A Little Bit...

A Little Bit of Fresh Oregon Strawberries

 A Little Bit of Playing in the River...

and Having a Picnic

A Little Bit of Crocheting

And a Little Bit of Gardening... 

made for a very nice Memorial Day Weekend.

 

Hope Yours Was Nice Too!

 

The One Season We Normally Don't See

Spring is here in Central Oregon....early! It started in February and has just kept coming. This may not seem unduly unusual to many in our country, but here we normally don't have a spring. We somehow get from winter to summer about the middle of June, with a few hard freezes yet to come. They say it's because of our proximity to the Cascade Mountain range. But this year things got changed up. We have continually seen beautiful weather and flowers. Flowers that have not poked up their heads just to freeze, but to grow and bloom. It's been a beautiful daffodil season, with longs weeks of blooms, and I still have a few later bloomers out there. We even had a beautiful Easter with flowers and outdoor egg hunting. Such abundance we are appreciating.

 On a nice Sabbath Sunday, we had our first hamburger cookout and ate on our deck in April. Pretty much unheard of in our 31 years here in Bend. I love weather that changes, and continually surprises. We have been in drought weather through the winter, but the last two weeks have gone a long ways towards helping that. April showers are showing up in May and I love the misty, moisty mornings of my youth. Great for gardening.

My ever faithful blooming crabapple trees are a delight to my soul. Hope you are enjoying Spring as well, wherever you live.

The Table

From start to finish, here's a record of the making of the table.

First is a picture of the homemade saw horses my dad put together to use and also the posts for the table legs leaning on one of them.  We turned our lower deck into work space, which worked out very nicely and the weather cooperated almost entirely.

The base of the table is almost all assembled.

Everyone was getting excited as the pieces were coming together and looking like a table.

Next was the tabletop.  

Done!

Dad got a nifty gadget called a Kreg Jig that made these holes so that the screws could go in straight.

They worked on extensions that can be added onto each end of the table to make it longer.

Sam is holding an extension in place.

Sam is drilling holes with the Kreg Jig.

The jig is the blue thing and it is clamped onto the board to hold it in place.  My dad said it was worth it's weight in gold.  A very useful little tool.

All of this building productivity inspired just about everyone.  I found these two hammering away on some scraps of wood.

Calvin got motivated with the sander.

Safety goggles were flying around like crazy while everyone got in on the action.  Someone thought James should even try them out, although he stayed safely away from the work zone.

They also put together two benches to sit on one side of the table.

These are some awesome, sturdy benches.  I have been loving them.  Great design.

This was one of the first things to get stained.  We chose a walnut colored stain.

There it is!  This was after one coat of stain.  We put on another coat later and a coat of polyurethane before bringing it inside to try it out.

This is what it looks like with the extensions.

This was our first meal to eat at it.  Practical, beautiful and big enough for the Jones family, plus guests!
 
 Here's one more so that you can see the table a little better in the dining room.  We are slowly working on this room.  You can see that we just added the curtains.  We hope to buy unstained chairs and stain them to match for the ends and one side.

Last of all, the benches!  They definitely help save space in this narrow room.

A huge shout out to my Dad, my husband, and my sons for this wonderful accomplishment and addition to our home!

A Couple More of Ben

 I think Calvin (10) had the camera for this shot.  Actually he gets the photo credit on most of the pictures that I posted in the last post.  It's the best one that I had of Ben (12).

Except for this one of him shaking Mr. Gallatin's hand.  :-)