House Warming

Look closely at Teri's card...

Yesterday a pile of folks showed up to visit, have a little food and look around. It was a great afternoon and the weather cleared up with a little time to do some mowing and arranging outside. It was a wonderful celebration.

Many friends and family were here. In particular it was great to have Joe and Adam back to celebrate what we all helped create. I wish we could finish building our house more often so we could have an excuse to gather together our friends and neighbors like this more frequently.

Our friends Jeanne and Craig thoughtfully offered a blessing of salt, wine, and bread inspired from a scene in "Its a Wonderful Life":

Bread- that this house may never know hunger

Salt - that life may always have flavor

Wine - that joy and prosperity may reign forever

Among the treats and great food, Nancy tried out a recent discovery called switchel, which used to be served a refreshing drink on farms in the days before gatorade-type drinks. Its super yummy and I'm hooked...

Solstice etc..

The house about 10 minutes after noon on the summer solstice

It has been a year since I first noticed how the roof shadow at the summer solstice lines up ever so neatly just after noon to reveal only the sun part of the sunburst on the south face of the house. This little event is a delight for me and today I was out there again taking pictures to document the moment.

Insulator lamps hanging from track over the dining room table

I recently made a couple more of the hanging insulator lamps. You may remember the one I made that hangs over our tub. My idea for the lights over the kitchen table was to have a series of lamps that will all hang at different heights and are made from insulators of different shapes. I'm pretty happy with the effect. The lights are dimmable, so the light can be quite intimate and candle-like.

The new motion detector light switch for the mudroom/pantry closet

This image shows the detection range of the switch (in blue). At some point it might make sense to move it so it is pointing towards the door so it registers movement right away, rather then after you start to move into the room

In other news, I replaced the conventional light switch in our kitchen/mudroom closet with a motion detector switch so we don't have to manually turn on the light every time we go into the closet. My previous plan was to install a push-button switch that would have been activated by the door itself, but that would have required a bunch of wall and trim deconstruction. The motion-activated switch was an easy and quick solution and it works really well. If you open the door and don't step in, nothing happens, but as soon as you move into the room the light comes on.

Done Enough!

So, yes, the house is "done enough" and we'd like to extend an invitation to any of our long-time blog followers. If you plan to come and need directions, email us at decthree (at) rcn (dot) com.

In fact the house isn't really done, but it's at a place where we want to celebrate all the hard work and all the people who've helped along the way. We've long been looking forward to having this get-together!

See you then!