All Dressed Up

It's finished! My second DIY piece of furniture. This time I had some help from my wonderful husband though. Let me tell you, two people armed with paint brushes makes things go MUCH faster. Especially when you are dealing with primer, paint, 9 drawers and some pretty tiny detailing. 


Scott and I set out on Saturday armed with all the necessary supplies (and then some...our driveway looked like a Home Depot paint aisle). It ended up only taking us 2-3 hours to complete our masterpiece and we are really happy with the results. 


So, without further ado...


Before:

Not the most gorgeous before picture...an unmade "bed" on the floor in the foreground isn't exactly great framing.

After:

I have no step by step pictures for you (I will get better at the documenting, promise) but the process was relatively easy...sand the rough spots, prime the whole thing, paint the trim/more detailed portions, paint the rest. We only needed one coat of paint in most places. Being new to primer I will have to say it is my new favorite thing. Makes the job go MUCH faster even with an extra step in the beginning. 


We were originally going to change the pulls out completely as these are admittedly a bit "antiquey" but due to that same "antiquey" fact we were not successful in our pull quest. The holes are a very odd length apart and we couldn't find anything that would work as a replacement. Sure, we could fill them, paint them, and drill new holes but that sounded a little bit ambitious for two novice DIYers. So it was off to the spray paint aisle. We bought a can of brown and one of kelly green. More on the baby's room/vision soon but the main colors in the room are going to be navy, brown, and white with kelly green accents. We figured at $3 a can we could afford to try the bold color. Alas, it worked and we love it! It works great for a nursery and it makes us excited to put the rest of the room together for our little man. 

And just a little bonus...this is a gift from my client The Monterey Bay Aquarium. Isn't he cute? 

Next up...painting Baby R's walls.

Napa. Packing. DIY.

We packed a lot into our three day weekend! So much it actually felt like a nice little vacation. Don't you love it when that happens?

Katie managed to swing another trip out to the Bay Area and of course we made another trip up to Napa. I took on my new role as designated driver and off we went!

Kate and me at Gloria.

Maxi dresses. God's gift to pregnant women (I am sure I will continue to echo this as I grow - I actually look bigger than I really am in this picture).

We actually stopped at a few new wineries and unfortunately Kate witnessed her first bad day of weather in Napa. It rained all afternoon but it didn't damper our fun and the skies parted just in time for dinner.

Rain in the distance from Joseph Phelps. It was actually very dramatic and pretty.

Our picnic at Montelena. Looks great but we were actually rushing as the storm was looming in the background.

Our Saturday itinerary:

• Gloria Ferrer
• Oakville Grocery to pick up sandwiches
• Chateau Montelena (we made Kate watch Bottle Shock Friday night) - picnic
• Mumm
• Joseph Phelps
• Redd for a glass of wine while we waited for dinner
• Bottega - capped the night off with an early dinner

Heaven.

Sunday we got Kate off to the airport and headed down to Menlo Park to visit our new neighborhood. We strolled Santa Cruz street, drove by our cute house and then headed back to the city for a day of R&R. 

Of course, too much R&R makes my mind race with projects I need to start so Monday was filled with just that. We went to Menlo again to sign papers and made a stop at Home Depot on the way home. This place is going to be my new BFF. Why I have decided that two weeks before a move is the time to start DIY projects is beyond me. 

Current projects include:

• Spray painting frames for my "wall o' stuff" in the new house (inspiration here)
• Repaint the dresser that lives in our room that will become the baby's dresser/changing table
• Packing

The frames were easy peasy but the dresser is going to be a chore. Katie Bower makes it seem so easy but getting nice smooth lines is something that is going to require a little practice. 

Frame before (we have a zillion of these).

A little spray paint.

and viola!

My helpers. Lola was dancing around in the garage with us too.

Matching paint swatches to the crib.

Test drawer painted with one coat. I will take a picture of the entire dresser before I go any further so we can see the before/after.

The doctor gave me to ok to paint as long as the area was well ventilated but we went ahead and got a few masks for me to wear just to be safe. I look hot!

