Vaya Con Dios!

My last Clintondale weekend before Mexico (there's frikkin monkeys there!!!). It's a bit melancholy to miss Thanksgiving (AND I'm traveling on James' birthday. Happy Birthday to my American boy!) but maybe we'll do a turkey for Christmas instead. 


I'll miss some work being done on the house but James has promised pictures. Got to see some sheetrock go up though! Exciting.

It's a tough one getting around all the angles and stuff but these guys will get it. 

Bedroom ceiling.

We have closets!

Downstairs is almost done. We bought paint yesterday, Ralph Lauren: Club Navy. The chip does NOT do it justice, but the picture at the top of the page has this color on the wall and it looks mmmmmm... Rosemary helped us in a big way with picking it out. We are leaving the inside of the doors white and our wood wall will be white and the rest BLUE. Trim in a semi gloss and walls in a flat.

We took a  long drive yesterday to familiarize ourselves with WOOD. For our decorative wall and for our floors. Since we moved up here, people have told us we have to go to Ghent Lumber in Hudson.  And once you're up there take a little stroll through the strange but lovely town of Hudson. For starters, we had a bite at Tanzy's on Warren Street. 

We shared a cream of brussel sprout soup. I had a super tasty grilled ham and cheese with carmelized onions and James kick started Thanksgiving with an open faced hot turkey sandwich. We took a peek in a few antique stores  and also saw this house which looks sososo much like our spring house. 

So - back to the business at hand. We are looking for rough sawn boards for our wall in the pastry shop and wide pine boards for our floors, upstairs and downstairs.

I'm pretty sure we found what we are looking for at Ghent, but since we were kind of in the area we decided to check out 2 other places that had been recommened to us. Both of them located in Pine Plains.

Antique and Vintage Flooring and New England Wholesale Hardwoods, or floorings.com. Both places were extremely helpful and nice to see but in the end we are trying to get away with cheaper wood and maybe spend the extra money on a stupendous finish instead. So 12" white pine boards from Ghent it is.

These guys have been all over the feeder lately. The usually super shy and lonely tufted titmouse now in abundance! 

I really hate leaving my beautiful house but the next 5 weeks will go by fast and I get to come home to a Christmas tree and super cosy time for at least a few weeks. We stopped by IKEA on the way back to the city today and stocked up on Glögg and gingersnaps! 

Here is the little table Rosemary brought last weekend that fits so perfect in that corner.

And here is the living room with the new little chest of drawers we picked up at Pier 1 Imports. (WHAT! That place is hell on earth you say? And I would mostly agree with you and your shopping eye has to be very selective.)

And we had claypot pork chops with dilly mushroom gravy for dinner. 

I rubbed a little salt, pepper and olive oil on the chops and seared them for a minute each on both sides. Then put them in the clay pot with potatoes and onions. They were in the oven for about 40 minutes.

We made the gravy with baby bellas, white mushrooms, oysters and shitakes. Sauteed them up in 1/2 stick of butter. Added 1/3 cup flour. Then 2 cups of stock and 2 cups half and half. 1 teaspoon dill weed. Let it simmer for 30 minutes.

We mixed it up the day after by making potoates au gratin. The gravy was even better day 2!

Alright. I better start packing. See you in Mexico!