The Realization of Moving

It always happens this way. I know we are moving, and I prepare for it well. But every time I move, there is a point where it all hits me. It's not a bad feeling, just a realization that things are about to change even more than they already have. It happened to me Thursday night after the moving company came and loaded all of our stuff on a truck and hauled it away. Sometime around dinner time, when we were sitting on the air mattress in the middle of the floor in the living room eating store bought sushi without plates or utensils. It's a feeling of relief, anxiety, and excitement all at once. All of our stuff is gone and we don't have to worry about it for a while-relief. We are soon to be theoretically homeless and jobless-anxiety. We are about to take an amazing road trip across the country and be reunited with all of our friends and family from back home-excitement! While these feelings can be overwhelming at times, the changes that come with them are always worth it. I like moving and starting fresh. I like experiencing a sort of carefree life for a while where we don't have to worry about jobs, bills, or schedules. I like house hunting(as terrible as it can sometimes be) and that feeling you get when you've found the place you'll be spending the next year or so. I like road trips. I like my life right now. It's not a life fit for everyone, but at the moment, it suits me.

Persie is sure gonna miss her spot on the back of the couch. She guarded it until the movers came.

Julian loved having towers of boxes everywhere.

Iggy in my pine cone wreath. "Please don't pack this, I love it too much. Just put it in my suitcase"

The pups being sad before the movers came.

Iggy loves cardboard.

So full of stuff. We've collected quite a bit in just a year.

Tim having a paper cup of cereal. 

All clear! The animals were having little panic attacks. So confused.
This is how we'll live for a few more days until we take off down the road.

Such a big empty white kitchen. No more of my favorite orange :(

Eating sushi off of a cardboard box. Classy. And it's store bought at that.
The kitties get all shifty-eyed when they smell fishies in the house.

Berry medley off of a cardboard box.

And morning doughnuts from the Safeway up the block. Buying food when you crave it is great.

Before it all gets packed away, our living room in the Portland house.

As most already know (but some don't, so now you do) Tim and I have decided that the time is right to move back to Virginia. While we love the Northwest and are so happy and grateful that we were able to experience living in a new place, we know that we would be pretty sad if we missed anything significant in our friends and families lives. We feel that although we have only been gone a year, we already have missed out on some good times. We've done a whole bunch while we've been out here. We've made a bunch of cool new friends who will be greatly missed. We've traveled quite a bit and experienced a whole new way of living. We've built our lives back up from just a car full of objects and no jobs or prospects. We've found out a lot about ourselves(super cliché) and have grown as a couple too. I wish we were staying long enough to have more visitors come out so we could show 'em around. But alas, the time is nigh. We will be back to visit, to see more. We don't know if we will settle down for good back in Virginia. But for now, it is the right and logical thing to do. So, can't wait to see everyone in the flesh very soon, like July 1st kind of soon.

And since we have worked so hard(it's a labor of love for both of us really) at setting up a new house, we'd like to at least share it with you all through photos before it all gets packed up and U-hauled across the country. Boxes are lurking behind every one of these photos, and we don't know exactly when we'll be able to see our stuff all set up again in a proper house(it will probably be a few months until we get a place of our own again). We do love this tiny 450ft² apartment, but I think we are ready for a space upgrade next time. It is a good way to control how much stuff you collect. Tim and I definitely used to be mild hoarders. We've learned how to keep a place cozy but not cramped. The key is to have properly scaled furniture. None of that bulky stuff is allowed in our house anymore. I'll be honest, I pushed a lot of mess into the bedroom to take these photos, but it was mostly moving related clutter, boxes and things. We will be renting the smallest U-haul truck and only taking back what we can fit inside, but really I don't think we will have a problem at all this time around. This time, though, I like my furniture too much to sell it all. Portland has the best furniture, antique, and thrift stores ever. Just one of the many things I'll miss...

Newton sat in his favorite spot the whole time I took pictures.
Next to the furry pillow.

Even on an overcast day this apartment is so bright and cheery.

Iggy likes to sit on the record player and watch the outside world.

I have the prettiest striped boy kitty ever.

Three newly added hanging plants.

I plucked a small piece of this from my neighbors yard
and it has grown quite nicely in it's glass house.

A squirrelly spider plant that we have named Spidey.

An African succulent that blooms these little puff balls sits in front of the wedding picture corner.

This poor guy came from the plant store with spider mites and by the time we
 realized, he had lost nearly all of his leaves. After an organic treatment of
various oils mixed together, he is on the road to recovery with new little leaf
sprouts emerging from his stalk. He is a Croton plant that we named Petey.

The Expedit from Ikea holds all of our records perfectly. Most of our books
still remain in Virgina, so hopefully, when we move back they will all fit.
I lined the insides of the shelves with orange paper to brighten it up a bit.

