Punta Cana

Honeymoon teaser pictures. :)


View from our balcony:

Just Married!!

After eight months of planning the wedding came and went exceptionally quick.  While it was a tremendous amount of work, Hanna and I were beyond happy with how the ceremony and reception turned out.  The venue (Matt and Renee's beautiful colonial style home and garden backyard) were perfect, the weather was sunny and in the low to mid 80s, the food was exactly as we had remembered from the taste tests, and the floral arrangements and music selections all seemed to work nicely.  The best part was looking around and seeing our friends and family happy and having a good time.    

It will be a while before we get our official photos back from the photographer, but the photos below look professional and were taken by our friend Beth Lawson.  I will be sure to share more photos as they become available.  




We are extremely appreciative of all of the support Hanna and I received from our family and friends, we are truely blessed to have all of you in our lives. We are enjoying our honeymoon but can't wait to get together with all of you to hear about your experience at our wedding and who you enjoyed meeting or visiting with, what made you laugh and who had the craziest moves on the dance floor.  I think I know the answer to the latter.

March 2013 - Alcatraz & Red Rock Cyn.

We are coming up on the 30-day countdown to our wedding!  As you might imagine, things have been crazy busy for both of us. I compare wedding planning to the feeling you get when you're in college--that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that says "you should NOT be enjoying yourself, you should be studying!"  We secured the most important vendors in the January-February timeframe, having done taste-tests for catering and selecting one we really liked, interviewing DJs and finding an officiant that was willing to do an outside wedding for a couple that rarely sets foot in church.  But the little details are the killers--picking music, finding a reasonably priced location for rehearsal dinner, finding hotels for out of town guests, trying on tuxes, designing/making table center pieces, getting a ring bearer pillow, a flower girl's basket, a basket to place greeting cards, doing a registery, booking a honeymoon...you get the idea.

In-between the wedding planning we try and sneak a few fun things in.  We got in at least a day of skiing at Squaw Valley (I think we also got another day in at Homewood, but not sure), we hiked the Steven's Trail with friends, we spent a day in San Francisco and took the Alcatraz Island Tour and probably some other things I can't remember.

Here are a few photos I liked from Alcatraz:

I expected to see a concrete prison and little else, but the landscaping on the island was pretty spectacular. 

Last weekend we had my bachelor party (of sorts) and went to Red Rock Canyon State Park down south in the Mojave Desert.  We all took Friday off work and spent three days camping, taking the 4WD trails and exploring the mines the area has to offer.  One of the mines, Burro Schmidt Mine was 1/2 mile long and punched through the mountain to the other side, and the Old Dutch Cleanser Mine (picture below) was big enough to drive a truck through and had series of interconnected tunnels that were open to exploring.

Overnight sandstorms left a film of sand on everything inside the tent, but otherwise, the weather was perfect and we plan to return another time to do more exploring.  No bachelor party would be complete without some kind of forced embarrassment, so my friends took care of that at lunch at Hooters, where I had to stand on a chair while the girls sang a song about how I was a sucker for getting married.  It was all in good fun.

Red Red Canyon:

 

Our campsite

The v-notch on the 4wd trail

One of the many HUGE mines you can walk--one was 1/2 mile long.

February in Pictures

This month in pictures--February.

2 days of skiing in Tahoe

Stained the fence

Finished product

Did some gardening

"Finish what you start"

I discovered a bad habit of mine--I am great at starting new projects but lousy at actually finishing them.  Sure...they are 95% completed but I generally move on to that next fun project before putting the finishing touches on the last one.  Our house is being appraised for a re-finance and I have discovered that nothing makes you finish uncompleted projects like an appraisal.  I took a step back and looked at the house to try and determine what needed the most attention.  It didn't take long to notice that my fence was leaning and really taking away from all of the landscaping work we have done in the yard.  So I need a new fence.  The side gate on the western side of the house doesn't hardly work at all, so that's next on the list.  The kitchen ceiling still adorns three 1" holes in the sheetrock for the old fluorescent lightbox that I removed two years ago (replaced it with recessed lighting) and the remaining white, unpainted square that used to reside in lightbox needs paint to match the rest of the ceiling.  There is a wood floor transition strip that is missing, I apparently need a carbon monoxide detector and the yard needs some pruning, weeds pulled, leaves raked, etc.  Well, there you have a snapshot of my last 5 weeks...

