Bon Weekend: One of Those Weeks

If you figured that I've been at work early, late and pretty much every hour in between, you'd be correct.  But that's behind me and we're headed to Washington [state] tomorrow!

The plan is to drive to Leavenworth, which--you guessed it!--is a Bavarian village at the foot of the North Cascades.  We will do lots of rock climbing and then eat spatzle and schnitzel and wurst.  Then we'll head to the land of higher-end mass retailers--aka Seattle--to hit up IKEA and Trader Joe's.  I'll admit this excites me equally as much as the rock climbing.   Then we will join my West Coast relations in Tacoma for a 4th of July celebration.  All signs point to a fun long weekend.

Meantime, our kitchen got some bling this week:

Old, sad, small and energy slurping.

Shiny, new, EnergyStar.  Terrible photograph, I know, but it was all I could manage this morning at 6:00AM.  Notice that a fancy fridge does not an attractive kitchen make.  It's a start, and I love using the thing, but it almost makes the kitchen look worse.  Lipstick on a pig and all that.

Same situation here:

An amazing Jenn Air downdraft stove that was slightly damaged during delivery to Sears.  So we got it for about $1600 off. 

There is nothing lipstick piggy about this though:

The beautiful new table made of beautiful old wood.  It's fir from the hillsides around Missoula, and was probably cut and milled about 100 years ago. Now it has another life, thanks to the work of local craftsman Ben Heath.  We love, love, love this table.  Tonight we finally had enough time to site down around it and share a meal together.  It always feels like summer has truly arrived when you cut into your first fresh tomato.  This pretty yellow heirloom was perfect as bruschetta:

 

Summer, welcome to Montana.  We're so glad you're here.  Bon Weekend!