New Home Inspection

We went up to the new house for our inspection on Saturday morning and were so excited to see that almost everything is finished! The appointment went really well and the inspector only found a short list of items that he recommended we bring up to the builder (touch-up paint and caulk, missing fall-safety bracket on the roof, a light missing in the guest bath, etc).

Our pre-closing orientation will be Tuesday afternoon. That's when we can walk around with a roll (or five) of blue tape and mark every teeny tiny thing that isn't just perfect, and the builder will need to fix it before we close in just a little over a week. Tick tock tick tock... it's almost here!

Beautiful stairs in the entryway.
I didn't originally like these black wrought iron spindles, but Stew and Mom convinced me and now I really love them.

The den faces the front of the house, which means it will get lots of light.
This is where my books will live, and I want to get built-in shelves all along the back wall.

The downstairs powder room; I really need to spruce up this space.

Lovely chef's kitchen with stainless steel appliances. Now, if only I knew how to cook...

A few more close up shots of the appliances. We are going to love the water/ice dispenser on the fridge!

 

Downstairs living room. This is where our new furniture will live.

I just can't get enough of this fireplace. Have I mentioned we had to pay extra to get one with "wood"?
Apparently now the standard is these strange glowing crystals... and we definitely weren't a fan of that look.

 

Entryway linen closet with extra storage under the stairs - yay!
Maybe now I won't have to store luggage in the trunk of my car.

A couple shots of the media room upstairs,
but it was hard to get a good angle.

Laundry room with brand new (full size!) washer and dryer.
We discovered that I can't reach the cabinets up above... someone get the short girl a stool!

Guest bedrooms and bathroom. Unfortunately they missed an overhead light above the shower,
so the bathroom is really dark right now, which is seriously going to bug me if they can't fix it.

A couple shots of the master bedroom.
(I had a hard time finding a good photo angle again).

Master bath and walk-in closet. I've looked into having the closet professionally done,
but it's really expensive so that will have to wait for now.

The garage, for those who are interested.

And the backyard! We're really happy with the way it turned out, although we're still not sure what we're going to
do with that bark area up top. The subcontractors made a mistake and poured our patio too small,
so we actually ended up with a much larger patio without paying anything extra... we'll take it!

So now the packing really must begin (Sarah, stop procrastinating). It's going to be difficult with my bum leg, but it must be done. Speaking of, I did go to an orthopedic specialist on Friday morning and he suspects I have a sprained MCL/ACL, but I need an MRI next week to confirm and decide a course of action (the ACL won't heal on it's own and could require surgery). So that's a bummer, but we're taking it one step hop at a time and I'm still hobbling around on crutches with a knee brace... not my best look.

Mt. Baker Ski Trip

We were super bummed when my kidney stone ruined our ski trip to Mount Baker over the holiday weekend in January, so we decided to try again for President's Day weekend.

Stew's brother Mark has a condo just about 25 minutes from the ski area so that's where we crashed for the weekend. Stew, Tara, Jason and I arrived Saturday evening and had a fun day of skiing and snowboarding on Sunday before Andrew joined us for dinner, drinking, and hot tubbing.

I haven't been snowboarding at Mt. Baker in years so I was really looking forward to it. The conditions weren't amazing, but we still had a great time... with one small exception, which I'll explain shortly.

Firefighter building us a fire.

Tara and I made a yummy dinner Saturday night.

Fun on the slopes.

"I just need to rest my leg!"

My first time snowboarding this season. And likely my last (see below).



Hanging out at Chair 9 after a day on the mountain.

And... the aftermath. This is my knee, currently.

2013 has really been a bummer year for us so far. I thought the kidney stone debacle would be enough for a while, but apparently not. I fell coming off the very first chair lift of the day and seriously twisted my knee. But instead of ruining the day for everyone, including myself, I decided to shake it off and fight through the pain. Tara and I did have a great time skiing and snowboarding all morning, but by the time we were done with lunch I knew something was seriously wrong, and it was all I could do to get back down to the main lodge. And now my knee is so painful I can't bend or walk on it at all... not good, obviously.

I've never had a knee injury before and I'm not crazy about going back to the doctor for another CT scan at the moment, so for right now I'm just taking an anti inflammatory and using ice and crutches. If it doesn't start to feel better in a couple days I'll go to the doctor, I suppose. I feel so betrayed by my stupid, frail human body!

Oy vey.  

Getting so close we can taste it.

Just two more weeks until we close on the new house in Snoqualmie! We've been going up as often as we can to see what progress has been made, and every time we visit something new and exciting has been done.

 

Most of the exterior painting is complete!
There will also be a third, fairly dark accent color for the door, some of the trim, and the window shutters.

