Stephensons in Seattle

Ryan's parents came out for about a week for a visit in Seattle. We were both able to get the time off of work to hang out with them the whole time which was a nice little vacation for us too! They came in last Wednesday afternoon and we spent the rest of the day wandering around Seattle and relaxing after their long day of traveling. We started out with a nice little mid afternoon lunch on the waterfront, it was a perfect day out for sitting in the sun and smelling the breeze off the water.

Thursday we packed up and headed out for a day of fishing! We headed over to Cle-elum about 2 hours east of Seattle and found a few rivers around the city to try out. There weren't a whole lot of fish caught that day, but it was a lot of fun hanging out on the river.

On Friday we took Ryan's parents up to Queen Anne to show them around our new hood ;) After brunch at one of the local diners, we went over to the house to show them around. Unfortunately a couple of days before we ran into a little snaffoo in our construction. Apparently our neighbors (the ones we haven't met yet because they keep running inside their house every time we try to introduce ourselves) are mad that we had construction debris in our yard, so they called the city to complain and after several complaints the inspector finally had to give us a stop work order. Luckily we were able to go into the city and get a permit for our work to make it all legal (which we probably should have done to begin with but were hoping to get it done before anyone really noticed). So until we were able to get the permit, we had a nice bright stop work order on our front door. Oops! Anyway, things are all back in order now and hopefully our plumbers and electrician will be able to get in there and get some things done in the next week so we'll be moving along again.

After dealing with that and showing off our house, we went around to a few of Ryan's other projects. Last time Ryan's parents were visiting, we took them to this house (the Z House) and it was just getting walls up, so it was fun to show them the final product too.

Saturday we cooked up a big breakfast and spent most of the day watching football games. Saturday night we took a walk around Lake Union to check out all the awesome boats...maybe some day we'll be able to buy one of those too! One step at a time I suppose!

Sunday, football time! We had told Ryan's parents that if they came out to visit this weekend we'd buy them tickets to the Seahawks/Falcons game. They're all big Falcons fans, so I had to represent my city all by myself! On another note...way to go Detroit Lions on their win that day too! The game ended up being awesome! It started out looking like it would be a blowout, but the Seahawks came back and for a few minutes almost looked like they could take the lead! In the end, the Falcons pulled it off, so all the Georgia Stephensons were happy.

One of the awesome parts of the games here is how much the fans get into it. The field is apparently one of if not the loudest field in the NFL and actually registered on the Richter scale last year when the Seahawks had a huge upset win against the Saints. Here's a little video of the fan's excitement in this game. It was literally non stop screaming almost the entire game. So much fun!

Later that night we played a few sports of our own on the Kinect. Once again after a few hours of some intense gaming, I ended up getting more and more sore on the following days. Apparently video games can be a pretty good workout!

Monday we took a trip on the ferry over to Bainbridge and then onto the Olympic Peninsula. We took a drive up the mountains to hurricane ridge to get some great views above the clouds. Although it was a little chilly and foggy out, it was still really beautiful and the air was so crisp!

We stopped in Port Angeles on the way back for some supper and to enjoy the views on the water there. We also drove past the Bremerton Naval Base to see a few of the HUGE ships out there. I'm always amazed at how massive they look even just from the road. It's pretty impressive. We got on our own ship in Bremerton taking the ferry back into Seattle for the night. Tuesday morning I had to get up bright and early to head into work again and Ryan's parents headed to the airport shortly there after. Somehow that little week of vacation went by really fast! Just a few more weekends till more parents come out to visit for more vacations! Can't wait!

House Updates!

Just a few little house updates for the weekend. We actually did a little work ourselves this weekend, and now I'm super motivated to do a lot more! Since the contractors are doing everything on the inside for now, we stuck to the outside doing a little demo work and some yard work, which this place is in much need of! We also got to meet our neighbors right next door to us, who just moved into their house a few months ago too, so they're in the same boat with lots of updating to everything (maybe not to quite the extent that we are)! We also met some ladies that live in a duplex across the street who brought their dogs over to play with Ben. One of the dogs was a boxer as well, so they had lots of fun running around the yard and doing a little boxing. I think this yard is going to make for one tired puppy every night. It definitely worked yesterday!

The inside of our house so far.

All of our new bedroom windows and window door are in place!

The before shot of the back of our house. This silly deck looks a lot better in pictures than it actually was.

