Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Another Girly Wedding Post

It's really been awhile since we have thought about the wedding itself.  We've been so busy with the move, the job search, and the house.

But every now and then we get a chance to think a little bit about the wedding. I was searching around for some sale furniture for the house when I saw this;

Source: VivaTerra

Talk about wedding inspiration, or at least I feel like this captures the feel we are trying to go for with our wedding. Maybe we'll have to splurge and purchase a couple of these as decorations...

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Ladies and gentlemen, the couch!

Ok, it actually arrived on the 19th but I haven't been able to figure out how to get out of it to get my computer and post about it until now ... and in truth I didn't actually get out of the couch myself. Adina had to activate the regions FEMA team to set up a rescue operation. It took six urban search an rescue teams and I nearly starved but they eventually got to me, I would post about the entire ordeal but really, it's nothing compared to how AWESOME this couch is.

Basically; it's huge! comfortable and well... does a couch need anything else?

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

10 Minutes Away


Is a lovely lovely park that we can walk to.  It has a name, but I can't remember it.  Either way it has a beautiful view of the sound and the Olympic Range.  I don't think we mind trading sunsets over the Pacific Ocean for sunsets over the Olympics.

Speaking of the Olympics, we just scheduled a little weekend getaway in May to accomplish some wedding related tasks.  We're headed to Kalaloch Lodge on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula.  Last summer we camped at the campground just down the road and really enjoyed the location, this time we're staying in a cabin with a full kitchen and a fireplace.

Friday, March 19, 2010

New Home To-Do Project #1: Painting the Bathroom


It's small and dark, especially since we will be putting a mirror over the only window.  (The window doesn't open, so the only major change is the amount of natural light in the bathroom, no change to the air flow unfortunately.)

Here are the colors we are considering;



They look much darker in the picture than in real life.  The bathroom is small, dark, and long.  So we're thinking the two lightest colors.  The lightest for the back of the bathroom and the second lightest for the park that opens to the kitchen. We're going to paint the towel bars and the built in shelf that top apricot looking color.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Finished Projects #1, 2, 3, 4, & 5: Light, Lemons, Shelving, Mirror, and Door

We got so many small projects done in our first week that it's really just easier to put them all into one post. Otherwise we could fill a whole week with posts on each of these small projects.

Finished Project #1: Light
Our bedroom light fixture was cracked and well, ugly.  So we got a new one at Home Depot to replace it.

Finished Project #2: Lemons
My mom send us the best moving in present we could possibly receive, a Meyer Lemon tree!  We had to leave ours in California, so we were a bit sad about that.  Anyway we found a great local nursery and potted our lemon tree to grow inside our Laundry Room where we get a lot of morning sun.

Finished Project #3: Shelving
We needed shelving in our laundry room to make up for the lack of storage space in our kitchen. So we bought a really nice bamboo shelf that is doing quite nicely.

Finished Project #4: Mirror
We had a serious lack of mirrors in the bathroom, so Zeke found a place to have a mirror custom made to fit into the window setting of the bathroom.  The window didn't open, so all we lost was some natural light.

Finished Project (sort of) #5: Door
The door knob on the front door seemed a little iffy to us, so we replaced it.  It took some work but Zeke finally got it working! We're planning on repainting the door as well, so thus the "sort of" finished nature of this project.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Things Are Getting Into Place: The Kitchen

The kitchen was the second thing we unpacked, after the bed. Looking at it now, boy are we happy we did this second after the bed and didn't wait.  It's rough doing so much eating out, especially with my being gluten free and all...




Most everything fit quite well, except for the food. So we had to come up with a different solution. Eventually we may move this all into the Laundry Room or find some other solution, since this is not really a dog friendly set up.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Problem Solved: Lack of Closet Space

Our house only has one closet and it's in the bathroom.  Its awkward and dark and generally not a great place for things that you would need to use on a daily basis. We also currently do not own a dresser, so this makes finding a place to put away our clothes rather challenging.

But I think we finally found at least a temporary solution...


We bought this nice bamboo clothing rack at Storables, which is essentially the same thing as the Container Store. I think it will meet our needs quite nicely.  The rest of the items were things that had been used in various other capacities around our house that I made work for our clothes. We're also using an old Ikea cabinet as a pseudo dresser until we find one that we are willing to invest in.

Monday, March 15, 2010

An Official Federal Employee

Things Are Getting Into Place: The Laundry Room

We've made a big push over the last week to unpack the most important parts of our house.  While the room is definitely not "finished" and there is nothing on the walls things are mostly in their place.

Here are some pictures of our laundry room with all of our stuff moved in.






There are two little projects that also took place to get this room up and running. So posts to come on that soon.  Can you guess what the two little projects were from the pictures?

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Our New Home

So here is a tour of our new home prior to us moving anything in.  It's really a blank slate for us to do almost whatever we want to it, even though its a rental. So that's really exciting for us!

This is the view from the street. Some of our first thoughts are painting the trim a good contrasting color and repainting the door. We will also probably cut back that rosemary and plant something with a bit more color.

This is the living room as you come in through the front door. That is a fully functioning, although dirty, wood burning fire place!  Hooray!

As you walk through the living room you make a left turn into this other area that we will probably use for crafting and office space.  To the left is our bedroom and to the right is the kitchen.

This is our bedroom, there is no door... So that is something we will be looking to remedy.  We may just hang a rod with a curtain though. The light fixture in there is pretty ugly and cracked and the ceiling is bright white.  More projects...

Here is the kitchen.  The floor was recently redone and the counter and cabinets in the bottom right of this picture are new. The stove is unfortunately electric but that's okay. The cabinet and counter space is pretty limited but I think it will work out alright. To the right is the bathroom and behind the camera is the laundry room.

Here is the bathroom. It is small. There is a large closet to the left and then the rest of the bathroom goes to the right and boy is it a tight fit. Also notice the lack of a mirror.  That will need to be fixed... We are also thinking about building some sort of counter around the sink.

Here is the laundry room. Its pretty good sized, so we will probably use it for some kind of storage. That door goes out to the back yard.  We'll get to that later...

And last, here is the view from the kitchen looking through the living room to the lovely picture windows in the front of the house.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

We Made It!

Well we successfully packed up all of our stuff into my CRV, Zeke's dad's Safari, and a 12 foot U-Haul trailer.
I'm still not sure how everything fit...

We packed up everything on Saturday and then started out on Sunday morning for Springfield, Oregon where we stayed overnight at a quite posh Holiday Inn that looked more like a Sheraton.

And on Monday we crossed into Washington State...
And made it to our new home town!

Monday, March 1, 2010

It's Our Last Week...


...of living in California!

At least for a good long while!

We packed most of our stuff this weekend and gave the backyard a good weeding. We'll finish up this week, load the trailer on Saturday, and start the drive on Sunday!