No Bears!

We're back in Seattle after 4 days of roughing it in the beautiful
wilderness of western Washington. We had a great time, all safe, and
all sore from some of our hiking adventures. We didn't see any
whales, but we didn't see any bears, either! Matt and I are headed
back to NY tomorrow, but I leave you one last image of Seattle: a wall
of gum, by the Pike Place Market. Gross.

The Wild

We are headed out for 5 nights of camping around Olympic National
Park! My one goal- to see some whales (and no bears). So I think
we'll be "going dark" for the next couple days. We took this picture
from the top of the Columbia Tower yesterday. Today is more of what
you would think Settle is like- rainy!!

Proof

The Space Needle

Map Skills

Matt and Glenn planning our adventures!

We made it to Seattle! Loving our nonstop flight on JetBlue with personal TVs; I got to watch a lot of Law & Order. Jess and Glenn live in a great little area called Fremont, home of Seattle's best sandwich joint, which we've already patronized, and the Theo chocolate factory. We hit up some samples- chai chocolate, anyone?

Sleepaway Camp

We took Moose to our friends' house last night. He will be staying
with them for 8 days! They are a blessing. We lugged all his food,
bed, medicines, a picture of Mom and Dad, chew toys, treats,
blankets . . . and forgot the instruction manual I had typed up.
Reminded me of sub plans from the good old days - way too much
information for anybody's good.
We are on a train headed to JFK with some ginormous hiking backpacks to distinguish us from the commuters. We are very distinguishable. I'm taking advantage of the wonders of technology to try to keep this poor neglected blog updated. TRY. That's all I can do.

Bon Anniversaire!

That actually means "happy birthday" in French . . . but I like it . . . because today is our anniversary!

One Whole Year.

Really, it sounds like a drop in the bucket. As my father-in-law texted today, 1 down, 65 to go. Sounds like a plan.

How did we spend this momentous occasion? Quite nicely. We've had a very enjoyable weekend of football, strolling through a local art fair, general relaxing and a couple naps here and there.

Our big celebration will happen in just over a week, when we head to Seattle for nine days!! I'm very excited! Matt gets two weeks of vacation at the end of September and I was able to get the time off as well. We've never been to Seattle so, if you've been, please share your favorite must-dos. We plan to do some camping while we're there with our friends Jess and Glenn so our anniversary present was a tent.

Of course Matt had to set it up in the kitchen.

Of course Moose thought the apocalypse was here.

So, that was supposed to be it for our anniversary. We've asked each other multiple times if the other had snuck in a present. "Did you get me a present? Be honest." "No, did you?" "No." "Ok." "Ok." I mean, the first anniversary is traditionally paper, and we had paper.

Tickets to Seattle: paper.

Small print of Old Field Light from the local art fair: paper.

Two books - C.S. Lewis letters for Matt, biography of Harper Lee for me: paper.

So . . . I was a little surprised and betrayed when I saw a pink bag on the kitchen counter this morning. But . . . turns out I'm pretty happy about my surprise gift.

Matt is just so artistic. He doesn't really get a chance to prove it, but he is. Look at that. So great. Moosey in the corner. So cute. Love it.

He was inspired by an artist at the fair yesterday who made similar paper cutouts. We heard him say he used an xacto knife and dental tools and, well, wouldn't you know but we have some of those lying around! I went to a museum in NYC this spring with my dear pal Carla and came back prattling on about the paper sculptures and two-story tall murals of paper cutouts. And now I have my own personalized piece.

Matt took this picture as inspiration:

And took some liberties by adding sweet Moosey walking with us. I think he also took some liberties around the hip area. :)

We went out to anniversary lunch since we looked nice after church and I knew we'd be sacked on the couch all afternoon watching football. Another special treat awaited us at home.

