i have no photographic proof of any activity this weekend because lately our camera seems to mysteriously only take photos of puppies. i offer, instead, a brief list of what happened around the house, with photos to follow soon:

- planted the cantaloupe and peas, finally
- cleaned out the front yard and planted another small area. this job is HUGE and will be completed tiny bit by tiny bit. we're making progress...
- moved the huge pile of wood, AGAIN and turned the side yard into an outdoor elli play-pen.
- finished painting the carport
- replaced and restrung the old christmas lights on the carport
- strung outdoor "ball" lights along the back of the vegetable garden area

oh, and a friend told us last night that our backyard looks like how she imagined fairytale forests when she was a child (except that it's missing the fairies and elves). that made me a lot giddy...

lest we forget that there was a world before elli...remember that project i mentioned a week or so ago? here it is:an incredible potting bench designed and built by one talented german. it's made completely from recycled wood. the top pieces are redwood from our giant stack and the bottom pieces were salvaged from an old deck via craigslist. C sanded it all when he was done and then applied a thin coat of beeswax. he even added a few special details, pulled from a collected pile of old construction parts, to finish it off.i especially love the way the wax really brought out the different colors in the wood he used...while C was working on the table, I painted the funky carport. we figured it as long as it's still there (until we tear it down), we could at least spiffy it up a bit....and yes those are indeed overalls that i'm sportin'.

barring weekend-long thunderstorms, there are many more projects underway for this little area (and a special side project for elli!)...

Correction: after weighing her last night using C's grandmother's market scale (from a zillion years ago), Elli weighs approximately 8 kilos or roughly 16/17ish lbs.apparently, this is how you spend your evenings after you get a puppy: finding new and exciting things to put her in so that she looks even tinier and impossibly cuter.
she loved the bag.

we knew it would come one day...after all, a cabinhouse needs a cabin hund, nein?

Here she is: all of 12(ish) weeks old and weighing in at 14 lbs of pure puppy....Elli!