I have also come up with one heck of a moving system. These movers don't know who they are dealing with! 

Each room will be color coded. Each box will have an index card indicating which room it belongs in. Of course I will also be writing what each box will contain. All furniture will also have an index card taped to it so the movers know just where to take it. Hopefully this makes it go smooth as silk!

Ok, time to get back to the working world. 17 week update coming up next.

What a weekend it was...

I am going to make you wait for the good stuff. First you have to look at the millionth across the table pictures of Scott and I. One day I am going to make a collage of all of these.

Scott, and...

ME!

Friday night we took a recommendation from Jess and went to Orson for dinner. The food was delicious and I could have easily picked a handful of other things off the menu I wanted to try. I guess we'll have to go back! PLUS, dessert is prepared by Citizen Cake. Remember how baby likes dessert? Well, baby LOVED the Breakfast of Champions (cinnamon toast ice cream, oatmeal ice milk, bourbon carmel fried french toast). It was divine.


Ok, enough of my sugary reminiscing. On to the good stuff. A couple weekends ago Scott and I were out impromptu house hunting and fell upon our dream house. It wasn't even in the cities we were originally narrowed in on. It was a lucky find and we fell and fell hard in love with this house.


Fast forward through a very long week of deciding when, how, and how much to offer to the sellers. A couple back and forths later we went into contract officially on Saturday morning. It was a roller coaster experience of extreme excitement and then a few reality checks when we thought we might have to walk away. This week was another nail biter waiting for the appraisal to come in. It came today and it was exactly what we had hoped for and now we are officially able to share our unbridled excitement about our house. Of course, it isn't over until it's over and we will close escrow mid June. Until then, I will continue decorating our new home in my head at all hours of the day and night. Maybe in June I'll sleep again...

Our little house!

Living room and dining area. Through the far door on the right is the kitchen and the next door in goes to...

The Family Room

Backyard and my mom's favorite part, the "in-law unit".

I see this fire pit getting A LOT of use!

Some house facts (in the words of Crick's sister Libby. Hopefully she doesn't mind me sharing her amazing words with you all...it was truly a wonderful email Scott and I received from her):


So, yesterday, I was at Crate and Barrel at Stanford and decided to drive over and look for your potiential house....(not knowing how fast things were progressing with you guys),low and behold, I found it.....after cruising down the Menlo Oaks MAJOR OAK-lined street before Bay. Omg! GORGEOUS! Anyways, the house is awesome and I actually pulled over and asked two darling gals (Mom's) about the street.  They were SO SO SO nice!


They told me these things:

1. Perfect street for young families!!!!!!!

2. Most kids under 3 years old.  ; 0 )

3. Laurel Wood is a wonderful school (so is Encinal for

Spanish immersion), which I already knew!

4. The family that is selling your house are really,

really nice and will be missed.

5. Last night, they had a Spring Fling at Laurel Wood

and they told me to tell you to come.

6. I told them that you were interested in it (I had

no idea how much! ha ha) and they said to

tell you that you will LOVE the hood and the families!

7. There were a lot of Mom-mobiles around there,

and it seems like many Mom's may

be stay-at-home.


We also got to see Libby on Saturday as she came to meet Crick, Kyle, the kids, Scott, Me and the Poms at the house. One of her new neighbor friends came over to visit and we got even more fabulous information about the street. I will stop rambling now but it pretty much just kept getting better and better. 

A San Jose Sharks cupcake some neighborhood kids were selling at a lemonade stand. LOVE!

Can you tell we are excited?


Saturday we continued the fun with the Strand Fam for dinner and officially collapsed in exhaustion into bed that night.  


Why stop there? Sunday we headed down to San Carlos and had brunch with Nick and Kristina at Town. It was nice to catch up with them and visit for awhile.


And, that's all for our weekend. We'll be sure to keep you posted. I have a million little projects and design ideas brewing in my head!

Whew

What an unexpected weekend. The major news is that it culminated with Scott and I finding our dream house. Not really much news other than we found it. House buying is quite the process so we are in a waiting game right now. I'll share more about the house when we know more. 

