Monday, December 30, 2013

Ode to a Kitchen Faucet

I just finished doing the dishes--not a chore I adore exactly but not the worst either (read: mowing)--and thought I'd give some deserved praise to, yes, our faucet.



Had anyone told me I would spend well over $300 for a faucet I would have called them nuts so I guess it's good that no one warned me how expensive faucets are and how it just didn't matter in the end. When you really start looking at and comparing faucets you see that there's a world of difference between them. (Also, who knew the Italy is famous for them?) It's an item you use every single day, multiple times per day and you expect it to last a long time. I think there is literally nothing else in the house that gets used as often as the kitchen faucet, so why not get the one that is AWESOME then?

We got a pull-down model and it switches from a stream to a glorious spray at the flick of a button and just makes you want to be a tiny gnome and crawl in the steaming sink shower, too. Okay, that might be going too far, but if you are wondering if you should get the cheap faucet and maybe replace it later when it breaks, don't! Just get a good one and enjoy the faucet bliss.

(Unfortunately, I can't remember the model, but we bought a Danze.)



On the turntable:

Lorde - Pure Herione

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Solstice tree!



Yesterday was my first day of vacation, which I celebrated by eating for breakfast a very special pink-iced sugar cookie shipped to my door from Larry's House of Cakes. To deal with the resulting sugar rush, I went for a jog around the neighborhood and met a new neighbor who was busy limbing a tree in his front yard with a chainsaw.



Not more than five minutes later, our front yard went from this:



































To this:













You know when someone you know well shaves their mustache and their face looks all weird and wrong? Turns out the same thing happens when you take away ALL of the plants in your front yard.









Why would we do such a thing? Well, the plants that were there before had not been trimmed in many years and there was just no saving them. Any pruning would have left us with only wood, so we decided to wipe the slate clean.











Last weekend, we stopped in The Garden Spot, the sweetest neighborhood nursery ever, and stumbled on this shore pine:









We bought it :)





And then we had to deal with our new purchase.















Being a novice at tree planting, I gathered what tools I could and had my best buddy/landscape lifeline on speed dial. Getting up the root ball of the space's former occupant was no easy task, and we still have four more stumps to go. E thought she'd give the pick a swing.



(No houses were harmed in the taking of this picture.)









A shore pine is the same genus as a Japanese Black Pine, but a different species. This was has been well-trained already and we will have to learn a bit about maintaining it and getting it to grow in a, aesthetically-pleasing manner. We think it adds a needed vertical element to our squat little bungalow and can't wait to watch it grow. 










What you can't see is that it was so cold and raining all day. It's time for an AMAZING Christmas beer from Kulshan Brewery, which happens to be a stone's throw from The Garden Spot. Keepin' it very local (except for the damn sugar cookies).







































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