Lights: House & Zoo

Our Christmas lights aren't the fanciest. But I sure do love pulling into the street in the evening and seeing the glow of our house.

This house is the source of a lot of emotions right now. Mostly bad. I'm trying so hard to love it. But this tiny little sardine can is draining my patience, my tolerance, and my bank account (our sewer drained backed up this weekend-yay for surprise and expensive home repair projects that are becoming way too frequent for this 103 year old house). This house is probably the biggest reason why I am not getting my third baby. It is also why I cannot begin the process of becoming a foster parent (which I feel so strongly called to do). And we're kind of stuck here for the foreseeable future.

Some days, I just want to walk away from it. I literally want to exit the front door and never come back. But I can't.

 So, I wrapped it up in Christmas lights instead.

 

This is our entryway/living room/dining room. The kitchen is behind the wall with the bookshelf. Two other rooms and the bathroom are crammed off to the right. That is my entire house. 

At least it's pretty - when it's not filthy and littered with toys that have no place to go.

Lucky for us, we spend a lot of time outside.

Last Friday evening, we packed up the kids and went on an impromptu trip to Zoo Lights. I was exhausted from working all week but we decided to suck it up. It's just not Christmas without Zoo Lights.

 We saw Mt. Rainier.

Not quite sure how the polar bears migrated to the Pacific Northwest. Maybe they rode on Santa's sleigh?

The kids were bundled up in their finest jackets and whatever other warm accessories we could find.

For some of the displays, I was a teeny bit more excited than the boys, as evidenced in this picture:

My husband pushed the stroller ahead of me and walked way too fast. But I still stopped for a minute or two here and there to play with the shutter speed on my camera, even at the risk of getting lost/separated.

The light technicians recreated the Tacoma-Narrows bridge.

And a creepy tiger.

Ryan looks so handsome in this picture. I love that guy.

And this guy is simply hilarious although not so easy to wrangle away from any item that might be used as a playground. I present, Jacob the hermit crab:

The next picture was taken especially for Ryan. Jacob has a small stuffed shark that is most beloved by both boys. In fact, they fight over it constantly. Most mornings I wake up to the sound of Ryan yelling, "Sharky! Sharky! My Sharky!" I can usually get a sense for how the day is going to do based upon Jacob's response. (If he shares, then we are usually in for a good day.) I

Ryan was very excited to see a real-life shark.

Jacob was just excited to be set loose at the zoo. He must be doing a happy dance here.

One final pose before everyone (including me) got crabby.

Calling All HGTV Fans: Advice Wanted!

Ok, I have a confession. My workouts at the gym are really an excuse to watch HGTV. I LOVE that channel. LOVE. Curses to my sister-in-law for introducing me to that sink-hole of time and encourager of futile home-improvement undertakings! My sister-in-law and I spent an entire week of vacation watching that channel. To our credit, it was pouring down rain most of that vacation...

I've decided that I can never have cable. If I had access to that channel, I would do nothing with my life. The children would never get another bath. Forget ever working at home. We would eat canned peaches for every meal. Because my butt would be perpetually parked in front of the TV watching drab and horrid rooms transform into magazine worthy spaces.

Now that we have actually committed to staying in our home (Many of you have asked why we don't just move to Seattle to cut out the horrible commute. The answer is this: our home I only worth 60% of what we paid for it. We're stuck. For a long, long time.), we're slowly making improvements. It's amazing how much you begin to get attached to your house once you put some blood, sweat, and creative energy into it.

We're putting off the huge ticket item, turning our unaccessible attic into a second story, and tackling some small projects for the time being. Next up, beautifying the exterior.

When we bought the house, it was this hideous shade of Pepto-salmon. New to that color? It's a curious mix between Pepto-Bismol and salmon. Here's the unfortunate evidence:

We already painted the exterior. The bottom half of the house is a really light grey-which apparently doesn't register in blinding sunlight. We had wanted a darker color to contrast with the white trim...oh well. Right now our house looks like this:

But it's not done yet. Our weird craftsman style home is wearing a Victorian hat. The non-functional peak is adorned in decorative Victorian shingles. The single color up top does not do these weird shingles any justice. We decided to embrace the funk and add a splash of color to the peak. I spent two hours the other night coming up with some design concepts for the peak.

I was very busy. This isn't even all of them!

But we need some help. My husband and I can't decide between our four favorite options. We'd love your thoughts, before I go around showing these to complete strangers on the bus! And forgive the poor quality. These are pictures of a printout of a picture that I colored on. And I had to use whatever markers were in the house. The actual red will be more muted. And to balance out the color-heavy top, we will add a grey trellis to the front with red flowers and maybe some other décor or additional trim painting. If we can ever decide on the peak...

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Dirt Won't Hurt

My entire backyard is a sandbox but I couldn't be more thrilled! We are finally taking the first steps in our home remodel. The interior is going to have to wait a leeeetle bit longer. Right now, we're focusing on the backyard.

We live in a cozy (read: tiny) house that was built more than 100 years ago. The floor plan is odd, there is a fold-out ironing board in the kitchen, it has a charming baywindow, a retro built-in in the "dining room," a horror-film-worthy basement, and an unfinished attic. The four of us (and a circus-tent volume of baby items) are currently living in 2 small bedrooms and 1 tiny bathroom, all within the 950 square-foot floor plan. TINY. But it has character!

After we moved in 5 years ago, after being forewarned that a good amount of rain would likely crash the roof in, we wasted no time replacing the roof. This IS Seattle, you know. Can't take any chances. Then we painted over the salmon-pink exterior with a neutral but cheerful light grey. We've almost repainted all the interior walls as well. The booger green in our bedroom is no more, the tooth-stained yellow in Jacob's room is now a pale blue, and MOST importantly, the fake 'n bake orange in the kitchen is now a subdued, pale greyish-green.

In the future, we are going to remodel the front entrance and fix up the attic to provide about 500 more square feet of space (masterbedroom! and second bath! and TV room/office!). But right now? We are turning our red-neck, trailer park backyard into an outdoor sactuary.

So...I'm going to show you some pictures which will probably make you say, "WTF?! Is there an archaeological dig in your backyard? Are you digging up zombie bodies?" Well, all I ask if for a little "vision." Put on your rose-colored glasses and just remember...."baby steps."

Before:

 

Very lumpy and uneven

 

During:

I set the kids free to "help" out. Please notice that Jake is in his underwear.....

Now:

Ok...not SO impressive...yet...

Jacob loves the new sandbox.

Bonus: in addition to heaping piles of buried garbage, my husband found some vintage glass bottles from at lest the 50's. The milk bottle is from an old local creamery from "back in the day." Maybe the others contained Moonshine? It would only be fitting.