Alone...

So the boys are off to watch the NJ Devils play against the Vancouver Canucks. Originally they were going to drive, but after a few long driving trips, the chauffeur (Jim) said "Not this trip." He promptly made flight arrangements. :)

That means that I get to be home alone for two full days!!!!!! YAY!

One problem though - I don't sleep well by myself. At all. The few times I've been in this situation, I didn't fall asleep until about 4 am every time. I do ok the following day, but the lack of sleep catches up and other people have to pay. It's rather unfortunate for them. ;)

My dilemma is this: do I do the things that need to be done; finally unpack/organize the upstairs family room, straighten up the garage, wash big bits of laundry (sofa slip covers) OR do I do the things I want to do; check out new antique shops and fun places that boys may not appreciate OR do the projects I've been accumulating in my mind?

I guess we all know which one I won't choose, huh? :)

New living room...

In our new house we have real living room! Amazing, right? I know you're jealous. ;)

In our last house the living room was teeny-tiny and oddly laid out...if you can even call it 'laid out'. At any rate we had odd and end stuff in there. Very make-shift and it made me unhappy.

Fast forward to now.

We had an empty living room. Also making me unhappy.

I recently saw some new furniture on CL listed by a home stager; a whole living room set for a great price and it's a great color/style, to boot. YAY!

Problem #1? It's in Seattle and we're in Spokane. Only 297 miles, not a huge deal, really, but still an all day excursion. Our 13 yo son wanted to stay home! NO, I don't think so, what if something happens?

We make the drive in one car and pick up a U Haul truck there in Seattle. Um, yeah, so Seattle is VERY confusing to drive around in!! Tons of twists and turns, streets that stop and start elsewhere, just craziness all around. Before we left, we looked online for maps of the few places we needed to hit, but didn't really get a 100% exact map of our destinations.

We thought "How hard can it be?" Very hard, that's how hard! After we got the truck and hit up the bank, I got online, borrowing wireless from someone who didn't have his access locked, (Jim grabbed the laptop for some reason) and was able to find directions from where we were to the furniture. And we're off. Separately. With one cell phone between us. (I had lost mine and had it turned off and haven't replaced it yet.) Awesome.

Problem's #2 - 736? THE DIRECTIONS ARE WRONG! We don't know where the other is. It's pouring rain. Getting late and dark(er). I'm horrible at direction (even with my handy temp./direction thingy in my car. No GPS. etc., etc. You get the picture.

I drove lost for probably only about 10-15 minutes, but it felt like hours. In complete distress, I get on the freeway. I had the phone, so I finally call the guy with the furniture and thankfully my move to get on the freeway is the right one and he gets me to the warehouse in about 10 minutes with no problem. After that, we wait for an hour and a half for hubby to show up with the truck and $$! I started thinking the worst about where he may be along with the fact that my son and I are at some warehouse in the bowels of Seattle and NOBODY knows where we are. It felt vaguely like a Lifetime movie. Not a good feeling. Thankfully the guy at the warehouse is nice and waits and waits and waits with us.

Finally Jim finds his way and we load up and are off back home. Keep in mind that we left at 10 am and it's now 6:30 - ish. We don't get home until after 11 pm! Exhausted. Jim more-so than I, since he had just retuned home from a whirlwind driving trip to Cali in which he drove straight through there and back!! (With 48 hours in between, but he was busy busy.) Ca-razy! To add to the fun, we stopped once to get gas and a little something to eat and got separated from each other and Guerin went with dad and was very upset (crying a bit) that I was lost for good. Poor guy!

Once we finally got home, Guerin informed me that I wasn't allowed on CL anymore!! :)

Good news is that the furniture is great and I've been having tons of fun decorating and putting stuff together...it's been a long time! When I delete some pics from my camera, I'll get around to taking some pics up!

Hopefully....

I finally see what you all already saw

About 5 years ago, after several sofa sets, we decided to splurge on our 'last' couch/loveseat. We went to Arizona leather and picked out a really nice huge sectional made with a naugahyde type leather (not too cold, not too shiny) and got two roomy ottomans and a sleek recliner. Lots of $$, but we were told it would last, blah, blah, etc.

Fast forward 3 1/2 years...the cushions didn't completely go kaput, but did so just enough that your back would hurt after sitting on it for a while; the back cushions were connected to the back so that if your butt made the seat go down, there was no real lumbar support. 'Bummer', we thought. And it was.

We then moved into a smaller place and the sectional wouldn't fit anyway, so we gave it and the ottomans to my cousin. She's happy; her family of six can all sit together and I'm sad...remember the $$ and now we're stuck (I love it, but it's not really roomy) with our Ikea Ektorp Sofabed in the living room. Don't get me wrong, I like the slip covered look and all...I just missed having all three of us cozying up on the couch.

Now we're in a 'regular' house (our last place was too weird for words, but close to hockey and that's what mattered at the time) and I want 'real' furniture. So out of curiosity I scanned Craigslist for a few weeks. Junk mostly and what wasn't, I never got any replies to my attempts at contacting anyone. It's like people are posting stuff for fun and never really intend to sell it, just post it. That's not any way to make friends. ;) But whatever.

