Thanksgiving

This thanksgiving we visited our favorite family on Bainbridge Island. We made our favorite thanksgiving dish: a pork shoulder roast. This is the first time we got a shoulder instead of a loin. We brined it for 2 and a half days in salty apple cider and spices. We stuffed it with apples, dried cranberries and spices. The stuffing was the best part.

We had the dinner at Sussy's new restaurant on Bainbridge Island. The restaurant has really come together nicely, and they will be opening soon.

Guchi, pictured here, and Sussy, prepared several courses of delicious sushi to complement the feast. We had a roast turkey and our shoulder and a variety of other dishes.

Back at home we launched into our home improvement project. We dressed up like Jacko before doing the sanding. We had to sand all the puttying; this coated our entire condo in a fine layer of white dust.

After the sanding and a layer of primer, we put on the first coat of color. We chose a sky blue color that will brighten up the kitchen. We painted the ceiling and archway also to help open up the space.

After 3 days of sanding, painting, and cleaning dust up from everywhere, we have the project complete. Now we have more space to keep our larger kitchen wares, and our kitchen is much more cheery.

Some finishing touches...

This weekend we did some computer work for Sussy and Q-chan. We programmed their cash register and designed a web page. Sussy wrote this with a caligraphy pen and we digitized it.

This is the new countertop in the restaurant. It is really beautiful wood. These are its natural colors and pattern.

Here is Guchi mopping the floor with stain. They are using a special persimmon extract which is traditional for finishing wood in Japan.

After working all day Guchi and Teta enjoying dinner at home. It was a very productive weekend, and we think they will be able to open soon. :-)

Our Chandelier

We did something with our chandelier. We cleaned the crystal and only put about half of it back up. It looks a lot cleaner now.

Bye-bye Takashi

Takashi visited us from Japan. We had a fantastic, productive, but exhausting time.

We took takashi to the airport to say goodbye this morning.

Takashi got this pepper wreath from Pike Place Market as a gift, but couldn't fit it into his luggage, so he left it with us.

We already miss you, Takashi!

Something to fix.

We have these pointless, empty boxes above our cabinents in our kitchen that would be a great place to store pots that we don't use often and our canning. When they put the cabinents in they thought it would be a good idea to contine it up to the ceiling, but we disagree.

With Takashi's guidence and help we were able to get this started. We cut a hole in the box.

It turned out that, as we suspected, there was no structural reason for that little wall to be there so we decided to go ahead and rip it out.

The ceiling inside the box turned out to be original plaster, not dry wall. This is very crubly and a big chunk of it came down when we tore the wall out. The kitchen ceiling is drywall but doesn't continue into the box, so we needed to fill the space with plywood.

Takashi used a bunch of neat tricks to get this up and match the height of the ceiling in the rest of the kitchen. We'll have to finish it up by puttying a bit, sanding, and finally painting.

We're going to repaint the entire kitchen a light blue color. We almost chose a color called "Niagra Falls" for sentimental reasons, but ended up with "Skylark" instead.

We were very happy to get this off to a good start. It's going to be a lot more open once we have it all finished. :-)

Our new stove and countertop

Takashi, who agreed with us that our old stove was ready to retire, bought us a new stove. This one heats up much more quickly than our last one. The old stove would take forever to heat up, and then when it was hot, would be too hot. It took a lot of managing the controls to get reasonable performance. This new one is much more responsive.



We got the stove at Home Depot, that day it was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.



Next to our stove is a new stainless steel butcher block cart. We went to a warehouse sale that a home and garden store was having. Takashi got a pressure cooker and we got this cart. It was about 70% off of MSRP.

Trip to Anacortes

Today, after Nile bipassed a long line with her absentee ballot, Nile and Takashi went to Anacortes to investigate some properties that Anita and Jim are thinking about buying to build a house on. They surveyed 3 different lots, took lots of pictures, and Takashi gave his professional advice as a general contractor about the costs and benefits of each.



As their commission, Anita bought Nile and Takashi these new coats from REI.



Thanks Anita!

Go Sussy and Q-chan Dinner

Sussy, our friend who is opening his own restaurant came over for dinner. Takashi cooked most everything and it was a fantastic meal.


You probably recognize some of these faces from the construction photos we've posted. Here we all are in the living room. Guchi is visiting Sussy and helping him do the construction. Others in the photo are Ami-chan, Sussy, Matt, Nile, Q-chan, Tetta, and Takashi.

Haunted House

Matt walks by this house on his way home from work.

They did a fantastic job decorating for haloween. It helps that the house is made of a very dark stone.

Interesting Plants

Nile has some fascinating plants at work. Nile gave us a nice tour. This plant has leaves growing out of its leaves if you look closely.




You can't tell from this photo, but these orchids are chocolate scented.



This orchid grows samurai wariors.




This is a wasabi plant. The root is ground up to make wasabi paste. Most wasabi you get in restaurants is a mixture of coloring and horse radish, but this plant is the real thing. It takes about 3 years for the root to get to a good size for eating.



The trees are turning colors here.

No Pigs Please

This is a sign near our house. Whenever we see it it reminds us of Matt's dad because he likes funny signs, Kate because she likes pigs, and Steve because it is at an elementary school with the same name as the town where he lives, and Kenneth because the name is the same as his high school.

Our theory is that this sign was put up in the late eighties when people actually had pot bellied pigs as pets.