Hoosier and spider

Steve is supposed to be having a few days off (of course he's at work as I write this on Friday evening!!!) so yesterday I had him working on my Hoosier. I had already scraped most of the old paint off of it. All he had to do was sand and paint. I have to laugh, because it doesn't sound like much but it took most of the day to do it. He moved it into the kitchen last night and I was able to start using it this morning. Waaa-hoo! It is going to be lovely having a "baking center" right by kitchen the windows. I've been a very unmotivated cook since we moved into this house. At first I couldn't understand why, I was cooking up a storm in CA, I thought I was just tired from the move, but now, I finally realize...this house is *very* dark and it just doesn't inspire me. I had a wonderfully large, bright, sunny kitchen in CA. This kitchen just doesn't do it for me. I'm pretty much convinced this will not be our final house for that very reason. I like a lot of natural light in my house and we don't have it here. *sigh* I'll just have to settle because there's not much else I can do about it now, is there?!

Today we unpacked a few boxes that were known to have glass and Portmeirion dishes in them. We ended up with MORE breakage by the movers. A 64 oz pitcher ($70 to replace), a 13" pasta bowl ($40 to replace), a Frankoma platter (less than $20 to replace), a chip out of my McCoy bean pot - a pot my dad bought for me about 15 years ago - and that, well, I've already put a bid on one on ebay. Auction is starting at $9.99 so I'm hoping it will stay low! One improvement, if I win this auction, is that said ebay pot comes with a lid. My pot never had a lid. Let's hope I win! We also had a very sad casualty of Icelandic handmade pottery. It was our most favorite piece that we had won at a holiday party. We are going to attempt gluing it back together and photographing it then contacting the artist to see if she can reproduce a similar piece for us. Lucky we have her name and phone number on a little card that is attached to the bowl!

Tomorrow we were supposed to have a birthday party for Steven but we are down to just one set of friends stopping by so it won't be quite as exciting as we had hoped it would be! Still, these are great friends whom we have not seen since they left Iceland in June 2003 and I'm very excited to see them again. I'll post pictures if we take any.

Below are two photos...one of an orb spider Steven saw in the yard this morning. This guy is HUGE...he was eating when we were photographing him...his body is about 1" and his legs were at least 2". The zig-zag you see behind him is part of his web. Amazing. Creepy, but amazing. (My head itches while I type this. Yuck.) The other photo is of my Hoosier in the kitchen. Finally, a place for my KitchenAid! No more lugging it up and down the garage steps!!!