Blue Moon Travels Under the Super Moon

We're moving! We said goodbye to the bay this weekend and hit the road :) More shenanigans to follow soon...

Airstream Projects Day & Night

There's a lot of photos here -- we are working on the trailer nearly every day since we are moving out this weekend! Last night J was out in the trailer until 11pm getting our electrical all set up. We also had our first summer thunderstorm at the same time and when J hadn't come back in the house for a few hours it occurred to me to go out and check on him (you know, metal trailer, live wires, thunderstorm...hmmm - the thought occurred to me that this is how the darwin awards are won...) but he was fine :) Blue's looking like home these days and we're itching to just take our mattress out there and move in! Enjoy the photos:

We have water! This is a hand pump from West Marine that just sucks up water from a bucket or container under the sink and drains through another hose that goes out through the floor of the trailer. Pretty simple. I'm still hoping to just set up a dish station outside for the summer though.

Peeling off the tape to reveal beautiful straight edges of my maps.

Loving it :)

Just another day of trailer work in paradise! We're easily distracted by whales and get lulled into west side drives with roomie Andrew to go watch them.

Sometimes our days extend into the night...fortunately J's drill has a handy dandy light that comes on when you use it. Here he is finishing up our rolling under-the-bed drawers around 10pm.

We took a trip up to our new property to scope out our trailer spot. It was majorly overgrown up there and our landlords said to have at it and cut whatever we needed to. So Andrew and I cut down trees and limbed overgrown branches to clear a spot for Blue Moon.

Andrew.

J gets out the pruners under supervision from Agnes and Nick.

We left 3-year old Nick to hook up our water (landlord's son). As long as he doesn't get it mixed up with the gas can, we should be fine.

Relaxing with key lime pie from the bakery after a lot of hard work. Well, Maggie did not get pie.

Putting in the drawers; after an extensive (and expensive) search for casters, our drawers now wheel nicely out from under the bed.

Drawer faces look pretty awesome!

"Can we please build the sofa now?"

"Not yet honey, I have to install the toilet" :)

Our dear friends Joe and Noelle came up for the weekend and lounged on our porch and entertained our dogs. Noelle also put in the rivets for our composting toilet vent. Don't worry Noelle, those scratches on the trailer were there before you started :)

We also learned that you can easily fit 4 people on our sofa - yay! (once it is built...)

Our trailer came with nearly all of the original screen frames, but the screens themselves were disintegrating. After a visit to our new property, where I got bit by some no-see-um bugs, I moved replacing screens to the top of our priority list!

Old screen and new screen! I was amazed to find out how simple it is to install screens. No power tools required. Blue is all screened in now so we can enjoy the summer island breeze, bug-free. Hopefully next time I write there will be photos of Blue being hauled up the mountain to our new home!

Free to Sail the Seas Beyond the Edges of the Map...

We are nearing the end of our precious time living by the sea in a real house. It's bittersweet because we love the bay, and we love this house, but it isn't ours. The owners are moving back in, and we are moving into our beloved Blue Moon in just a few short weeks. This past weekend was full of progress on the airstream, which is a relief because time is running out. I got a little crafty and ventured into the realm of mod podge to solve the issue of our ugly front endcap. The endcaps of the our trailer are fiberglass, and when we got Blue, someone had already started stripping the paint up there and it just looked horrendous. I have a strong negative gut reaction to painting anything in our trailer now because I know how much work it is to "undo" it. So, what to do? I had come across some images from other folks online that had put up maps in their trailer, so I decided to cover the whole thing in vintage west coast maps. A big thanks to Michael for donating all of his old maps for this project! 

Here we go...

Jack Sparrow is a dying breed. The world is shrinking, the blank edges of the map filled in.

Wrapping those round edges of the overhead storage bin in map pieces was a real pain, but it looks so nice! If you ever want to go anywhere on the west coast, from Vancouver Island down to the Mexico border, just come on by and stare at our ceiling for awhile. Hopefully the roads haven't changed in 30 years :) And if you are lying on the couch, you'll be able to find your way to our childhood homes in a great little town that we grew up in called Fort Collins. There may also be a section of Colorado's Arapaho National Forest in which you can find Lake Agnes...

Meanwhile, another original Blue Moon item needed some cleaning!

Fitting all the pieces together for the countertop. The fridge is installed!

Roomie Andrew helps J move in another piece of beech wood countertop. 

J cuts out the spot for our sink!

The trailer really feels like home with the kitchen nearly complete and the maps on the end. I still need to trim off the painters tape of the maps.

J installed this insulated panel next to the fridge to try and help keep the noise from the compressor to a minimum. There will be cabinet doors and a unique water and hand pump system coming!

The current state of things... 

In other news, we have tent caterpillars EVERYWHERE. They are disgusting. They gather in massive piles on deciduous trees and defoliate them completely. Then, right about now they all leave the tree and start clamoring over anything and everything outside (you, the dogs, the deck) looking for a special place to make their little cocoons. I regularly find them in the house because one of us tracked them inside. They have sticky little feet and are quite friendly in that they just latch on and hop a ride! Summer is here!