Joy.

On Friday, Andrew and I had a rare date night. We drove to a neighboring town about 40 minutes away, so there was plenty of car chatter, which also meant that our dinner chatter got a little more random, since we'd covered all the typical end of the day topics already. I asked Andrew, "If you had to name 5 things, in no particular order, that bring you joy, what would they be?"

Not surprisingly, Andrew's list and mine were pretty similar. While I don't remember everything exactly or in what order, here's a general summary of the things we said:

- Riding our bikes together
- Working with our church youth group/feeling a sense of community within our church
- Curling up with the kitties and each other
- Improving our house/coming home to our house at the end of the day
- Enjoying the nature and changing seasons where we live
- Spending time with family
- Finding meaning in our work
- Eating, growing, preparing organic/sustainable/local food

Looking at that collection, it makes me realize that our joy (and many of our goals) stems from the idea of living a simple life. Sometimes, I feel like I should be striving for something greater. Other times, I feel like living a simple life in itself is complicated, daunting, frustrating, chaotic, and possibly probably unattainable.

One of the things that stuck with me from my abnormal pyschology class in college was the idea that a disorder becomes a problem when it gets in the way of a person finding pleasure in the things they once enjoyed. But in order to identify if a person has lost pleasure in these things, the person has to first identify the things that they do (or did) find pleasure in to begin with. A person who is depressed and has been for some time can have a hard time identifying what once made them happy. The example that our lecturer used was of one client who said that she once found pleasure in sitting in quiet and drinking a cup of coffee - it took her nearly an entire session to identify that one activity as being one that used to bring her happiness.

Forgetting your joys is not something that I think is limited to a person who has depression. While I'd say that I have a relatively happy, hopeful outlook at the moment, I still forget to identify the things that bring me happiness sometimes. Is joy real if it goes unacknowleged?

A lot of times, when I carry a burden, it can become oppressive until I write it down, speak it to another person, voice my concern in prayer - whatever it takes to acknowledge the idea as being one that is weighing me down. Then, once acknowleged, I can begin the process of overcoming or letting it go. Once it is voiced, that burden becomes real and I'm better able to tackle it or face it. I begin to feel better in the exact moment that I am able to voice my pain. I think joys work the same way for me. To acknowledge it, write it out, or say it out loud makes the joy feel more real.

For me, the end of October signals not so much the celebration of Halloween, but instead it means it's time to re-focus, start slowing down, and acknowledging what's important. At work, I'm encouraging my students to re-focus on their goals and what they need to do to attain those goals before the semester slows to a close. And at home, I'm re-focusing on the seasons to come, managing my time into bits and pieces so that I'm prepared to enjoy the holidays and the vacation time that comes with the end of the year. With Thanksgiving coming in just a few more weeks, there will be a house to clean, meals to plan, dishes to prepare, and family and friends to welcome. After that, there will be gifts to buy, bags to pack, celebrations to attend, and gifts to wrap (ugh, I hate doing that). In the season of giving thanks, there are still lots and lots of distractions. So maybe it's best that I get a head start on voicing my thanks and sharing my joys by writing them down and sharing them out loud.

Porch "After" Photos Part II

Starting from where the last post left off, here's what the porch looked a few hours after we'd applied the (oil based) stain. By no means is the wood on the porch perfect, but I'm still glad we went with the stain that would allow the most natural beauty of the grain to show through.



After a long weekend, we felt that the oil had completely soaked up, and we returned our porch furniture to their original places. The adirondak chairs are plastic and were a great sale find at Menard's earlier this summer. Their low price means that I don't feel guilty when I hope they're replaced next season by a porch swing - there are hooks still in place from years ago when someone who lived here had one.



View of the entry way - the front door seems to fit in so much better with the stained porch.



All ghouled and ready for Halloween this weekend! Our pumpkins were all purchased at the Farmer's Market, and I love their irregular shapes, colors, and stems. They fit in well with our not-so-perfect, but wonderfully so, finished project.

Harvest/ Porch "After" Photos Part I

Living in Iowa, even in a city, you'd have to be living under a rock to not notice when the fall harvest begins. Driving outside (and sometimes in) the city limits can become an interesting game of Frogger with combines. Everyone in the heartland seems to be preparing for the winter.

