Gardening in February

Time flies by. It wasn’t too long ago that we planted our climbing roses. This year’s winter wasn’t too bad, so I think they made it out ok. Last weekend, Sergey and I took about 30 minutes to prune and train the bushes onto the fence. This should be done at the end of winter, before plants start budding for spring.

This is how we started out. The plants didn’t even loose all of their leaves,

which I thought should go, to make way for fresh blooms.… Read the rest

Exposed Brick, Tin Ceiling, the works

while i am on a “dreaming about new kitchen” roll, i figure I might as well share pictures that I have been taking everywhere for inspiration.

 

The plan is to have exposed brick in the kitchen. i am not sure how that will work with insulation, so that may have to be scrapped. but for now, the idea is that the wall that houses the fridge/built-ins/bench will be exposed brick.and… Read the rest

We’ve got plans

and so far, not much else.

its been a month since this happened. since then, time spent on VIB = 0.00002. unfortunately, time and resources for all of our projects, from new kitchen to a garden/forest wedding all come from the same source (who knew, average amount of hours spent on planning a wedding? 300! and I am not going to bring up the outrageous cost of the average wedding, which is up there with kitchen renovation budgets).… Read the rest

Its that time of the month!

chalkboard time — her’s our january to dos. not much crossed off (in fact not one item)

so here is our february board:

what can i say. we have been busy.i was actually telling someone that renovating a house and panning a wedding are fairly similar. we have the vision and its awesome (in our heads), but before you get there, there are lots of behind the scenes work, not to mention money, involved.… Read the rest

how engaging

happy news — sergey and jenia are engaged. (yes, we do everything backwards)

of course that means that some attention from the VIB will shift to the VIB- wedding edition. as of right now the plan is for a very late summer nuptials, which is going to require quite some time from us for the next couple of months.

we will still be doing projects on the house, just with a slowed pace.… Read the rest

S Novym Godom!

Happy 2011! happy new beginnings :)

Since we have been on a kick with a year of firsts, we decided to do VIB’s own holiday card. The house pictures from last year’s snow storm were perfect, and after choosing one, we sergey used photoshop to enhance the image to make it look as if it were painted.

we also added a short text with our blog address and mailed these to friends and family last week.… Read the rest

Getting warmer

literary. when we took off the old molding and replaced the kitchen door we took the opportunity to add some insulation.

sort of wild that in certain spots you could see straight to the outside. the mortar just sort of crumbled out. sergey now thinks we should take down all of drywall in the kitchen and start everything from scratch to make sure we are good on all 6 sides (4 walls, floor and ceiling).… Read the rest