Skool Rulz

Three subjects

School hasn't started yet up here in the PNW but my second child seems to be anticipating it. The other day she put together a schedule for us in the hopes that we would all benefit (really she just likes calling the shots).

She's eight. Her spelling sucks. But she knows how to plan for a good day:

Play
Eat
Learn
Play
Play
Eat
Learn
Eat
Play

Sounds good to me.

I swear we're perfectly normal

My eight year-old cut her hair the other day to the point where I had to chop nearly all of it off. She looks like Peter Pan now.

It was so bad we couldn't wait until Friday - payday - and take her to the hairdresser's.

However... well, one thing led to another until this happened.

I'm sure I'm not the first mom to do this to her kid. And I may or may not be digging around the craft box looking for silver and gold paint so we can do Ziggy Stardust.

Absent

Jackets in July? 

While the rest of the country has been roasting in its own juices (ew!) up here in the Pacific Northwest, we've been waiting for summer to start.

I'm so not complaining.

Back home in Texas it's been well over 100 degrees every day with no rain in site for weeks so I'm enjoying this interesting form of summer and the novel idea of being outside in July and August (really May - June - July - August) without the threat of heat stroke lingering over our heads.

Give a three year-old your camera and step back.

My three-year old has become interested in photography. Well, mostly I think she's just interested in my camera. Her world view is interesting and only reaches about four feet max.


We decided the girls needed a rooster for protection (against one of my dogs -  oh dear) and he's been a fun addition to our growing menagerie even if he's crowing his tiny head off out on the patio as I type this.

Rocky

I jumped on board yet another trend and canned something for the first time ever. I made it easy on myself and made jam from some raspberries we got at a local U-Pick. We don't even eat jam very much but we're already more than halfway through one jar. I got thirty-five quart sized jars off a lady from Freecycle and I plan on jarring tomatoes later this summer. Woo? Woo.

OMG! Raspberries!

And because I love a good trend we also got bees! Technically they're not our bees, they belong to Eugene the Beeman. We're trading land use for honey, which is he best thing ever. His bees can have all the pollen and whatnot bees need and we get to enjoy the rewards with none of the work! I found Eugene on Craigslist and if you're interested in bees but not the expense and upkeep then you should troll your local list for a week or so and see if anyone needs land for their apiaries.

Also, we have twenty hives.  The sound when we walk by (they're not close to the house) is... well, if we were scared of bees, this would be nightmare fuel.

OMG! Bees!

My chickens need to start putting out. They're sixteen weeks old now and they should be old enough to start laying. Biddies need to get on that or it's chop chop. I got dual purpose for a reason.

I will eat you.

Adventure around the corner

New friend

Starting new fashions

It's so easy being a fairytale princess when your backyard is an overgrown field of blackberries and hay.

Oh hi there!

It seems I forgot that I had a blog. It probably won't be the last time it happens.  As for any excuse, life got about as busy as it can get. And when you're as lazy as I am that could mean nothing more than the laundry reached critical mass and threatened to swallow us whole.


Well, actually, it did, but other things happened, too.

Free range kids

My oldest daughter was inducted into the Honor Society.

Right on!

And I cried.


My second daughter turned eight.

Purple unicorn, right up her alley

I cried then, too.

My youngest daughter turned one.

Balloons! 

Not gonna lie. Cried like a girl.

My third daughter, who did not have a birthday or scholastic achievement, is just plain awesome. And doesn't stop moving. Ever.

Pretty accurate depiction

We got chickens. Because I am trendy like that, yo.

Playpeep

We planted our very first garden ever!

Tired.

Someone in all there there was Easter, Mother's Day and my husband also had a birthday. People talk about how frantic the month from Thanksgiving to Christmas is but for us it's always April to May. And summer can't come fast enough. Besides our chickens will be old enough to lay eggs by then.

Old boots

What do you do with old, holey, worn out boots?

Plant 'em!

Just one pair in the picture was actually used as a planter but the way my girls go through shoes it's only a matter of time before I'll have another set.

My mom sends me these Spring signs. I think she thinks she's being ironic.  The irony isn't that I have a house full of Spring signs, it's that she named me Spring when I was born in August.

But I like the signs or plaques or whathaveyous. I almost bought one at the store but I said no to myself and got these flowers instead.

And in the natural course of things it's snowing here in the Pacific Northwest.  I hope my flowers survive.  I'd bring them in but I bet one of my dogs already Christened it. *ew face*

It is so too an art form!

We put in an offer on a house over a week ago but we have yet to hear from the owners.  The house is a short sale with recourse, which means that the current owners are wiling to pay the difference between what the house sells for and what they owe on it.  This is a different situation from a house without recourse, which means that the sellers do not have to pay the difference and the bank eats the cost*.

A normal without recourse short sale could take months for an approval. However we were hoping for a little faster turn around time.

Okay, a week and a half is still better than the six months some people have to wait for an answer but I never said I was patient.  I've been on pins and needles ever since the offer went in.

I have to know before I exploooooooode.

Anyway, as I wait - impatiently - I took some pictures of my one major design consideration. Most of the, er, 'art' in our house is homemade.  Usually things the kids made or something Shawn drew in grade school that I had framed.

He's artistic.  I'm not.

It's not fair.

We have a gigantic Jackson Pollack-y painting done by my oldest and that's sometimes difficult to find a placement for. But it works great over a couch so it's not something we have to really think hard about**.

And then we have Diana.  Every house we look at and consider we ask ourselves, "Where will we put Diana?"  If we can't find a good spot for her then the house is immediately crossed off the list no matter how good it is otherwise.