The top of our beautiful wedding cake is in my grandparents' freezer in South Carolina. Since it is a delectable raspberry and lemon curd filling with buttercream icing, it wasn't going to travel well. But here it is in its glory:

So I decided another option would be to ask the baker if she would mail us a small cake for our anniversary. She never responded to my email and I let it go . . . until I got a package from my mom this weekend! Of course she had thought of the idea long before me and had taken care of everything. The baker was in on the surprise, of course. We loved our little slice of Signe's Heaven Bound bakery . . . anyone in Hilton Head absolutely MUST stop and taste EVERYTHING. Amen.

I smell steak and Matt is coming in from the grill with the instruction to put my computer down. Anything for you, dear.

We are so thankful for one incredible year together and for all of God's provisions. We give Him the glory.

book lovers

Here's another of our recent creative endeavors.

My book page wreath:

Once again, this was born of a "Matt is studying and I don't feel like _________" moment. (Doing laundry, cleaning, exercising, cooking, etc.) I saw this on a website and decided to give it a go. I used my $2.99 mini glue-gun, a styrofoam wreath form, and a book we didn't know we had.

The large postcard in the background was a gift from Matt's parents - it's an enlargement of a postcard sent to Matt's great-grandfather. It's very cool.

I think the wreath was a nice addition to our corner. I probably should've hung it up right away instead of letting it sit on the chair for a couple weeks, which might account for some of the wrinkling. But I don't mind its imperfections.

classic with a twist

This weekend I got the crafty urge again and finally decided to follow through with an idea I'd had for a while.

Silhouettes of our little family.

Hee hee!

It was actually a rather painstaking process. I took photos, altered them in photoshop, and then printed them on book pages. This wasn't an original idea, I'd seen it online and I liked the look of it. The hardest part was printing them properly- as you can see, they're not quite centered. Moose was the inspiration, as his profile is just so endearing.

I like the way they look in our bedroom.

Don't you, Moosey?

D.I .MY.

I've got a couple more projects to show off here. I'm no DIY queen but it is satisfying to rescue and repurpose. It's also easy on the old wallet! When we moved houses we had a different space to fill, getting rid of some items but needing others. Plus, every time I said we "needed something," Matt said "need" was a strong word. So, we got creative.

One thing we needed was a desk. We had a big one that broke in the move (one of our only casualties!), but it wouldn't have fit in this house anyway. One night driving home we spotted a desk on the curb. I shouted, "Praise the Lord, it's a desk!" and Matt groaned and shoved it in the back of the car.

It was a humble looking thing.

But I had grand plans.

First, I covered the top with a trash bag and scotch tape (I couldn't find the painters tape in the new basement) and spray painted the rest. Turns out I'm a horrible spray painter and it looked like a real mess, quite unlike the even coat I had imagined. Matt helped with a couple coats and it finally looked smooth enough.

Then, I looked all over town and Anthropologie in the city for hardware . . . couldn't find what I was looking for so I bought some from Target online. I waited eagerly for it to arrive . . . and it didn't. . . until my neighbor flagged me down and said she had a package delivered to her instead of us. My hardware!

Finally . . .

Ta Da!

I love how it turned out!

The desk is kind of in a strange place - the kitchen. But our kitchen is large and quite long, and originally quite poorly laid out. There was a space in the baseboard cut out that fit the desk perfectly . . . because that's where the island used to be, over near the door. Didn't make sense to us so we heaved the island into the center of the kitchen.

Matt knew I was craving a proper mudroom so he made this nice little area, perfect for coming through the kitchen door.

He disappeared into the basement one day and emerged with this:

A creative little shelf! I love the nautical look of it.

He also pulled some hooks off a door he found in the basement so we had a spot to hang jackets and bags.

It's really a great and practical spot. I'm not thrilled about the chair, which was another side-of-the-road find. I used to have this sweet little thing there:

Which was already painted green when I got it at a garage sale, and I recovered the base with a cloth napkin. It looked great in the kitchen until we got our rug a couple weeks ago and then it didn't look so great there . . . so it lives happily in a corner of the living room.

And that's the story of the desk!