Costumes and Parties

October was full of preparations and activities.  We went to the Columbia Tower Club for their Masquerade Ball with our friends Rory and Cameron.  It was loads of fun with lots of great food, magicians, acrobats, music, and dancing.  It was quite the extravaganza!

Although half of the fun, of course, was planning and putting together the costumes. :-)  The four of us went as characters from Alice in Wonderland (the 2010 version).  Cameron and Rory were the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen.  Noah and I were the White Rabbit and the White Queen.  We even made our own plaster masks.  At the ball we came in second in the costume contest, so we must not have done too bad! Thanks to the creative genius of our friend Cameron.  Here is a picture of me in the process while we were molding our faces:

It kind of hurt to peel the masks off, but afterward I had really soft skin... must have the same properties as those mud masques!

Here are a few pictures from the night with some new friends as well:

A close-up of me as a blonde and really pale skin... I don't want to tell you how much makeup I had to put on to get that pale!

Once that night was over, it was on to plan the next weekend, which was the actual weekend of halloween, and Noah's 30th birthday.  So, I threw him a big halloween birtheday party at the house to celebrate.  Unfortunately I don't have many great photos, but we had a ton of fun with friends and neighbors... and I kind of went a bit crazy with the decorations, but hey, I had fun transforming our home into a spooky haunted house.  I now have three tubs full of halloween decorations and baking instruments.  Guess I'll have to have a party every year now... oh well!  You are all invited ;-)

Here are a couple photos...

Catching UP

Can I just say that I L-O-V-E fall?! The colors, the cool brisk weather, the coziness of home. We've been busy this fall season. I've been baking, decorating, camping, preserving basil in large quantities of pesto, making delicious dinners with chanterelle mushrooms that are in season etc, etc, etc. So here's a catch up:

One of the things I am so thankful for in our house is a pantry... not exactly something that was on our list of things we wanted when we were house shopping, but now I think I'd be lost without it! I can buy things in bulk, so that means fewer trips to the store for those things you hate buying (like paper towels, flour, canned tomatoes). So, I found these sticky labels that are sticky on most of the piece to label my bins with! I know its kind of a silly thing to get excited about, but what can I say?

Then we went camping a few weekends ago. Nearly got rained out the first night, but luckily our tent stayed dry and it cleared up the next day. We went up near Mt. Baker in the North Cascade mountains. It was right on Baker Lake and really pretty.

Look at that breakfast!  Pancakes, bear sausage, eggs, grapes, and coffee.  Thanks honey!

Then as soon as we got back home from camping, since it was such a beautiful day, we went out sailing with a guy from Noah's gym. Out on the water on a gorgeous day, is pretty breathtaking around here.

Then for fall decorating... yay! I made cushions for the entryway bench that Noah built for me. Not being much of a sewer, I had to improvise. Noah had some leftovers from the wood he used, so I took some of the backing wood and had him cut it to size in two pieces. Then I bought some foam and material.  Then just used a stapler to secure the fabric around the foam and wood.  On a side note, I couldn't believe the cost of foam at the fabric store! Like $30 for a 3ft by 3ft piece! I was thinking about putting a foam topper on a spare bed, but never mind! I'll just buy a real mattress topper for that price....

I also made a door hanger thing... not sure if I'd exactly call it a wreath, but here it is. I just took a frame from goodwill that I liked, got some fake leaves from Fred Meyer and and found some fake tiny fall produce. All it took was a hot glue gun and some fishing wire to hang the little pumpkin and gourd, and voila!

I potted some pretty mums, picked up a bunch of pumpkins from the CSA farm that we've been members of this summer, and had some fun with our porch. Looking at the picture, I really wish I had a big porch rocking chair... I'll have to keep an eye on craigslist for one :-) On another side note, I planted my mums from last year in the garden in the back, and this year they are like 4 times bigger than last year... crazy! I love the plants that just do their thing and I don't have to worry!

I preparation for the winter, we pressure washed and sealed our driveway as well. Poor Noah was a trooper and pressure washed all day out in the cold and rain. We caulked the cracks as well so that they don't get worse with all of the forecasted freezing that is expected this winter.  You can see the before and after from the pressure washing.  The sealant then made the whole thing kinda shiny.

I had some funny little squashes from the CSA farm, and didn't know exactly what to do with them. So, I tried stuffing them with a rice and bean concoction. How cute are they?!

And finally... my pesto. I freeze it in ice cube trays, then transfer the little cubes to a ziplock bag so that they are just ready to grab for pasta anytime. Yummmmy!

Phew, that was a lot! Sorry for being sooo inconsistent...

Finally the Flooring Post

I was waiting to post pics of the new floors until we got the baseboards in and the furniture back in place. That has all happened now for the most part (except for the huge hole in our sheetrock next to the fireplace, but more on that a little later). So, we finally were able to get everything together to have our existing wood floors re-finished, and to have them matched and extended through our living room and hallway. Those rooms get so much traffic that keeping the carpet looking nice was not happening, and I am just not much of a vacuumer... I prefer the broom :-)

Now, Noah and I are pretty ambitious DIYers, but this was a job that I just did not want to tackle ourselves. If we have learned anything in our short one year of home ownership it's the following:
1. Know your furthest limits of ability, then anything within those limits you should also seriously weigh the cost of hiring the job out to the amount of time, stress, and frustration of doing it yourself!
2. Then, if you do it yourself... buy or rent the RIGHT tools... the FIRST time!

