Elfa cafe

We've been waiting for the 30% Elfa sale at the Container Store to strike! Today we went down to the store in Pasadena and got a bunch of storage for the espresso machine, wall-mounted pull-out drawers in the pantry for each family member to stash their lunchboxes/bags/hats, and an entire master closet setup.

I picked the low-hanging fruit and assembled these two carts tonight. They're great -- Erin is wildly happy to have a drawer for all the paper Trader Joe's grocery bags, we put kitchen side towels in another, and I imagine I'll fill a couple with coffee related gear.

Workbenches from doors

I've got a two stage plan:
Stage one, clean out the garage in order to clear enough space for two large workbenches.
Stage two, build two workbenches from house addition scraps. The scraps are two solid core doors for the worktops and a bunch of original 8ft. long 2x4s from the 1939 part of the house.

Secret hollow book

This has nearly nothing to do with the house, but I wanted to share my secret hollow book. I made it as an enclosure for my Make Controller (a microcontroller board that can serve as the brains and input/output for robots and other fun creations). I was inspired to do it by Bre Pettis's Make Weekend Project video.

Prep for landscaping

Our landscaper came in and put some very nice, low maintenance stuff in the planter boxes next to the garage and behind the living room window. I haven't taken the "after" photos yet, so here's the "before".

1. next to the garage, 2. papyrus staging area, 3. kids watch the landscaping, 4. leaning tree, 5. planter box, 6. plants in waiting