A tale of two quilts

Right now, Steve and I appear to be in a baby cycle...that is to say people we know and love are starting to reproduce so I have been busy making baby quilts. The two pictured above are the same pattern, but done for two different babies in two different color schemes in two different countries.. The first is for our friends in The Netherlands, Bas and Erna and their new much wanted and long awaited baby girl. The second is for the first of the next generation of the Wachter family. Technically the baby will be a Murphy/DeVore...but technically the Wachters are actually Richardsons so who can keep track, and why do we care? The important thing is that Steve's sister Bonnie is finally going to be a grandmother when her son and daughter in law have their first baby sometime in June. I had the pleasure of meeting Jackie for the first time last September and loved her on site. We talked then about her desire to start a family, what neither of us knew was that at that very moment she was already pregnant! I hope her little peanut likes its quilt as much as I do!

As the Aquarium Cycles...

So, I was cleaning the living room the other day and I paused to look at our new fish tank. Steve has gotten on the fish tank bandwagon with me and together we have set up a really good looking tank. Its about 30 gallons, and its got live plants, a first for me, but Steve really wanted to give it a shot, and so far so good. Only one type died on us but all the others are growing like sea weeds. Its teaming with life, our tank and that is what I was thinking about when I took a moment to watch the fish. Less than twelve hours after adding the first two guppy fish to the tank to help it get through its nitrogen cycle ( the first crucial few weeks of a new tank) I looked up and saw baby fish swimming around the tank. You can see one in the top photo. 5 have survived from the initial brood and they are hale and hearty and doing fine. We have since added 5 danios, 5 tetras, 2 otocinclus and 3 angle fish, and I enjoy watching them all. The baby guppies though are special. They will live out their entire lives in the middle of my living room... Think about that for a minute. There are five fish downstairs in my living room right now who will live out the entirety of their existence in the middle of my living room. That is

an odd thing to consider, no?

It might seem sad at first except I know these fish are many hundreds of generations removed from their wild ancestors and so for captive bred fish they are living large. I don't mean to brag, but really, look at that second picture and tell me those baby fish were not born into the lap of watery luxury!

Aloha Oe!

Here are a few shots of our newly redecorated home office. We had so many cool things from Hawaii that we decided to devote a room to them. I spent a great deal of time surfing the web looking for the right office furniture. We finally found a computer desk and hutch that were at the high end of our price range, but it had the right tropical vibe and we were just waiting till the stars aligned and the time was right to buy that desk. In the meantime however we kept looking around in case we found a bargain and boy did we! The desk itself was not tropical in any way, but like my friend June likes to point out, real Hawaiian style is not over the top tropical with koa wood and rattan everywhere, but a mixture of some traditional, some tropical...so with that in mind we decided to snap up the bargain desk and make it work. We found the perfect rattan chair at Pier One on clearance, and a great lamp at a consignment store. Once we moved all our Hawiiana into the room it was ready to go. I did add one little touch though. The woven panels in the hutch are my handiwork. I bought some lauhala place mats online, cut them to fit and stuck them on the glass panels of the two cupboards. Once they were trimmed out with bass wood trim they look like they were always there. Now we have some more concealed storage and the best part is that its totally reversible. If we ever decide to redecorate then all I have to do is pull them out and clean the glass. So tell me what you think?

A visual Aid

Would you believe me if I told you I had been trying to get back to my blog for three days? Well, that is to say, get a new picture up on my blog. I have been back, but empty handed, so did not bother to post anything. If a picture really does speak a thousand words, then the above shot should easily be able to fill that quota. It was taken with the photo booth feature on the computer, but it's taken me this long to figure out how to get it on the blog. To be fair I have not been at it full bore for three solid days, but I have made an attempt or two and left in frustration. I guess I am back to my old click and cuss method of computer usage. I have yet to figure out how to upload a picture from Picasa to my blog, but maybe I will figure it out. I guess Picasa is fairly new to the Mac world, like me, and like me is still feeling its way around in the dark uncharted reaches of deep cyberspace that is realm of the Mac user. Hopefully I will learn the new ropes soon and it will not be the trauma to post on my blog that it is right now.