planning and dreaming

Well, it turns out I don't need to worry about that wall in the living room. We're going to knock a hole through it anyway. I made some sketches.


This first view is from the kitchen, through the soon-to-be hole-in-the-wall, to the couch and window in the living room. New cabinets, countertop (I think we are doubling our current amount of countertop, at least!), new cork floors...

And next in full color! Except not really, because I only had a box of 16 crayons. Ok, this one needs some more explaining. The top half is the outside (west-facing) wall of our kitchen, that has an exterior window. The bottom half, below the squiggly line, is the wall shared with the garage (north-facing)...the door in the sketch leads to the garage.


Except that when we are through, instead of the garage, it will lead to a BRAND NEW LAUNDRY ROOM.


Currently, my laundry room looks like this:


So that will be a pretty big improvement, huh? We're still deciding on details and we haven't hired a contractor yet, but we are planning to get moving on this pretty quickly. I'm never going to want to leave our house after this!

art

Hi. I'm still here. I've been busy creating art walls in our house. I'm bored with hanging one piece of art on a wall or 3-in-a-line groupings. Random groupings have been making the blog rounds lately, so I thought I'd give it a try. In our dining room (which is waiting anxiously for a new dining room table and chairs...) I hung all of our black and white photographs. The frames with matting still have the factory inserts in them, but I ordered a couple b+w photos from our wedding to put in them.


And then some more colorful prints in the living room. This grouping needs more. I have my eye on a print at 20x200.com to balance out the right side, and I think we can add prints as we find ones we like. The big picture in the middle is actually a pastel drawing I did in high school! I still like it ok but decided it needed some company...which is how this whole idea got started, really.


And then. We have the new paint color (a warm, light gray) in the bedroom, and a whole wall that needs something major. Another grouping of multiple prints/photos seems like overkill, time consuming and expensive, but I don't know what else to do. Wall hanging? Huge canvas photo or painting? The room is so small that shelves really aren't an option; we would hit our heads on them walking around the bed. And the layout of windows and heating vents necessitate the current furniture arrangement, so things need to stay where they are. Oh, also, I don't think we can use vinyl decals because of the texturing, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?

winter tip

Well, we have our first foot of snow for the season!

Here is a tip I learned when I moved out here: when it is snowing, or you know it is going to snow, pop your windshield wipers up away from the windshield. So they are sticking out in the air. It looks silly, but they won't freeze to the windshield and you don't have to worry about them when using the scraper! Then just flip them back into place after you clear the windshield of snow and ice.

Does anyone in the Midwest do that? I don't think I ever saw it before moving out to Colorado.

chilly

We celebrated our one year wedding anniversary with a trip to Telluride and Crested Butte. We took Cottonwood Pass out of Crested Butte. It was high. And windy. And cold.

finally fall

Happy Solstice!

It's the first day of Fall, and it may very likely snow in Boulder today.

I was home sick yesterday drinking tea and eating soup, crackers, and ice cream. Today I am wearing my boots and herringbone pants (my Fall pants). I've got books (Ulysses, Twilight (shhh!)) and crafts (needlepoint, sewing) and recipes (lentils with bacon, chipotle mac and cheese) lined up for the cool days ahead. Sure feels like Fall to me!

favorites

You know how iTunes makes a playlist of your 25 most-played songs? I thought the most interesting thing about my list was the songs that have been there for years. About half of the list is Ryan Adams right now, since that is our default cleaning / cooking music, but here are some of the older songs (all of which I still love listening to):

• To Live is to Fly -- Cowboy Junkies
• If You're Here When I Get Back -- John Eddie
• Never There -- Cake
• Dry Your Eyes -- The Streets
• Loser -- Beck
• Morning Glory -- Oasis
• The Ascent of Stan -- Ben Folds
• Flight Test -- The Flaming Lips
  

tour de fat 2009

We headed up to Fort Collins on Saturday for the Tour de Fat. As you can see, everyone dresses up in their finest apparel for the TdF, so we followed suit. We wore my grandparents' square dancing outfits.


I tried to get a photo of the Best Group of the Day. It was a whole funeral procession. On bikes! With a casket, a shovel, a lantern, people in mourning, and a sound system. Totally awesome. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the casket in my photo (it's behind the lady in the black dress, attached to the bike that the guy with a partially shaved head is riding...you can see the yellow flowers that were adorning the wooden casket (on wheels)).


Drew looked so handsome in my grandpa's shirt and hat.


And I was just happy that my skirt wasn't getting caught in my spokes. (The last time I wore this dress, I was Essie in the Hillsboro High School production of You Can't Take It With You!)


(Note: rigging a couch on bicycle wheels is asking for disaster.)