Our house, our dog, our blog

For our second Halloween at the house, we kept some of the decor from last year (rats, spider chandelier, spiderweb rosebush, graveyard) but then we added some new twists:

The garden zombie was a huge hit (thanks Wes and Karen!):

Zombie by day…

…zombie from hell by night, thanks to some red glowsticks

In order to add atmosphere while also protecting the new couch, we went for an abandoned house feel by draping all the living room furniture in muslin…

… with the added creepy effect of the TV playing strange static-y images through its drapery (much creepier in person).

Otto isn’t much of a party animal, so he spent the night at the neighbor’s. We rigged up a fake costume for him in his crate:

I dug out my great-grandmother’s silver tea set and other random bits of silver. I highly recommend not polishing silver for about 20 years in order to get the perfect Halloween vibe.

We even made the bathroom a bit creepy with a mirror and some lipstick.  But what’s even creepier is that you can still see a hint of REDRUM on the door months after the fact.

Redrum as seen in the mirror over the toilet

Dad sent us some new friends to hang out with

We also had some special effects in the back yard, but they were all light-based so didn’t photograph well: 3 pairs of glowing eyes peeping through the honeysuckle, and a chomping skull lighting up the lawn. Thanks Dad!

On actual Halloween night Grimbil dressed up as the Grim Reaper and lurked in our graveyard garden while I played nice and passed out candy with our friend Marie.

Our take on American Gothic

There was plenty of shrieking and screaming from Grimbil’s victims. Some kids were too scared to walk past Grimbil to get candy. My favorite was the kid who, after jumping and screaming, turned to Grimbil and said “What is wrong with you?”

Indeed.

Even though this winter has been pretty mild, it’s still nice to see signs of spring, such as the buds on our Japanese Apricot tree. Looks like it will flower in Feb/March, right on schedule. Then the chocolate vine should flower, along with any bulbs that have survived Otto’s excavations. It’ll be good to have the garden looking like a garden instead of some sticks in a pile of leaves.

Out with the old…

…in with the new!

Our new couch arrived yesterday! We love it. It’s comfortable and stylish, and low enough to the ground that Otto doesn’t need stairs. Let’s face it, it’s hard to incorporate pet stairs into your decor.

Our old couch, which came with the house when we bought it, is being eBayed, so if you know any0ne in London looking for a Beetlejuis-esque sofa, have them check out auction 170700654996.

Of course, the lovely new couch is now making the rest of the furniture that came with the house look even shabbier than it already did. Case in point, the coffee table in the foreground of the second pic.  So looks like we have some more decorating to do!

We’ve had mixed success in our garden. The beans never sprouted, the spinach fell prey to slugs, and I’m not sure what’s going on with the beets — I pulled one up and all it had was a spindly little root.

But, the lettuce, tomatoes, chili, and strawberries are going gangbusters!

Yesterday’s tomato harvest

Now I’m looking for recipes to use our abundant chilies. This week we’ll be trying chili mac n cheese.  I’ve been eating the tomatoes as a snack at work and they are absolutely gorgeous.

Chilies and tomatoes ripening

I think next year we’ll add at least one more strawberry plant, and probably only have 3 tomato plants instead of 6. I’d like to give the beets and beans another try, maybe start the seeds indoors earlier in the year to see if that helps.

But, for a first year of gardening, I think we’ve done pretty well!

Awhile ago Grimbil greatly improved our foyer by building shelves for it (which one day he might post about). Having somewhere to keep our laundry supplies, shopping bags, etc organized has been a huge plus. However, we still need a better way to store our coats and hats. Currently we have a cheap over-the-door coatrack which some clever person hung over our banister when we first moved in over a year ago. It doesn’t look good, and you have to walk through the foyer to the middle of the living room to get to it.  We’ve been keeping an eye out for interesting options and we have a couple of ideas percolating.

Inspiration 1, courtesy of Design Within Reach (which of course means it’s rather spendy):

Limited edition Eames Hang-it-all in walnut, for purses, scarves, hats

plus

the Twist coat rack for coats

Inspiration 2, courtesy of SCP (which doesn’t make it any cheaper):

Grimbil could make something like this, but with cool vintage-y doornobs etc, for hats, scarves, whatnot

plus

Two of these for coats, in a nice dark cherry, to go in the corner