In our household, harvest preparations are underway, too. I brought in the last of the tomatoes before the frost, let (most) of the green ones ripen (--everyone says to wrap them in newspaper, but for the last 2 years, I've just put mine in a deep wooden bowl, and they turn red just fine), and then froze them along with our teensy crop of peppers. I decided that even though I only had 4 ziplocks of frozen vegetables that I'd grown (and technically, tomato is a fruit) I'd go ahead and cross off "Freeze my own vegetables" from the 101 in 1001 list.

We've been trucking away at our house to-do list. But the biggest accomplishment that we made in October is Porch Project. Driving up the house, I can't help but be proud of what we accomplished. Even though the project took longer than we thought, it was much, much less painless than the other refinishing projects we've done since moving into this house three years ago. And, our porch is ready and waiting for Trick-or Treaters this weekend!

Here's what we started with in early October - a slate blue, very chipped porch.



Then we tried a non-toxic chemical and power wash, thinking everything would come up, since it was already chipped.



Not quite. So we began the heat gun process. In the end, it looked good enough to sand. The orange stuff is stainable woodfiller.


Andrew spent a few afternoons sanding tough spots with a hand sander, since we only rented the floor sander for a day. The wood looked beautiful by the time we were ready to stain.


And so began the staining process. I did the edges with a brush, while Andrew used a larger applicator that we'd held on to after completing the interior floors in '09.

To-do Lists

I love lists.

I'm one of those people who makes and actually uses grocery lists. I have a stack of lists at the office (and there, I'm also the queen of Excel files...nothing better than sorting a list!). I recently signed up on DayZeroProject.com for a list of 101 things I want to accomplish in 1001 days - my "ultimate" list for the next 3 years. I make wishlists - the count on Amazon.com is up to about 4 (gift list, someday list, dream list, shopping list). And then of course there are the lists for the house. With all of the progress we've been making, I've noticed that my ambition and lists themselves keep on growing.

We have a list on our fridge right now of the little things that need to happen in the week or two. These items include:
-Schedule upstairs insulation installation (YAY!)
-Fix the upstairs bathtub
-Touch up paint
-Fill in holes in grout (outside)
-Get rid of cobwebs
-Winterize the garden
-Clear out the weeds
-Wipe down walls upstairs (dust and construction dust still linger)
-New TV for upstairs and take current TV downstairs...I'd like this to happen in the next week or two, but may take a little bit longer, since it's the least pressing item on the list

Then there are a few more things on our winterizing list, which will happen sometime before the end of November:
-Plastic the windows (kitchen, upstairs bedrooms, dining room)
-Get out cold weather bedding (flannel sheets, down comforters)
-Put recreational stuff in the attic (bikes, lawn mower)/get out the snowblower
-Put rubber mats in our cars, get out shovels and ice scrapers
-Re-organize coat closet so that hats, gloves, and winter coats are within reach
-Buy a bag of salt/put salt in trunks to weigh down our lightweight cars

Last year, we didn't have much of a list about the house. The few items in our winterizing list were pretty much the only things that got done. Andrew and I were too busy and stressed to really think about the house, and thankfully, it was still standing by the time we got to this summer. But this year, it's list city, and I'm excited about it. There will be plenty to do all winter.

Winter Projects List:
-Remove upstairs bathroom medicine cabinet and replace with mirror and light fixture
-Grout/lay down ceramic tile in hearth
-Possibly stencil ceiling borders in the bedrooms using craftsman inspired patterns...not sure if I want to to do this or go the more expensive route and install crown molding
-Build additional shelves in the cellar
-Make a master plan about what goes in the cellar, attic, upstairs cabinets/organize all
-Organize decorations and storage in basement closet
-Re-organize important documents/filing cabinet system
-New sound equipment for basement TV area (this is all Andrew - I have no idea what's going on with this project)
-Go through attic and sort through storage (this will be closer to spring - hopefully we will be able to list some items for sale)
-Add organization system and finish overhead lighting in the laundry room

This list doesn't even bother to go into my "Holiday Lists" - which include gifts (both purchased and made), baking, party hosting, decorating, etc.