Ryan destroying the deck. I'm not sure how we never fell through it, it was so rotted out! Ben's a good supervisor.

After a few hours of destroying the deck. almost gone! It will look so much better having some nice grass and a patio back there to walk out onto from our bedroom. We'll replace the deck eventually with a much more awesome one in the front of the house!

Our house on Friday.

I tore down the silly trellis at the front entrance. Hopefully there'll be lots more progress on the front lawn in the next few weeks. I meant to do more yesterday but got distracted trimming unruly plants in the back yard.

We went to home depot Saturday night to pick up tools for yard work and got a mailbox for the house because we didn't think we had one. Turns out we did have one, it was just completely hidden in seriously overgrown bamboo! I spent a good hour hacking away at that to uncover a mailbox that was very full of mail for us from the last few weeks! I'm surprised the mail man could actually find it before to deliver the mail. Our back alley entrance looks much better now, but still needs a lot of trimming and plant removal to make it look clean.

This week is a short work week for me because Ryan's parents are coming into town for a week. I can't wait for all the fun we're going to have. This probably means no house work for us in the next week too...oops!

September Showers

This weekend was a little bit of a crafty weekend for me, which I definitely needed after a serious lack of creativity going on at work I've been aching for an outlet. I started out with a little fall decoration craft that I've been wanting to do for a while. I saw a link to this tutorial on Design Sponge (another blog I frequent) a while ago and have been wanting to try it since, so I got started with it this weekend. 

By the end of the day I had 2 completed pumpkins and I'm hoping to make a few more of smaller sizes to bunch them all together in a cute little fall centerpiece on our soon to be new table. For now they make for cute little window decorations in the apartment. I have a few more fabrics to play with for the other pumpkins which hopefully will all go together really well. This was such a simple cute little DIY craft for fall!

After I made headway on my pumpkins and we had finished watching Auburn lose their winning streak to Clemson (boooo) we took a break to head out to Ikea for a little house shopping! The plumbers are set to start putting in the new plumbing for the bathroom and the kitchen so we needed to get our new bathroom sink and cabinets so they knew where their pipes needed to go to connect to our fixtures. We took the stuff right over to the house to drop them off and check out the progress on the renovations. It's so fun to see all the changes since the last time I was there (just a few days ago). All of our new walls are now framed up and ready to go. We also have a new giant hole in our bedroom wall. On Wednesday, I brought home a couple of windows and a big sliding glass door. A guy I work with is replacing all their windows and had the old ones, which are still perfectly good, just laying around. On the way home from work, I borrowed his truck, we loaded up the door and windows and I brought them over to the house. I'm not sure if we'll be able to fit the windows in anywhere, but the door is going to replace the old back door in the bedroom. It'll be an awesome way to get more light in the room and great access to the back yard. So now there's just a giant hole in the wall where the sliding glass door is waiting to go!

As if those free windows/doors weren't awesome enough, we also were able to scavenge a few windows from one of Ryan's job sites. The windows are brand new, but the client decided he wanted different ones after he saw them, so they were just laying around and we swiped them up. We're going to put them both in the corner of the bedroom like Ryan's kindly showing in the picture below. There will be one more on the adjacent wall as well. So we'll have a well lit bedroom full of lots of free windows!

Our kitchen is really starting to take shape now too. The picture below is the kitchen wall that will be a line of appliances and cabinets. Across from that will be an island of the same length with the sink and a few more cabinets, shelves, and wine rack.

On the way back from Ikea, we also stopped by a few stores to get supplies and gifts for a Bridal/Baby shower I went to on Sunday. It was for two of the navy wives. Jaime just got married to Eric (one of the guys I work with, and Meg (the wife of another coworker) just had their first baby, Joey. I actually really like hanging out with all the wives, it's nice to be around a bunch of other girls associated with the navy. Anyway, I decided to get a little crafty on their gifts as well, which was so much fun! I've always wanted to try making a diaper cake, so I finally did one for Meg. This was also my first time buying diapers...which was weird. I did a little sea creatures theme staring "Captain Calamari" on the top! I think it turned out super cute, and it was a big hit at the shower. So much fun!

For Jaime, I got them a little cocktail shaker that was on their registry. To go along with it, I got them a bunch of little minis which are actually kind of an inside joke with us since we both stash our liquids bags with minis on red eye flights to get a little extra relaxation and sleep! I ended up wrapping them up into a little bouquet on top of the shaker tied with a little bow. I think it turned out really cute too, and definitely a fun change from just sticking it in a gift bag...it amused me at least!

