Almost settled in!

I almost felt like we lived at a real home this weekend! We're getting

close to unpacked, although we still need to get/build a little more

storage in the laundry room for random things that have no home at the

moment. Our shower officially works now! It still needs a little work

and now we need to find a new shower curtain (extra long) to fit in

the shower. By the end of the weekend, we were actually able to site

on our couch! There's still a few large boxes waiting to be

unpacked/installed including the cooktop range and the hood for that.

We also still have random power tools strewn about that we need to

give back to people. Our countertop should be in this week so the

kitchen will look a little more finished. I put up new curtains and

some more Christmas decorations too, so it actually feels a little

homey now!

Besides working on the house, we actually got out to be a little bit

social this weekend. There were actually a couple of architecture

parties downtown Friday night that I really wanted to make it to, but

we were both just so exhausted that that didn't happen. Saturday

morning I attempted to get a little back into running. That hase

definitely been on the back burner since the whole house renovation

thing has consumed any amount of free time I had. There's a little

running group at one of the parks in Seattle that puts on races every

few weeks, so I hopped into the 5k run. Hopefully if i keep going to

those I'll be motivated to keep running! There's also a HUGE dog park

at that park, so Ryan took Ben to that while I ran.

We spent most of the rest of the day Saturday unpacking and organizing

and doing laundry, but we got some pretty awesome visitors too! Leigha

and Nino brought their little baby Max over for us to meet him! He is

too cute, I can't wait to see much more of that little face. And his

parents are pretty awesome too ;)

Saturday night we headed over to some other friends house who have

just recently bought their house as well and were having a house

warming party. Their process was a little easier since it was move in

ready! It must have been so nice to buy the place and move right in,

but I think it's definitely been worth it for us since we've been able

to make everything the way that we like it. Some day we'll get to have

a housewarming party too...hopefully soon!

Sunday morning we met up with more friends for brunch in Queen Anne

and walked them back over to our house afterwards to show them around.

I love being able to walk all around the little neighborhood, it's so

cute!

Just a few more days of working away at our little house then it's off

to the south for Christmas! It should be a really nice relaxing

vacation which is exactly what we need right about now!

Merry Christmas Time!

I wish we had a little more time to dedicate to some Christmas decorations!! Unfortunately we don't really even have room for a tree right now. I was able to decorate our front gate though! Since it's already dark by the time I get home from work, it's so nice to come home to a lit up fence! I also made a little door decoration as well, and maybe once we get a little more organized we can put up a few more things too.

Luckily my work is fully decorated for Christmas too, so I feel nice and jolly when I get to work! My favorite part is the Christmas tree set up right at the entrance fully decked out with all kinds of construction ornaments. We're such construction nerds!

We moved!!

So it's official, a week and a half ago we moved into our new house. No more paying rent!!! Unfortunately our house isn't fully finished yet so we're roughing it a little bit at the moment. The last week before we moved in we were frantically trying to get all the floors done, lights in, and water running. We did have a bathroom sink and toilet working by the time we moved in, however we're still working on that shower! About 5 months ago we had also purchased 4 tickets to the Seahawks/Eagles game which just happened to land a couple days before we moved, so that was a lost night of work, but an awesome Thursday night of football!

The first Sunday in December was our big moving day. I'm not sure why we decided AGAIN that we would undertake the feat all in one day, but that was the plan. It was a looooooong day and definitely ended in the wee hours of the following morning (around 4am)! Ben was (and still is) super confused about the whole situation. By the end of the night we had an empty apartment and a super full little house! Since we don't have our kitchen and other storage areas fully complete yet, all of our boxes and bags have been living in a big pile in the living room. It'll be nice to finally be unpacked and settled in one day!

 Ben got to ride in the front seat while moving...he really enjoyed it.

 Empty apartment!

Super full house!

Now that we're all "moved in", we're slowly plugging away at all the final pieces of the house. The kitchen is getting close to being all put together, and the shower should be functional shortly, and we're putting together a sweet closet system to unpack into.

Our nearly complete kitchen!

J&K Wedding Video

Just a few months late, but I've uploaded Jordan and Kristen's wedding ceremony video to YouTube so you can go check it out :)

Thanksgiving in San Francisco!

I'm super thankful that I have family in driving distance (sort of)! This thanksgiving since plane tickets anywhere would be absolutely outrageous and we can't take the pups on a plane, we decided to road trip it down to San Francisco. It's the first Thanksgiving that all of my siblings live in SF now and they were all staying in town for the holidays, so we got to join them! We left bright and early (actually dark and early at 4am) to start driving down. We left with perfect time to miss all the rush hours in the big cities on the way. We made it into Walnut Creek just before Kimberly got home and just in time for supper for the night. 

 Welcome to California!

 Our road trippers.