My homemade cork board and coat rack and front door catchall. I painted the coat rack to match all of the other
accents in the room. I stained the floating shelf my favorite stain, a dark walnut. The cork board is a layer of mat
board topped with three thin layers of cork. The cork was then painted the same rusty orange as everything else.
The face is a decorative paper made of tree bark. It's all held up with gold brads and features lovely wooden pushpins. 

Some of my little buddies that I collected from our road trip out here live in a
 pretty wooden vase. And a sweet little orange owl cross stitch
I picked up at the thrift store sits with them.

Tim's first anniversary present was a pair of maps. They were odd sizes so instead
of regular frames, I attached them to the wall and nailed up some molding from the
 hardware store. Of course I stained this myself and cut it all down to size with
 my circular saw. It's not perfect, but not a lot in our house is.

I framed some of my favorite pictures of the animal babies and hung them on a
part of the wall that was just big enough for some 3"x5" frames. The stool is one
of a pair that I bought used, sanded and stained. I reupholstered the
cushion in an old but very pretty bed sheet.

A couple of my own prints hang beside an Ikea mirror that I sanded and stained to a more suitable
color than it's original faux whitewashed wood.

I love hardwood floors so much.

Mid century round coffee table picked up off Craigslist for $35.

The two green armless chairs I bought off of Craigslist. I bet you could guess that
I stained their original cherry wood bottoms to their current dark walnut.

I love my yard sale finds:
A floral rocker and lampshade that aren't exactly the same but match so perfectly found at two different yard sales.

The best couch around for about $500, the Kivik from Ikea in a discontinued rust orange. It took some luck to
find the last cover they had in stock. One of my favorite full priced purchases.

Newton says, "Alright, enough pictures. I'm outta here."

Happy Happy New Things!

So many great new things are happening this week! First my marigolds have started to sprout from the seeds I saved from our wedding. Hopefully the kitties won't eat them...

We also got a pretty house plant and planter. I'm super excited because we haven't had any bigger house plants since we moved and this guy is one that I've always wanted. We also got him for a really good deal at the Home Depot. He's a croton. We named him Petey.

And finally, maybe the best new thing ever! Newton is potty trained! Or at least he's one step closer. We've been teaching him to bring us his leash when he needs to go out. And today he walks up to the couch dragging Persie's pink leash and looks me in the eyes and drops it right at my feet! Tim and I were sooo proud! We took him right out and gave him so many treats and he was so proud of himself! We are one step closer to potty training this puppy!

Marigold sprouts! These are from seeds I saved from our wedding flowers.
I am so happy that they actually grew!

Our planter that we got on super sale from Ikea for $10 and my huge croton that was on super sale at Home Depot for $8.

My proud baby boy :)

Such a weird looking thing!

Bought some nostalgia yesterday

One of my favorite things in life is finding something from my childhood at a thrift store. Every time I do, I am hit with the nostalgia that the sight of it brings. I don't always purchase these things, as some are quite ugly (no offence Mommy). Sometimes it's furniture or a toy, sometimes it's an old jelly jar with Gonzo on it. This time, it was a set of books. Anytime I had a report to do in school, I would look through our set of Life: Nature Library books to find my topic. We had encyclopedias, but they didn't have the same amazing pictures and colors that these books had. We didn't have a computer and I'm not even sure if the internet existed when I was a kid. This set of books published in the sixties to early seventies answered all the questions I could have about anything from soil, to continent formation, to why bees buzzed. They held information about everything I would be interested in back then, and, apparently, I'm still interested in the same topics today. I limited myself to purchasing just ten of the ones available at the thrift store. We probably had about 20 books from the 24 piece set when I was growing up. While I am tempted to steal them all from my Mommy, I will resist. My new goal is to collect them all so that, maybe, one day, little Timbers can look through them too, instead of just clicking around on a computer.

The start of a collection.

Such pretty yellow bees.

I love the redwoods.

They are all my favorite colors.

Some valentines things

Here are some random photos from last week, around Valentine's Day. It's not the best holiday, but it gives me an excuse to make candy and cards, so I like it. And it gave Tim the excuse to buy me a rose bush and make me dinner. Valentine's Day, you're alright with me.

Origami flowers to send with my valentines.

Origami hearts, too.

Handmade valentines.

I like owls, if you couldn't tell already.

Truffles to share at work.

Sprinkles, sugar, coconut, and cocoa almond covered peanut butter truffles.

Someone made me a Valentine's Day dinner. And bought me two new records.
I have a sweet husband.

Fake chicken breast over vegetarian rice pilaf with grilled asparagus.

And a bottle of organic wine from Cristy and Seanboy. Thanks guys :)