At any rate, for the most part we are really pleased with the results. We went with a darker stain than what was originally on the wood, and it looks FANTASTIC. Especially now with our new white baseboards. The contrast is beautiful, and just makes my day (kinda nerdy, I know, but gotta appreciate these things that consume such a big part of our time and money nowadays)! We did the baseboards ourselves (and had to buy the miter saw to do it of course). It was also a lifesaver borrowing Rory and Cameron's paint sprayer...we had previously painted some baseboards by hand, and so with this big of a trim project, the sprayer literally saved our sanity. Our garage was covered in white paint spray by the end of it all, but oh well, we got most of it off with the pressure washer the next weekend (when we also cleaned and sealed the driveway... whoa buddy... that's another post in and of it self!).

So, here's a picture of the wood before - you can see the new wood installed in the living room before they sanded and stained:



Here it is with the new flooring laced into the existing:



And the final product!:





We love it, but at the same time it's one of those things that you want to stay perfect so we're always paranoid about scratching it or whatever. Even though it's inevitable it's almost comical how we are about things like little felt pads.

Oh, now back to the sheetrock hole... so, we removed the mantel from the fireplace before the floors went in. It just didn't reflect our style, and I want to build some built in bookshelves and surround for the fireplace to make it a little more cozy. So, when the mantel came off we discovered some water damage to the wallboard, and a bit of a musty smell. So, we let it dry out and eventually decided to cut out that section of the sheetrock. Well, once we did that, came to discover a gap between the house wall and the fireplace that went completely out to the outside! We could look directly outside from the inside.... NOT GOOD! Now I know that the older houses aren't as airtight and efficient as newer construction, but I think I'm safe to assume that this is a bit much! So at any rate, I guess in the end I'm glad that we discovered it so that we could take care of it. We caulked the crack from the outside... we just need to fix the inside now. So that will definitely be a future project.

Check it out:

Until Next Time Grams

This last week, I went down to Portland to attend the internment ceremony for my Grams who passed away this spring. It was a beautiful sunny day, and a touching small service as we gathered to remember my Grams. While it was a somber event, it was great to get to see and spend some time with family members that I don't see very often. We all had dinner at Macaroni Grill together, then went over to Uncle Bob's house. Uncle Bob is my Grams' brother, so really he's my great uncle, but we all call him Uncle Bob. He's quite the character, and just so much fun. Here is my cousin and I with him:



And another one of just my cousin Heather and I.




We'll always remember and love you Grams! I think this is the only digital picture I have of her, all of us at Heather's wedding... I'll have to get on scanning some others in:

Hallway Painting

A few weeks ago, we decided to tackle the hallway. I chose a light tan-ish color since I didn't want the small enclosed part of the hallway to feel too dark, and needed something pretty neutral to complement both the green in the living room and the buckskin yellow in the kitchen. The challenge with the hallway is the entrance where it is the full two stories tall. So, Noah was my brave hero and painted all of the high spots while I held the ladder for him praying that it would all go smoothly... and luckily it did! Now that it is all finished, definitely don't plan on re-doing it anytime soon!

Here is it before (sorry the pictures don't really accurately capture the colors, but it looks great!):























And the after:
























And Noah in progress:























Sorry the colors are hard to make out and that is only a piece of the full hallway, but it's kind of impossible to show the whole thing... so y'all will just have to come visit to see the rest :-)

Also, as my anniversary gift, Noah made me the entryway bench and cubby set that I have been drooling over. There's a blog that I read occasionally, and she posts plans to build different designer pieces of furniture. So Noah made this for me; it fits perfectly in our entryway... LOVE it! I wanted some baskets with cute colorful liners, but was having a terrible time finding any, much less some that would fit into the cubby spaces. So I found some baskets that would fit, and then went to JoAnn's Fabric and found some baskets that had plans to make your own liners. The sizing was a bit different for my baskets, so I took the basic idea and modified it to my baskets. I don't have a sewing machine, so I just bought some of that glue that bonds material and just used that to seam the fabric together. It worked fantastically since you don't really need the size or seams to be perfect for this project. Here is the whole thing:

Golf and Nature in Big Sky Country

Wow, so summer hit just after the 4th, and we have obviously been out enjoying it seeing as I haven't updated this in over a month! So, I'm just going to rewind, and catch up in a series of new entries.

The weekend after the 4th, we packed up and drove to Columbia Falls, MT and met up with my family to spend a week at the Meadowlake Golf Resort. My family has history in that area going way back before I was born. In fact, my Dad lived in Big Fork in the 70's after he graduated from college. One morning, we had breakfast at The Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish, owned by one of my dad's old buddies from back in the day. It was while we were there that Charlie (the owner) told dad that a bar in Big Fork still had a picture of their group of guys at the "Not Enough Chicks Party". The story goes that apparently it was only guys that stuck around for the winter, and all of Flathead Lake froze over that year. So the guys got together and had a huge party out on the frozen lake, but it was all dudes, so it is forever commemorated as the "Not Enough Chicks Party". So after breakfast, we all trekked down to the bar in Big Fork to take a look at the picture. Here it is:



















Dad is right smack dab in the middle, with a mustache, flannel shirt, and aviator shades. You sure were rockin' it Dad! :-)

A couple years after this picture was taken, dad left Montana and went up to Alaska to teach. Which is where he met my mom, and they got married 3 months later! They spent 10 years teaching in bush Alaska, but the year that I was born, they bought some land back in Montana on Swan Lake not far from Big Fork. That year they took sabbatical and built a cabin on the land. It was at this cabin that I spent many of my childhood summers when we came back from Alaska on summer break. On the trip this summer, we went back to the land, and much to our surprise it was still there! Here's what it looks like today:































At any rate, enough with memory lane... we also went up to the magnificent (there really isn't any other word to describe it) Glacier Park, golfed a lot, and even did a bit of fly fishing. Apparently that part of Montana isn't the greatest for fly fishing, but Noah and I at least got some expert instruction from my brother. So hopefully we can try our hand at it over here in Washington in the fall. Here are a few random other pictures from the rest of the vacation.