Hillsville

When Asha was little, when grandma was still alive, we still made regular trips up to Seattle. She hated it. Everywhere we drove, we drove down steep hills, and she'd cry "no more hills!". She started to call this city hillsville. I still think of it as hillsville, but I love those hills.

rain on the glass, late night bus trip home

On March 5th it should be light out when I get off work...

I want one more snowfall, this winter

Big Love - a pretty, but somewhat preachy play

I hadn't been to a play in years. I had really mixed feelings about this one, but was very glad I went. There's something to be said for singing bloody brides. Especially on a lovely stage like that. But the dialog was so so, and the speeches were obnoxious.

Holiday present, made by the lovely Jess

Sorry about the lighting. They looked the best in the hallway, with a wall sized just for them, and the cream and deep brown. but the hallway can be dim, and awkwardly lit. perhaps I'll bring them down, for a special photo session, next sunny day I get :)

Thank you Jess <3 I love handmade gifts!

Asha's room, part two

it might be a hair greener than this....

I'm tired of hearing "People never really invent/do/create anything new anymore"

It's just not true... Check out these uses for Bic pens. Old item sure, but new uses also.

Alley garden

Jess asked me to take a picture of the "See Rock City" bird house in the alley behind my house. It's in the neighborhood pea patch, so I wound up taking a bunch of pictures.

Happy Birthday Jason!

I know you don't read my blog, but happy birthday anyway :)

Bedtime kitty

Bedtime kitty, we love you, even if you're kind of funny looking sometimes...

Slightly wilted flowers

That's how I like them....

Mushrooms

Asha's room

We have our own Turrell installation....

We also painted Asha's room. At the paint store, I asked for "Passion Blue" But they gave me "Poolside Blue". I decided to try it, since I didn't discover the mistake until months later. At the paint store they probably don't know I'm manic enough about paint to remember, for sure, what I said :)

It turned out to be a Caribbean blue. If you're in the room, the lighting is as though you're under water. I'm not sure if I like that. But it's gorgeous in the sunlight, and in the evening, if there's a light on in her room, it shines like a jewel at the end of the hall. So Erik and I decided it's perfect. I hope Asha likes it too.

Repainting the livingroom... again

In our old house, we had a room we were never happy with. I wound up repainted the wainscoting on a near month basis. However, it was the bathroom, a small bathroom, and it took half a quart of paint, and about an hour to do this. In our current house, the room we having been happy with, and have been repainting on a monthly basis, is the living room/dining room stretch, which is huge, takes over a gallon of paint, and has lots of horrible edges to cut in.

At first we were experimenting with golds, and they were ok, but we couldn't really find a shade we both loved. Having two shades of wood to work with was very difficult. Erik liked this one:





Which I agree was pretty in the sunlight, but it was so boring at night, in artificial lighting. At night, I liked this one a lot:



Which Erik totally vetoed. So we tried a green next. It had it's moments for sure, but often looked like it belonged in a nursery.


So we cast out nets a little wider, tried some pretty...


And not so pretty colors...






...but couldn't find something we both wanted to see all over. Until I picked up this little diddy on our last trip to Eugene. It's a ralph lauren color, which means natural pigments, and it will pick up wildly different tones depending on the light. It may look blue, but it's made of rust brown, ochre, and cool black pigments. I love it more every day.