Luke's LOST Birthday Party

My husband is a big LOST fan. He counts down the days to the season premieres starting at 9 pm the evening of the season finales. He doesn't know what he's going to do at the end of next season when the show retires for good. He quotes LOST blogs to me. But after planning and researching for his (what else?) LOST themed birthday party, I wouldn't say now that he's one of the biggest fans. He probably isn't even in the 95th percentile. There are some TRULY dedicated LOSTites out there, as you can see here, here and here.

We welcomed Luke to the island Dharma Initiative style. We were a little suspicious of him at first when his name wasn't on the manifests, but Juliette cleared that all up. His aptitude tests qualified him to work in security and he was issued a jumpsuit (t-shirt) to suit. We held a barbecue in honor of the new recruits. There was plenty of Dharma food.

My Dharma labels were all modified from labels I found online for other Dharma things, like beer, tuna chunks, and wheat crisps. I just did a little pasting in Word. You can see that our Dharma soda is a "barley flavored beverage" (on the back "may contain alcohol"). Also that our Dharma pickles are an "emulsified condiment". Dharma cereal is "fully hydrogenated." Those Dharma folks sure know how to make food sound good.

**On the other hand, Smitten Kitchen does a great job making food that sounds and taste great. I got all the recipes for the cake (vanilla buttermilk), filling (raspberry and white chocolate ganache), and cream cheese frosting off her blog.

Happy Birthday, Honey! You're the best thing on this island!

Small Victories (and Failures): Horseshoe Pit

Two years ago around DH's birthday, my mom was here for a visit. For his gift, she made an awesome horseshoe pit in our backyard. I thought it had everything a perfect present should have. It was thoughtful, useful, personal, and homemade. We both really appreciated it.

But I was assisting on this project, and I didn't really think through the concrete process. So, after a lot of use that summer, and because of my misjudgment as to the concrete/water ratio(really, though, I blame the directions on the Quickrete bag--completely useless!) the concrete cracked and the pole fell out. Since then, it's still been a great sandbox for the girls, but that doesn't help DH much. Finally this spring, we got it back together again.

The first problem (after finding that darn pole that fell out 2 years ago) was the rust. I read somewhere that salt and lemons would get rust off, and it sort of worked. Maybe if I had kept at it more would have come off. Felicity was helping (and tasting and helping and tasting--you'd think once would be enough) and we did our best and then sprayed Rustoleum on it.

After learning from the mistakes of the previous pole installation, I decided we needed something to brace the pole and keep it in place, besides just concrete. So I drilled a hole in this plywood board:

Then we mixed the concrete. Ginger helped (and acted sous-photographer). Instead of looking for directions, I just mixed it like we did for tile mortar. I just stirred and added water until it was a thick paste that wouldn't drip off the end of a spoon. I put half in the hole, then the pole and the board, then more concrete to seal it up.

The other boards are holding the pole in position while it dries overnight. Interestingly, a competetive horseshoe pit's pole is not vertical. It's actually 3 inches off of vertical, pointing towards the thrower. Apparently this makes for more ringers, though not in my case. But oh well, if I can't make the ringer, at least I can make the horseshoe pit.

New Granite Countertops

Here are some pictures from this week's Granite Countertops adventure. This is how our new countertop arrived.

This is where we started from. Goodbye, ugly old laminate. Won't miss ya.

Uh-oh. We ran into a problem trying to level the bar. Who knew there was a big old pipe in there, right where we were trying to cut down the drywall? A plumber came ASAP and told us it was just ventilation pipe. He cut it out and replaced it with a ventilation cap...hmmm. Are we really sure water isn't just going to come spurting out of that? Seriously? My fingers are crossed.

They cut the sink hole in the driveway. Right after I took this picture, it started pouring. I felt so bad for them in the rain. I almost thought it was going to shut down the whole project for the day, but they kept at it.

Here they are bring it in vee-eery carefully. They drilled the holes for the faucet after they installed it.

The new undermount sink. It's cavernous compared to the basin we had before. It's held in place with epoxy and silicone caulk. I was like, "are you kidding me? You're just gonna glue my sink in?" But that's how they do it.

All done! I was really impressed with Austin Granite Direct. The whole process was easy and fast and we love the way it turned out.