And then there is my 101 in 1001 project that I mentioned earlier. Sometime this summer, I made my Day Zero list (http://www.dayzeroproject.com/). It's like a bucket list, with a much shorter span of time. So far, I have 912 days left and I've completed 10 items (for the curious, the items I've done are: kiss in the rain, ride the bike trails, make fresh crepes, organize my recipes, make made from scratch tortillas, refinish the porch, go to Brookfield Zoo, join the church choir, make a new friend, and learn to sew...okay, still working on the last one, but I felt like I could mark it as done since I'd attempted).

When I organized this list, I made a point to put things in a do-able order, and group items according to the season that they're most likely to be completed. I have some very clearly winter-themed goals, like iceskate in our neighborhood park, go skiing (I've never been), attend a Madrigal dinner (something I haven't done in years), host a New Year's Eve party, and make cinnamon rolls from my grandma's recipe. One of my 101 in 1001 items is to collect copies of Andrew and my grandparents' wedding photos - so I'm planning to ask for this as a Christmas gift from my parents and in-laws. In an album of pictures from my mom, I found a black and white of my maternal grandparents holding their wedding cake, which made me realize how much I'd love to frame of all of our grandparents' wedding photos together (or wedding-era photos...I'm not sure that an actual ceremony photo exists of my paternal grandparents, since they married in the middle of WWII).

I may not actually finish my 101 in 1001 list...Andrew pointed out that to finish it, a person has to do about 1 task every 10 days. Technically, I'm about on target, but some of the items on my list will take more time to do than experiment with a new recipe or go somewhere over the weekend. But, as a chronic list-maker, I just enjoy having a place to put my miscellaneous plans.

Tour de basement - 1

It all starts here!

I've always loved hall trees, and when we were laying out the plans, I thought I'd put one at the base of the stairs. Last winter, I'd started horseback riding, so I was always clomping downstairs to store my dust/gunk covered riding gear or gearing up before lessons and needed a spot to put on my boots near the back door of our house. But when we started planning, the depth of the nook that I'd envisioned kept on getting slimmer.

So I came up with this idea instead. I put up a mirror (from my Grandma's old kitchen) and a row of deco-inspired dragonfly hooks (Target - the main source of all my decorating). We already had the cubes for the basement TV area, so I put them here and added 2 pillows that we already had plus the red one - another Target find - for $4. So, all told, this little nook cost about $20 to put together.

The other thing worth noting in this photo is the vinyl floor...it was the only splurge in our entire basement remodel. We had some basic beige options for about $300 less that were very nice, but I loved the slate-y colors in this sample and decided that the upgrade was worth it. A few months later, I still think it was worth it.

Tour de basement - 2

For poker nights and bananas and cribbage and trivial pursuit and jenga and all the other board games in the closet. Had a few late nights with friends around this table already this summer and it was great fun...definitely a good investment!

One of my favorite things about this area is that absolutely nothing in this photo (minus the cafe curtain/rod) is new. The basement does have a very clear "Europe" theme as everything on the walls comes from my travels (except the Chat Noir hanging, which is just a nod to my own black kitty), and I will admit that there are several new things on the walls upstairs in our house. Using stuff we already had gave me a pretty solid excuse to "sophisticate" the upstairs a little bit. For example, the bullfight poster used to be over our living room couch - there is now a very grown up mirror in its place.

Tour de basement - 3

Family room..yeah, we are aware that the tv is from 1992. Working on that!

This part has a little bit more new stuff. Last spring, I loved this blue and white print at Target, and planned on steel-gray walls with everything else blue and white floral - kindof a modern take on vintage blue willow. When I realized that our budget did not involve all new stuff, I abandoned the idea to work with what we already had. However, on a last run to Target in June for things like a shower rod, I found that the blue and white print had gone on deep clearance. While I didn't end up with the whole matchy-matchy line, I bought the pillows for about $7 each and the vase for $4. The paisley chair pad on the rocker was less than $10 at Tuesday morning, and I like how it ties together the royal blue and the the sage green from our couch cover (I wanted to replace this, but those things are darned expensive, and our current one is still in decent shape). The entertainment center and coffee table were the biggest pieces in the room, but together came in under $75 - and I thought my days of "college furniture" were over. Unfortunately, the entertainment center is "expresso" and the coffee table is black, so it's not my ideal, but both were in our extremely limited budget so I went for it. I'm able to camoflauge the shades enough by keeping a small runner on the coffee table. My favorite new piece in this room is the funky modern-and-mission style lamp from Target.

