August Garden Update

Our garden is really coming along.  We've picked two massive cucumbers, some blueberries, mint, and chamomile.  Our chives are also constantly being used! Everything is growing so well.

We've also added lingonberries and "Pink Lemonade" blueberries to the mix!

Project: Plant Bench

Our plants were starting to take over all our chairs on our back porch.  So Zeke built a wonderful bench for them! I'm hoping eventually he'll make another one for sitting!

Kitchen Cafe Curtains

Since we're not planning to move anytime soon, we've started to make little improvements to the house here and there.  Replacing the old (and broken) mini-blinds with cafe curtains was our first step.

We bought a nice warm wood colored curtain rod and some cotton fabric from our favorite fabric store. Admittedly, this project took us two attempts.  The cutting board we have wasn't big enough to easily measure the fabric and we had to do all the cutting on the floor (not the easiest place to measure things well).

We followed some basic instructions on making the 3 different kinds of edges you need for a curtain of this type and learned that ironing folds before sewing them makes such a difference!

Next up, curtains for our big living room window.

Our Garden At 1+ Month

Even with not the warmest temperatures ever our garden is trucking along!  We've also added some new plants;

• Artichoke
• English Lavender
• Carving Pumpkin
• Pansies
• BBQ Rosemary
• Sun Sugar Tomatoes
• Jalapeno

Our romaine was being nibbled away by some kind of creature, so we put up a cage around that planter. The arugula, dill, tomato, and tea plants are growing like weeds. And we're getting swiss chard sprouts from the seeds we planted!

Birthday Banner

We celebrated Zeke's birthday yesterday and I made another banner out of the burlap & jute bunting that we originally made for the wedding. I followed pretty much the same instructions as I did for the holiday banner except I used navy blue cotton fabric with cream colored thread.

Since we still have a lot of bunting left to use, perhaps I'll put some time in to actually making a tutorial one of these days...

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

We used these instructions from Apartment Therapy to dye eggs naturally! And the results were pretty great for a first try!

Step 1: Hard boil eggs and set aside to cool.

Step 2: Roughly chop up purple cabbage and place in a large pot with enough water to cover the cabbage and to completely cover the number of eggs you plan to dye. Bring to a boil and cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. Set outside to cool to room temperature.

Step 3: When the pot and contents have cooled, strain contents into a flat bottomed pot or jar large enough to submerge the eggs in.  Add about 1/2 cup vinegar (all we had was Apple Cider Vinegar) and stir to combine.

Step 4: Place the eggs in the mixture and place in refrigerator.  We let ours sit overnight.

A couple observations to consider for next time...
- The un-dyed spots you see on the eggs were the sides siting on the bottom of the pan.
- I picked the eggs up out of the dye matter with tongs and it appears to have scraped the dye off!  So next time I'll be more gentle!
- Apartment Therapy suggests rubbing the outsides with a bit of olive oil and I bet that would be a good idea too!

Our 2011 Spring Garden

We've started off the spring with a tea plant, romaine lettuce, chives, dill, thyme, sage, chamomile, mint, rhubarb, blueberries, arugula, and tarragon!

More Spring Blooms

We've got tulips spouting everywhere!  These beautiful pink ones are blooming in our front yard.

And brilliant red ones in the back.

Our Holiday House

Our little house dresses itself up quite nicely for the holidays!

A (Brief) Tour of Our Living Room

Well, for a brief moment when I took this picture the living room was not in total chaos.  I'm sure it will still be be crazy until after the wedding.  Then we'll get back to normal.  Anyway, just thought I would share!

A Tour of Our Kitchen

We got this piece when we moved into or first Seattle house and used it in our pantry area.  Now it works really well in our kitchen for all my flours and as a perfect place to display our mugs!

Our breakfast nook is still awaiting a nice bistro/bar table, but until then our Meyer lemon tree and lemongrass plant are enjoying the nice sunny nook.

Washer and dryer room at the end of the kitchen!  It's so nice!  And they work so well!

Our stove, fridge, and microwave (it came with the house too!). There's great built in shelving in this kitchen and a butcher block!

We LOVE our new kitchen!  It's pretty skinny so for two people it's a little tight but there is a lot more usable space. Also our fridge is amazing, so big and so new.  It's the newest one I've had since I started college. With the exception of our breakfast nook table and some nice curtains we're not planning to do much else to it.

A Tour of Our Second Bedroom/Office/Craft Room/Drum Studio

That window looks out onto our covered patio.  That BBQ that you can see came with our place!

Our desk and shelf set are currently serving as wedding stationary central. And that door opens up to a small closet.

That cabinet is pretty much full of various craft and project items.  The drums are still in the corner here, but it looks like we have enough space in the room to set them up!

So as you can tell, this room isn't exactly well organized yet.  We're planning to buy an air bed for the room and also to set up a table in here so I can use my sewing machine.  Anyway, it's generally a work in progress.  Hopefully we'll get an area rug in here as well so it's more homey when folks come for a visit!

A Couple of Peeks At The New House

The Living Room

The Kitchen/Breakfast Nook Still To Be...

Our Bedroom.

Yes, that is a hanging basked of knitted items.

We're Moving! Again!

Well...we tried. And tried. And tried.

But our new Seattle home just was not working out.  We came to a mutual agreement with our landlady about a month ago that we would amend our lease to a month-to-month version and start to look for a new place to live.

Lucky for us we found a place pretty fast!  We signed our lease last week and we're moving in next Friday!

It's a two bedroom, 1 bath house with a garage, doors, closets, a dishwasher, washer and dryer, custom painted rooms (the living room is an awesome maroon color), hardwood floors, and a covered patio in the back yard!  The house also has been certified (except for the maroon wall) by a Feng Shui expert! It's also only only a move across town in Ballard, we're going from 22nd to 9th, which is farther East.

So anyway, here's to our a better start to our new life in Seattle!

Kind Of Not So Recent Things Put Away Pictures

So we've been lacking on our updates on our house, it's probably because we got the couch, so now we spend all of our time on it!

Anyway, here are some quick iPhone photos that we've taken around the house of stuff being put away in place and our new dresser!

The new home for the meyer lemon tree and our lemongrass plant.

Our brand new awesome C&B dresser.

This is the built in shelf in our bathroom. Pretty much the only storage in the whole room. I bought those little brown baskets to make it look a bit cleaner.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?