By far, I have to say the most fun writing I’ve had this year has been on this blog. This site has been visited about 175,000 times this year by 85,000 individual viewers. Thank you all for reading. Here are some of the posts you liked best:
1. How to buy an IKEA couch and have it delivered to Alaska. Yup: with perseverance, you too can have all the Swedish-designed, Allen-wrench assembled furniture you want and even with shipping, it’s comparable to what you can buy in AK. AND, AN UPDATE: I went to IKEA in Seattle over Thanksgiving and was pleased to discover they have a sweet shipping desk where somebody will help you get your stuff to a freight forwarder. It’s $100 bucks, but much smoother than the rogue approach I’ve taken before. I used Linden as my shipper. They were GREAT.
2. For Talking Points Memo: What the Lower 48 doesn’t get about Denali The best line, from my sister-in-law’s friend Ajax, who I reached on his fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska: “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Let’s do whatever’s cheap.”
3. Before & After: The Living Room. (That down there is what it looked like before.)
4. Before & After: The Kitchen (It was pretty heinous.)
5. Before & After: The Master Bedroom I should have kept the light fixture.
6. This is a guest post by the talented event planner Erin Velander of Blomma Designs: Xtratufs, pistols, mountain peaks: Four truly-Alaskan weddings (This is her wedding photo)
7. Before & After: A pink bathroom gets a makeover, keeps its mid-century soul Look at that pink wall-mounted toilet.
8. For the Anchorage Press: Getting sideways. This was a blog-post-turned-essay about the time I got two visiting journalism professors and my baby stuck at the top of Arctic Valley in a rain/ice storm. Because? I still don’t understand my thought process. Luckily my dad came to the rescue.
9. For The Guardian: Alaskans put politics aside for Obama visit. Remember that one time when the president came to Alaska?
10.Friday/Pieday: Cranberry Curd Tart. I know, Uncle Tommy is right, there is something weird about reading “curd” next to “tart.”
I called Ikea from Dutch Harbor, wanting to order some bookshelves. “We don’t ship to foreign countries, you’ll have to order from Ikea Alaska” said the woman on the phone. I pointed out that without Alaska, which happens to be a state, Seattle would be no bigger than Port Orchard. Eventually I got the bookshelves and the shipping was super. And so were the shelves.