My biggest project was building a redwood "picture frame fence," which is just a way of saying it has no visible support stringers and it looks exactly the same on the front and the back.  I used all stainless steel fasteners and good quality redwood from a local redwood retailer.  A standard dog-ear fence is around $15 per foot to have it built, so my 75' span would have run $1,100.  A picture frame fence is $65-75 per foot, which would have run $5,000+ once I spec'd stainless fasteners, so I decided to do it myself.  I ended up with a really nice final product, I have exactly a grand into it and I learned a lot about woodworking along the way.  I also picked up a few new toys--a pockethole jig so the screw hardware would be hidden from view, I refurbished a leaky air compressor a friend gave me, I bought an airless sprayer for the staining I will do once the wood is fully seasoned, a sawzall and some new drill bits.  Believe it or not, I got all of that for just over $100.

Here is a Google Streetview of the old fence:

And here is a section of the new one (unstained):

 

The new fence is set-back 2', so I was able to increase the size of my backyard a little in the process.  With the fence completed it was time to start on the gate.  The old one was a single 4' gate, but with the fence set-back I now have a 10' width to play with, so I opted to install a double gate to increase accessibility to the backyard.  My friend Stuart loves playing with steel, so he encouraged me to go with steel 4x4 posts for the gate supports.  We got to the steel supply place and he upped the overkill ratio by 10-fold by encouraging me to bypass the 1/8" thick steel and go straight for the 3/16th" stuff.  The metal supply place cut the 20' post down to two 10-footers so we could get them home.  It took two of us to wrestle each post.

Unloading one of the beasts:

To increase the overkill ratio, I managed to dig a hole over 3 feet deep and each post is set in 200 pounds of concrete.  Once I had the gates constructed Stuart helped me align and install the two gate doors and then he welded the hinges to the posts.  My gate doors were extremely heavy, I couldn't have done it without Stuart's help.

 The gates are highly visible by passers-by, so I decided to add a little decorative touch.  I constructed it using a basic gate design, then I added four 1x5 pickets to frame the door, then added another sideways 1x5 with six 1x2s oriented vertically to give somewhat of a Craftsman-style detail.

And speaking of unfinished projects, I have some nice decorative wrought iron handles to add to the outside.  In the picture above, the left post is painted brown while the right one is still bare steel.  Should I go with the painted brown or should I box the post in wood pickets to make the post look like wood?

I would be lying if I said I haven't had any fun building the gates or that we also managed to catch the Home and Garden Show at Calexpo, attended a couple of get-togethers and a day at my sister's place in Los Banos, spent a day at the coast (Marin Headlands) and a day of skiing in Tahoe, but it's just as easy to make you think I just slave-away all the time.  :)

December always comes and goes so quick.  This month has been entirely consumed with holiday parties, a little Christmas shopping and time with friends and family.  I feel so fortunate to have fun and healthy people in my life.  My wish for 2013 is more of the same.

I leave you with two photos, because I am incapable of posting without photos.

Mr. Spoiled in Casa de Aston:

(who has turned out to be a most excellent cat.)

And this goes to show just how early I am sitting in my office in downtown--a rainbow just after sunrise in a break from the storm:

November happenings

November happenings:
- a bbq for some of Hanna's friends
- some winter cleaning and home winterizing
- a weekend with my Aunt, whom was visiting from Seattle
- a trip to my Dad's
- I built a new side gate for the house

I am not good at woodworking, but enjoy the challenge.

Hanna and I left Wednesday after work for La Crescenta (L.A.) to spend the holidays with her family.  Aside from gorging ourselves with Thanksgiving dinner, we hiked in the park near the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, went to Korean BBQ with friends in downtown L.A., did a drive up to the top of the San Gabriel Mountains to the Mount Wilson Observatory, which had the world's largest telescope for some time.  It was at this observatory that Hubble made his observation that the universe is expanding.  We also rode the ferry to Avalon on Catalina Island and spent the day hiking the island.  We plan to return for a one or two night stay so we can go zip-lining, paddleboarding or kayaking and the hike to Two Harbors.

Ferry ride to Catalina

Bay @ Avalon

Not a bad place to spend time!

Inspiration for our sideyard succulent/cactus garden

Solar telescopes that combine light for piping to the main observatory

100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson