Christmas Love Explosion

Few things in life can make me smile as much as this video. Christmas was an explosion of love. Simple. No traveling. Snow falling. Pancake breakfast. A night of cocktails and shared love that ended with us watching this video. It stars my friends daughter Adia (she's the one with the tears), her BFF Max and their mutual BFF Danielle. Sometimes you need to be reminded that Christmas is shared, silly, and can make you feel like a kid again in the best possible way.

One of my favorite things.

New shoes care of Santa Me.

Want.

If I could design myself, this is what I would look like. If I can't find these frames I will have them made for me.

To paper, or not to paper?

After stumbling across these amazing wallpapers by Julia Rothman I can't help but be inspired to wallpaper every available inch of wall in our house. I've been struggling with what to do to bring more intrest into the guest bedroom and I think the Pebble Cones would be perfect on the North wall. I don't know where I would use the Red Sky print but I imagine it in the basement once we build out a guest bedroom/sewing room down there. Now I just have to go about figuring out how to actually apply wallpaper. Hmm.

Hi, I want each and everyone of you.

I know that Halloween just ended, and Thanksgiving is weeks away, but I can't help but want to skip right to Christmas. Maybe its all this hope and change and happy fuzzy feelings from the election, maybe its having a new house to decorate. I've got big plans for my holiday cards and I want every single ornament I see. If only the holidays weren't such a busy busy time, I would love to have a ladies craft night and drink spiked cocoa and make homemade marshmallows.

Jeff's gone & we're still standing here.

In the past few years we've been to a few funerals. Some were bittersweet, the end of a battle doomed to be lost, the end of pain. One was a celebration of a life well lived, a life big and full. This weekend we said goodbye to someone who very much deserved a better bigger life, but who never asked for more than they were given. Its hard saying goodbye to someone whose time shouldn't have ended, whose life had just begun in so many ways. Jeff, your laughter will always be missed, replaced now by the laughter of those who remembering you can't help but laugh at the retelling of your jokes. Everyone who knew you was better because of it.

Fall Thrifting

Something about fall makes me want to go thrifting and today was no exception. I found some amazing things and nothing exceeded my $10 or less budget.
I found an amazing vintage oil painting for the living room for $4.99 as well as a couple smaller paintings for the entry way.
As I have become more and more obsessed with glassware and serving platters/bowls/ect I spent a fair amount of time in the back of the shop looking for inspiration. I found a set of 4 teacups decorated in teal, black, pink & yellow that I could not stand to leave and at fifty cents a piece why would I?
Erik & I are planning a holiday cocktail party and are in the process of accumulating mid century tumblers, shot glasses and stemware, these silver leaf tumblers were a must have.
I love books and cant help but buy vintage editions of classics whenever I find them. I've started displaying them in the guest bedroom.
I am currently obsessed with both the color navy blue & vintage clutches. Finding a navy blue eel skin clutch was magic.
I love plaid for fall. I'm planning on shortening the sleeves and wearing this shirt with a skinny black patent belt, my Frye boots & jeans.
I love amber colored glass. I'm starting to dig out my fall decorations and this bowl fits perfectly in my design for the new house this season.

Gold is a girls best friend.

Tomorrow night we head to the Artic Club Hotel in downtown Seattle to see Erik's cousin Chase marry his girl Jude. Its rare that we both have a Saturday night off, its even rarer that we get to go someplace as fancy as The Artic Club. I'll take any excuse to pull together the myriad of accessories that I manage to collect in mass and get dolled up. I was inspired by the golden chandeliers and domed ceilings in the ballroom to go gold. Here goes nothing!

A girls gotta have wishes.

One day before I am old and grey, I solemnly swear that I will purchase well made wardrobe staples and refrain from buying mass quantities of fairly ridiculous ill made garments off of sale racks. I will reserve my cheapy impulse purchases for $15 clutches and the faux pearl earrings I am fond of. I am a creature of habit and this one will be hard to break. If you see me grabbing for a hanger with a cotton-poly blend tunic take me outside and give me a talking to.

Blue Cardigan, Dark Denim Pants & Skirt, White Blouse: JCrew Fall08. Teal Blouse, Gingham Shirt & Color block wedges: Anthropologie. Clutch Purses: Forever21. Patent Heels: JCrew.

Unabashed love of a carnation.

Someday I will have a garden full of dahlias, mums, carnations, and more. My vases will overflow and you won't know if you are indoors or out. In the meantime I will fill my ever growing collection of vintage glass vases, Ikea ceramics and pickling jars with flowers from someone else's garden. This summer I've had a love affair with carnations. Two bundles ($2.99/bundle!) can fill enough vases for every room to have its share. They feel right in our new house, unpretentious, homey, timeless. I don't know why I ever disregarded them. They are wonderful and I plan to make up for the years I looked down upon them by filling every corner with blossoms. Carnations, I'm sorry, you are amazing.