It was funny how we ended up at this house though. Sunday morning I woke up and Scott said, "I am going to go look at houses today" (our appointment with our realtor wasn't until the following Sunday). I decided to tag along on what Scott assured me was going to be "an hour, max" of looking. 7.5 hours later we made our way back home excited, nervous, and full of hope!

In other weekend fun we took to Crissy Field for the first time in ages! We spent so much time there when we were training for our 1/2 marathon but with all of Arnold's hip issues we haven't been able to get the poms down there. Luckily, Arnold is a new bionic Pomeranian and we all had a blast. 

Lola and me and the typical SF spring weather.

Arnold might look a little pooped but immediately following this picture he ran for the big dogs in the background and then sprinted into the Bay. He LOVES water but the Bay makes me nervous so we wrangled him back in. We'll have to find him a pond to swim in.

One happy little pomeranian.

Saturday evening we headed down to Redwood City for dinner with the Hyland Family. I failed to take pictures but we have a great evening of catching up and it was wonderful to see the kids again!

When we turned onto our street after driving home we noticed that it was oddly dark. We did a quick assessment of all the houses and realized the power was out on both sides of the street. I came to learn that this was Scott's first real power outage that he can remember. I got a fair amount of entertainment out of this fact as he sorted out what would work and what wouldn't. 

We managed to scrounge up all the candles in the house and found a great activity for the dark evening. Baby name selection. So, we pulled out some wine (for Scott), Ben & Jerry's (it was going to melt with the power out, it had to be eaten), the baby name book, pen & paper, a picture of the pumpkin, and set to work. My computer also had enough power to grace us with some music for ambiance.

Power outage fun.

We really enjoyed the hour without power and have decided it might be a good thing to just pretend the power is out once in awhile. AND, I am pretty sure we have officially selected a boy name (the girl name was already locked up).

I guess now is as good a time as any to share my philosophy on name sharing. I could do a whole post on people's reactions and statements about pregnancy and pregnant people (my prerogative, obviously) but it will likely come off as annoyed so I'll just keep my trap shut for now. BUT, it is really is amazing what comes out of people's mouths.

I digress...names. I (we?) have decided that I don't want to share the baby's name with the world because frankly I don't care what other people think. For the record, my opinion again, the correct response to someone sharing their baby name is, "Awww, that is so cute". Or something of that nature. "Oh, I knew a Timmy once, he was really strange" is not considered an acceptable answer. I think it comes from people not knowing how to react in the situation so they fill the void with whatever pops in their head and are truly just trying to relate. The thing is, this is the name I have selected for my baby to have for a lifetime and I don't care to know how many baby Timmys you know or who names who what or what an odd name that is. 

I don't really know that it will get much better once the baby is born but my hope is that by seeing the baby live and in person and hearing the name people will accept that name and just ooooooo and ahhhh over tiny fingers and tiny toes and not the person they knew once upon a time. I know this won't always be the case. People have their opinions but I just don't need to hear them until they can fall upon deaf ears.

I do intend to make a fun little game out of guessing the name (think NCAA bracket) so you'll get some clues along the way, but not a full reveal until I have a picture of the baby to go along with it.

Phew, so there you are. My personal issue with sharing baby named and why it will be a closely guarded secret.

ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, readers, it looks like we are buying a house. This is something Scott and I have gone back and forth on (sometimes not so happily) over the past year or so and we are 98% sure we are going to make a move. 


I have finally come to terms that the money we plan to spend will get us this:

**

versus this in another state.

Ah, the price you pay for living in the Bay Area. But we have a good thing going here so we are going to hunker down, suck it up, and pay our mortgage. 


Well, that is if we can trick someone into actually letting us buy a home ;-). I kid, we are going about this very smart and slowly and will buy when we find the right home at the right price in the right location. Easy, right? We could be looking until 2020. 


Aren't I funny today? 


In all seriousness it is a very exciting venture in our lives and we (I'm) looking forward to owning a home that we can do whatever we want to and call it our own. 


We'll be sure to keep you posted!


**Ok, full disclosure, I did pick one of the smaller options in our price range for dramatic effect.