Spring Light

It's hard for me to believe we made it through the winter in our Airstream, but the daffodils outside are living proof, literally! We've officially entered spring, and I couldn't be happier to say farewell to frosty nights, frozen pipes and the four letter word that starts with the big R (rain). While there are still many wet days to come, I'm sure, spring comes with such relief that the long nights of winter are truly over. September doesn't seem so long ago when we were pondering whether or not we would be able to maintain our sanity living in 180 square feet throughout an island winter. With some help from friends during the cold spells, a handful of vacations when we needed to get away, and more than a few bottles of wine, we came through all right. 

Sunny spring days turn into beautiful west side sunsets at the lighthouse.

First daffodils harvested! LOTS of joy!

We also finally got around to ordering some 12v lights and installing them. The idea behind keeping our wiring 12v was to have overall less draw and someday have a rooftop solar panel setup on the Airstream. But somewhere in this whole project, the lighting situation got too complicated and we threw our hands up in the air, capped all the wires sticking out of the wall, just got two floor lamps and plugged them into our outlets. Mid-winter we decided to tackle the lighting saga again and spent a ridiculous amount of time poking around Amazon searching for 12v track lighting that we liked. We finally ordered some and they got lost for 35 days with FedEx. When we finally tracked them down, to our dismay we discovered we'd somehow ordered regular household voltage lights, not 12v --- arrrgh! So we threw our hands up in the air again, returned the lights, and settled back in to life with our floor lamps. The kitchen sink was still a very dark corner (therefore I was not responsible if there were still food chunks on dishes after I cleaned them), and J was always moving his bedside reading lamp over to the kitchen counter top to have better lighting for food prep. The only light we ordered that ended up working out was a cheap, 12v task-style light with a switch on it that we had gotten for my side of the bed so I could read. 

 

So we decided to just order a few more of those and be done with it! J wired them into the kitchen area on Saturday!

I got one over the sink (yay!!!! and also ewwww I need to clean the sink now that I can see all the grime in it...)

And J got one right over his chef prep area and the stove. Seriously, once you get light, there's no going back to living in the dark. We got rid of one floor lamp and it feels like a lot less clutter. I was worried about having all the lights be on their own switches instead of being able to flip one switch and have them all come on. But I actually like having the option to turn each light on or off, especially since we don't have any dividing walls in the Airstream. It's nice to keep the lights off at the sleeping end of the trailer if you're just hanging out on the couch reading, or if one of us is still asleep back there (that would be me). 

My favorite new Airstream addition is this chalkboard/mail holder/key and coat rack thingy. I ordered it on etsy from The Wooden Attic, and it's awesome! Current chalk art above is by J. I've learned you can never have too many hooks in the Airstream. There are also slots on top of the chalkboard that hold mail, DVDs, pens and of course, the chalk! Fun to write messages on and free's up our counter from piles of mail, keys, hats, whatever :)

Some spring days are still quite gray. But Agnes doesn't care what the weather, it's always a great day to be at the beach in her mind. Thank you for all of the kind words, phone calls, and emails when we lost Maggie. She will always be in our hearts. We are able to smile and laugh now when we think of her and it hurts less. Agnes is our fur-ball of good times - she has been always been good at that, so thank goodness for her! Here's hoping spring reaches you soon, wherever you are.