Why Worry?

I was driving from work to the new house on Monday afternoon and took a wrong turn. I looked around at the signs to see if I knew any of the roads, and I was so surprised by the name of the first street I passed. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me then, so I stopped by again today to take this one. And yes, it's a real road on an actual map.

... And a few days later Sami and I went to the local Safeway (supermarket) and found Weekly Ad Avenue.

Per Your Requests

I received several requests for pictures of Sami and I. We don't have too many pictures of us together because usually one of us is taking the picture. Anyway, this is a good one taken by our friend Agnes last time we were in Helsinki. Sami calls this our "Finnish Mafia" photo. I will try to take and post more recent ones this weekend.

Red Rum

Sami gets decorating ideas from "The Shining"...

Actually we had to paint around the molding and the grooves in the paneling with a paintbrush because the roller couldn't get them.

Painting Part I

All of the rooms in the house were painted this beige off-white color. It's fine, but boring. Sami and I have lived in neutral colored rooms our whole lives and we wanted a change. We decided to paint the office/guest bedrooms this soft green color and our bedroom a medium blue. At first we thought we might paint the two extra rooms different colors, but then decided maybe we didn't need 5 different colors in the house right now.

This room is the basement part of the split level (the windows are the low ones you can see behind the bushes on the snow picture), so it it only 6 steps down from the living room and kitchen area. This will be Sami's home theater. Our friend Eric (on the milk crate) came over to help tape the rooms and get ready to paint. The second photo shows the grey primer we had to use in order to paint the room a darker color.

Backyard

The snow has mostly melted and I decided to work on the yard a bit while the sun was out yesterday. I cleaned up this nice bird bath/ feeder that was left in the yard and put fresh water and birdseed in it. Although, it seems like I've heard you're not supposed to put the bird bath right near the food...

I also put in hooks and hung most of the old baskets from our apartment complex. We usually have a bunch of herbs in the lower baskets and flowers in the upper ones. Those french doors go into the dining area. There is also a brick patio off to the right of the covered porch. To the left is a hot tub. Supposedly it works, but we haven't investigated. I think the previous owners left some chemicals in the garage. Between the hot tub and bird feeder there is a small fountain/pond, but it seems home-made and needs a lot of help. The waterfall isn't working at all and at the moment there is still in the pond so I decided not not mess with it yet.

Snow at 6655 SW Wilson Ave

So, this is our new house!

Sami went over to the house today to meet with the insurance people. He took a few pictures of the new place so we could finally show everyone what the house looks like.

The first time I saw it in the daylight (last week - after Sami bought it) I was surprised to see that it was brown. Brown is a perfectly fine color, but in the sale listings online the house was a grey-blue. So of course I was expecting a grey-blue house. Funny to think you can buy a house and not know what color it is.

Avoiding Housework

Today is our second snow day in a row. Schools were closed all day yesterday and today too. Work was canceled too. I wanted to go over to the new house and take some photos, but it didn't make sense to drive over there if I didn't need to go anywhere else. Really I should clean and pack stuff, but I'm avoiding work. So, I'm taking snow photos around the apartment complex and teaching myself how to blog and make slideshows.

Flash Slideshow

View of Mt St Helens from Sunset Highway

We went on a geocaching trip to Astoria with our friend Eric on Sunday the 14th. The weather was beautiful and sunny and we had a great scenic drive through the snow covered forests.

We also saw a lot of elk, a waterfall and cool icicles.