The couch is our old couch from the living room. I can't remember if I blogged about this, but the couch itself was a major headache in this project. Since our plan was to put in a wall (for the bathroom) next to the already very narrow but previously open staircase, we knew that we needed to get the couch downstairs before construction started. And once the couch was in, it would not be going out (same for the bed...the only way these things will come out is with a large saw).

Due to some strange corners in our house, the couch needed to go through a window. So, around 10pm, one of our good friends came over to help Andrew get the couch through the window. Of course it started raining the second the couch was out on our porch. The guys then carried the couch around our house and we started to work the thing down the stairs. But it was stuck. Over the next 2 hours, we managed to saw off all but 1 of the couch's feet. We were so exhausted that we didn't care.

But after a couple of weeks into construction, Andrew and I tried several different methods of giving the couch new feet. And all failed. Finally, our contractor suggested putting 2x4 rails on the sides. Andrew did some excellent carpentry work (we do miss all of the nice tools that were housed in our basement for a couple months!) and now we have the heaviest couch on earth, but also probably the most stable. Which it needs to be, considering the thing will be in our house probably longer than we will.

Tour de basement - 4

This photo shows a lot of the ceiling, which was one of my biggest woes throughout the whole project. It turned out fantastically, though we're now finding a few spots that need touching-up (not a big deal). I also like how our layout gave us a few "nooks" - I wasn't expecting that, but found that the nooks worked perfectly for our needs. In the nook by the closet, our DVDs, CDs, and stereo were a perfect fit.

I also love how the closet turned out. It holds our massive collection of board games and I also stashed our extra heavy winter coats there (in the winter, I'll put the light jackets here) so there is more room in the coat closet upstairs.

This is also a pretty good view of the carpet, vinyl, and paint colors together. Again, I couldn't be happier how it turned out. Carpet selection was incredibly quick (I just wanted a heavy-duty beige) but paint and vinyl took a lot longer. The paint was a little brighter than I wanted, but I think the bright is great in what was a very dark basement. I also like how the the blue works as a neutral - a lot of the stuff on our walls have brown, rust, orange, and red as main colors and I found myself really liking a light blue paired with earthy reds - not a color combo I'd been particularly fond of before.

Tour de basement - 5

This part didn't turn out at all how I envisioned, but it still turned out pretty good.

The plan in this room was to put enclose the bedroom, add a door, add an egress window, and a walk-in closet. Basically, I wanted this to be a potential master suite if we needed it later on.

However, when the ceilings were deemed too low for us to call it an official bedroom, we decided to keep this area open. The egress window stayed in the plan since we did intend for this to be a sleeping and recreation area.

It was very late in the game when the contractor told me that my walk-in closet idea wouldn't work due to where the furnace and connections were located. However, we did put a closet door here so that I could use the space as unfinished storage. It's now the home to all of my holiday decorations and exercise equipment.

So, in the end, this space is pretty different from the vision, but pretty close to the function.

Tour de basement - 6

This is a view of the guest bedroom, which is the only room that still needs a little bit of work. You can see in the left corner by the bed that there is a headboard sticking out. The headboard is actually one of the original doors from elsewhere in the house (we have another 1 or 2 in the garage as well). I wanted to hang it as a headboard, but we haven't quite figured out the best way to do that.

On the right side of the picture, you can see the gray curtains that I picked out to create a little "wall" and separate the room. While having a real wall would have been ideal, I like the flow of the space with the curtains there.

Tour de basement - 7

Here's a view of what we did with the curtains. Originally, this was supposed to be a full wall (with a door), but I like how it turned out. The room feels a lot bigger and more open, and because the egress shares so much light (obviously hard to tell because this is taken at night), I'm glad that light can come into the family room area, too.

Tour de basement - 8

Cellar and "litter closet." Yes, our kittehs require their priv-acy.

This was another surprise. We thought the litter closet would be a full sized door (and that the closet would slant since this is the underside of the stairs leading up to the kitchen), but our contractor built mini-doors. They're still big enough for an adult to duck under, which is good, since our sump pump is also hidden back there under the stairs leading down to the basement.

Tour de basement - 9

Bathroom - the biggest investment, but also possibly the best improvement.

The closet here leads directly to the furnace. We couldn't fit both a laundry sink and a bathroom sink in here, so the bathroom sink doubles as both - it's super deep and then we had the tall-neck fixture so things like buckets can get in the sink. I love this feature. All the fixtures minus the lighting came from my favorite place, le Target.

