's mixed up the paint can tops, and he put the TOP lid on the MC, and the MC lid on the TOP can.  So our fireplace is actually MC and the wood paneled walls are TOP, the colors are so close that it's not a huge deal, certainly not enough to redo it.

Follow me downstairs and I'll show you:

This is heading down to the den from the hallway.  Monday night I covered the speaker wires in an ivory colored wire-concealer that blends fairly well with the TOP, so the wires are sort of hidden now.  I have pics of that below.

That's the stairwell down into the den, and part of the RD wall.

This was taken Monday night after I'd put the speaker wire in a concealer, no dangling wires, however when I removed the tape that I'd been holding up the speaker wire with it pulled the paint off the white trim, so I'll need to do some touch up on the trim.  You can tell how close these colors are here.  The MC is a fraction darker than the TOP, the only bummer to me is that I really wanted the brick in a semi-gloss instead of a flat paint.  Oh well.  The mantel came off really easily, it was held on by that bevelled strip you see below.  M wants to stain it and polyurethane it.

Here's the wall behind the sofa in the RD color.  I really like this color, it's bold and warm.  The windows are currently covered by dirty, dated vertical blinds.  Our next BIG chore is to order wooden blinds and get rid of these hideous things.  Eventually, we need to do something with this couch, but it's ok for now.  M cleaned it really well after the construction was done.  We want to replace the cushion and pillow fabric with something less "southwest-y".

That box below in the corner is our electrical junction box.  I wanted it to be the RD color so it wouldn't draw as much attention to itself.  I am going to hide the wires on the other side of the room tonight.

Finally, heres our TV in its nook.  The room is still not 100% put together, of course.  As I said the wires are going to be concealed tonight.  We still need to install the quarter round to finish the floors (there goes another Saturday!). But we feel like we're over the hump now, that the painting is done downstairs.

We'll that's all for now. Have a great week eer-one!

S'all for now,

cc

Finished Fireplace

Alan stopped by yesterday and finished the Slate fireplace surround.  He installed a tile topper that I'll tru to show in the next picture.

That's not a great shot but you can kind of get the schmoo. 

He added a final coat of a finishing compound, that gave the whole thing a unified sheen.  It's lovely.

Thoughts?

cc

Crouching Ardvaark, Hidden Wombat

Hey folks. I know it's been awhile.  We've been on vacation, and I am finishing up a course at our local community college...time is precious.  So I won't waste your time either.

We received the bamboo flooring from Lumber Liquidators the weekend  before Labour Day, and we journeyed all the way out to Chantilly to get it..packed a lunch and everything!  It's  really close in color to the red oak floors we have. 

M was absolutely convinced that we could do it ourselves, and I sort of believed him.  We lacked mitre saw and a table saw, and the know-how and what not, but that wasn't going to stop us from trying.  Actually we'd bought the mitre saw for  the base of the wall unit so we had one of those, the table saw was purchased last Friday night on a desperate foray to Home Depot...another Ryobi product...only $114, and I still have all my digits, so it must be ok.

Saturday it took us all day long to get the area prepped and ready to go for the install.  I had to dissasemble all the A/V stuff down there and keep it safe until we were done.  M and I had to clean, and move all the furniture and boxes out of there except the sectional, which would have been a screaming horror to move.

After we actually started we did have to make one final trip to Home Depot to buy a $12 rubber mallet, which we forgot we needed until we'd started...at 4pm on Saturday.

Below is the lovely green and black laminate flooring which is probably the original 1955 floor finish.  Yecch.  The previous home owner had covered it with a carpet remnant and it was passably ok to look at if you didn't look closely.

The blue stuff is called Quiet Step, its' made from 'recycled materials' (prolly old Pampers and used Kleenex!), it's about a 1/3 of an inch thick and a bitch to  unroll and cut (a working box cutter would have helped but we didn't want to make another trip to Home Depot).

Here's the first box of planks, the rubber mallet really made things cruise.

I think this is around box 4.  We were really getting the hang of it.

The area behind the pantry/closet area were tricky.  It all ended up looking ok, and it's behind a door, no one will look too closely.

Around box 6 or 7 we had to move the first part of the sectional to the other side.

This was about box 8 or so.  It was 8:30pm.  We broke for dinner, and had two tough steaks and a baked potato each.  All that chewing revived us. 

After dinner we had to move the other sectional to the done side of the room.  Our friend Bobby and Marti Brom (along with son Carson and friend, Colonel Tim) dropped by and offered Apple Crisp and lots of encouraging words. 

Nearly done here, it was about 10pm, at this point. 

Cutting to Chase.  We finished at midnight.  M was concerned that the saws were making too much noise, and we were pretty much toast.  All that lifting,  crouching, sawing, hammering, etc, had this 47 year old carcass a'hurtin.

This bit won't show, because it will be behind the TV, but it still looks good!

Cut to Sunday afternoon.  We get it all back together, mostly.  M used a co-workers' shop vac and went over every inch of the couch.  I put our A/V system back together, and [sniff] put our 46" Samsung LCD HGTV back in it's rightful place.  The rug is a family piece that is on loan to us for the last few years from M's brother in law, I have always liked it, but I think it goes down here fairly well.

The next BIG project is painting, we're going to bring some of the colors upstairs, downstairs, and try to jazz it up in here.

Thoughts?

S'all for now.

cc