All set for our guests..

Weird lighting, but the soon to the be warm living room complete with a fire in the fireplace and candles all about..

A non-traditional way of cutting the turkey meat, but it worked and nobody died from eating it..

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving and so I got to bake my firts turkey ever - go figure. I tried a brine recipie that turned out really well.

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I built this workbench on wheels so I can work outside in the sun or at least not in a stuffy garage where dust gets everywhere - especially on the toy at the right -the Ducati. It's working fabulous and once I finish a lower level, I'll store all my power tools there. Awesome.

I took a 6 foot x 3 foot slab of granite that I've had for 15 years and cut it down to size to give us a faux granite countertop to cook and prepare on. I've been moving with this 100lb+ chunk for years and now it's finally being used well.

The new house

We technically we moved into the house Aug1. We were SO thankful to have movers. We had one truck and then Andy and I each drove our vehicles down filled to the max. Traffic was crazy 5 hours when it has taken us 2.45 in the past. We just love this house. It took us a little while to find homes for everything, buy some new furniture and get plats, pictures on the wall etc. But we are almost there. Mostly because Andy started making some of our furniture. You will see in the pictures his coffee table and the dining room table.

this is the front of the place...this is 20 feet to the right, our backyard...

Nicole's new box o' garden. My outdoor shower - I love it

Our bedroom


Our big kitchen and our dining room and my self built dining room table

The Media/Man room with big screen HD TV, leather couches, X-box and locking door.

To the right is the view from our living room through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Our living room with my new hand-built poplar coffee table.

Garden Phase Two

This week Andy picked up some dirt for the garden beds that we built. The dirt is actually made from our yard waste that the city picks up, kinda cool to think that we pay the city to pick up our yard waste and then we buy it back as dirt.

The beds worked perfectly and we got a lot of seedlings planted, as well as added some seed to start growing.

I can't wait to see the new seeds come up after we get back from Ireland in a week and a half.

Swimming Nationals

Two weekends ago - May 6-10 Andy raced at the USA Master's National Swimming championships.

It was in Clovis CA, basically Fresno. It was held at Clovis high school that had two 50 meter pools. So one pool was for swimmers to warm up and the other was holding two heats at a time. It was pretty cool to watch.

Here is Andy in his super speedy suit. Everyone was wearing these suits. Not just for the Olympic swimmers. Swimmers were saying that the suits were helping them improve their times - big time!

the carpeted garage with my bike and our washer/dryers and refrig in storage...

more of the backyard..

Our backyard with 3 or 4 banana trees..

Our backyard. A cool sundeck and the pine box is the starting of our vegetable garden that we are about to start planting in. The bigger plants are white ginger that are not blossoming for some reason..

It looks messy to you, but it's organized for us right now. Definitely time to get rid of some stuff. Yes, it's carpeted..

Andy's office/room...still pretty much a mess.. This will be our guest room once we get a few more things..

Nicole's room/office..

Nicole at the door of our bedroom, down our short hall..

the master bedroom with no wall adornment yet..but great morning light..

the pictures make this look really small, but in reality it's not..

The kitchen..

This is our front room with the east facing front door in the upper right, the fireplace on the right and the wonderful wood floors.

Pictures of 364 Rancho Dr

Nicole and I moved in to a new (to us) house together in April and we're estatic with this place. While relatively small, it's typical for most of mid-town Ventura...Hardwood floors throughout, a good size fireplace, 3 bedrooms, a full-size clean (and carpeted) garage and good neighbors. We're really happy here and hope we get to stay here for a long time..