surprises and treats

On Friday afternoon we made a quick dash to Seattle to surprise Teal on Saturday morning for her 21st birthday. We had to be a couple of days early but had a good time in pre-birthday mode. Her boyfriend, Mike, was super in helping us with the coordination.

The place we met was the Vivace Coffeehouse on Denny located just a few blocks from their apartment. While we waited we had treats...a double latte and berry scone for me and jasmine green tea with a vegan chocolate cookie for Rob. YUM!!


And then she arrived, surprised and happy:


We had a lovely weekend with Teal, Mike and Gretchen. The weather was even mostly cooperative. While we were there we even checked out some services in Issaquah (the nearest shopping center to North Bend). We found a great pet store for Tiika and a grocery store for us. There's even a Trader Joes!! Woo hoo!

That's it for now.

Ciao!

couple of girls having fun

On Thursday I got together with my friend Ruth and we had a lovely afternoon catching up over adult beverages and snacks on her deck. After that we headed over to the Missoula Art Museum
for their third Thursday event, Artini. I didn't get a chance to actually look at much of the art because Ruth knew so many people. We kept running in to folks and chatting. At 7:30, there was a live performance that we had specifically come to see. It was an interesting show. They had performers who sang, who were amazing with a huge red hula-hoop, who juggled, who swirled scarves and some other spoken words in between. It was pretty well done. I liked the opening bit, and the swirled scarves the best. That is, when I wasn't entranced with the girl and her red hula-hoop.

I can hear Rob stirring in the kitchen which means if I want coffee with my breakfast, I best get to it.

.ttfn.

dairy avoidance

I recently realized that I seem to have a bit of lactose intolerance. I can only manage to eat and digest it in relatively small doses. In order to avoid the painful stomach ache that comes from too much dairy, I have begun to drastically reduce my intake. Two places I refuse to compromise though are the butter for my popcorn and cream for my coffee.

The half and half in this picture is my favorite right now. It is from a dairy in northern California. It is organic and non-homogenized. Quite tasty. I also love how it comes in these glass containers. We pay a deposit on them when we purchase the half and half and then get it back when we return the bottle to the store. The store returns the bottles to the dairy and they are refilled. I'm thinking about keeping a few though. They would make great little vases for sweet wildflowers.

card #4

The fourth and final card of the series was also done on a paper sample. The book of samples I was using had perforations on each page and on this card I used them to my full advantage.

The image I scanned is of the card opened fully. It is intended to be folded in half with the two stripes as the front of the card. The stripes are placed such that they can be carefully ripped off and used as bookmarks.

The papers I used over the paper stock are ones I made at ArtFest in my Diva Fairies class. The really vibrant background is a dyed paper towel. The yellow-y bits are truly golden in real life. The stripes were created from a dyed paper towel and some stamping with acrylics layered over that image.

It was great fun to do the paper towel dyeing. I'd like to set aside an afternoon to make a bunch more. It takes a fair amount of space to do it right. At least more space than I have readily available. The resulting papers are so worth it though. Unique and wholly mine.

card #3

The third card in the series is also done on a paper sample. I had a particular color theme I was going for here. Black, red and asian. I think I achieved it. I just dug through my scraps until I found a combination I liked. I really like how the busy pattern shows through the handmade paper on the top layer. It's a little bit fuzzy, too so there is a nice texture to it.

card #2

This is the second card in the series. The butterfly is what was left from transferring the image via water process onto another page (a dictionary page). I then altered it with a stamp and ink, some watered down acrylic paint to soften and sort of age it and tie the elements together.

I also tried to use my glaze pens to highlight things on the butterfly. The surface of the paper didn't take it as well as I would have liked so I stopped. The edge is from a stamp I made with a white eraser. Again, the background stock is from a paper sample book.

card #1

This is the first in a series of cards I've made over the last two weeks. I came across some paper samples and used them as a base for my images.

I created this image via water transfer process onto a page from a dictionary. I did it at ArtFest in my Naturalist Sketchbook class. Then I trimmed the image with funky edging scissors and stamped the word.

I really like the way the words from the dictionary show through the image. It is a process I intend to play with more.

an update on relocation

Now that we've been home for a week and sick for the entire duration, our ten days of traveling seem like ages ago.

Overall, I'd say it was a good trip. The weather mostly cooperated. We got rain and wind but usually at appropriate times. We truck camped in the forest at the base of Mt. Baker several nights and found a hotel a couple of nights.

