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Lynette, Lori and I at the Pampered Chef party. I think I wrote a couple posts ago that the house hunt all started at Lynette's Pampered Chef party in January. So, I wanted to make sure and get a picture of the three of us together for the scrapbook on the house! :-)

Lori brought her adorable almost twosie, L, whom my children adore. L still finds my big black camera with the long lens a little odd and just stares at it! lol I thought this was a funny picture. Boogie on the left, has no problem smiling for the camera whether he is in the picture or not! And Sunshine on the right is being very careful not to get in the picture with L. Heidi, the kitten wants to escape. There's only so much "lovin'" one cat can take! :-)

Here is Sunshine with Heidi again. Sunshine is our little helper girl. She likes to learn things and DO things. So (after putting down the cat and washing her hands), she did get to help a little with the dessert making.

Heidi is the most amazing little cat. She just puts up with so much from the kids. She lets them carry her around the house, one arm under each set of her legs and she looks floppy like a rag doll. Her face always has this non-plussed expression like: It's my lot in life. It's not a lot but it's my life! :-)

Meine Mutti wants to see what the house looks like, so here's the first bit of pics. Coming in from the hallway you look toward the fireplace. Normally we don't have grain bags on the hearth but they are my recent order from Azure Standard and I have not had a chance to put them in storage. The blue blob in front of that is a blanket on top of the cats' toy. Since I haven't had a chance to frame and hang any pictures, I put up some of my Aunt Grace's oil paintings on the mantle. She taught oil painting classes for years at Boeing Arts Club and other places in the Seattle area. Most of these paintings were instructional ones she did in class. L to R, Mount Rainier, Sunset Silhouette, windmills in Holland, Rhein River Castle ruins, a still life and an autumn pastoral scene. My Aunt Grace is the one who taught me so much about color and "seeing" things, as well as photography. She also bought me my first spinning wheel. The one in the photo is "Caris", my Lendrum wheel. On the right of the photo you can see the china cupboard that was one of my Grandma Johnson's.

From the fireplace, looking back to the door you can see our table and school area. Eventually we hope to find a large dining room table that is more useful for hospitality. We are in desperate need of overhead lighting but the beams are not placed in such a way that we can center anything over a table. We haven't figured out yet how or what we will do to get better lighting. Those reading lamps are just there as a temporary solution.

From the fireplace looking towards the living room you can see our lovely bookcases, all but one were housewarming gifts from Mom and Jack. The bookcase on the left was my graduation gift when I finished technical school in 1988. The armoire is where we hide the tv as I hate having it show and we don't watch it that often, mostly in the evenings for DVDs. The love seat faces the armoire and the couch (with the blue quilt over it) faces the bookcases in an L shape.

Another shot since Mom also hasn't seen the love seat/sofa.

Maisy, finding a quiet place to rest away from the kids, on a box under the keyboard!

Our potatoes growing in wine barrels 5/25/09. After this photo we put a few more inches of soil in.

This is the left hand barrel 5/31/09. Look how much they grew in 7 days! We filled dirt up to the top rim now. No flowers yet but they are growing like crazy. We started these from organic potatoes from Trader Joe's, which they told me come from Newman's farm. We planted both red and white potatoes. I think the whites are Russets but I am not certain. Some of the leaves have some yellowish spots on them, so I have to do some research. This is my first time growing potatoes organically.

In addition to the huge black walnut tree, orange tree (we just ate the last of our DELICIOUS oranges!) and grapefruit tree, we have some type of magnolia tree on the side.

Here is one of our raised beds. It's only 75% planted. In front are all peppers and in back is a tomato, watermelon and rosemary. I'm late getting everything else planted but I'm going to try it anyway.

The kids have had a blast eating outside on the table Grandma and Grampa found for them. Princess on left and Sunshine next to Boogie.

We still have much to unload, paint, put up on the walls etc before it's really feeling homey, but it's a start. I still wander through the house at times and think, "Whose house am I in again?" In spite of already having some repairs to the AC and electrical for the W/D and our first house payment, it doesn't feel like "ours". Maybe that's how it should be; the house is really His!