2013, family, friends, travel

Road Trip: Pacific Northwest

by casadeberry4 Comments on Road Trip: Pacific Northwest

On Sunday, the day after Alex’s birthday party, we left for a week-long road trip through Oregon and Washington State. We have family and friends in the Seattle area and it seemed like a nice way to (almost) end the summer with school starting on Monday.

On Tuesday, we did some sightseeing with relatives around central Seattle:

We also rode the Ducks, it was such a blast!

Our dear relatives prepared a delicious dinner of salmon, chicken mac casserole (supposedly for the kids, but we ate a lot of it, it was so good!), homemade biscuits, green beans, beautiful flowering tea, and for dessert, ice cream with blueberries. Needless to say, we all slept very, very well.

The next day it was time to hang out with our friends – they have three sweet kids and their boy and Aidan were friends right away. We took the ferry over to their house after spending the morning in the pool and at Pike Place Market – does this remind you of certain cell phone commercials?

We did not tell them to line up like that, seriously!

The views from the ferry were spectacular:

Then a viking welcomed us to town 😀

And our friend made the best. ever. vanilla. cake. Like, I will always make this cake whenever my boys ask for vanilla cake, it was that amazing.

We hung out for a while and then took the ferry back.

Thank you, Warcraft gang, for a memorable evening. We shall meet again!

More on our adventures next time!!!

2013, birthdays, blue, boys, kids, parties, yellow

Alex’s 7th birthday party

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Alex’s 7th birthday party

I’m still going through 400+ pics from our Pacific Northwest adventures, so for now I will share a few pics from our youngest’s birthday party. It was a small, sweet gathering:

The birthday boy requested vanilla cake

AND brownies!

Aidan quality-tested the buttercream and declared it good.

We inherited a pool from some friends so our boys and their friends had a blast playing in the water:

After the party it was time to clean up and get ready for our road trip, which started the very next morning — stay tuned!

2013, birthdays, boys

Joy

by casadeberry2 Comments on Joy

Our youngest, Alexander, turned 7 last week. We had a little get together over the weekend, and I have tons of pics to share but this one makes me smile every time I see it.

This is my husband showing my boy the card his friends had made for him. Alex hasn’t even seen the gift yet, his reaction is to the sweet homemade card, and that his friends had written stuff just for him. He read it all out loud, and yeah, then he got to the present itself.

Good times for my seven-year-old.

2013, cats

Willie-Boo has a twin!

by casadeberry2 Comments on Willie-Boo has a twin!

I’ve posted before about our cat Willie-Boo. This pic, probably the best of him, was taken by a friend during a birthday gathering.

So imagine my surprise when I read on one of my favorite blogs that the blogger’s kitty had also lost an eye. Even more surprised because Nicolas, the kitty, looks just like Willie-Boo!

I am glad Nicolas is recovering from his surgery. If Willie-Boo is anything to go by, Nicolas will be just fine. Willie has no problems with depth perception or anything else. He is getting on in years, but his missing eye has not made a difference in his quality of life.

So, best kitty wishes to Nicolas – Willie-Boo and Bernie send lots of happy meows your way!

2013, autism, birthdays, boys

Alex turns seven

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Alex turns seven

Seriously, how does this happen? I know that I ask the same question every birthday, but how is it that my chubbalicious chunk of goodness . . .

is now seven and entering second grade??? Seriously. How does that happen? And even though he is in a special day class because of his autism, he is doing work that is at grade level. He’s fearless, will throw himself off of anything and into anything and is responsible for many of my gray hairs.

We shall be celebrating a few days later. Maybe he’ll sing for us. He loves to sing 😀

Happy birthday, my little sunshine. I love you so much.

2013, accessories, brown, husband, ikea

Impromptu IKEA

by casadeberry9 Comments on Impromptu IKEA

Over the weekend, my husband had a sudden urge to go to IKEA. Have I mentioned how much I love this man? 😀

It was a quick trip as we went through the showroom, which the boys love. My oldest kept saying “THIS is how I want our living room to look!” every time we went through a new “home”. We had yummy meatballs and ribs and I had my usual IKEA treat – their sparkling pear drink. That stuff is awesome.

We ended up with a few odds and ends:

We decided to get rid of some old dishes we’ve had for over a decade — Steve had them before he met me, which was in 2001. We already had some neutral stoneware, and we decided to add some chocolate brown goodness to mix it up a bit. We were also in need of some everyday wine glasses. Not that we drink wine everyday, but we wanted glasses that wouldn’t be too expensive to replace. At $4.79/6, the price was perfect.

The hardware on the bottom left is for a future project, we also got pretty bird prints and some kitchen utensils, and more ice pop molds because mine are currently full of icy mango-y goodness.

Last but not least, are the new book ends IKEA released to celebrate their famous Billy bookcases. We have a few of those bookcases, and it’s our family initial, so we snagged two of each size.