Tour de basement - 10

Commode...yupp, this picture needs to be flipped...but I can't figure out how to do it. Oooops.

Tour de basement - 11

Bathroom/laundry - again, badly uploaded photo...but it shows how the bathroom opens up into the laundry room. Originally, the whole space was supposed to be open, but there were problems with layout late into the inspection process. We ended up really liking this solution.

Craftsman closet

All finished! Here's the shelf above the door/window and my wall of hooks for handbags. I added a firefly hook on the door (can't get enough of these...also have a few in the basement).

Fact: Menards is open until 10pm

This is a useful fact, because I keep on changing my mind about what we should do with our porch stain.

Andrew has sanded down the front porch to a pretty beautiful state. We had no idea that the wood would be so gorgeous (and uh...we think it's cedar, not oak as I may have suggested previously), but I should have known better after seeing the character of the wood in the rest of our house.

Originally, we'd gone for a semi-transparent color thinking it would showcase the wood but cover our mistakes. But now that there aren't mistakes after some very careful sanding, we want to show off the grain of the wood in its full majesty.

So we returned our poly- semi-stain for an oil based tinted stain. The poly had a 6-8 year guarantee, where the oil has 3.

While we were standing in the store at 9pm, I thought that we'd found the solution. So what if a little more upkeep is involved? Show off some Craftsman beauty! But now all I can think of is winter....snow drifts....snow sitting on our porch...our beautiful, original woodwork rotting.

And for the first time in the life of our home projects, there is no help to be found on bungalow blogs. Bob Villa is even silent.

So now we wait, dodging the weather (rain) hoping for warm temperatures to stay for 48 hours, and maybe another last-ditch trip to Menards for yet another exchange.

The view from my front porch

Last weekend, Andrew and I embarked on the Porch Project. We've been meaning to tackle this project since our home was inspected prior to purchase. We were assured by our home inspector that, though making creaky sounds, the slats of our front porch were solid oak (like all of the other woodwork in the home - this is typical of Craftsman building) and could possibly go another 80 years if properly taken care of.

The porch looked okay when we first moved in - not great, but okay. The paint was a slate blue, which is a little odd for our house since it's a vanilla color with peach and white trim, but it was neutral and thus began the Porch Project's downward slide toward the bottom of our DIY project list. The paint was flaking off in the high traffic areas, but we could live with it. I bought a doormat and called it a day.

And year by year, we kept waiting until fall to refinish the porch. Especially after we refinished the hardwood interior floors in the bedrooms, the porch seemed like an easy-peasy task because, as we told ourselves, "Hey, we know how to do that!" But somehow we just never felt quite up to it.

So last weekend, one of the two weekends left that we have open until Thanksgiving, Andrew and I decided that we'd just casually strip the paint off the porch, sand, and stain - starting on Saturday afternoon and finishing Sunday.

If you've followed by blog since our first string of projects, you're probably saying, "Haven't those dumb kids learned something yet?"

Apparently, no, we haven't.

Of course stripping the paint took 4x as long as we figured it would. First of all, our porch is bigger than we thought. Second, the paint wasn't chipping as much as we thought. And then our favorite non-toxic paint stripper wasn't strong enough, nor was (our brilliant idea!) the power washer borrowed from our neighbor. I went online to check the blog where I'd seen this done (failing to mention to Andrew that when I called it a "3 hour project" like I saw on said blog, the homeowner's porch was roughly a 1/4 of the size of ours). They said they'd used a heat gun to scrape off all the paint.

"A heat gun!" I said. "We have one of those! We know how to do that!" Cheered by the fact that we are 'old pros' at this, Andrew and I went to work.

Our confidence was short-lived. Under the blue paint, there was green paint (the kind of 70's stuff - not a pretty sage green). And under the green paint, there were surprises. Some spots had white. Some spots had a dark brown. Most spots had a caramel colored putty like substance that turned to a gray-black tar when heated. This substance also would smolder if heated too much. This substance was awful and horrible and it was everywhere.

After a full Saturday and most of a Sunday of work last weekend, we had finished about 1/3 of the porch. We promised ourselves that we'd work on it in the afternoons/early evenings during the week so we could sand everything over the weekend.

