Oregon Getaway

Since I last posted, my husband and I were able to get away on a little adventure. We escaped to the beautiful state of Oregon for a college football game and a little site seeing with some friends. I took a lot of pictures (way too many to post) so I'll spare you the bulk and just share the more scenic of the bunch.

Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge...
We decided to hike to the top and captured some pretty pictures of the Columbia River from the trail.


Very green and beautiful.



Ecola State park looking down on Cannon Beach. Beautiful even with a bit of late morning fog...

Oceanside (view from the restaurant where we had lunch)...

Ocean views from Cape Meares...


Cape Meares Light House...

This is the view from our hotel balcony in Newport. By this time, a storm was beginning to roll in and the skies were gray the rest of our time at the coast...


Such a fun trip (even though our team lost). Good company, great food & beautiful scenery. My favorite part was just spending quality time with my husband. It was nice to escape our busy lives and have uninterrupted conversation for 3 days straight. Loved being with him.

And for all those people (a small army) who watched our kids while we were away, THANK YOU! We owe you big time.

Homework Blues

I'm not the world's most consistent blogger. But I have a good excuse. Four good excuses. And lately they've kept me hopping. Now that school has started back up, so have all the extra-curricular activities. I love staying busy, but the amount of paperwork my little peeps bring home (homework, permission slips, forms, schedules etc.) could bury us alive. So when I saw this old desk at the thrift store, I couldn't pass it, and the potential organization it would bring, up.

So I hauled it out back, primed it, then gave it the Dusty Spruce treatment (same brush on paint I used for the chalk board, with antiquing glaze). Now each of our school age children has their own drawer for homework, reading charts, soccer & dance schedules, book orders etc.

And we already had this chair waiting patiently in the makeover queue.


Added a little embellishment to the back of the chair just to spice things up, and new fabric on the seat.

And just so you don't think I only play with the blues, let me introduce to you to my new friend "Olive". I'm just getting to know her, but she's a favorite already. Together we're gonna paint the town...or at least the master bedroom furniture.

More to come...someday. I'm not committing to anything until soccer season's over.

*PaintColors:
The desk is Valspar Signature Seaside Retreat " Dusty Spruce"
The dresser is Valspar Signature Laura Ashley "Olive 4"

One Last Hoorah...

Of Summer.

This past weekend we escaped the busy realm of everyday existence and fled to our favorite getaway destination, Bear Lake. We played on the beach, and swam in the pool...

Until our feet looked like this...

Wrinkly, but much cleaner than the same feet on our camping trip last month.

It was such a NICE weekend. As usual, I loved the journey there as much as the destination - another episode of me and my ongoing love affair with the open road. We passed through my favorite little valley and college town where we lived the first few years of our marriage. So painfully beautiful. Painful because I yearn to live there the way my 4 year old yearns for chocolate donuts with sprinkles, and it's just not a possibility right now. If it weren't for the 4 little time bombs tick, tick, ticking away in the back, we would have pulled over and taken more pictures.

Along the way we noticed some of the trees and underbrush in the canyon starting to change color, and my heart started to race. Summer has its moments, but I am completely smitten with FALL.

Dangerous (in a mental sort of way) Beauty

Pardon me for a moment while I go off on one of my favorite tangents. Farm houses, and their aesthetically similar suburban counterparts. I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll skip the overly long narrative this time, and just get to the good part. While checking out a few houses in the local Parade of Homes this week, we drove past this beauty. It was most definitely a “Honey, STOP the car!” moment. Isn’t it lovely?

It’s located in a humongous master planned community on the southwest corner of the valley. Nice, but I think I’d take it on country acreage, with a big red barn on the side. Nothing against master planned communities or city planners – I was a fledgling planner myself back in the day. I just like the idea of living away from sprawl and traffic and having space to breath.
Now I've got houses on the brain again. I knew checking out the Parade of Homes would be a BAD idea. Pretty houses are hazardous to my mental health.

Little Vintage Mirror Re-do

This one is pretty self explanatory. For a while now, I've had a little vintage mirror. The same one that used to hang in my grandparents bedroom, but it has been in need of a bit of work.

Today I decided it was time. I was the crazy lady outside spray painting in my pajamas before the kids woke up.

I enlisted 2 of my favorite makeover tools...

Sprayed and then went to work with the "Purdy" brush. See how easy antiquing is? Just wiped off the extra glaze with a wet cloth.

And after drying in the morning sun for a 1/2 hour, it was ready to hang.