Portland - We have arrived! Watch out!

Greetings from Northeast Portland!

We finally arrived in our new city last Friday and here I am, over a week later, finally getting some updates! Holy Cats, I'm slow! 

In my defense, it's been a bit hectic. You know.. moving, and all. 

We pulled into town at a bit before 5pm on a Friday night - honestly, not the best time to be trying to navigate through the city for the first time but I did ok. Only 3-4 wrong turns. 

We quickly met with our landlady for our keys and then unpacked our car/truck and let the pets get acclimated. I have to say, the cats & dog did great on our 2-day trek north. I figured Zoey, our golden retriever would do fine since she's been in the car a bunch and she would be with Mark, whom she adores. I was not-so-convinced about our cats - Freddie & Foxy. They don't care for traveling. 

On day one, Freddie did meow and cry from our house in Orange County until we came down off the Grapevine. (For those of you not sure how long that is... roughly 2 hours) Then she mellowed out. The rest of the trip was fine... except once when I slammed on the breaks to avoid the back end of a Subaru. They were not thrilled about that. 

Our POD showed up on Saturday morning & we spent the entire day unloading it. It was a large project but it was great to get it all finished. We felt like champs. 

*side bar comment*

If you ever plan on moving, I highly recommend using a POD. The whole process was great & easy and I can't say enough about the convenience or ease of the whole thing. Kudos, PODS - nice work!

So, 4 billion boxes, 2 huge trips to Target, 1 trip to Ikea and many beers later... here we are. So far, we LOVE Portland. Ironically, the day we unloaded our POD it had to have been in the high-80s if not low-90s. It was hot. And ever since, it's been raining. Still, it's been great. 

Drew and my mom made the trek up from NorCal the middle of last week & Drew has adjusted seamlessly. At one point, he did try to convince me that his tooth brush had fallen down in the drain, but I assured him that happened at our old house. (sorry, new owners... forgot to mention there is a toddler tooth brush in the drain. oops!) But at least Drew is considering this house home now. 

Now, a few pics.

Our front door. We live in a duplex & we have the back unit which is 2-floors (plus a basement - score!)
I love the color scheme of our house - grey & salmon. Purrr.
BTW, those are Drew's blue curtains - not a classy tarp over the windows. His Robot room required blue curtains.
Only now do I see the striking closeness of the color to a tarp. Hmm...

The view from our sidewalk. Little stairway up to our walkway. 

This is the front of our house. That is our garage door on the right (and my car).
The window above belongs to our neighbor, as does the left side of the driveway.
My car fits in pretty well around these parts. 

A happy dog.. and some toes that need a pedicure. 

 Once our house is a bit more put-together, I will post more pictures. I am sure no one wants to look at a bunch of pictures of rooms with boxes in them... so I'll hold off until we are a bit further on our unpacking.


xoxo

Project De-Clutter: The Kitchen Counter, Part 2

It is late & I am about to head off to bed but I am so excited to show my next Before/After pictures of our kitchen counter as part of my de-cluttering project... and I couldn't wait until tomorrow to share!

Before:

After:

This has been such an exciting project for me - super liberating in a strange way. I've been challenged to really look at things and ask "do we need this"... not really so much "am I using this" as do we NEED it. Can I function in my daily life without it? I dropped off 3 huge bags to a local thrift store on Monday and it felt so good to be done with so much stuff. 

I read an article in Sunset Magazine a while back about a family that lives on the extreme side of minimalism. I am not really looking to go that far but it definitely gives perspective to things. Check it out here if you're interested.

Good night! Off to dream about clean counter tops!

Project De-Clutter: The Kitchen Counter, Part 1

I've been busy working on my de-cluttering process and have my very first Before/After to share!!

Before:

After:

Now... This may not look like I've gotten very far but this cleaned up area had a trickle-down affect. In order to get things off this counter, I had to clean out the cupboards above it and get rid of 20 wine glasses that have never been used. Not too surprisingly, that freed up a bunch of extra space - so all of Drew's stuff that was on the counter is now tucked neatly up into a cupboard. 

I picked up a few glass jars at Crate & Barrel last week with a left-over gift card from my birthday & have made quick use of them. They make even dog treats look nice and neat!

I also fixed 2 parts of my sink (OK.. husband helped with one of them) and reorganized the under-sink cabinets as well. I thought about showing a picture.. but without a "before" picture, the "after" seems a bit anti-climactic. 

Today is President's Day and I am celebrating my day off by cleaning. I'm not sure what that is how it is meant to be observed  but I bet George and Abe would be in favor of my progress. 