But life happens, and between coming home late or just being exhausted, by Friday evening, there was still 1/3 of the porch done.

After working most of the day today, I'm proud to say that we finished the other 2/3. But not after feeling like I was in my favorite 1986 full-animated feature, My Little Pony: The Movie. If you missed this cinematic masterpiece, I will attempt to describe the plot (and my metaphor). In MLP:TM, evil sisters put a spell over a volcano and create "the Smooze," which threatens the vitality and beauty of the little ponies. Anyone who is touched by the Smooze can no longer fly, loses magical powers, and also loses, in essence, any a sense of self (the Wikipedia entry for MLP:TM contains this brilliant explanation: "[the Smooze is] an unstoppable purple ooze that will eat and destroy everything in its path. It will also make anyone who is splashed by it grumpy and woeful"). You get the picture, I'm sure. The black tar crap was stinking everywhere on that porch, concealed by layers of paint. Our next door neighbor told us that at one point, our front porch was enclosed and screened in, so I'm not sure if it was an adhesive or just a lethal substance slathered on the floor for fun. Whatever it was, it was awful. And it certainly made Andrew and me grumpy, woeful, and miserable. But like the MLPs, we soldiered on. And to date, no flutterponies needed to come to our aid (shoot...sorry about the spoiler). But in light of our past sanding experiences, I'm attempting to walk into this with an open mind. Anything can happen tomorrow when we rent the sander.

Tonight, Andrew and I are still keeping busy, even though the sun has gone down and there's no more Porch Project to work on. Currently, Andrew is busy working on my closet, and after we eat dinner, we'll be taking inventory to see what we need to buy at our second trip to Menard's this weekend.

Project Closet seems to be coming along quite a bit better than Porch Project.

A couple of weeks ago, when putting away laundry, my closet shelf that previously held all of my sweatshirts came crashing down on my head. Turns out that it's a bad idea to make really big holes in plaster walls, because that causes instability. Adding a lot of weight to that is a particularly bad idea as well. Andrew seemed more upset about it than I did, since this was his first ever "handyman" project in our home, and it was now a miserable failure, 3 years later.

Last week, I went downstairs and found a shelf that Andrew and I had put up in a closet when we rented, and found that the window sill in the closet and door frame could be used to anchor the shelf. Since we have a hoard of small tools, we were able to saw the thing down to fit. Problem solved - for the sweatshirts. However, there was more to the issue.

Some girls like shoes. I like handbags. All of my bags had also been hanging from the shelf (it was one of those wire ones, so I'd concocted an elaborate hanging system with hangers that were made for holding neckties). Because my solid shelf no longer allows for a hanging system, my handbags were homeless, and that made me sad. So Andrew is currently working on securing a beam to the studs on the wall, and then attaching hooks to the beam. In the end, the effect should be an Arts and Crafts-inspired Altar of Handbags. I realize this description is insufficient, so I promise to post photos when it's finished.

And since my husband has been busy at work for the last hour, it would be a kind and loving thing if I finished this post and made the pizza that I said I'd make.

Wish us luck, dear friends - if we survive to tell the tale of Sunday, I'll do my best to share.

Staple time!

Before and after

Elmo helping

Old covers from antique store find chairs

Finished

Have a seat.

Today is the first of October, and thus begins our mad dash rush toward my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I realize that this statement sounds ridiculous. But since the incredible basement project (I know, I need to take photos...I promise this is coming!), we've been exhausted. All of the little projects that we said we would do this summer - because we thought we'd be done with the basement in May - have been delayed due to the fact that, well, we just didn't want to start another project. We needed time to breathe and enjoy the new space.

But there are some things that need to happen before winter comes. And there are other things that I just want to finish before Thanksgiving, which will be our second year hosting. It sounds like it will be a small gathering again this year, but nonetheless, since I have perfectionist tendencies, I make Thanksgiving our deadline to finish up big projects so we can batten down the hatches and welcome in the holiday season. Little indoor projects can wait until the winter boredom of mid-January and February settle in, and then by March, we usually find our energy and start off to the races again. Such is the cycle of owning a little old house and having big ideas.

Andrew has just started with the first steps of refinishing our porch, so I'd better start helping (and taking photos, of course).

But before then, I'm going to try to post some pics of the chair project last night - we'll see how this works from the phone.