Thanksgiving morning we got up bright and early for our second bi-annual family turkey trot! Some how it managed to be the only morning that it rained, but we warmed up and it dried up while we ran. It's such a great was to start a day that's you're going to spend the rest of it eating!

 Turkey Trotters (Lance wasn't feeling well so he passed this one up)

We spent the rest of the day watching football, eating snacks, and preparing for the big feast later that day.

 The feast

 The feasters

Eventually we busted out the desserts and spent the rest of the night picking at leftovers and playing some hard core apples to apples.

Friday we spent the whole day watching football, playing with puppies, eating leftovers, and playing more games.

Saturday we headed into the city bright and early to watch some more football at Jordan and Kristen's apartment. We started out with the Michigan/Ohio State game where Michigan pulled out a huge win!! It was awesome. Uncle Tom and Aunt Leslie were in town visiting Eric and Melissa too, so they all came over for the game too. It was another full house of family football fans! Right after that we switched over to the Auburn/Alabama game. Not quite as positive of an outcome, but still a great game. War Eagle!

 Jordan and Kristen's Street

 Football Fans!

After all the football watching we went for a little walk down the street to a park by the water to let the dogs stretch their legs, and quite honestly to get a little exercise for all of us who have been siting around eating all week! Shortly after we decided to hit the road back to Seattle. We wanted to miss all the Sunday traffic so we left around 5 Saturday night and drove through the night. Thank goodness for our Hunger Games audio book which kept us alert most of the night.

 Walk in the park

Goodbye San Francisco!

We got back to Seattle at 6am which turned out to be just in time to miss all the closed roads and traffic from the Seattle Marathon which was starting a couple hours later! After a quick nap we headed over to the house for a little more work. Although it might have been a little more productive for us to work at the house over the holidays, it was so nice to spend it with family instead, and we had such a great time in the bay area. I can't wait to go back again!!

Floors!

Floors are almost in!! We've got the whole front room and bathroom done so just a little more work in the bedroom, closet, and laundry room. They look great! I was a little nervous at first going with such a light floor, but I think it makes the space look a lot bigger and brighter, which is just what we need. Speaking of brighter...all our lights are in now too! No more working by work lights on extension cords all over the house. Also, the heat is on now, so no more freezing our little booties off in the middle of the night working!

Clearly Ben and Tara have been incredibly useful throughout this whole process.

We noticed that our paint is from Rochester, MI! Yay for having another little piece of home in our home!

Tiling has starting in the bathroom! I was super nervous starting it, but it's really not too tricky once it gets going. There's still lots more to do on this, but that's what the next few nights are for. Only a few more days till our first night staying in our new house!

Crunch Time!

Oh my goodness it's almost time to move into our house and there's so much left to do!!! The end is slowly coming into sight though and it's amazing. I can't wait! In the last couple of weeks we have finished tearing down the plaster walls, insulated everything and had drywall put up, mudded, sanded and primed. Tonight we started the final painting of the walls! This weekend we also ordered our floors which will come in later this week and that will really be the last big step before we can move in.  We'll probably spend most nights this week painting and next weekend will be a big one with lot of finish work and we'll start the moving process!

 I'm so glad we were able to actually insulate our house, I think it will make such a huge difference.

 Drywall is done and primed!

 View in our bedroom and closet!

 Our kitchen with drywall!

 Living room with drywall! It looks so much cleaner in there!

Starting to paint! It's looking awesome!

It's really starting to look like a real house now!

Just to break up all the house pics, here's a few delicious recipes I've tried out recently too!

These cinnamon rolls are surprisingly easy to make for a quick weekend breakfast to watch football with, and they're super delish. I'll definitely be using this recipe again!

Lavender shortbread cookies. These are also super yummy, however, they were a but more time consuming and finicky. The dough was super dry so hard to roll out and cut out. The shortbread taste was really great with a hint of lavender. Recipe found here.

Balls...

We weren't too halloweeny this weekend, but more just completely exhausted from working on the house. Maybe next year when we actually have a house we'll do some sweet decorations and dress up for trick or treaters! We did go to a pumpkin carving party on Friday night though. Only a few people actually carved pumpkins though, the rest of us just enjoyed the pumpkin soup and delicious fall cocktails. Sunday night I did get to be a little festive though. I did my first attempt at cake balls! Today we had a fund raiser 'bake sale' at work with 'spooky treats', so I decided to donate some spooky cake balls that look like creepy eyeballs. I think they turned out pretty awesome, although verrrrrrry rich. I started with the chocolate cherry cake recipe (which was super hard to resist just eating as a cake instead of making balls) then mixed it with a chocolate frosting and dipped it in white chocolate coating. I used blue and green M&Ms for the Iris of the eyeball and a red food coloring pen to make the veins...gross but super delish!

