Home Improvements

Part 4 of Summer 2011

Since moving into our new house, we've made a few improvements and some exciting purchases.

Our first big furniture purchase -- a dining room table and chairs! Delivered late, but finally here.

Our finished guest bedroom, with Ikea furniture. We haven't yet decided what to put on the walls. As a reminder, here's what the room looked like when we moved in:

. . . a color we like to call "Cookie Monster Blue." It took three coats of primer plus paint to cover this exuberant decor!

Here's the attic loft, which is not quite assembled. It will be our home office, once it's all done. We have made significant progress. Here's what it looked like when we moved in:

Wood paneling from floor to ceiling! We put three coats of primer plus paint on these walls, and we're really happy with the "Mild Lemon" color you now see throughout the room.

We love our house, and home ownership continues to be an adventure. We have many more plans for small improvements, but now that fall semester is coming on, our pace has slowed considerably. Come visit us some time!

Miscellaneous summer stuff

Part 3 of Summer 2011 Coverage

Early in the summer, Mike and I went to Boulder, Colorado for the day. It's a beautiful place, with the University of Colorado campus, downtown shopping, an amazing independent bookstore, and a great farmer's market. Here are a few pictures:

Tulips downtown

Flowers at the farmer's market

Mike at the Dushanbe Teahouse, where we ate lunch

On a different note altogether, one of my library classrooms got new laptops (yay!) and white boards. I'm very pleased and excited to teach there this fall:

For the first time since moving to Laramie, Mike and I were in town for Independence Day. Laramie has a huge celebration called "Freedom has a Birthday." Here's a picture of the main musical stage:

Freedom has a Birthday was really fun -- there were four stages in Washington Park. Also, free ice cream from the Freemasons and lemonade from the Democrats. (I heard the Republicans were giving away watermelon, but didn't run into their booth.)

Mike's mom visited us this summer, and we had a great time introducing her to Laramie. We went up to Vedauwoo for a walk around and to the Snowy Mountains. It was mid-July, but the Snowies still had tons of snow that shut down our attempts to go on a hike! On our way down from the Snowies we stopped for pizza at the Bear Tree Tavern and noticed this sign for the restrooms. It made us giggle.

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series of books, visited Laramie for a lecture and a reading. I went with my friend Kennedy and met the author. I'm reading the series now, and it's pretty entertaining. Her books include time travel, romance, and historical fiction, set (at first) in the Scottish Highlands.

Me, Kennedy, and Diana Gabaldon

Finally, a few food highlights from the summer. Mike and I have a share in Community Supported Agriculture, and every week we receive a box of vegetables and fruits from a farm in northern Colorado.

Here's a zucchini quiche, right before I popped it into the oven. It was delicious!

Pad thai, made with lots of the vegetables from our CSA share

This raspberry freezer jam does not represent produce from our CSA, but is actually made from Mink Creek raspberries given to us by my mom. It was my first-ever time making jam, and it's totally delicious.

Our pretty yard

Part 2 of Summer 2011 Update

Mike and I have spent a little bit of time working in our yard this summer. Luckily, it's fairly low-maintenance! We both enjoy having our own little piece of Laramie to take care of.

Here's our front flowerbed

A rosebush -- we just had 3 or 4 roses this year, but hopefully there will be more next year!

This lovely hanging basket was a house-warming gift from a good friend. (Also note the bright blue porch swing.)

I don't know what these purple things are called, but they're pretty, growing next to our garage.

Columbine at the back of the house

Lilac trees on either side of the bay window

Bright pink daisies in the front yard

Trip to Vancouver

I'm going to do a series of posts to wrap up events from summer 2011 -- I can't believe it's coming to an end! Here's Part 1 of the series: American Society for Engineering Education conference in Vancouver, B.C.

At the end of June I traveled to Vancouver with the engineering librarian from University of Wyoming to present a paper that we wrote about our assessment of information literacy skills among freshman engineering students. The conference was fine, our presentation went really well, and we had some time to explore Vancouver, which is a beautiful city.

The Olympic torch, right next to the conference center on the harbor

We rented cycles one morning to bike around Stanley Park, a small peninsula that protrudes from Vancouver

The temperate rainforest of Stanley Park

One of the beaches in Stanley Park

Totem poles in Stanley Park

While in Vancouver we also visited Granville Island (which is a lovely, though tourist-heavy, place) and I spent some time at H&M. I find that almost every time I leave Laramie I need to do a little bit of shopping!

The paper I presented in Vancouver is published online in the ASEE proceedings. If you're dying to check it out, go to http://www.asee.org/search/proceedings and search for bowles-terry.