Not bad for Syracuse....

Rob and I had a lovely evening out last Friday. We met our friends Charlotte and Gary at the Everson Museum of Art and toured the Turner to Cezanne Exhibit. The exhibit featured over 50 paintings collected between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, two chicks with shit loads of money and very good taste. The collection include masterpieces by Cézanne, Daumier, Manet, Millet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Van Gogh. One of my favorites was Rain in Auvers by Vincent Van Gogh (how hard is it to like a Van Gogh?)
Who knew you could paint rain?

I was highly entertained and did my best to entertain those around me. I always share my feelings and opinions about the art we are viewing...much to Rob's annoyance. It's amazing how differently we can see the same pieces.

After viewing the exhibit, we walked to the Mission for a dinner of exceptionally good Pan-American Cuisine. The food is fresh, original and well prepared. I had for an appetizer a quesadilla made of eggplant, grilled sweet peppers, jalapeno and goat cheese. I am still thinking about it....
The Mission is in an old church (Wesleyan Methodist) built in the 1840's. The inside is tastefully decorated with the traditional Mexican paint colors, an array of crucifixes and the old Virgin Mary in the bathtub display. I was not offended.

New Shed

It took 2 full Sundays and 1 Veteran's Day but Rob and I completed the shed. The most difficult part was leveling the ground and preparing the location for the shed. I took what looked like the easy road and we built an 8 X 7.5 frame to level and fill with gravel for the base. That took 1 and 1/2 days and many, many bags of pea gravel. Maybe not the best option but it is done!




The spot before the shed










The naked shed in the pre-winter backyard. Now I need to start thinking about landscaping. Should I continue with the pea gravel around the edges or build up with soil? Right now the wood frame sticks out and up and it is ugly and in need of hiding. Luckily, I have 6 months to think about this. Your thoughts?

Changing the look of the backyard...

Since we took down the garage and put in the pool, I have been looking for the perfect shed. The "perfect" shed always seemed to be thousands of dollars beyond my budget. I looked at pre-made plastic sheds online and at the stores but I could never warm up to them. When we went to Chandler's graduation party in June, we spent the entire party in the backyard and I thought their plastic shed fit in well with the landscape and looked perfect in the space. Then I noticed the shed in pictures of Mike and Erika's yard and I realized I could make this less expensive alternative work. I found a shed I loved at Lowe's and waited for Rob to go check it out. By the time he went to look at the shed, it was on sale!

We bought the shed at the very end of August and moved the HEAVY boxes into the backyard.
A few weeks later we moved the boxes closer to the area where it will be built.

Each weekend comes and goes and we never seem to have a full open day to tackle this project or we have the time but the steady downpour impedes our progress.Rob is now at Home Depot picking up a few things we may need and I think we'll be building soon. The directions state quite clearly that the average assembly time with 2 people is 5 - 6 hours. Stay tuned...