 

The tile back splash in the kitchen is in and we're so happy with how it turned out.
Everything looks pretty matchy-matchy right now, but the stainless steel appliances should help break that up.

My giant under mounted kitchen sink. This was an upgrade I insisted on.

And here are the cabinets with the crown molding added at the top. So pretty.

And a pantry! This is going to change my life.

Not really any changes to this room, except you can see that the window coverings have been installed.

Stair railings almost all done. I didn't take pictures of them, but you can see the
powder room and the den in the background.

All the fixtures have been installed in the master bath including the shower surround and tub.
I don't like baths, but I might make an exception here...

The laundry room sink is in and we're just waiting for the washer/dryer in this room.
I am going to LOVE being able to wash and dry full loads!

This front guest room is my favorite... I just love the window seat
and view of the neighborhood and mountains in the distance.

Nothing too exciting happening in the guest bathroom right now, but I still think the tile and cabinets are pretty.

And here was our big surprise... the fenced backyard! We had no idea we had so much property.
When we selected the lot we thought it went just a couple feet above the rock wall... it turns out
we own all the way up to the top of the hill! The landscaping isn't done yet but now we have that
whole sloped upper area to deal with... not quite sure how we're going to utilize it, but we'll take it!

 

Our condo is crowded with empty boxes that I need to start filling with our belongings, because the countdown is really on. But we're heading up to Mt. Baker this morning to make up for our previously ruined trip, so I'll really have to get on that next week.

 

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Anticlimactic.

Even though Mom of course enjoyed helping pick out living room furniture with us, the real reason she wanted to come up was because she was dying to see progress on the new house. The last time she came up to see it we barely had framing, so it's obviously changed drastically since then. And we were so excited to show her all the lovely finishes that she helped us select back in October now that they've been installed. Unfortunately, we were in for disappointment.

Although a lot more work has been done even since Stew went up on Thursday, we weren't able to see any of it. When we arrived at the house we were excited to see our lovely front door for the first time, but when we opened it we were greeted with a lot of paper, plastic and tape.

Front door! Very pretty... I can't remember what color it's going to be, though.

All the upper cabinets have been installed as well as all the woodwork and trim...
But we couldn't really see any of it! Everything was sealed up tightly with paper, plastic and tape.

It took us a while to figure out why, but eventually we realized that it was prep
for painting all the woodwork... that must be happening next week.

We were excited about all the progress, but Mom literally couldn't see a single
one of the lovely finishes that we were so excited to show her. Bummer.
(This is the den, which I don't think I've shown in a while)

So basically the trip was kind of a bummer, except we made a decision on the living room furniture and had a lovely lunch at Mabel's. We have our inspection in a couple weeks and then we close in just a little more than three weeks... it's getting so close now!

Living room furniture.

We finally pulled the trigger on the living room furniture! When we started the process it was pretty overwhelming, and my week as a medical mystery kind of slowed any progress we had been making, but as of this afternoon our order has been placed!

We met Mom at Dania this morning because we wanted her help/blessing on our final fabric selections. We know we are going to have to live with these choices for quite a long time, so we really wanted to choose carefully. I think it's safe to say that we made this experience much more complicated than it needed to be, but hey, we feel confident and love our choice, so that's all that matters, I think.

From a prior visit to Dania to look at fabrics we were pretty sure that we wanted a cream color for the sofa fabric,
and we really fell in love with this black and cream accent fabric for our chair.

But of course I just couldn't let go of these other fabrics, which I also really loved.

Of course just looking at the fabrics in the store wasn't enough... we had to see them in person in the model home.
So we checked out all the fabric samples and drove ourselves up to Snoqualmie!
Here are the fabrics we liked on the current model home sofa...
We actually chose a bit lighter, which makes this one look kind of brown.

And here are my favorite accent fabrics on the chair in the model home.
I love, love, love the birds, but since our sofas are going to be so light
we decided to go with the "words" fabric for more contrast.
Plus Mom absolutely loved it once she realized the words are Latin phrases.

We ended up choosing the cream colored fabric on the right for the sofas.
It might be a mistake to choose such a light color, but the fabric is a very high grade of microfiber that is
supposedly super easy to clean with just soap and water or I think she said rubbing alcohol.

Following the advice of a friend, we actually ordered everything from Sansaco Furniture, a warehouse/distributor that is right behind Dania, and saved ourselves about $500. We got the Martin sofa and love seat with the Times Square chair and ottoman. The sofas also come with pillows in the accent fabric. I like our choices because I can basically choose anything as I want to use as an accent color in the room by adding more pillows, curtains, area rugs, or other pieces. Right now I am loving apple green but also teal. We'll have to see what catches my eye!