Oh - did I mention that I cleaned out one of my closets too (yes, I said one of my closets)?! I got rid of at least 10 pairs of very expensive shoes from the early 2000... holy cats, were we into pointy toes or what?! Good riddance.

So, before I lose my motivation I am off to work on laundry and some other clean-type tasks. And then, we're off to celebrate Presidents' Day in the truest of fashions - hitting the Sears' sale for a new vacuum cleaner!

Happy Presidents' Day!!

Project: De-clutter

My life is cluttered.

Every counter top has stuff upon stuff just piling up. 

I'm not really sure what all of this stuff is, but I'm pretty sure I don't need it all. 

It is time for Project: De-clutter

Step One:

Toss out anything that hasn't been used, eaten, looked at or thought about in at least 10 days. I bet I will have alot to get rid of!

Step Two: 

Head to Container Store and Ikea and look for ways to organize what is left.

Step Three: 

Enjoy all my new space... by adding new piles of stuff... 

Just kidding!

My new garden

We have been working hard on trying to get our yards put back together after a year-long sprinkler project. My husband has been slaving away installing new sprinklers, laying sod, sorting gravel, building retaining walls... and my contribution is a cinder block succulent garden that is on our front stoop. Not quite as impressive as laying 1200 sq feet of sod but who's keeping score? Not me! 

Maybe I'll be fair & show you the finished backyard too.... but not yet.. let's bask in my garden just a little longer...

New Landscaping!

Mark and have been working on our yard for ever... or at least it feels that way. I think I posted a bit earlier this year about the dramatic down-turn our back yard took. Ugh. Well, things are on the upswing! Yesterday, Mark and I completed the first re-planting done since we moved in almost a year ago. And we have conquered the driveway strip! Yes, it is true!

Mere weeks ago it was dirt & sprinklers... now it is beautiful with 28 society garlic plants and lots of friendly mulch. Oh... it's just so beautiful.


Now we're pumped to keep it going... this weekend while Mark is continuing work on the sprinklers, I will be plotting and planning for the Front Garden!



It's almost too much!

Progress?...

When we bought our house last May the landscaping had just been redone & looked very nice. Wait, back up... when we first looked at hour house last April the landscaping had just been redone & looked very nice. Then we entered escrow & the owners of the house stopped caring about the yard & by the time we moved in we had dying grass & a ton of weeds. Then it got hot and even more grass died and more weeds popped up. Sadly enough, after that we decided just let things die out & we'd just attack in the spring. Well, it's spring!

First, a few side-by-side comparison shots... just to paint a picture.







The pictures on the left are from my first visit to this house. The grass is green, the trees are happy, there are accent plants all over. The pictures to the right were taken this morning. Dirt and weeds... and no trees.

One of the first "improvements" we made was to rip out all of our trees. Most of them were fruit trees and they really just were a pain. They attracted bees and dropped fruit all over the ground constantly. I realize that fruit trees do need some maintenance but this seemed excessive... especially for fruits that neither of us really ate all that much of to begin with. If it was a cookie tree or a beer tree, by all means... but lemons? Not so much. So out they went. The guys from Dana Pacific Landscaping did a great job!

This is an on-going project but we're both confident that it will look awesome once we're done. Maybe then we can finally have our housewarming party... a year later!

It's the little things..

We had a productive day yesterday... A while ago we made a "master list" of all of the household things we needed to do - some small, some pretty decent projects. Yesterday we actually got to cross a few off the list!

First was our shower door - bye -bye! I don't know about you but we weren't fans of our glass shower doors. The seemed to be dirty all the time & noisy and just a pain. So, Mark ripped them off yesterday & replaced them with a nice white shower curtain. Already the bathroom feels bigger & is definitely much brighter!

Next he installed a door guard for our sliding glass door. Since the construction of some of the doors in this house leave us questioning their reliability we're doing what we can to make them a bit stronger. So, in comes the door guard. A simple metal bar that rests between the far side of the door and the back of the actual sliding door. Keeps unwanted people or big animals out!

And last but definitely not least, Mark ripped off the cabinet doors and moved them over so they actually shut now. Before you pretty much had to throw your entire body into the doors to get them to close & stay closed but now it is so simple. I love it.

So... now you're asking "what did YOU do?" It is true... Mark spearheaded all of the above improvements even though I was the one who navigated Home Depot to find silicone caulking and razor blades. But while he was being Handy Manny I was making Creme Brulee and Tomato Soup from scratch... so THERE! Both turned out amazing, by the way.

Another productive day at the Lepperchaun farm!