This is Diana.

Hi there!

Pardon the picture, I live in the Pacific Northwest and cloudy is our default setting.

Yes, it's Legos.  I have this thing about Wonder Woman and Shawn has this thing about Legos. It works for us. :) He started this project in June of '09 while he was still traveling from Seattle to Dallas.  When he came home on the weekends he would either leave it at the hotel or with friends.

Close up detail of the lasso.

Close up it's like a Seurat. All dots and abstract-y until you stand back to get the full picture.  The baby loves it. She stares at it a lot. 

The funny thing is, my husband is partially colorblind. He wrote the program that showed him what color Legos to use (because he is awesome like that) but he didn't even realize that he used bright pink until I told him.  I thought it was deliberate because it looks great. 

What is that blob?

This is a close up of the tiara.  It looks nothing like a star until you stand back and then:

Pardon the mess. I have little kids.

It's HUGE. Nearly four feet by four feet with about 4700 Lego bricks. It's backed with MDF but the frame is made out of Lego plates. He's known by name at both Lego stores in Frisco and Bellevue.  Though it's cheaper to order the bricks from places like Bricklink.

Did I mention my husband is awesome?

He is.

He gave it to me at Christmas. We were celebrating in Seattle and also doing a bit of house hunting in preparation for our move up.


It's dang heavy. It takes two people to hang it up.  Three would be even better.

When we moved into this house we tried hanging it over the fireplace where there were already two heavy duty screws in place.

The wire snapped.

I'm not gonna lie, I felt my heart seize up for a moment as I watched her fall.

It's a testament to how well Shawn made it because only one corner broke and he was able to fix it within a few weeks. And it only took one trip to the emergency room, too.

Note: Dremel tools are better than Xacto knives when trimming glued on ABS. Your still intact fingers will thank you in the end. Just thought you should know.

So, that's my one major house consideration.  If the house doesn't have a good place for Diana, then I don't want it.

As far as we know this is the only Wonder Woman Lego mosaic in existence.

Because my husband is awesome like that.

Linking up to Show Me What You Got Tuesdays and at Allie Makes. For fun.

(If someone could tell me how to make the button a clicky link that would be swell. I am tech stupid.)


* But don't quote me on that.

** At the moment it's hanging in the entryway/kitchen/stairwell.  This is an odd house.

Front Door Mania

Last month, in a fit of impatience, I cut my hair.  And when I say "I cut my hair" I don't mean I went to a salon. I mean I took the scissors and, Psycho music playing through my head, lopped off my own hair. This is a lot easier than you'd think if you start with very long hair like I had and if you don't care about it being model perfect or, you know, even — then it's a quick and easy (and cheapo) change. Just tie your hair back in a pony tail (I did pigtails) and lop it off. Instant layers! My hair is curly so choppiness there is disguised and it grows fast.  And what the heck, it's just hair, right?

When my mother-in-law visited for Christmas she said it was pretty and that it really opened up my face.  Which:

This is how I look in the mornings pre-coffee.

Yeah.  

All that is just to awkwardly lead up to the idea of letting the front door open up your house.  Or, at least, that's what I've interpreted the design blogs as saying.  And I wanted to put up a picture of a Predator.

The front door to our Old House Back in Texas was a traditional mahogony-stained door with a pretty glass insert. I picked it out when we built and at the time it was one of the only non-painted door in the 'hood. Then I noticed other stained doors cropping up. Dude, I started that trend.  I am so cool.

Well, maybe not. It was actually a pretty standard door.

Now that we've moved to the Pacific Northwest and got over the inevitable culture shock I realized that you need color here in order to survive.  The sun?  She hides. A lot. And the resulting soggy, grey skies and the soggy, grey roads and the soggy, mossy ground can be one soggy downer.

I've been taking note of interesting houses (something Seattle has in abundance) both on our long drives and online, making mental lists of what I want the next house to look like and how we should decorate it. I've noticed people's front doors can get lost in the pervading gloom.  Good when you have unwanted visitors — disastrous when you've ordered a pizza and the guy can't find you.  Their faces needed opening up.

I've just started organizing my saved links onto Pinterest (such a cool site) and I started with the front door  (I'll probably need twenty for the dream kitchen).  This is just for starters. I'm sure I'll have another two pages filled in a few months.

http://pinterest.com/springm/front-door/

I didn't realize I was so drawn to yellow. Maybe it's the lack of winter sunshine that's catching up to me.

Differing opinions

Because of course what the world needs is another blog about houses and house hunting and house decorating and house renovating and house, house, house (only with a distinct lack of Hugh Laurie in its contents).

What I'm attempting here is a way to keep my thoughts in order as my family and I wade through the massive amount of homes for sale in the Seattle area. Some are gems and some... okay, a lot are real stinkers.  But at our price point, we're going to be holding our noses a lot.

The biggest hurdle, other than our budget, is that my husband and I have differing tastes. My ideal house would be something like a farmhouse or cottage and his ideal house would have a moat and ramparts and cannon or possibly a machine gun nest (or both) and a giant vat of boiling oil to pour over unwanted visitors' heads. I would actually be okay with the boiling oil but only if we could use it to fry doughnuts with.

We both agree that a small tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific is our ideal location.

So, somewhere between my cottage and his castle there has to be a reasonable compromise.

Stop laughing at me - it could happen. I just have to finish rubbing this lamp I found. :)

Houses seen this week: six.

And for the record:

In which we start the new year

Just your average family of six looking for a nice house with a bit of land in Washington State.