The shower was a lot of fun on Sunday hanging out with all the ladies! We did a few little shower games and had a fabulous brunch with super fancy little drinks, and lots of gifts for the guests of honor.

Look...NO WALLS!

This weekend we headed down to Oregon. It was a pretty quick trip for just a day of outdoor adventures, but it was fun to hang out with friends and see a new town we hadn't been to yet. We left Friday night for Hood River, OR and got into town around midnight. The group had rented a condo and by the time we got there everyone was already asleep so we tried to sneak in without disturbing too many people. That's a little hard when your bedroom is on the top floor and you have two crazy dogs, one of which can't make it up more than one flight of stairs and the other one that's bouncing off the walls after being in the car for nearly 4 hours!

Saturday morning after a coffee fix down town, most of the group headed off to ride bikes down a mountain. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten to give it a try on an easy ride, so I just got to shuttle everyone to the top of the mountain and spend the rest of the day with the pups. We ended up piling one of the trucks full of 7 people 6 bikes and a dog and trekking it up the mountain. It was a pretty great view from the top and you could see in the distance Mt. Hood which had plumes of smoke coming from it from several on going forest fires. I dropped everyone off and headed back down the mountain to some sleepy puppies in the car. By that time it was pretty hot out so it was probably pretty brutal of me to try to take Ben for a run, but I gave it a try anyway. He lasted a couple of miles before he decided to give up and sit under a tree. By the time everyone got home, they were all pretty exhausted, so we headed over to a little swimming hole in the Columbia River. This time it was Tara's time to shine...hahaha. She jumped right in and did a few little swims out to the middle of the swimming hole and was more excited about swimming than the other pups. We're still working on getting Ben to voluntarily swim, but he's not quite there yet. It felt great to dip in the water though after a long hot day. After dinner we headed back on the road to get back to Seattle in the wee hours in the morning.

Sunday Ryan had a photo shoot most of the day at one of his recently completed houses. They're trying to get some good proffessional photos for an award submission. I can't wait to see how they turn out! Taking a break from that we went over to our new house too! I hadn't seen it in a week and I was shocked to see how much had happened! We have no walls anymore! They reinforced the roof and tore down all the interior walls and fixtures of all sorts, so now we pretty much have a big open room. We can also see a lot better how much patchwork has gone into the house. We're definitely going to have to patch up a lot of the drywall that the walls had covered before and a few spots in the floors as well. Hopefully this week they'll be able to start putting up new walls and the new plumbing and electrical. I can't wait to see what it looks like next weekend! Here's a little photo progression of the last few weeks:

Labor Day Weekend

Yay for the holiday weekend, yay for getting 4 days off from work, yay for football season and YAY for visitors!! We got a surprise from the Captain last week saying that we got to have Friday off as well as Monday! This was especially awesome because Friday morning I got to pick up Lauren and Lance from the airport. Even though it was an early flight, it felt great getting to sleep in a couple of hours. Once back in the city, we headed out for a delicious brunch at Flo's where I'm sure I ate waaaaay too much. As soon as we got back to the apartment Lauren and Lance went to meet up with some other friends for lunch...I stayed back to take the pups out and recover from breakfast and finally be able to make it back to the chiropractor which I haven't been able to go to in forever since I've been working such long hours! After Lauren and Lance walked around the city, Ryan finally got off of work as well so we all met up for a sushi dinner and decided to pick up some desserts and wine on the way home for a kinect party! I love having nerdy family and friends who think a great Friday night is drinking wine and playing awesome video games all night :) It was also a great workout and I spent the rest of the weekend with an incredibly sore back!

Saturday Lauren and Lance went off to their friend's wedding and Ryan went off mountain biking so I spent most of the day cleaning up and watching football games. I can't wait to see what this season holds for the reigning national champs!!!

Sunday Lauren and Lance got back in town from the wedding just in time for a cookout on the roof deck and some more game playing! We were all feeling pretty lazy so we just sat around in the lovely sunshine playing games for a few hours. That evening we headed up to Queen Anne to show off our soon to be new neighborhood! We went by the new house so Lauren and Lance could see the before renovation look. I'm still having a hard time realizing that we now own a home! Since we were in the area, we went up to the main strip of Queen Anne for supper and met up with some of Lauren and Lance's friends who were also in town for the wedding. After supper we took L&L on a tour of one of Ryan's houses that is nearing completion. It was actually the first time I had been there in a long time too, and it was soo much fun to see the progress. It is such an awesome house and it's so much fun to hear the clients rave about how much they love it! Ryan did such an awesome job...as usual! Click here to see the house on Pb's website.