Summer is a flip flop tan line.

I've had every intention of documenting every project big, small, significant or not, but life has been big, small, and significant and it all added up to less and less computer time and more and more life time. I have taken pictures. I have captured moments. But most of all I have been sleeping when I wasn't laughing, working when I wasn't sleeping or laughing. The project list grows as we choose to escape the city for the weekends, and it makes me appreciate the fact that we have all the time in the world to paint a room or find the perfect pictures for the walls. There is no rush. This last weekend we drove five hours and fell into a lake, got dirt in our sandals and laughed so hard at Uncle Pat that tears welled up and ran down our faces. There were so many moments that I will remember for a lifetime but could never manage to describe to anyone who wasn't right there with me. Summer has been about family, be it the three of us at home or the tons of us on Whidbey Island. I feel like everything has been in fast forward and slow motion at the same time and it leaves me a little bit disoriented and punch drunk. I will catch up someday soon (or maybe I won't) and I will share all of the details of our house & the life it holds when the leaves start dropping and our slow hibernation into winter begins. In the meantime I will drink too much punch, get my feet dirty, take naps in the sun and in general pretend to be a layabout.

Our house, its ours.

The weirdest part about being in a new house is the sounds. I hear kids laughing and falling down and riding bikes. And we have birds, so many birds. Our next door neighbor is one million years old and deaf, she's lived in the house next door since it was a chicken farm and there were no other houses for acres around, her stories fill afternoons. High school boys walk thru the alley in baseball uniforms on their way to games at the ball fields a block away. I can see the neighborhood kids congregate through my kitchen window. On a sunny Saturday you can hear the crack of their bats and the cheer of their families. Instead of walking to work I now take the bus which is both amazing (I can read twice as much now) and annoying (seriously, can't you just show up on time and please can the other people waiting for the bus not be icky dudes who leer at me? Please!). Oh yeah and I have a garden. A real honest to goodness garden with herbs and flowers and vegetables and blueberries of course. I have a gardening knee pad and gardening gloves and gardening tools. Our front yard is like an oasis in the desert. Everything smells amazing (lavender, rosemary, fresh cut grass, roses, strawberries, tomatoes) and you can kindof sink into a sunbeam and feel like the city and everything involved does not exist. After a week of being here I already know every creaky board and crack in the wall. Home has been redefined. The bluejay, the grass, the worms in the earth, the basement door and every creaky board is ours and that feels amazing in a huge way. If the house starts caving in I will do everything I can to hold it up. I love it. Its part of our family now. I love it even though the bathroom is so small you have to sit sideways on the toilet and there are slugs in the yard because its my family and you forgive those little indiscretions.

Because packing is no fun at all...

For every box I pack I spend an equal amount of time not packing. Every box is color coded with the room it's contents contain. In my mind I have already unpacked at the new house and everything has its place. Every object I wrap up in newspaper and every book I box up has its own spot. The Seattle Worlds Fair glasses that Jenny & Robin gifted us from their wedding are perfectly arranged on the display shelves in the kitchen. The curtains I've picked out have been hemmed and hung in the kitchen. Our honeymoon polaroids will live above our desk in the office and all of our records, books, notes and records will be stored in the custom built in my dad & I will design on the opposite wall. My mason jars full of cotton balls, Q-Tips, make-up brushes, and earrings will sit in order on the bathroom shelf. My corkboard will hang in the kitchen by the fridge. The living room will house all of our bigger books, our best pictures and a new tv. But I digress, I've already wasted time by planning our guest bedroom and typing this post. All of my fabric and sewing supplies are awaiting boxes (they will end up in the basement on my soon to be sewing station) and they won't pack themselves.

Second times a charm.

Buying a house is complicated, exasperating, anxiety ridden, scary, amazing, exciting, uncomfortable, surreal and did I say amazing? You cross your fingers and toes and ask everyone you know to do the same and its not enough. Our first offer was rejected and it felt like heartbreak. We tried to see other houses, they looked promising on the outside and yet closer inspection showed us that none of them lived up to our first love. We decided to take another look, we couldn't help it. It was love at first, second and third sight. As we finished our walk through another broker walked in the door and I panicked, my heart was racing and I was overwhelmed with anxiety. This was/is/will be my house! How could anyone condescend to think that they could walk on my floors and open my doors? Erik & Rick begged me to relax, but I knew that we needed to act quickly because we would regret it if we lost it. Just thinking of anyone else living in this house made me horribly uncomfortable. Within an hour we had made a second offer and fifteen minutes later we got the call. ACCEPTED! And in a couple of weeks (hopefully less) we will have signed each and every single paper that says we are committed to every square inch, every pine floor board, every leaf on every tree and every small corner in our new small house for 30 years plus interest. Our inspection the following weekend went so well it was almost too good to be true, I fear that we will drive up with our moving truck and find that the house doesn't really exist at all. It was built in 1930 and has been loved ever since then, and will be every second that it is ours.

