December Round-up

I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas!  I blinked and *poof* it’s almost here.  Today was very exciting- the 787 took flight for the first time. Matt and I were able to watch from the tarmac- it was amazing!  Luckily- Dad gave me my Christmas gift early- errrr- or I opened it early. I was able to capture some clips on my new HD Flip Cam-  Enjoy the short video below- or for more professional clips of both take off and landing go to: http://787firstflight.newairplane.com/ffindex.html

This month we’ve made some progress around the Townhouse. See for yourself:

We replaced this light fixture

With this one

oohhh pretty!

Hung ourselves a pot rack

Hung some pictures on the walls

Put up a little tree 🙂

And celebrated the first flowers on Fred the Meyer Lemon Tree

I hope your December is going well.  I promise more blogging over the holidays 🙂

Giving Thanks!

Admittedly I have been absent from blogging- well blogging on this site at least.  The past month Matt and I have been in full swing wedding planning and I have thrown all of my blog efforts into my personal wedding blog.

This year we all have so much to be thankful for: Matt my awesome fiance, my amazing family, wonderful future in-laws, friends, a job I love, and all the small blessings God has placed in my life. This is the third year that I’ve celebrated holidays with both my mom and my dad.  Matt and i will be in Fort Wayne for Christmas so dad came to visit for a week this Thanksgiving.  We’ve had a great time and enjoyed quite the feast.

Last year Matt was the one who conked out on the sofa

But this year it was mom who fell fast asleep on the sofa with a full belly.

🙂

Hope your Thanksgiving was great!

Hugs,

Amy, Matt, Jim, Elizabeth, Cassanova, and Cheese

 

Pick me a Pumpkin!

One of the purposes for our weekend excursion to the Farm was to pick out pumpkins but after the maze we got caught in a flash rainstorm.  We took cover in the petting zoo.

Chickens!

Rocking the rain boots! I've fallen in love with my polka dot boots!

The rain subsided and we went a pickin!  They had so many great pumpkins! It wasn’t hard to find a suitable one.  I picked out a tall, square-ish pumpkin for Matt and I to carve together.  With all the wedding crafting we’re learning how to be creative together. Not an easy task for two creative people- especially to creative, stubborn people.

T wheels our pumpkins back for us.

OHHH Rainbow!

We went back to T and H’s  house and got to carving!

J starts out a little shy

The rain activated my curls!

scooping out the pumpkins

Almost done scooping!

Matt traces our design

H goes old school

T Freehanded this awesome design

H's old school sad pumpkin- look close there are eyebrows and a tear!

Arggghhh- Matt and My pirate pumpkin!

All lit up!

We seriously couldn’t have planned a better day!

Wander Washington!

This weekend, Matt and I shared a fun filled day with our good friends H and her boyfriend T.  T has a 7 year old son, J,   and we had a blast with the three of them.  In fact, we walked the whole state of Washington.  H and I went to a corn maze a couple years ago.  We spent 45 minutes getting lost in the first half of the maze, came out the entrance, checked a map and took only 15 minutes to get through the whole thing!  H planned this years excursion for us, researching different corn mazes in the area.  She picked one called the Farm.  It is in the shape of the State of Washington, with the pathways being actual interstates, US highways, and State Roads.  The maze contains a whole host of facts about Washington history and you have a scavenger hunt to complete.  It was a lot of fun!  I didn’t do much navigating- which is a good thing.

Hayride to the Maze

Our trusty navigator!

Hummm Is Matt the Grump of the year? (a real billboard in a washington town where they vote a grump of the year)

Or is this the right grump?

H leads us over a bridge- look how big this maze is!

Huge!

H, J, and Matt read facts about the Grand Coulie Dam

H poses with a sign that designates her tiny hometown near Mt St Helens

After successfully making our way through the maze, Matt enjoys some hot cidar. Yum...

Up next? Pick me a Pumpkin!

A weekend of nothing!

My blog has been quiet, but life hasn’t!  Matt and I have been real busy with work, and outside of work (wedding planning is in full swing!).  It felt like we weren’t getting much time to do nothing and just be.  So we took a weekend for our selves and had no concrete plans.  It was amazing!

Matt loves citrus- in fact there is almost always lemons and limes in the townhouse kitchen.   He’s been researching the dwarf meyer lemon tree, a fruit bearing tree that can be grown in a container and moved inside for the winter.  I was actually planning to buy him one for Christmas, but he beat me to the punch and ordered on a couple weeks ago.  One of our “Nothing Weekend” activities was to plant the tree.

Matt plants the tree on our balcony.

Tending to the tree

While Matt cared for our first house plant (YAY!) I started cooking a huge breakfast. Ok, it was like 11:00 so it was kinda lunch, but whatev.

Yum fresh ingredients!

Not bad for a girl who just started to eat eggs a couple months ago.

Matt's face says it all, "Finish taking phots so I can eat!"

What a great way to start a day!  What did the rest of the weekend hold for us?  Behold the pile of Wedding crafting supplies… oh my…

Hint: These are screen printing supplies! Oh and a Woot monkey!

Dahlia Dahlia Dahlia

No secret Dahlias are my favorite flower.  Last week Matt IMed me this link http://www.scdahlias.org/national-show/ I just about jumped out of my seat! The Snohomish county (where I live) Dahlia Society was hosting the National Show.  The show was last weekend and Matt and I went on Sunday.  I was in heaven!  I took lots of photos, got some tips from the members on growing my Dahlias and even got a website of a place that sells cut Dahlias.  Apparently, the Snohomish County Society was celebrating 100 years of Dahlia shows- the longest running show in the country. Awesome!  Enjoy the photos!

She’ll protect my photos with “the force”

Isn't she so cute!