Updates on the house: We finished tearing down all the lath and plaster walls so the electrician can finish rewiring the whole thing. This will also allow us to insulate the whole thing which is awesome because I think I would have died in there with no insulation in the winter. I have a feeling it's still going to be pretty chilly. I may be moving the bed next to the fire place if I get desperate!

Another fun surprise for the weekend was a skype date to everyone in San Francisco! Jordan skyped us in on his iPad and brought us into the room singing happy birthday to mom, almost like we were there too. Technology rules!

Padres in Seattle!

More visitors last week! This time my parents came into town for a quick visit before heading down to SF to visit the rest of the kids. They came in late Wednesday night and by the time we got home it was sleepy time. Thursday morning we took our time getting moving (yay for being on vacation!) and headed over to Top Pot Doughnuts for breakfast. Looooove me some Top Pot. The downtown store is such a great space and the coffee and baked goods are so delicious. So after we got hopped up on sugar and caffeine we headed out into town to be tourists at the Pike Place Market. We just wandered around for a while, then wandered around a little more at the waterfront and eventually wandered back to the apartment to get ready for our next bit of fun...yard work! I promise I didn't force my parents into involuntary servitude, but they wanted to see our new house and help out with it. My mother also happened to have smuggled a few wonderful Michigan plants into her suitcase for us to plant! My favorite is the Rhubarb! Straight from my mom's garden which makes it even more awesome. Hopefully next spring I'll have some good plants to harvest and bake into all kinds of rhubarb goodness! No more buying it from the store for me...woohoo! She also brought some Iris plants that have been spread around my extended family starting with my Grandma's yard, so now they're transplanted into Seattle, which is awesome! So we spent a few hours planting those plants and weeding out a bunch of the overgrown mess of existing plants while letting Ben run sprints around the house to get rid of some of his energy.

Top Pot!

Pike Place Market

Planting Rhubarb!

After working hard we headed back to the apartment to get primped up for a fancy dinner at the space needle! Although it's super touristy, it's actually a really nice restaurant and obviously has awesome views of the city. It's so pretty at night to see all the lights of Seattle. We went a little early to get a few views at the sun was setting, then had our delicious dinner in the rotating restaurant to get some more good views and brews ;) We walked around the observation deck a little more after dinner before heading home for the night.

Space Needle Observation Deck

Space Needle Restaurant

Friday it was forcasted to rain pretty heavily most of the day in Seattle, so we took the opportunity to chase down the sun shine on the eastern side of the mountains by driving over to Wenatchee for a day hike on the dessert mountains. It's amazing to watch the change of scenery as you drive east. When we got to our hike it was sunny and mid 60s! The hike was a few miles up a mountain right at the edge of the Colombia River, so we got great views of the river on the way up. We didn't quite make it all the way to the end of the hike before we decided we should probably turn around, but we had great weather, great views all over, and great exercise for the day! On the way home to Seattle we stopped for a few hours in Leavenworth to check out the cute little German Christmas shops and grab some more delicious dinner. 

Saturday we did a lot of relaxing...or I guess really we did a lot of football watching which doesn't require a lot of effort. Although for Auburn it was a pretty disappointing game to watch. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around to a few of Ryan's projects so mom and dad could see all the fun things that he gets to work on. It's always fun to see what kind of progress has happened since the last time I was there too. That evening we stayed in and grilled up a delicious dinner and watched a movie which was a nice relaxing way to wind down their Seattle vacation.

Sunday morning we headed over to Ballard to Mars Hill church for their service. I think when we move to Queen Anne we'll try to go to that church a little more often since it'll be closer. They always have such amazing music which is a great way to get the day started! After church we grabbed some brunch in Queen Anne before having to head back to the airport so mom and dad can start their next vacation in San Francisco! Hope they had/have fun! I can't wait to have my vacation in SF too in about a month!

October Showers!

The back deck is officially cleared out. Next to be demolished is the silly lean-to next to Ryan. It's already partially cut up, we just need to finish taking it apart piece by piece so it doesn't collapse into the sliding glass door right behind it.

It's not too noticeable, but I did a lot more trimming to the unruly plants in the front yard. Now they're not poking up all over the place above the fence, so that's a good start. Next up, I'm hoping to get rid of the massive juniper bush in the middle of the lawn to make a little more open space. So much work to do!

Another baby shower this weekend! This time for Leigha and little Max (soon to come). I had some more fun making another little diaper cake, and I now officially have all the diapers out of my house, so no one will be getting any ideas when they come visit ;)

Leigha's shower was on Sunday and strangely enough I think the majority of the people there were from Michigan. I still think it's so awesome that I get to be back with some of my favorite people from middle school. Here's Sarah, Cheri, Leigha, and me at the baby shower. Can't wait for little Max to pop out of that cute belly!