Sunday, February 21, 2010

Pet portraits

As you know we are completely a little obsessed with our pets. We already have pictures of them all over the house and we just added a few more to our collection.

My friend and co-worker, Kaethe, is an artist in her free time and started doing pet portraits a few years ago.

Just before we moved into our house she painted Monkey and Hobbes and then I temporarily lost them due to disorganized packing. I recently found them and then asked her to paint Zeke too.

They are pretty small (5 x 5) but they capture our darlings perfectly!

Monkey

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Hobbes

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Zeke

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We have this skinny wall as you walk into the family room and it fits the pet portraits perfectly!

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Aren't they cute?!

Spring is here!

The winters are never very long here in northern California but I think ours is officially over.

We were working in the backyard this weekend and I noticed our peach tree is covered in little buds. I hope this year's peaches are bigger than the miniature ones we had last year. Although its probably my fault since I didnt water the tree. At all. Oops!


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We are in the process of cutting down this unattractive bush (because its a hiding place and litter box for the neighborhood cats) but I quickly grabbed a snap of its spring growth. I like how the new light green leaves look next to the dark green older ones.

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This purple guy (girl?) is cascading over the neighbor's fence behind the mail boxes.

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These mustard weeds are everywhere - especially along the sides of the freeway. Even though they are pesky weeds I still enjoy their sunny yellow flowers.

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The cherry blossoms are starting to bloom and I just love their pretty pink color!


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(These cherry blossom trees are outside the grocery store and Josh sat in the car embarrassed while I took a few pics. I think I embarrass him a lot.)

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These are my Valentine's day flowers from Josh - they have a springy vibe so I think they are appropriate for this post too.

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Anyone else experiencing an early spring?

Friday, February 12, 2010

The loft: a work in progress

Wow its been a long time since I last posted! I thought it had only been a week or two but apparently my sense of time is a little off ...

Its been cold and rainy for the past few weeks so we've spent a lot of time lazing around indoors but its time to start being productive again! Apart from our bedroom the upstairs of our house is in a complete state of disarray so its definitely time to change that. First up: the loft!

The loft is mainly going to be a man room but will also store books, CDs, and games so I guess I'll get to go in there now and then :-)

This is the best pic I have of the room (from when we first moved in):

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Over the past year we've filled it with a bunch of junk (actually stuff that will eventually go in there), painted the ceiling, cut in the walls, and replaced the ceiling fan. Currently it actually looks worse than when we started!

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This is our plan for the furniture / layout:

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(please excuse my kid-like drawings)

We got a great deal on an Ikea slip-covered sofa on craigslist and we're planning on building our own bookshelves. Besides the headboard I made for our bedroom neither of us has any woodworking experience so who knows how they'll turn out.

I found this awesome blog called knockoffwood and it has plans to make all kinds of furniture so we're using her plans to make these shelves:

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Hopefully I'll be able to report back with some shelves that resemble these and not a crumbled pile of wood :-)

Since I work better under pressure I'm shooting for us to get most of the room done in the next month but considering how little we've done in the past year that might be a little optimistic!

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In other news, Wednesday was the one year anniversary of the day we got Zeke. Its hard to believe we've had our sweet little boy for a whole year already.

He may look like a tough dog, but he spends his nights wrapped up in his blanket between us on the bed ...

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Awwwwww :-)