The forests there are really lovely. Very green and lush, moss and ferns everywhere and WET! Tiika didn't quite understand the whole "we have to wipe off your feet before your joining us on the sleeping bags" in the truck idea. She picked up pretty quickly though. She's a great traveler.

We didn't take a single picture. I brought the camera, it was charged, it simply never made it out of its bag. We were too busy trying to "feel" the places we were traveling through.

Our first day in Bellingham we met up with my friend Joanne who gave us an enthusiastic start to our exploration. She assured us that all the best places to live and recreate around town were within 25 minutes. (We wondered if she had talked to Mandy J or was related to her in any way...) We also enjoyed a cup of tea while getting the tour of her beautiful place. Thank you Joanne!

Then we were on our own for a day or so. We explored some neighborhoods that are near access for taking Tiika into the woods. Of course, we had to find the local bookstore and ended up spending a few hours perusing books, new and old, and even buying a few. I also had a couple of good lattes though we never made it to the coffee shop I was most intrigued by, I think it was called the Black Spot or something like that.

On Tuesday we met up with friends Sue and George at their lovely home just outside of town. They took us to lunch and gave us further pointers on neighborhoods and access points. Sue also told me how to get to Stampadoodle, a most amazing store for stamping supplies and handcrafted papers. I was so overwhelmed I left without buying a thing. Thank you Sue and George.

We ended up at the library to do a bit of research on housing prices for the neighborhoods of greatest interest. A bit steep but perhaps doable with first time home buyer assistance.

Of course, this led to speculation about jobs. I still think I can find something in a similar field or at least similar skill set as I have now. Rob is unsure exactly what he will be doing but thinks he could find something in the area. The median income in Bellingham is higher than that of Missoula so that is also encouraging. According to our sources though, jobs can be hard to come by.

Bottom Line: Bellingham is still on the list. (Distance in time from Portland area is close to 6 hours.)

We left Bellingham on Wednesday and headed south toward Seattle. We went on secondary roads to travel through the smaller communities of Duvall and Carnation. The result is that they are no longer on the list but it was an interesting way to spend the afternoon. We overnighted in Everett. (Yes, that meant we backtracked north.)

We arrived in Seattle Thursday afternoon to pick Teal up from work as well as some delicious Thai food for dinner. Gretchen joined us for refreshment and catching up before Teal got off work. We had a nice evening with Teal, Mike and Gretchen eating and talking.

Teal had Friday off so we got to hang out with her for the day. She took us to a nice little beach where Tiika could play. Actually, we played on the grass since the area was too rocky and weather too cool for Tiika to play in the water. Teal took funny videos on her phone of Tiika running back and forth. It was then time to meet Gretchen for her break, do some grocery shopping for dinner and go home. Mike and I cooked a delicious Mexican style meal for us all that evening. We even found out Mike makes a mean margarita!

The next morning we took Mike and Teal out for coffee at Vivace (a favorite of mine and only a block away from Teal and Mikes!) before heading to North Bend to meet my friend Elisabeth for lunch. There is a nice Mongolian Grill place at the outlet mall where we met her. She gave us an overview of her experience of North Bend and the surrounding area including some neighborhoods we should check out.

Rob really, really likes this area. It is surrounded by mountains, with it's own peak in fact, Mt. Si. Access is pretty straightforward from just about anywhere. It's an interesting option even though it doesn't have some of the features we think are important such as the cultural opportunities we currently enjoy being in a college town. This could be changing and if we expanded our thinking to include Issaquah for those kinds of activities, it gets better.

As for jobs, Rob is still in the same position as Bellingham. My horizon expands to Seattle as an option, especially if I could negotiate some tele-communiting. It is about a 35-45 minute drive to the city from North Bend, depending on where you are headed. Housing seems to be a bit more expensive but if I had a city job, hopefully my income would offset that.

Bottom Line: North Bend is #1 on the list. (Distance in time from Portland area is about 4 hours.)

That's the roundup of our trip to the great Pacific Northwest. Email or comment if you have questions or words of wisdom to add. We are now in the process of making a list of all the things that we need to do in order to make this happen. It's pretty overwhelming when I think about it too much.

coming soon

I'm in the process of writing an update on how the trip north went. It's kind of slow going since we've both been sick this week. Argh! Hopefully I'll have something meaningful to post later today.