Weekending

D was away on a guys' weekend, so I spent time with all the 4-legged girls here at the house.

Friday, I had a photo shoot down in Santa Fe in the morning.  I'm thrilled with the photos we took AND we actually got everything I needed to photograph done before the rain started.  (Although there was plenty of thunder and dark clouds threatening while we were working away like mad to get things finished!).

Saturday, I had another quick photo shoot here in town for some kids' things and then did some knitting and some spinning, and enjoyed our new deck.

We decided that our side deck was pretty much wasted space on the house.  It's the side of the house that gets the brutal afternoon sun and we never sit out there, despite it also being the side of the house that tends to get lovely breezes coming down the hill from the caldara, so we have been having a porch roof over that side of the deck added, plus had the deck sanded and restained (and had an ancient hot tub we never used hauled out as well).

Here's the before picture:

The hot tub is just out of the line of sight in this photo to the left.

And while the guys aren't quite done yet (they need to do a bit more finish work on the roof and put our benches back in place now that they've been finished, here's the after:

Here's the view looking NE towards Taos mountain:

It's wonderful to be able to sit outside and enjoy the cooler air during or just after a rainstorm.  (And we had more rain this weekend, which is always welcomed!)