Welcome Home, Mellie: This Weekend's Projects

I had my last work trip (before the wedding) this past week. While it was in one of my favorite cities (NYC) at my favorite time of year, I was happy to come home on Friday night and put in a full weekend of wedding related prep and errands. With officially less than 2 weeks left every second counts (yes, that was a purposeful reference to Lance's book).

Carl's dad came in town to help with some land related projects. The final things to complete are the following:

1. The step up onto the deck
2. The dance floor
3. Final land prep and clean up

Carl and his dad got some of the step completed on Saturday but it was pouring down rain (even hailing) a lot of the day, which delayed some of their progress. I went out to the land and brought them lunch and worked on my signage plan. I now have the wood selected and the list of signs I need to make. This is a project for next week, once I'm off work.

The dance floor supplies are all bought and should be completed next weekend, along with a big group clean up. It really does feel like it's all finally coming together.

The big project today was beer bottling! Carl brewed 20 gallons of beer a couple of weeks ago and today began the assembly line to prep for distribution.

Carl and I have worked on many projects together but I think this may have been our most successful. It really highlighted both our strengths - Carl and his physical strength and inventive strategies and my efficiency and process expertise. We were unstoppable.

First, there was bottle soaking. We had to clean the over 200 beer bottles in a large tub.

Then we had to rinse. We had to ensure the soap and residue was all gone.

Then we moved inside to begin the bottling process.

Carl had to do something to get each jug flowing to then pour into the individual (freshly cleaned) bottles.

Then I got to cap them!

All in all it took us about 6 hours. But I felt a huge accomplishment that we have almost 200 beers for our friends and family to enjoy during our ceremony. It was well worth the mess that was our kitchen for a few hours.