If it didnt rain so much, i'd move to seattle

Once again no work progressed on the house this week. Beth and I took our one and only vacation of the year: a brief weekend to seattle. Normally we travel and camp all year long but this year we've done nothing as life has been all about the house. In fact, we started looking for a house this time last year and looked at our first house in Oakland on Nov. 1. Halloween is a good time to explore neighborhoods. Seeing who's decorated and how they've decorated lets you kind of gauge the personality of a neighborhood. After living in San Francisco for years and only decorating our flat's windows, i'm looking forward to decorating more maniacally this year. But anyway, Seattle. It was gorgeous. Perfect experience for beth's first and my second visit: weather was crisp but not too cold, colorful trees dropping leaves everywhere, nice people, a great view of the Sound, the Space Needle and Lake Washington from our room. Delicious food at every turn and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a cup of coffee in that town. Sadly, the 49ers humiliated themselves against the seahawks in the first shutout since 1977. Sigh. Now beth is out of town for 10 days and work is crazy so i doubt things will go much further around here for a while. And you know, i'm about to get crazy for halloween.

posted by merideth @ 9/30/2004 08:37:00 AM 5 comments

Land of Fruits...

Sunday was more pleasant than Saturday. We bought 2 delightful little citrus trees to plant in the backyard: a Bears' Seedless Lime (the bartender's favorite) and a wonderful Meyer Lemon.
They'll grow into little evergreen bushes that prouce lots of great fruit and fragrant flowers. I'm so excited for the Meyer lemon as I have tons of recipes to try that make use of the curious little fruit.

Dixie dug up one of the snail vines twice this weekend. She hates that vine.

posted by merideth @ 9/13/2004 03:12:00 PM 0 comments

Hot Tomatoes

I've wanted to grow my own tomatoes since i was a kid. Growing up, we frequently had veggie gardens and there is nothing NOTHING like a real home-grown tomato. Ours are coming in like gangbusters.

There is also nothing like a potato dug out of the garden and popped in the microwave for immediate consumption. Dixie, however, destroyed the potatoes her first weekend in the yard so we'll try those again when the tomatoes die back.

posted by merideth @ 9/10/2004 08:29:00 AM 0 comments

It's a freaking mailbox...not high art!

So why do the dang things cost one meeelion dollars? Everything beyond the standard fare you find at the likes of Home Depot seems to be ridiculously priced. Frequently, too, accompanied by some snotty description whose subtext is "surely you arent planning to hang this outside?! unguarded?! on your HOUSE!?" I even ran across one pompous blurb that explained how the mailbox in question was designed by an architect without consideration for how much it would cost to produce (or buy).

Ultimately though, we found this. Style appropriate? Yes. Lovely detail for the outside (that's right) of the house? Yes. One million dollars? No.

If you love it and want one too, it came from here.

posted by merideth @ 9/09/2004 01:07:00 PM 2 comments

dixie with shrek

We did nothing to the house last night except wish that it had a/c. The bay area isnt prepped for hot weather (we only have about a week of it a year) so we had 2 fans pointed directly at us while we ate ice cream and tried not to let anything touch us. Here's a picture of our dog Dixie. She does not care about a/c.

posted by merideth @ 9/09/2004 08:34:00 AM 0 comments

I've Seen the Light

And it's name is "New Windows." I can barely work for wanting to come home and just look at our new windows. Not OUT our new windows. At them. Beth researched all over the place to get us the most reasonable combination of quality and value and we are thrilled with the results. They are Milgard double hung windows. They are double paned, uv coated, and they tilt inside for easy cleaning. They are beautiful. Not exactly period, but not wackily non-period either. We think they do nicely. As an added bonus, the window installer guys took off all the unnecessary burglar bars that were ugly and making the rooms that much darker. We just put them on the back of the house because we plan (fingers crossed) to actually restore the original divided light windows on the front of the house. But on the back, we just needed good solid windows with screens. (Bugs stay out, cat stays in.)

posted by merideth @ 9/03/2004 03:53:00 PM 0 comments