As I previously mentioned in Townhouse and ‘puter trouble! my external hard drive was broke and I sent if off to have the experts try to restore my jpgs (there were other files that I just decided to write off instead of paying thousands of dollars to retrieve).  Good news- all of the jpgs were recovered YAY!

Now I needed to replace my external hard drive.  I have been lookign for an excuse to get a princess Leia flash drive and I couldn’t think of anything better to store my photos on!  I just ordered her, so once she arrives I’ll be back in business.

I know it’s silly- but i think not having a hard drive or my photos has slowed my blog posting… don’t laugh- i know they aren’t really related but mentally I think they are.   I’ve got a bunch of posts to share with you in my head- I just need to sit down and  type them up.  Here is a preview:

• Townhouse update: the dining/living room
• Seattle Adventures with M&S (Matt’s brother and his fiance)
• Making Salsa, Mojitos, and Cuban sandwiches  from the garden (ok with some ingredients from the garden)
• Photos from the National Dahlia show

A week from tomorrow Matt, Mom and I are flying east to see my New England Family. Yay! It will be a great trip. I must admit I am pretty nervous for him to meet the Uncles- I’ve never had my uncles meet a boyfriend (perhaps for good reason- they can tease mercilessly).  I also get to see my Grandma, It’s been almost a 2 years since I saw her last.  I hope to catch up with some dear friends from high school and spend some quality time hanging with my cousins. I promise to be better about posting… July and August have been so crazy!

Happy Bastille Day!

In our 2nd annual celebration of the French holiday Bastille Day, BF and I cooked up a french themed feast! On the Menu:

• Baked Brie with Mushroom and Thyme (you can see the remnants in the bottom left corner… yum) on french baguette.
• Lemon-Roasted Green Beans with Almonds
• Roasted Chicken with Lavender Thyme Butter (remember I said Lavender was edible?)
• Green Salad with Sauce Vinaigrette

BF put together the menu… from our garden we used thyme, lavender, parsley, and basil.

OMG the chicken is amazing, if you need me to mail you a tablespoon of lavender just so you can try it I will…  Can’t wait for next Bastille day!

June Goal Wrap-up and July Goals

1. Set up and attend Personal Trainer apts for 2 half hours a week- early Monday and Wednesday mornings (7 sessions for June) SUCCESS!
2. Stay within calorie budget 1,327 per day 6 out of 7 days per week – FAIL- A good try but I stopped calculating calories about halfway through the month.
3. Purchase Dress for BF’s sister’s wedding ($75 budget), but spend no other $ on clothing in June FAIL- I purchased the dress for $97  had it altered for $18 and also bought flip fops and a tee shirt for a total of $135 on clothes
   
4. Zero dollar yarn budget (gasp!) SUCCESS! Yay- I resisted the urge to buy yarn for a baby gift…
5. Complete 1 project per week on BF’s to-do-list. (week 1: clean the interior of his car, like I promised a couple weeks ago.) FAIL- I did however, clean the interior of his car yesterday 🙂

Two out of 5… hummm… Here are  my July goals

1. Eat dinner at BF’s place at least 2 nights a week (we spend too much time at my house)
2. Close on the house!
3. Make itinerary for M&S’s (BF’s brother and brother’s Fiance) Seattle Trip
4. Add 1 day cardio to weekly workout (currently 2 days personal training)
5. Renew Drivers License

Sold… Almost

...Almost!

It has been over two months since the offer we put in on our future townhouse was accepted and we have yet to close. It’s been a roller coaster ride and I know many friends and family have stopped asking when we were going to close.  Here is the summary of our Journey thus far.

• May 6th put in offer for townhouse.  Offered 203K plus seller to pay all of our closing costs. In our offer we said close on or before July 10th, giving us lots of room.
• May 11th offer was accepted without any changes (Yay!)
• May 15th inspection complete (with flying colors!)
• May 15th loan application submitted and pre-approved
• June 17th locked in with Lender A at 5.25%
• June 17th appraisal came back at $219,00! Yay instant equity!
• June 30th, lender finally responds to our application with conditions (a few missed signatures, more current pay stubs, minor stuff)
• July 2nd we’ve cleared up all of the conditions and are waiting to hear from the lender when we can order our docs for closing…
• July 10th… after tons of missed dates (promises not kept) from the lender, and very little movement on our loan (it was in underwriting for 5 weeks!) we had to file an extension (remember that close on or before July 10th thing in our offer?) and we decided to go with another lender (lender B) who has much faster turn around times.  Much to our delight, Lender B (who we didn’t use before because of higher rates) locked us in at 5% a .25% improvement in our rate!

We absolutely love our mortgage guy- (he’s also our realator) and he’s been great at keeping on top of our loan stuff, it’s just that Lender A was just absolutely horrible to deal with (they would ignore his phone calls and e-mails until he got their management involved).   On friday when we were making the decision to change lenders, Lender A was forecsting July 24th as a BEST possible closing date (ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME!)  Lender B, starting from scratch was forecasting July 24th as the WORST possible closing date- with July 17th or 20th more like it.  The icing on the cake was locking in at 5% with lender B.

As you might imagine this has been causing a lot of stress!  Thank goodness BF’s lease is up in early September so the delay is only saving us money (less time to have mortgage plus rent) but we’ve both put a lot of things on hold while we are waiting to close on the house.

I don’t think it’s a secret that BF and I hope to get married in Summer 2010.  Since the event will be in Seattle lots of friends/family are wondering how soon we’ll know a date.  Deciding to buy a house together has put any ideas ofhim popping the question on the back burner, which of course has pushed out setting a date.  Trust me, as soon as we know, you’ll know.  Right now we are hoping for a July or August date.

So, we’d appreciate your prayers for a quick and easy closing with Lender B!