I'm in love with outdoor kitchens. And this month's edition of Garden Design is full of outdoor entertaining info. I wish it were a 300 page edition...I'd read it all. I'd love to have a full outdoor kitchen, dining room table, and a big outdoor fireplace to relax around. Ahhhhhhhh... Check out Lynx Professional Grills and Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet.

I wish I had an entire week of todays. It was gorgeous. My outdoor adventure began with a little veggie garden brainstorming. Then I rearranged the deck furniture, moved the grill off the side patio to a corner of the deck, bagged some leaves, mowed and mulched both parts of the back yard, cleaned out my iris' and green onions, cut back what-I-think-is-a-blackberry plant, filled the outside ring of the firepit with a mix of lava rock and pea gravel, and started to replace the two front yard landscape light transformers with one 300w transformer. I need to run two new uplights and the last 18 tiered lights. I think I finally decided where to build my veggie garden. Right off the side patio is a small section of yard that gets a good amount of morning and afternoon sun. I'm thinking a 6' x 4' raised bed built out of bricks that match the existing landscape bricks. Jalapenos, cayennes, and habaneros -- yes. Onions, garlic, herbs -- yes. I'd really like to grow some tomatoes, but I've had absolutely no luck with them. Hopefully our neighbor will leave plenty of fresh tomatoes on our doorstep this year. Yums! I just hope we have more beautiful weather over the next couple of weekends to build my garden. I've been in serious slacker mode with growing edibles for the last couple of years. It's time to get back to work...or play in my case.

Created a Blurb account this evening. Trying it (and the BookSmart app) out as we speak. I'll be very impressed if I can make a great looking photo book using photos from my Flickr account. The more I read on Blurb, the more excited I get. Not only can you print photo books, but you can print cookbooks, poetry books, regular books, and you can even print your blog (odd but cool).

"Spring 2008," they say. The possibility of getting a new TDI is just around the corner. Platinum grey, please?

Getting my current TDI chip UPsolute-tuned through Kraut-Burner tomorrow. Yay. I'm very excited.

According to UPsolute:

I need a new gallery. I want something clean, pretty, and relatively simple to use and tweak. The Lightbox display is beautiful. I just dread going through photos to create a new gallery...again.

It's about time for that annual event where I get a day older, and once again I don't know what I want. Well, I do, but I don't. I know more of what I want to do, instead of what I want.

I want to:	paint the living room / entryway, but I don't want to pay for scaffolding-use nor painters paint the laundry room replace our half-bath counter and sink with something not so dated and yucky replace our kitchen counter and backsplash tiles with something more natural add Elfa shelving to our upstairs reclaimed-attic closet add Elfa shelving to the garage and get it nicely organized (like this:)
I want:	a couple kitchen gadgets so I can try out some new recipes at least 2 8"x30"x3/4" cable-bracket shelves in driftwood from The Container Store to store my cds in my office

But for now:

I like the colors of these rooms:

We don't have house numbers yet... Only the curb painted numbers in black and white. I think some nice, clean, metal, architectural-styled numbers would look perfect on the front entrance wall. So...I've been googling. I came across Custom House Numbers which offers some very nice custom pieces. Choose your numbers, material (hollow stainless or solid aluminum), font, size, finish (or lack there of), and get it custom cut.

Now, I knew it was going to be pricey, but not as expensive as it is!!! Choosing a four digit address, the Neutraface font, 4" high x 1/2" thick, and Natural Satin stainless with a clear coat is $199.95!!! $200 for four numbers!!! They're gorgeous, but not at $50 each. And that's the cheap options. I priced some other finishes and sizes that came to $400.

[Mike|2007-05-15, 09:48:00]
"you should move to a house that only has three number! It would save you a bundle."

Kohler Sok - Overflowing Bath for Two
Kohler Chromatherapy

Of course, if I had such a glorious tub, I would also require a good set of adjacent windows like above. Maybe even a wall of glass with those neato electronically controlled shades. Or some sort of built in opaque-er-izer.

And along the same lines, how about colored LED lighting throughout the house for extended chromatherapy. I'll have to find the LED house link I saw years ago.

Which reminds me of the LED-speckled deck that Diarmuid Gavin built on Home Front in the Garden. I'd like one of those too please.