Then one fine day someone posts:

"BRAND NEW IN WRAPPER POTTERY BARN PEARCE SOFA, LOVESEAT, CHAIR & OTTOMAN $2,500"

In my head I was screaming "OMG! How cool!!" So we called her and she said we could come see them the next day. I call her that next morning to schedule a time and she tells me SHE SOLD THEM!!!!

Rude!

I was fairly heartbroken. I had looked at the PB site and we would have gotten such an awesome deal! And she was close to us. At any rate, I noticed that that collection is on sale, so the hubby said we should look into getting the couch/loveseat. I went into the store yesterday to check out the fabric colors and feel them, etc.....

I FELL IN LOVE!!

I've never really shopped in PB, just browsed and I wasn't ever super impressed.

(Sorry PB lovers).

I don't know what did it, but now, oh wow, look out 'cuz I'm all about it! Whether it's a look-alike or maybe the real deal...I'm going for it! I love the simple-ness of their designs and although that's not my whole look, it's a good place to start and easy to build upon...

Let the obsessing begin! ;)

Not for the squeamish...

Ok, so there's one thing I highly dislike about Spokane.

This guy: the Hobo Spider. They are HUGE!!

and scary for this non-spider loving girl!

When we moved in, one of the movers mentioned these spiders and I thought how bad can they really be?

Um, pretty bad in my opinion.

So far I've encountered (and killed, sorry, but they scare me) two. And it's no lie when I tell you that the one I saw last night (IN MY HOUSE!) was as big as the picutre...NO LIE!!

Ugh.

This post is giving me the heebie-jeebies, so gotta go do something else, like unpack and arrange my craft room...find a new desk on CL. Maybe. So excited to have my own space!!!!!!!

Wild moose chase!

So this is how we spent our Saturday morning:

1. Starbucks. Hot chocolate for Guerin, always yummy. Salted Caramel Mocha for me. Lame. Disappointed. Basically a mocha with a dash of salt on top.

2. Cruise new 'hood to see what's what.

3. Spot a moose between a soccer field and townhome complex.

4. Drive home fast (but safely) to get camera and hubby...he was irritated to go, said he was just getting ready to clean the kitchen. huh, say what??

5. Go back, just miss the moose as he was being chased away by cows, and on drive home, spot him again (us and the local news crew) and chase the poor thing (for pics and the adventure of it all ;) ). Meanwhile, my son is being interviewed by the news guy, I didn't notice since I was too busy running after the moose, and later, he and the moose are the top story!!

I had to laugh when I saw the clip originally (it was later re-edited) and they actually had 'Top Story' running along the screen! Back in Cali the top stories were usually gang related.

Anyway, here's Guerin's Spokane news debut:

Another funny thing was that they thought the kid (Brandon) in the white hoodie was ours - he's not, but he was a nice kid to whom we gave a ride when we had to jump in our cars to chase the moose up the road before he cleared the fence.

P.S. And wouldn't you know it, I ended up cleaning the kitchen....oh well.

Wow! It's been a loooong time!!! And this is a loooong post...

So, I sorta gave up the blogging for a while.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it anymore:

*I don't sell anything - although I make stuff...

*I don't have a huge circle of people to say "Read my blog!" to so it felt like a waste of time

*I felt like I had to write like someone else and not be totally myself

*Life got frustrating for a while...I bet blogging, even if just for myself, would have kinda helped with that...

*Did I really have the time to commit to pics, posts, etc.?...

*And (not) lastly, after reading so many of my faves, mine seemed, well, amateurish to say the least; and not that that has changed just yet, but hopefully it will...sorta. :)

In spite of all this, I blogged daily (if not hourly!!) in my head.

Looking back on what I was writing about, I guess it got kinda monotonous. Disneyland, hockey, random pics...blah blah blah. Not that I don't love the things I wrote about, they just seemed I don't know, lame, after a while.

So.

Some things have change radically (I mean that literally and figuratively!). The biggest thing being we took the leap and moved from my hometown (born and raised) of Orange County, CA and moved to Spokane, WA one month ago!!

What a difference!

I came here in June with my best friend Heather, who lives in Seattle, to go to the Farm Chicks show. LOTS OF FUN!! Before I left, hubby said to 'check it out'. That's his way of saying see if you wanna live there. I did and now we do. YAY!

So far so good. If you leave out the part where the movers seriously damaged some of our stuff - I can't even begin to tell you..sadness. And the fact that my Grandma is none too happy with us for leaving. :(

We moved into the coolest house I've ever lived in. Big front porch, huge yard, squirrels in the yard, massive trees, leaves that change color and so many other things this Cali girl has never experienced!

We got an awesome dog (a rehoming from CL) named Grizz...we're all in total love with this guy...

He's an 11 month old St. Bernard/Husky mix. The best dog ever and the cat doesn't even mind...really.

This is gonna be fun and I wanna write about it! I also want to write about other stuff, so I hope you'll stick around!