I can’t believe July is almost over, we’ve got a couple of things planned before school starts again and my boys go into 3rd and 2nd grades. Is it just me, or is this year flying by?

2013, flowers, frame, fruits, gardening, husband, lavender, outdoors, veggies

Garden Update: July 2013

by casadeberry4 Comments on Garden Update: July 2013

We’ve been enjoying our fruit and veggie bounty – I mad 2 loaves of zucchini bread and a batch of chocolate chip zucchini cookies from just ONE monster squash, and we’ve been eating our delicious tomatoes in sandwiches, salads, and a sauce that had my friend’s kids asking for lunch at 10am 😀

Some more future cookies 😀

We’ve recently planted some more corn for an autumn harvest:

And, hello! Check out the awesome planter my husband made!!! He’s planting bamboo in it, and he got his inspiration from a couple of gorgeous river photographs by Keith Liang.

Steve made the mold with a high-relief design and then built a structure to pour the cement in. This turned out amazing, and yes, I’ve put in an order for a smaller planter with a fleur-de-lis 😀 Of course.

Our strawberries continue to produce as well:

The other day we harvested some lavender for our neighbor. I think I’m going to make some eye pillows with the rest.

This crazy madness going on here is our Concord grape vine. Well, one of them. The other is just started to go all wild but this one is going to become another yummy batch of grape jam.

This is what the vine looked like in April:

Current goodness and future grape jam, nom nom nom.

Our pretty flower frames are doing great as well!

We are also harvesting potatoes and onions, and mint for our mojitos.

Gardening is to me an incredibly rewarding experience. Which is not to say there aren’t days (usually those in 100+ degree weather) where the last thing I want to do is go out there and water and tend to the plants. But homegrown veggies taste so good, and knowing that my family gets to eat fresh, delicious, healthy food is pretty awesome.

I say this every year, but next year I’d really like to get more flower plants for cuttings. I just love having fresh flowers in the house. I’ve killed some gerbera and hydrangea, though, so we’ll see how I do in that goal.

Have a wonderful week!

Uncategorized

Closet in progress

by casadeberry1 Comment on Closet in progress

The main reason for us reworking the closet was my need for an area to hang my dresses and skirts. Since I only have the bottom level, my dresses and longer skirts would end up sweeping the floor, so Steve graciously agreed to move the storage unit so I could have more suitable space.

Thank goodness the closet is not the only storage option – we do have each our own dresser, which makes things a lot easier. In our old place, we each had our own closet, but when we moved here, we knew that we’d need more storage than just the closet.

The small top drawers hold jewelry bits that I don’t wear often and some hair accessories. The main drawer holds summer pants/crops:

The next drawer down holds my tanks and tees, and I store my gloves in the little box in the corner on the left:

The next drawer down has my undergarments and other delicates and the bottom drawer holds workout gear and swimsuits. Not too exciting but there it is.

Now onto the closet itself. Left side:

Behold the beauty of organized tops 😀

Right side – skirt and dress area:

Top of the white unit:

A small but significant change – Steve got some new pulls for the drawers:

The pulls are like these but in a 4-inch center-to-center width. They stick out less than the old pulls and look a lot nicer.

So that’s our new closet configuration – Steve moved the white storage unit to the right, leaving the left half for our shared space and leaving about 2 feet on the right for my skirts and dresses.

So far, so good 😀

2013, bedroom, clothes, husband, organizing, storage

Not so very masterful after all

by casadeberry4 Comments on Not so very masterful after all

You’ve seen them. On Pinterest, magazines, blogs, etc. Those gorgeous master closets with chandeliers and fancy rugs and maybe an ottoman (or a sofa!) in the middle, or if you’re lucky, a whole separate island or vanity area for primping and glamorizing.


source

Well, that’s not going to happen here.

Our master bedroom has a plain old closet with ye olde mirrored sliding doors. We are keeping those because they bounce a great deal of light around and as dark as our house is, we love all the light we can get. Unless it’s time to sleep. Then we love our light-blocking panels.

But I digress.

This is the starting point. I’m so sorry.
Left side:

We’ve had the white unit for almost 10 years. Steve reinforced the back, which was bowing in, and it’s good to go for another 10. He gets two drawers, I get two drawers; my makeup and most of my jewelry go on the lower shelf. We share the top shelf and he gets the middle shelf.

Right side:

Did I mention we share?
Yep, he gets the top level while I (being all of 5’1″) get the lower one.

Since we didn’t have a good place for my long skirts and dresses, we decided to move things around, and give the old thing a paint job while we were at it. Nothing fancy, just the same Valspar “Cream in my Coffee” we have in the living room, but it was an improvement over this loveliness:

Of course, things got a lot worse before they started to get better:

I still have a lot of sorting to do, given my array of costume jewelry, so things aren’t 100% finished. But we are both happy with the results so far.

Hopefully, I will have more (neater) stuff to show you soon!

Have a wonderful week!