Since Herman is in Asia (Japan, China, Thailand) and I'm here in Rhode Island, we asked one of the sales people at our community to take some photos of our place for us. I just opened my email and when I saw these photos I think my exact words (out loud for only the Dex to hear) were "Oh Crap!" In a good way of course.
I know that they only have about 2 months to finish and I know that after getting drywall up it all goes pretty quick, but I don't think I was expecting cabinets and everything to actually start looking finished. It's just too exciting! I am trying to be all here and finish school strong. Really, I am...
Now for the tour: 1. Our kitchen! With cabinets! We're going to have black granite counter tops, and a light gray subway tile back splash. 2. From the 3rd floor looking down to the main level landing then to the front door. It's quite impressive when you walk in the front door and see all those stairs. Our very own mini Mt. Everest. 3. From the top of the stairs looking past the closet for the washer and dryer, and into the master suite. 4. In the guest bedroom, looking towards the bathroom. 5. Guest bathroom (with tub!) 6. Cabinet area in by the washer/dryer closet in the hall. 7. Master bathroom! We'll have two framed mirrors over the vanity and the shower will be to the right. 8. Master bedroom looking towards our balcony. 9. Our balcony.
Drywall! AC unit/vents! Ceilings! In case you didn't notice, this is me being super excited! Gratuitous exclamations!!!Herman is briefly back home before heading to Japan, and stopped by our place, naturally, and just sent me these photos. So much progress!
Plus, look at this great photo of Herman and his cousin Rick's super cute little girl:
I've watched this little video way too many times today. Aside from the bat part, Dexter pretty much follows this routine nightly, complete with loud meowing, "dough kneading", face touching, and general excitement that we (ahem, I) might wake up and either feed or play with him. Best enjoyed with your volume maxed out. Trust me. (the purring/dough kneading is just too cute).
We have this cute little digicam that was given to us a few years ago. I find that I don't use it as much as I used to because we now have two digital SLR's (and face it, they just take way better pictures), but the other day I saw it sitting on our bookshelf. I turned it on and was surprised to find some photos from Paris. Besides bringing back all the good and yummy memories, it also made me realize that I only blogged about Paris four times. A sad, sad, four times. So, even though we were in Paris 10 months ago, I will continue to blog about it at random times, like today.
To find great cheese and wine, we could have went to one of the cheese markets, or to one of the wine stores. But the cheese markets overwhelm me and didn't smell good, and we did go to the wine store (hello 3 euro bottles of wine!), but we found that we loved this little supermarket called the Monop. One of our favorite things to try were the wine by the glass. They were about 2.5 inches tall, sealed on top, and quite yummy. My other favorite thing was Brebis cheese. I still love it, but made the mistake of googling it and finding out that Brebis is made from sheep's milk. Now, there is no good reason why sheep's milk skeeves me out a little, but it does. I can still eat it but I have to banish all thoughts of lambs from my mind.
The other thing we loved, and which if any of you go to France you have to try, are French macaroons...especially from Laduree. I really can't think of a way to describe how amazing and delicious these are. I spent way too much time trying to find them in SF this summer, and succeeded in finding only 3 places that make them. They were good, but obviously, not as good as you'll find in France. Our last week there we spent a week traveling in the south of France. The day before we were leaving to fly home, our train stopped in Paris before we boarded another one to go stay the night at our friends Josh and Holly's. We had an hour layover, so Herman left the train station, ran to the nearest Laduree to get me one last box of chocolate and caramel macaroons (what a guy), and another box as a gift to my friends who watched Dexter while we were gone. They were so good that I wrapped one up, and took it back to Sumiko when I flew home to see her and her new baby. I'll never forget her face when she and Dean cut the tiny cookie in half and experienced the amazingness that is the French macaroon. Seriously, I'm drooling here. So, so good.
Sorry about the horrendous quality of these photos...dang you little digicam.
Surprisingly...er, maybe not since many of you have seen how I dress, I don't know much about clothing or fashion. But what I don't spend on stuff to put on me, I love to spend on stuff to put into my home.
When we moved to Providence over two years ago, we moved into a rather dreary (but inexpensive) apartment, complete with dreadful berber carpet and pink tinted counter tops, I stopped buying home stuff. It just didn't seem to make a lot of sense spending money on this place. I think we succeeded in making it feel homey and comfortable enough with the few things we had.