Of course we still need lots of other stuff for the room like coffee and side tables, bookshelves, etc. but I think this was a really good start! It's going to take 8-10 weeks for everything to come in so we'll have to live with an empty room for a while, but I'm okay with that because I love what we chose... it will be worth the wait and so, so exciting when it finally arrives!

We have a yard!

Stew stopped by the house on his way home from snowboarding this afternoon and the landscapers had been there! Brett and Haley had also swung by on Wednesday so I already knew they were doing work on the stone columns out front, and then within just 24 hours we suddenly had grass, trees and plants! It's still shocking to me how fast they are getting things done.

You can see the completed stone columns here, which I think are such a nice touch.

And here is our mini front yard!
The house is situated at the front of the lot to maximize the back yard space, and that's just fine with us.

Shot of the backyard from the master bedroom window.
Our property goes up just a few feet above the rock wall at the back and that's where the fence will be.
I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do with that upper area.

The whole backyard!
This is a panoramic shot so it's kind of distorted... the patio isn't really curved like that.

I absolutely love the back yard, but in front all I see is weeding and gardening and other chores that I loathe. So unless Jesse Metcalfe is available to become my personal gardener, I'm pretty sure we'll eventually be tearing all that stuff out and replacing it with grass that goes right up to the porch. After all, I don't want to be that tacky neighbor on the block who has a yucky, overgrown, dead garden out front. 

National Food Truck Date Day... coming up!

I recently told you about my dear friend Jeanna and her amazing project, 50 Food Truck Dates. One of the things I love about Jeanna is that she's a realistic romantic. She believes in love. "Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love."  But she also scoffs at forced, contrived, silly traditions like Valentine's Day... just like me. So when I saw her post about a fun new alternative Valentine's Day tradition I was super excited.

Let's make February 14th National Food Truck Date Day! You can read all about it at 50 Food Truck Dates, but basically the idea is to chuck this silly, commercialized holiday with ridiculous unjustified expectations right out the window. Instead, spend a little stress-free time with your favorite person or people while grabbing a meal at your favorite local food truck!


Image via the50dates.

I decided I'm definitely going to help Jeanna out with her new mini project by going on a fun and easy food truck date with Stew next week, and you can, too! Send her some info from your date and be featured on Jeanna's blog become famous!

Let's start changing the sentiment of Valentine's Day the worst holiday of the year! Love it.

Now, where shall we dine?

What are we going to do for the next seven months?

Tara featuring her gourmet nachos.
They were so delicious.

Well friends, the NFL football season has officially come to an end. Stew had to work, but I celebrated by getting together with Tara, Andrew, and a couple of their friends to watch the Super Bowl.

Of course it was bittersweet since the Seahawks didn't get to participate, but I'll pretty much use any excuse to get together with friends and eat chips and dip, so it was still a win for me.

I despise the 49ers (and especially Jim Harbaugh) even more than I hate bananas, so of course I was cheering for the Ravens and luckily wasn't disappointed. I couldn't bear to watch San Fran win the Super Bowl after we totally spanked them in Seattle.

I made Skinny Taco Dip which I haven't done since last summer and I forgot how yummy it is! Tara also made some of the most delicious nachos I've ever had (I love lots of toppings) and Marie prepared some awesome treats like artichoke Parmesan dip and BBQ chicken wings. I'm pretty sure I consumed my suggested calorie intake for the entire week.


Our partially-devoured spread.

Apart from feeling lethargic and chubby after eating so much junk, I'm also feeling let down about the official end of the season... what the heck are we going to do on Sundays for the next seven months??

PS is the Go Daddy commercial still turning your stomach? It is mine. Barf.

Bye Bye, Brooke

My darling, lifelong friend Brooke is moving back to Alabama with her family, and I'm so happy for her, but so sad for myself. She's been living in Silverton, Oregon for the past year and three months, which has made it so much easier to see her more often. We always meet up in Olympia during holiday times, and whenever I go down to visit family in the Portland area, and she's come in to Seattle quite a few times, too.

We have been friends since we met in seventh grade home economics class, and have been close ever since. I've learned that true friends can be few and far between, and I'm so happy that we've been able to maintain our friendship despite the years and miles that have separated us.

Long distance friendships can be hard, but they are always rewarding. And I know Brooke and her family will be super happy back in Alabama... and maybe one of these days I will head out there for a visit. I've never been to the South before!

I spent the afternoon with Brooke and her son, Abraham,
before they flew out on Sunday. Here's adorable Abe with
the piggy bank I gave him as a going away present.
He named him Babe... so cute!

Bye bye, Brooke, I'll see you again very soon! xoxo