A trip to Maine (and the completion of the craft island)

Our older son and his girlfriend have been vacationing in Nova Scotia the past week. It turned out that it was far more expensive for them to try to fly back to San Francisco from Halifax than it would be to take a ferry to Portland, Maine and then come here and fly from Boston, so we took a quick trip to Maine today to collect them. They will be here for the weekend and fly home Monday morning. Portland is about two hours away for us so it was a nice day trip.



Just over the border into Maine we stopped at a rest area - I got such a kick out of this sign - an official government reminder to eat right!



We found the hotel easily and collected "the kids" from the lobby. We decided to go into Portland to the waterfront for some lunch. The area is full of little shops and restaurants - lots of them have clever names and interesting signs.



A juice bar,



a pet supplies store,



and an ice cream shop.



I did check out one shop with some interesting pop up cards but my only purchase was this pretty bar of lily of the valley soap.

For those of you who have asked about the progress of the craft island - it is done! (If you want to see the earlier posts about the island, they have the label "craft island" - here is a LINK).




To make the top work surface, my very handy husband used a large sheet of clear plywood and added molding to fit the size of the bookcases to help keep the top from sliding.



Above you can see the finished underside of the top with the molding and plywood painted.



Here is a close up of the mitered corners - doesn't he do nice work! The finished size of the top is about 36 x 79 inches - lots of room to spread out my pages and projects.



I put the same shelf liner that I used between the base platform and the bookcases on the top of the bookcases to protect them from scratches and to help grip and stabilize the top.



High five for the successful completion of the project! I am going to work with just the painted surface for the time being but I may eventually add a laminate top layer or look into getting a piece of tempered glass. I can now finish moving things around and really get settled into this new work space.

The rest of the weekend will be busy with family and I have another medical procedure scheduled for Monday. I am trying to catch up with email and other messages and I apologize if you are waiting on an answer from me - things should be settled down by the middle of next week.