Rapid City highlights

I finally made it to Rapid City!

My parents came with me and did some touristy things while I attended the North Central branch meeting, but I did have time in the evening to go out with them and visit things like the best real fake dinosaurs:

The dinos have a great view.

We found the highest concentration of graffiti in South Dakota:

You have no idea how surprised I was to find a Tardis and a Dalek.

We visited Prairie Edge and I bought three clay chickens and ogled the Italian glass bead display:

They were so well organized!

All beads.

I also had the best strawberry pie that I've ever encountered at the Colonial House restaurant:

Imagine Way's strawberries cut up and swimming in fresh, homemade strawberry jam in a flaky pie crust. I'm pretty sure this would win at Memorial Day.

We also saw Mt. Rushmore, but that deserves it's own post.

Home improvements: Dining room edition

I've been working on redecorating the downstairs, beginning with the dining room. This picture will explain why I'm starting here:

Pink walls and green wallpaper. The white stripe is the only thing that's left of the chair rail.

The dining room has two stained glass windows, and I'm using them as inspiration for the room. I already painted the accent wall indigo (which matches all of the indigo shirts I own). Josh was nice enough to remove the chair rail for me, which was really awesome because it turned out to be attached to the wall with 3.5 inch deck screws.

Overkill.

The evening of the Fourth, I decided it was time for the wallpaper to die, so I peeled off the top layer. Today's mission is do remove the rest of the wallpaper, wash the walls, and spackle the holes left by the three painted over drywall anchors.

I ordered carpet samples from Flor, and we're going to pick out some for a rug in the dining room and also in the living room. We need something to go under the new coffee table.

Note Devo on the small sofa, melting into his usual spot. I don't know why I keep calling it a sofa when it's really Devo's own giant kitty bed.

Peaches!

Because I can't resist fruit in bulk, I contributed for a case of peaches with this week's basket.

This is most of the case. There were only two peaches that had to be sacrificed to the compost gods.

The rest of the peaches, plus some of the other fruit from the basket. Yes, those butternuts are from about a month ago.

You are not a peach.