And if everything weren't overwhelming enough, we now face the business of moving. Deciding what parts of our history in this house will be just that and what will move with us. We have years of memories tucked away in every spare corner, piles of pictures, projects, ill fitting clothing, well read books and well worn records. The idea of choosing what stays and what goes is both exhilarating and terrifying. I want to simultaneously throw it all away and keep it all forever. I am bound to run into memories I have long since forgotten. I have boxes and boxes of letters & notes from Erin dating back to middle school, how can I possibly put those in the recycling pile? This weekend we start with the garage. It has become a safe haven for all of the forgotten aspects of our bigger projects. Tarps are draped over things we haven't seen in months, remnants of summer poker games lurk in the most unlikely places (an unopened Sparks can in box filled with art supplies?), and things whose origins date back years before we ever lived here are mixed in with our camping gear. Packing will take a long time, we want to do it right. Everything we bring into our new home will be intentional and well thought out, a luxury we have never been afforded before. Look for the yard sale signs soon.

Hearts are houses.

Tonight we offered our hearts in hope of a house. Cross all fingers, toes, hearts, hands, legs, knees, ribbons, laces, and more for us (we're going to need it).

My new best friends.

My birthday this year was very quiet. French toast and milk. Mexican food and margaritas. Lily and Erik. I will celebrate more later this week. In the meantime I will walk around the neighborhood in my new boots, listening to Zooey Deschanel on my headphones and make lists for NYC.

I adore NYC.

I will be going to NYC this Spring for work (me sussing through millions of frames and buying for the store, heaven!) and have decided that this trip is a fantastic justification to shop and pick new haircuts and dream of being an effortless fashion plate envied by all. I've already started plotting for ways to make a $400 Frye boot purchase seem ok and have bookmarked all of the various necessities (ha!) for future purchase. I've bought a pair of gorgeous denim trousers and have emailed Ruthie about tailoring them as well as a couple of blouses I found at various sales & thrift stores. Its all about balancing the cheap with the chic, a balance I definitely did not succeed at for winter and hope to improve upon from here on out. Binge shopping at F21 & Target (apart from the new Go collection) will have to be kept at bay. And ridiculous purchases at Fred Meyer will have to cease (who needs the same Neutrogena lip gloss in 5 shades? Not I!). And though I do I love the ease of my short hair, I miss the freedom & diversity of styling slightly longer hair and will hold back the urge to cut it all off during the awkward middle period. I solemnly swear.

New York City, I've missed you, Mood Fabrics here I come!

Mexico + E & A= Love.

In leaving Mexico I made the poor choice of shoving our film into my checked luggage, after multiple security checkpoints it came out a wash of overexposure. But I still love some of the damaged images.

Mexico was a love affair, a first time crush that held our hands and kissed our cheeks and left us red in the face. Its only fitting that the pictures we took reflect the stumbling blur of that first love. We had our own corner of the world for one week, and we fumbled with words and miscommunication and forgot our suntan lotion and drank too much and overpaid for small things and we loved every second. For one week we were 16 years old again.

bring the outside inside.

L-R: Nilsson Dinnerware, Julia Rothman's Neighborhood Bedspread, Set of 2 Bird Hooks, Bamboo Serving Bowls, Live Wire Timber Hooks, Bird Wallpaper Prototype by Natalie Wright

In lieu of New Years Resolutions (my only one insofar being to chuck my mascara after the recommended three months on a regular basis) I am going to focus on my 2008 design wish list. I have been maintaining a long standing love affair with greens and am now going steady with browns & blues as well. I think I'm going into a more intense nesting phase. I want all branches and plants and birds and deer and pine needles and dark woods and sunkissed leaves. I want big windows with big trees right outside, so big you can't see anything else. As we are limiting our interior design budget due to a hopefully upcoming move into a new (but old) house, I'm currently focusing on the little things I can add that make me happy but don't break the bank. Think: Textiles! I could swim in textiles. Is it a sign of aging that you begin to find deep happiness in linens? I have a retirement investment account now and so I love tablecloths? I don't know quite what happened but I can't get enough. I spent nearly an hour in Anthropologie looking at their napkins, tea towels and aprons. And I enjoyed it so much I left smiling with only one tiny towel. In addition we've vowed to be more DIY together and Erik has started using his various belt sanders, jigsaws and things. He's restoring the wood and I'm adding the cushions to a couple of chairs we have in addition to refinishing two of our living room tables. I've signed up for an upholstery class at Pacific Fabrics and will be recovering a chair that I have meant to reupholster for years. I think I am more excited about picking out the fabric than the final product though. But I digress. We're happy, we're anxious (this has to be the year we actually buy our very own home!) and we've managed to be fairly productive project wise (see: refinished tables and home sewn clothes) and I have a whole stack of fabric designated for dresses and pretties that I can't wait to cut into.