Monday, thank goodness I had the day off! I took L&L to the airport at 4:30 in the morning, which sadly is barely earlier than I have to get up most Mondays. Luckily this time I got to crawl back in bed when I got home. I think the immense amount of food we ate all weekend left me with some serious heartburn that I couldn't shake all day Monday. After some good sleep in time I crawled out of bed and finally got motivated to get out and we took a walk down to the waterfront to enjoy laying in the sun and smelling the wonderful sea air and read some books. It was a nice relaxing end to the holiday weekend. Another big even for the day...Pioneer Woman picked yet another one of my photos for her semi final rounds! Maybe one of these days I'll make it to the finals ;) This time the contest was for 'silly' photos. She selected this one of Ben. He's a pretty silly puppy, and actually loves sitting in this big leather chair like this all the time! You can see the original post here.

Hello Home Ownership!

Yay, we own a home!! Now it's time to start all the renovations. Lots more pictures to follow I'm sure. We got the key Friday night and popped on by the house to do a little surveillance before the weekend. We tore up a little bit of the carpet Friday night just to see what we were dealing with. Luckily most of the wood floors underneath are in pretty good shape. Unfortunately there's also a lot of patched up places where walls used to be and such. One of the bedrooms also have the original old floors so they don't match all the rest of the floors. We'll find out when all the walls are down what's really going on with the floors though. We should be able just to patch up a few places and sand them down and refinish them for some nice wood floors!

Saturday we went back to the house to get started with some work. We tore up all of the carpet and stuck it out on the back porch for now. Hopefully next weekend we'll have a dumpster that we can start throwing things in as we tear things down. We were also sticking around the house in order to receive all our kitchen shipments. They finally showed up around 4 in the afternoon and took a while to get everything into the house. They delivered everything other than the countertop and sink which we'll order from another place. So now we have a lot of appliances and even more flat pack boxes in our living room awaiting assembly and installation into our brand new kitchen! 

This coming week some of the construction crew should be coming by to start reinforcing the ceiling from above so we'll be able to tear down all the interior walls. Then we can start rebuilding everything. We'll have lots more progress in the next few weeks and I can't wait to see it all finished!

 [living room without all the carpet...ready to tear down the kitchen]

 [trying to get the new fridge up the steps]

[our kitchen all boxed up]

On a little less positive note, Friday I took the day off of work mostly to take Tara to the vet to have them take a look at her little toe issues. The vet didn't seem to think it was as serious as cancer which needed toe amputation like last time, but they did think it was necessary to remove the toenail surgically to prevent infection which could result in a need for tow amputation. They were able to get her in the same day and remove the nail and bandage her back up and she got to come home with a cute little red cast on her foot that looks like a little Christmas stocking...how festive! She's doing really well with it and seems to be recovering fairly well. Everyone at the vet clinic kept raving about how sweet she was and how well she did with everything ;) I'll take her back on Monday to have the bandages removed and hopefully she'll be able to recover completely in the next week or two. The vet kept telling me to make sure she doesn't go on long walks or be too active. I had to laugh at that and remind them that she's 13 years old and making it once around the block is a pretty big feat for her these days. I don't think making sure she's resting will be an issue!

A few more fun recipes to mention while I'm at the whole blogging thing. Last week after we had eaten supper I had a craving for cupcakes. I really didn't want to make a whole batch or go walk somewhere to get them, so I found this awesome recipe that makes just TWO cupcakes! What a great idea and perfect for a random craving in the middle of the week! The recipe can be found here. I just whipped up some chocolate buttercream to go with it and a strawberry to top it off! I think I'll definitely be trying different versions of this recipe to make it other flavors but still in a tiny little batch! Definitely satisfied my cupcake cravings for the night!

Another recent craving...or constant craving of mine is for rhubarb! I made some delicious strawberry rhubarb scones a few nights ago that made a perfect easy on the go breakfast for both of us for the rest of the week. I love rhubarb and it was so easy to bake it into a little treat that I could enjoy the every morning with my cup of coffee ;) The recipe that I used to make them can be found here. Enjoy the deliciousness!