New additions and unusual visitors

My birthday is later this month, but we're not waiting to celebrate.  My fab husband took me to a Brandi Carlisle/Ray La Montagne concert last night, and topped it off with a chocolate fro yo with peanuts.  YUM.  That pretty much made up for coming home with one of these

and claiming he had a present for me?!

We also have our very own compost bin, at long last:

Sadly(?), we don't have much in the way of 'brown' matter to feed to it - we've so steadily killed our lawn this summer that we don't have any grass clippings to add to our kitchen scraps.  Maybe we should just get chickens!

Speaking of birds, our freshly unearthed bird feeder provides hours of entertainment, particularly when an unlikely visitor stops by.

We do wonder if we're making lunch (and dinner, and breakfast, and second breakfast, and dessert) much too easy for our resident owl. 

All of this is glorious to watch from our new deck furniture.  (on sale at Fred Meyer!)

I won't tell you how many arrrrrrrrrtists it takes to assemble furniture right-side-up and forward-facing.

A couple more tasks checked off...

The kitchen trim was an ugly McDonald's red when we moved in.  We decided to use the same color for the trim in the kitchen as we would on the 'contrast wall' in the living space.  Here's the trim with the burn-your-eyes out pink primer getting covered as fast as possible...

The things you'll do for love...

And here's that contrast wall.  I love this color so much I want to bathe in it! 

This is the master bedroom window.  We were appalled that the appraiser missed such a glaring problem.  The crack spider-webbed across the entirety of the 70"x46" window.  Uncool.

The guys who did the work were fabulous and fast.  I can't say the same for Lowe's, however, from which we ordered the new window.  This was a heck of a sight to encounter that morning...

And here's the new, gorgeous windah!  It's so clean that it's making me think we maybe kinda need to clean the rest of the windows...  It also provides some much needed ventilation, as there wasn't ANY at all in the bedroom before!

We also got a new garage window.  The appraiser somehow didn't see the big cracks, missing section, and cardboard covering the hole in this one.  Perhaps you're wondering, as we did, whether he actually came to the house?!

And here's a little bit of nature for your viewing pleasure.

Tree froggy on our porch, about 12 feet off the ground?!

What all you've been missing...

It's been a busy few months here, punctuated by some minor interruptions, like oh, you know, getting married.  Here are some of the projects we've been working on.  It's so exciting to feel the house returning from its somewhat neglected state, and becoming OURS.

We hired a creature from the abyss to paint our ceiling.  (Oh wait, that's my husband!)  It had been a dingy gray.  The bright white immediately made us both feel better, and got us excited about how much better the place would look as we got deeper into our LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG list of repairs and improvements.

 We were resigned to sticking with the vintage refrigerator, at least for a while.  Then we found this...

Yep, that would be mold.  On and within, I'm sure, the styrofoam insulation around the icebox.  There's no cleaning that!  Moreover, we're pretty sure the all the fridge fans and stuff were blowing that crud around the house.  I wanted the men in the hazmat suits to come right away, but we did our research and got a great deal on this...

I hear angels singing when I open the doors.  Yup.  Really.

Here's one of the downstairs bedrooms, before we moved in. 

And now it looks like this!  Anybody want a massage?

I'm sorta bummed the previous owners didn't leave us the pirate flag. 

Slow, lovely Friday

Friday morning:

We took our kayaks to Suttle Lake today.  Three observations:

The butterflies are making their annual trek.  They seem to like my red kayak.

A little girl rode her bike on the lakeside trail, wearing a bathingsuit and a life jacket.  Perhaps like most Oregonians, she can't choose for all the wealth of activities we have available to us during the summer?

Far overhead, there was a flock of 12 white, black wing-tipped birds, soaring, choosing which lake on which to land.


Friday afternoon:

Friday evening:

What newlyweds do on their first night home-sweet-home

1. Observe how dry the grass is.
2. Create meal that is even more amazing for being home-sweet-home-cooked.  Eat meal on deck.

3.  Drink more champagne after dinner.
4.  Move sprinkler.
5.  Wander around yard making list of outdoor projects while drinking champagne.
6.  Go crazy on weeds.
7.  Move sprinkler.
8.  Observe that yard is perfect for frisbee.
9.  Play frisbee. 
10.  Move sprinkler.
11.  Drink champagne.
12.  Lay on dry grass watching sun set in our 35+ juniper and 3 other trees we haven't positively IDed.
13.  Have love fest with dog.  Think we missed her more than she missed us.  Humpf.
14.  Straggle into house.
15.  Crack bedroom patio doors.
16.  Collapse into goosedown bed, fall asleep listening to river.

Let the magic begin.

We have keys to our house, to our magic kingdom, to our honeymoon cottage, to one of the most spectacular places on earth, to a place whose minutiae might be special to only us.  We went out to the house with cleaning supplies, the dog...

The dog in her new digs.

... and, importantly, our hammock...  for which placement is key.

If ya squint, you'll see the river in the middle right.

We are psyched, overwhelmed, and mostly exhausted after the uphill battle of the last 6 months and 10 days, but two little occurrences today make us confident we're in the right place...

As we carried the hammock about, searching for the perfect distance between two of our (!) many (!) juniper, a huge owl swooped out of a tree and over our heads.  Later, Jim found a pair of small turtle earrings strewn across the carpet in the master bedroom.  Sea turtles have made themselves my totem animal for 12 years or so.  Perhaps our good omens came to wish us well?

Holy cow, we're homeowners!  Let the magic begin.

Gorgeous, peaceful, symphonic

We went out to almost-our-house, just-about-our-house, our-house-within-the-week, and wandered, looking at it more like owners than too-curious visitors.  There's a lot to do - trees to try to save, lots of lawn to water, repairs to be done to the outside of the house, much planning to do, and the writing studio already exists as a spectre, awaiting life.  But I sat at the back of the property, under a juniper, and watched and listened to the river - yup, that's just-about-ours, too - gorgeous, peaceful, symphonic.  I can't wait.  I wonder if today's calm is in part due to having lived out there, for just a little while.