Currently: August 26, 2005

Today is the closing date on our house!! Hopefully within a few hours our agent will call and I can run over and get the keys! We spent about an hour on Wednesday signing papers...sign, sign, initial here, sign, sign, sign. Yesterday we got a frantic last minute call telling us that Jeff forgot to sign his middle initial in two spots. Could you imagine our house being delayed because of a couple of missing "L's"? Yikes.

Here is a not-so-good picture. Not really a great head-on shot but it's all I have at the moment. Look at all of the trees!


We are on a dead end and our only neighbor is a Buddhist Monastery.


 All of this yard is now mine! The property extends past the chain link fence and ends just before the pile of rubble. The rubble belongs to the Buddhists. This, my friends, is the future site of the kitchen garden.

I am so very excited. Tonight we start moving and tomorrow we have some friends coming over to lend a much appreciated hand. I can't believe it.

Kim gave me some great ideas for a "We've Moved!" cards and I have some images bubbling and brewing in my brain. Oh, so much to do, it's overwhelming. I am almost done packing. This morning I had to call in a search party to locate a packet of splenda for my morning coffee. Lucky there was one hiding out in the junk drawer of all places. Crisis averted.

August 22, 2005

I know it's not Friday, but since I skipped Friday's post I thought I would update anyway.

Boston was FABULOUS. I had a great time with my best friend. I can't tell you how amazing it was to see her be a mom. I love her so much, and have always admired her for her beauty, intelligence and humor, and it was so great to see her with her baby. He is a doll, and I really look forward to seeing what kind of person he becomes.

This Weds, Jeffery and I will sign the papers on our new home!! Yay!! I am FINALLY allowing myself to "feel" excited. We will be moving our stuff in this weekend, and I still have so much to pack! I am excited and stressed. I have a lot going on with my "real" job, illustrations to do, and all of this house stuff. Jeffery is super busy as well as it's almost harvest. He is busy filtering wine and bottling. The winery will be moving into their brand new home within the next few weeks so there are a lot of changes going on, and then the grapes will start to come in so I will be a "wine widow" again shortly.

I start my advance painting class early next month as well, and hopefully my mom is going to come up an visit and help with the house. I am going to put her to work helping decorate and paint. I also see an IKEA trip in our future.

I think the most exciting thing I am feeling right now is the beginning stages of coming out of my creative slump. I was feeling really, really burned out on everything for a while and I am sort of starting to get excited and inspired again. I am going to take it slow and not rush anything and see what happens.


August 10, 2005

Oh man what a week! I am leaving tonight for Boston to have a nice vacation with my friend and her sweet new born baby. It seems like I had A LOT of irons in the fire this week and I haven't even packed yet.

House news is looking super good. We got the appraisal at value with no work orders so when I get back from my nice relaxing vacation I am going to have a whole lot of packing to do.

Stef sent me a great link to an illustrated potager! Yay! I also checked out the Postage Stamp Garden Kitchen book from the library and it is GREAT. I am definitely going to buy this one. I haven't even gotten a quarter of the way through it yet and it's exactly what I was looking for.

Have a great week!!!!

August 5, 2005 link

My poor blog...it's been so neglected.

We are in a weird waiting pattern right now. Our stuff is sort of half-packed. Our closing date is supposed to be the 26th of this month, but we are waiting on the appraisal to go through and hopefully everything will be okay. (please, please, please, please)

I am already attached to this house, even though I told myself I wasn't going to let myself get attached in case it fell through. I have started to decorate in my head. Anh-Minh posted about how wonderful the new West Elm catalog is and I just got my copy and I would have to agree with her. I accosted Jeffery with it the other night pointing items out and saying "and this could go in the dining room..and Oh! don't you just LOVE these chairs?!"

I am afraid that if we get this house, I am not going to have any money left for West Elm stuff. But that's okay...I keep meaning to go to garage sales and this is a good excuse. We have lived in really small apartments over the past seven years and have only acquired furniture as we have needed it. Moving into a house that's twice the square footage leaves a lot of open space to fill. We will have a dining room, but we have no dining room table. Or a spare bed for the quest bedroom, or a lawn mower for our .37 acre. I know this is the fun part, and I have been looking forward to this forever, but the thought of spending all of that cash make me nervous!

I want to have a potager, or a french kitchen garden. I haven't had much luck finding a website that tells you "This is how to plan and grow a potager". Granted, I haven't really looked very hard. I did find this very charming site, which I am sure I will frequent. I don't even really have much of a green thumb either, it's more of a khaki color.

The premiere issue of Domino magazine has an article (page 182) on The Perfect Weekend Garden that I LOVE. It will be a very helpful starting point. It gives you a list of tools and materials, and suggested prices as well. I have decided that instead of pea gravel for the walkways, I am going to use crushed oyster shells. The garden down at the farmer's market has them in it's walkway, and one of garden volunteers told us that you can get them fairly cheap.

Now I have to figure out where to put the grass couch.

But...I guess I should wait until we find out if we have the house first. See? It's so HARD not to start planning! Oh..I must be patient!


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