Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Valentines Day

Valentines Day marks our 1 year anniversary for dating. We went out to eat and celebrated at our favorite burger joint "The Brass Ring" with spicey blue cheese burgers and sweet tea. We also got each other some fun gifts....we both picked out hats for each other (not planned by the way). Jonathan got a western hat and Emily got a chainsaw helmet. Who really needs flowers and chocolate anyway ?!?!

Feeling Crafty

Several weekends ago Emily was feeling crafty. She found this chalkboard on clearance and decided to transform it to match the nautical colors in Jonathan's bedroom.






First she added a groove to hold the chalk and sanded down the old paint job to prep the surface for it's new colors.











Next came primer. Then then a coat of yellow followed by a generous coat of crackel. She finished it with a top coat of dark blue.
As it dried it cracked to give it an aged finish.
Emily had fun with this. Perhaps she has been watching too many episodes of "This Old House"

Friday, February 2, 2007

Virtual Open House


We hosted an open house last week for the Pine Jog staff to showcase the improvements we made to the staff house fondly refered to as EM's Lab (nothing to do with Emily's name, just a bizare irony) where Emily is living.

Let's start in the kitchen. That is where the party always ends up and actually never left for most of the evening. We served Frank's Red Hot legs off the grill, homemade artichoke dip, and Em's famous Captain's brownies (secret's in the sauce, "wink", "wink").




It was a rather cool evening for Florida, so we had hot mulled apple cider on tap as well as the usual sodas.

We decided to put in new black appliances to add some class. They cost the same as their white counterparts. Jonathan is a countertop expert through his past job experiences and would have prefered to put in granite, but Pine Jog gave us a shoe string budget, so we went with a composite countertop modeled after granite. It turned out great!



In a previous blog we showed pictures of the closet (which you have to walk through to get to the bathroom....don't ask, it just works).


Another fun feature is the new sink and faucet which we lifted and mounted on a new countertop.

The bedroom and living room are all-in-one as you can see a corner of each in both pictures. The best part about that is if you want to watch TV in bed you just have to rotate the television....pretty nifty!


Wood chip patio by day....










....campfire circle by night. As you can see above, it is definately a house in the middle of the woods.


On the right is Katie and Tracey, two graduate students, pictured here with Pat Welch, Pine Jog's Executive Director.




This is a picture of the door to the back patio with the EM's Lab sign. We use this area as a stage for one of our outdoor programs. It helps create some magic out in the forest.

Jonathan is picutured with Christopher Hill and his wife Elise. Chris is the director of Pine Jog's residential summer camp and was my boss last summer.









No party would be complete without a bucket of Corona's on ice......Cheers!


Thanks for joining us on our virtual tour. Give us a call if you want to come down and visit to experience the real thing.