The sun and the sand and a bed in my land...yacht.

It was a beautiful island weekend and although we wanted to spend it deck-lounging, beaching, kayaking and hiking, we MADE ourselves work on the trailer :) We got a little beach time in though too. Just wanted to say thanks for all of the sweet notes, supportive phone chats and emails you all have been sending our way. We couldn't do this without all of your encouragement! It is such a challenging project and has certainly consumed nearly every weekend of the last 8 months, but we are nearing the end! Here's what we've been up to...

We mounted stabilizer scissor jacks on each side of the back of the trailer to reduce trailer rockin'!

I had pretty much given up on trying to get all of the old paint off the window trim, and they were an eyesore. So I got out the spray paint and covered them back up again!

Kapow! I told J these went from shitty to pretty in one weekend :)

J gets prepped for bed building while the puppies supervise from outside.

Agnes was pretty excited about the summer-like weather. We headed to the beach with the dogs both days after working on the Airstream.

Notice J is wearing shorts! It was 65 degrees and beautiful this weekend. While J was busy building the bed I riveted in my new red window trim. I think I have done about 300 rivets now.

Ta da! Pretty neat. There will be storage drawers built underneath the bed eventually.

Happy Easter/Spring! These are my super-fragrant hyacinths that J got for me. Have a great week!

Wires, Stoves, and Rivets - Oh My!

Upon returning home from Austin, J and I both promptly got sick :( which halted Blue Moon activities. After a few weeks of babying each other and coughing constantly, we are over it and back on track to have Blue completed by the end of May. Since the countdown to move-in-date has begun, we pretty much live and breathe all things Airstream at our house. As we speak, our living room is littered with trailer appliances, wiring, tools, things from Amazon, and wine glasses. It gets a little crazy at times. But now that Spring is here, those extra hours of daylight after work allow us to get a lot done. Today was t-shirt weather -- yippee! Here's what we've been up to:

2-4-6-8, RAH, RAH, Insulate!! Replacing the "mouse hotel" sections of insulation.

What ho! A foe? Is that rain leaking into our brand new sub-floor?? We can't have that. J and I did some seriously creative custom-made (by us) rain-guttering to solve this problem. This is the only advantage we have discovered to NOT having a nice warm, dry garage to be able to work on our trailer in all winter: we find out each and every leak each and every time it rains.

J has been super busy working on our electrical while all of the wiring is exposed. He literally learned everything from library books and the internet. He's got our trailer all wired so we can use 12volt DC power (batteries/solar = "boondocking") or 120volt AC power (plug-in to normal power), so no matter where we are, we'll be electric...boogie woogie woogie... if you want to know more, just ask him - All I do is ask if the wires are live before I go in the trailer so I don't get electrocuted.

Many lovely custom aluminum patches have been made in all shapes and sizes to button up holes in the trailer, hoping to eliminate any further "mouse hotel" incidents.

Caulking in one of the windows. We experienced an incident earlier this winter where one blew out in a storm. Can't have that!

Some people walk on the ferry with suitcases. We went to Anacortes and got a stove from some nice boaters. We walked off the ferry and did our deal in the parking lot. Then we put it on a dolly and walked back on the ferry to go home about 20 minutes later! We found the little stove on craigslist and it is great! It is a Kenyon Marine stainless steel cooktop/oven (runs on propane). We were originally thinking of just getting a cooktop, but then my mom reminded me how good cookies smell and so we opted for the oven too. What was I thinking- no cookies?!

We got a lot of funny comments riding the ferry with our stove. Our favorite one was, "Hey, we used to have a stove just like that on our boat. Do you guys need an AC/DC fridge too by chance?" Ummm, why yes we do. So the very next day we drove about 10 minutes from our house and met more boaters who were remodeling their galley and had recently upgraded to a fancy fridge. We took their older fridge off their hands and they were more than happy to see it go. So now Blue Moon has all her appliances, and we saved a bunch of money :)

Heidi the Riveter... and... Rosie the Riveter :) Let's get those walls back on, We Can Do It!

It's so nice to have the walls back on, about 250 rivets later. We're getting ready for the really fun stuff now, like building our bed, kitchen, couch... so stay tuned!

Airstreams of Austin, Texas

Walking up to a trailer-turned-restaurant that has "Hey, you gonna eat or what?" painted in bright red letters on it and ordering cheap, delicious eats is becoming more and more common in cities everywhere. The food truck revolution is sweeping the nation...except on our island. We kind of live in our own little bubble out here, so J and I were pretty excited when we went to see the big city lights of Austin, TX for a friend's wedding. Not only were there food trucks, there were lots of Airstream food trucks! But Austin is taking things one step further. You can now get your usual cupcake, BBQ, crepes, or chicken sandwich from a shiny silver trailer, AND you can: adopt a puppy (they had ringworm), buy used cowboy boots for $50, buy expensive (like $750 expensive) hipster shoes, and buy local jewelry and vintage home goods---all from the convenience of a parked vintage Airstream :)

We had a lot of fun...