This weekend, we had our first visitors! My parents came to visit us on our island, and I'm not sure who would win a competition of "who got the most out of this visit"!
Right away, let me say that I've learned that whatever is the first picture I put on each blog post, THAT will be the photo that shows with the title, so before I post pictures of my parents and our adventures, let me first post something pretty:
There. Now, the story. Mom and Jimmy flew in to Bangor on Thursday afternoon (June 14th) but it was too late for them to come out to the island that night. Roger picked them up at the airport, dropped them off at their hotel in Ellsworth, and got back to the island just in time before the tide came in. Early Friday morning, we both went into Ellsworth, took the opportunity for a hot shower in their hotel room, then drove them back to the island to spend the day. Neither of them had ever had to have the kind of footwear needed for walking across the ocean, so we gifted them new boots!
Once we got them over to Serenity Island, they had very different ideas of how they wanted to spend the day. Jimmy had several projects he wanted to work on, some of them things I had already asked for and some were just gifts! Mom, on the other hand, wanted to play Scrabble in the island air. I won't tell you about all the times I beat her, but check this out: we tied one game!
Roger and I had already identified a perfect spot on the island to set up a picnic table and have dinner watching the sunset. The problem was that the area sloped a bit, so if you didn't hold onto your dinner, it would softly slide into the sea. Jimmy logicked a way to level the ground in that area, and he also used random cinderblocks to make stairs in that spot so that we can easily walk down to the beach.
My favorite project was (finally!) the changing of the light fixtures. Originally, the cabin had four of these totally plain white fixtures, and one crazy thing over the bar that looked like it belonged in a 90's rave club.
Jimmy expertly replaced the simple fixtures with these beautiful electric lanterns, and over the bar, he installed this beautiful rustic chandelier:
We chose to spend Saturday OFF the island to visit Bar Harbor and spend time in downtown Ellsworth. So many pretty sites and interesting shops, lots of antiques. Bar Harbor is a town that cruise ships often stop at, so the downtown area is very quaint and inviting. Here are Mom and Jimmy looking out at the harbor...
My favorite treasure from this day of antiquing is this ship in a bottle for my mantle...I put it on top of this rock that I picked up on the island--a perfect slate diamond.
Here's a picture I'm adding just because I love it...Roger and Reagan are "resting" and Mom is texting...proving that we're not entirely without modernity on our island...
One more thing I want to share in the "before and after" category. I finally got the bedroom updated to my liking. The bedroom is very small--not much bigger than the queen sized bed and two night stands that occupy it. Though it is paneled in the same pine as the rest of the cabin, the paneling in the bedroom, instead of being stained and glossed, is simply whitewashed, which gives it a "cool" look compared to the warmth of the rest of the cabin. I had a picture in my head of doing it all in white with ivy, but the only way I could find what I wanted in terms of fabric was bedding that Waverly made back in the mid-90s. I'm so thankful for eBayers who, rather than throwing out old stuff, have the foresight to know that SOMEbody out there might want it. What you see in my "after" picture is a comforter that I made out of a Waverly sheet, plus I lucked up on other sellers who had the pillow shams, and the curtain (which was still in the package). I'm unspeakably pleased with the transformation:
Besides the visit with my parents, my main focus (when not working) is writing my novel. Here is a picture that Roger took of me working on it down by the shore.
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