Now that we get to move into a beautiful new home in a few months, I've started home shopping again (I guess it's just as well that I took a hiatus from it, because I feel my style has changed and matured over the past couple of years). I haven't went completely nuts, but I have picked up a few things that I really love:
1. Malm bed from Ikea in black-brown. Who knew you could get a gorgeous bed for under $150? Sure, it might not last forever, but we'll enjoy it in the meantime. 2. Malm beside tables, also from Ikea. 3. Marimekko bedding bought from CB2 on clearance. Score! 4. Birds of a Feather mobile by Helene Ige. This was a special purchase. I saw it, fell in love with it, and stewed over it for a number of weeks before taking the plunge. I couldn't be happier. 5. Salad plates and bowls from West Elm. We're giving most of our furniture and stuff to my brother in law before we move...so of course I need beautiful new dishes. An early Christmas present from my parents. 6. There's this great little store in Providence chock full of gorgeous and unique items from independent designers. I was in there last spring and saw these owl salt and pepper shakers. I decided to wait on them, and of course, they didn't have them anymore when went a couple of weeks ago. So when I saw them for sale at Anthropologie, I had to grab them. They also have great little sake cups that I'd like to add someday. 7. My most recent find on ebay. A 1960's Italian owl bank. We call him Bernard. 8. A great looking 78 piece silverware set from Target for only $50? Of course.
Every spring and fall (perhaps more often?) RISD has a big student and alumni art sale. For some bizarre reason, we never made it to the sale until the one last May. At that sale, we acquired a great screen print (which is already packed away, so no photos, sorry) by a very talented print making student.
So we decided to go to the one this past weekend, seeing as we're moving back to California very soon...which means no more RISD art sales. There was a ton of great stuff. There are some seriously talented people here, and we had a hard time choosing between 5 different pieces. Below are the ones we ended up walking away with. The sheep print is by a girl named Kate Walsh, and the forest print is by Rose Gottlieb.
I think I might miss this part of the whole thing.
I have a confession to make. I love to watch tv. Not daytime television, but the really good prime time stuff. I have friends (hi Lina!) who have managed to cut tv out of their lives...and I do admire that...but I just couldn't do it.
So this fall I added two new shows to my must watch list (must watch list being: Heroes, Lost, The Office, and Scrubs), and I must pass the recommendations on to you, my 6 faithful readers. Although one of you has no tv, 3 of you have kids, one of you is in Japan, and one of you is Benji...and I think I lost him in my year of only 7 blog posts. I'm sure I lost more people long before that.
First: Chuck. It might be the most ridiculous and cheesy shows on right now, but it's just so much fun to watch. I somehow got to watch the pilot episode 3 different times (once on the plane, once on the night it actually premiered, and once when I made Herman download and watch it with me), and throughly enjoyed it each time. It's a spy comedy. What else do you need to know? Preview here.
Second: Pushing Daisies. Perhaps the show I was most excited to see. It's got a mid-century, overly saturated aesthetic, centered around a guy named Ned who can touch dead people and bring them back to life, but if he touches them again, they die. A "Forensic Fairytale" as the preview guy says. If you like the visual beauty and quirky romance that is Amelie, and the fantastical elements of Big Fish, you will most definitely love this show. I love this show. Check this out and I know you'll get hooked. Or not. It's really up to you.
(Let's just pretend that it hasn't been 2 months since I updated the progress on our house, shall we?)
Herman made a trip back home last week for work stuff, with me joining him over the weekend for his dad's 60th birthday. Of course, spending time with family (and seeing Sumiko, Dean, and Kaia), was great, but we also had a chance to walk through our town home.
Earlier in the week (when these photos were taken...and I was in Providence), Herman and his mom went on the electrical walk through of the house, just to make sure that everything we wanted (recessed lighting, etc.) was where it was supposed to be before they started putting up the drywall.
It's crazy how quickly it's coming along. The outsides are almost done, and by the time I got to see it last Friday, they had started on the insulation. A small part of me just wants to sit there and watch them build it. But as my very observant brother in law pointed out - "that would be boring." So now we're back in Rhode Island, and the next time I get to see it, it'll pretty much be done. They're predicting closing in the first week of January, and with me wanting to paint before moving in, hopefully we'll be settled by the end of January.
Fingers crossed, of course.
(left to right): 01. The front of the units. Ours is the second from the left, with the big redwood directly in front of our door. Our place opens onto the street, so that fence will not be there in the end. 02. Front door, patio, and giant window in our living room. 03. Coming in the front door, a half flight of stairs up to the main living area. The full flight goes upstairs to the bedrooms. 04. View from the landing to the living room and down out the front door. 05. View from the giant window in the living room, through to the rest of the house (kitchen, bathroom, office). 06. The kitchen. 07. Door and stairway down to the garage. 08. Shows the extra insulation and air space that will be between our wall and our neighbors. 09. Our very skinny tandem 2 car garage. 10. Our bedroom with sliding doors out to the balcony (looks over the street and trees, and not into someone else's master bedroom. Very nice!) 11. The very skinny balcony outside our bedroom. 12. There are 9 units in our building. Ours is the second from the end (on the right).
