we're moving tomorrow!

A glimpse of our new house! Yippee. All is well. We get the keys this evening. We're having the carpets deep cleaned tonight, then tomorrow morning the movers come to haul all of our belongings from this rental house to our new home! We've had things in boxes for more than four years - from when we first left Bend. Since we began packing for our move to the Seattle area we've been living out of boxes for more than 10 months! I'm so thrilled about opening up every one of these boxes to put everything in its place. And nesting. We were blessed with the sweetest baby shower and handcrafted and very thoughtful gift items for our little baby who is getting ready to join us in our new family home. Wednesday is all about finding some of the final essential baby items - washer and dryer (we had been waiting to buy a dryer until we knew if we needed an electric or gas, then we discovered that as we are chosing to cloth diaper, our washer, which doesn't have a hot water or sanitizer feature, will not work for our purposes. We also need a crib (though not as pressing, since he'll be in his co-sleeper for a good couple of months). Dresser for his room. Cloth diapers. Stroller with carseat (the midwives have been pressing for this for a couple of visits now :)). Camera. Gotta capture those special moments from the get-go. It's real! All of this amazing grace is swirling all around us and it's such a thrill.
I love this little nook for cookbooks. I think I may have culled the number down far enough to fit in here, with a little space on there for a few soft toys too.
A glimpse of the studio. (Of course, both of these photos are filled with the previous owner's items...I'll re-post similar shots with our stuff within a week or so). I love the colour of this wall, though it's a bit dark for the studio space, so it'll be painted at some point. And need a lot of super great halogen lights to really lighten up the space whose windows are under the deck.

in which a BSJ is nearly complete

I've finally finished a Baby Surprise Jacket. And oh, how I *love* the BSJ! I'm so going to knit more and more of these. It was difficult to get through (I've started one three times), but I pushed through and did it! And then just to push my luck I knit the baby booties that match. Next I'm going to knit another BSJ and booties in fingering weight yarn.
I found the saw and framed two and a half of my paintings!
Went to a sketch crawl at Molbak's with a great group of artist friends. It's long been a goal of mine to do more sketching, and this day really got me jazzed about it. (I've even started sketching in pen! Next stop, washing colour in there). I took dozens of photos of the gorgeous plants and displays. This is my favourite cluster. Isn't it so artfull?
They had our favourite Alphabet cards, I took a picture to remember that they had them here, so we could go back somewhere closer for them (we registered for them at Merry Go Round in Bellevue).
Love this jolly Buddha. We still regret not having purchased two awesome Buddhas in Berkeley. We bought one for our friends housewarming gift and have never again seen such a great one. This one at Molbak's also doesn't compare to the beauty of the sitting Buddha we bought for J & B, the hunt continues.
My favourite planters in the place! I love the texture, the uniformity, the natural wonder of it. Love, love.

*And* my iPod and iTunes are talking again! Yeah! All in all a great day. (Oh, garage sales today - more baby clothes and toys, no crib still. However, we did find a push mower with basket for just $15, and we'd been just about to order one from Costco for $89 (plus tax)! Yeah us!

Whirlwind

View from the guest room of our soon to be home.

Oh my gosh. This is such a crazy time in our lives. Moving 5 miles is proving to be *much* harder than we thought. I think probably because we a bit focused on bigger things. Birth classes. Reading about birth (and being a mom). And, the re-packing the items we've had out of boxes for the past 9 months. I'm *so* excited about getting into this house, getting things unpacked and in their proper places and creating the great bedroom for Sparky and his birth (that's in chronological order - in order of significance Sparky's birth is way on the top of the exciting list).

I packed my little Japanese saw and really needed it out, so I'm actually opening a few boxes trying to find it, I know it's right near the top of one of them. I had to squish it down when I was squeezing the flaps of the box together to get the tape on. I really want to finish off a couple of the bigger paintings I've done lately. The lattice is so long, it would be much easier to move in smaller pieces.

My iPod is acting up. So not thrilled about that, because I love it, and really rely on it for listening to my various NPR and art podcasts in the morning while making my latte and other morning rituals. It's not "listening" to me when I want it to pause, or connect with iTunes on my computer.

Researching cameras, because my little camera has such lag time that I know it'll be really frustrating trying to capture our little man's adorable-ness. Great recommendation came for the Canon XTI. Found one at Costco, but think there might be one less expensive elsewhere. Anyone know of a great source for cameras?

i love them so...

gosh i hope i can grow these at our new house.

i do love a blurry image now and then.

a random meme (because i can't resist 'em)

A meme from cosymakes:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
ten years ago we lived in a fabulous intentional community in Bend. I had the most perfect job for me and had two months off in the summer every year for tootling around and selling my art.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?
start baby surprise jacket
library – return and pick up reserved books
call moving companies
food coop for goat’s yogurt, watermelon, strawberries & fresh ground peanut butter
finish felted box

3. Snacks I enjoy.
fresh fruit and veggies
popcorn – old-fashioned, stovetop with butter & salt
a bit of cheese (aged cheddar or goat) & wheat free crackers
dark chocolate
rice chips

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire.
endow scholarships at PSR, WOU, and COCC
start edible gardens at every school yard I could.
buy handcrafted everything.
create an intentional community.
spend a week in an ocean front cabin in Cannon Beach (every year).
spend two months traveling in Europe -- Paris, various Italian, Greek & Spanish spots.

5. Places I have lived

Singapore, Australia, Alaska
Oregon, New York, Wisconsin, Washington
Berkeley, San Mateo, Seattle area

6. Jobs I’ve had.
baby sitter, house sitter
hostess at a couple of restaurants.
boutique clerk
Student Government executive
self employed artist with odd jobs to pay the bills
residence hall director
director of community education centers
bead show class coordinator
development office administrator

7. Peeps I want to know more about:
I love participating in memes, but don’t like to call others out…tell me if you participate though, I love to read memes too.

i heart garage sales

Still searching for a crib and dresser to go in the baby's room. Went to a big neighborhood garage sale this past Friday and then on Saturday went to a huge churchyard rummage sale. Scored all this stuff (from all of these photos) for about $30. Also got a sweet wooden stool I forgot to photograph. Lots of baby items, including a sling just like what we've been looking for - the sling alone would have been $40.
I ran out to this sale and had to get the car back within a half hour because C had a wedding in Seattle and needed to leave by 10:30. The church yard sale started at 10. So I rushed through and scanned the area for baby stuff - headed there. No crib, no dresser, no bookcase, not many baby clothes, but I picked through the toddler boy stuff grabbing everything that didn't have huge logos on them (no GAP, OLD NAVY - those are quite abundant) also, for now avoiding the cars, trucks, etc. Found a lot. Then toward the books, walked past the craft table. Nothing of interest there. Found piles and piles of books, noticed a woman with a Costco bag -- what a great idea! Wished I had one of those. I do keep about 6 canvas bags in the car, but didn't think to bring those with me to the sale. If I hadn't been on a tight timeframe I would have spent another 10 minutes or so in the books area, there were a lot of children's books.
So glad that I finally fixed the camera/computer connection issue. Totally by trial and error, but I'm finally able to use the camera again!
Hard to photograph a baby sling. I'm so thrilled about finding this. We haven't seen one like this in any of the stores we've been to, but I've seen them online from $40 - $80.
We also need a bookcase for the baby's room. Finding lots of great books and puzzles too. I even found a Babar book! (I loved them as a kid, because of Queen Celeste).