last post of 2009?

I feel compelled to summarize the year so here it goes:
- Rang in the new year in London on our honeymoon. Had a frost bite scare but my toes recovered!
- Took a quick trip to FL for a friend's wedding.
- Started a new job.
- Moved from basement apartment to our top floor apartment.
- Bought house and moved again a few months later.
- Went to Austin for Christmas, visiting Perla, and meeting our new niece.
- Celebrated 1 year anniversary yesterday!

Next year we're hoping for a slower pace so we have more time to spend on the things that got overlooked last year. One of our goals in buying a house was having enough land to grow a vegetable garden. Starting in Feb we can begin planting! I also want to make more time for reading, trying new recipes, and exercising. I had to cancel my elliptical because the ship date moved to when we were on vacation, so now I'll have to reorder it. I would like to say I have a plan for improvements to the house, but I feel like the house has a plan for itself. I'm sure as soon as one thing breaks, it will lead to other projects so I don't want to get my heart set on anything cosmetic just yet.
Happy New Years, everyone!

Texas Photos

Leighann posted all of these to her Facebook already, but I figured I’d post them here for anyone that isn’t on the Facebook wagon.

 

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Salmon Bay Photos

I was walking around our neighborhood the other evening and came across this park on the edge of Salmon Bay. The Bay sits between Lake Union and Lake Washington on the East, and Elliot Bay (Puget Sound) on the West. The bodies of water are connected by the Ship Canal and the Ballard Locks. The park overlooks where the Bay reaches the Sound. The sun was setting behind the hill (Magnolia) and it was really pretty. I snapped these pictures with my cell phone, so they aren’t super detailed, but they stitched together nicely.

Photos are here

London Photosynth

My laptop died the other day, so I’ve been going through the long process of recovering some of my stuff off of it, mainly photos.  I came across a bunch of panoramic type photos that I took on our Honeymoon that I had sort of forgotten about.  I’ve always wanted to give Photosynth a try, but didn’t really have any good photos for it.  So, here’s one.  I’ll post more if they are any good.

left overs

Why do I hate leftovers so much? I was looking forward to them all day until it was time to heat them up, then I talked myself out of it. I turned to Nate and said " I wish we had more of the asparagus ravioli we ate last week." Then I opened the freezer and there it was. We can't figure out where it came from or remember buying another bag. I hope the freezer fairy brings me some Ben and Jerry's oatmeal cookie dough ice cream next...

super quick update

- Sewer fixed.. we hope
- Got a new, bigger christmas tree with some led lights for nerdy flair
- 1 week until doug and helen's baby arrives
- 2 days until my parents come for thanksgiving
- Sun came out today for the first time in awhile and instantly gave me a headache

That Was Fast

We officially feel like homeowners, and it only took a month and a half!  We finally got over the fact that our plane tickets to Austin weren’t going to come down in price any more and just bought them.  We accepted it, and moved on.  Leighann went to cook dinner, and I went to take care of the cat litter and get the trash out ( side note, Seattle has ridiculous trash and recycling rules - http://www.seattle.gov/util/Services/Garbage/GarbageatYourHouse/WhatsAcceptedasGarbage/index.htm ), so I headed downstairs to find three inches of standing water in the basement.

It turns out our lovely flat sewer line backed up, just like we thought it would.  We had really hoped to get more than 6 weeks out of it.  We got a plumber out to clear the line and the water all drained away.  A few hours of cleaning and a few hundred dollars later and it’s back to how it was.  Isn’t owning a house fun!?  We don’t really know what caused it, but I’m willing to wage dollars to donuts that it had something to do with the fact that this has been the 10-day forecast for over a month now:

neighborhood gossip on the internet

It's an excellent concept. We've been following the My Ballard blog since we moved in and we're loving it. There isn't a local paper just for Ballard and not much media attention is given to it, so it's great to know what's going on around us. For example, tonight we heard a really low flying plane that gave us a scare. I spent years living within a mile of airports and had never heard anything like it before. Within minutes the forums were alive with activity of other people hearing the same thing. Without the blog we would have just shrugged it off. Same with when we saw all of the emergency vehicles in front of Matador. The blog was the first to report the stabbing and I'm not sure if the newspaper ever ran a story on it. Thanks to the internet we don't have to go out into the 40 degree rain to talk to our neighbors to stay up to date on the neighborhood news. =)
In other news, we're making progress on the house. We've painted the entry and the living/dining room. Did I mention we're horrible painters. Not good at staying in the lines... Anyway, we have a contractor coming tomorrow to see how much it will cost to get some trim work done and the wood floors refinished. We're not handy people.

painting

We bought a bunch of little sample paint pints from Lowes to decide what color we want to have on the walls. Last night I commented that I'm not going to get to see them in daylight until next weekend. I'm afraid of picking colors that look great in artificial light but then look horrible in daylight. There WILL be daylight in our lives again eventually =)

first day of yard work

The rain finally let up enough for us to do some yard work today. The grass needed to be cut and there was a gigantic vine that had wrapped itself all the way around the house. Luckily, the previous owner left us an awesome rotary lawn mower and hedge clippers so we had everything we needed. We completely filled the yard waste bin which I think means we were successful.
Our goal later on is to get rid of all of the crazy mismatched plants and make a cohesive design. I like the look of evergreen shrubs and not so much the weird tropical-looking plants we have now (which aren't pictured here.) Also, they're fairly easy to shape so they won't block the basement windows and we can get more light down there. Maybe I'll make topiary...