happy birthday?

december 15th - a great day for two reasons now
1 - jen's birthday
2 - the day we moved in to our house!!! 

pedro finished on thursday with the ceilings and paint and we suddenly had a new, clean house that looked so much bigger and brighter!  it only stayed clean for a bit as moving is messy business.

we worked all day on sunday (well, ray did) but still have plenty to do.  thanks to all our movers, we were able to get everything out of the apartment, unpack the kitchen, make dinner and have some fun to celebrate the day!!

if you've talked to us, you know that the plan is to completely change the kitchen.  for now, we are happy that the appliances are new and that it is big enough for about 5 people to be in there at once without running into each other.  we found this out while unpacking.     can anyone find ray's favorite part of the kitchen?  here is a close up

 

we got these at EMP in seattle over thanksgiving.  

things to do for the rest of the week:

go to the laund-ro-mat (hopefully for the last time )
pack for cincinnati/oregon
continue unpacking
go to work
sleep? 

winter wonderland?

the scraping of the ceilings has been completed. now, it just looks like it was snowing in our house!  since pedro did such a good job taping the plastic up to the walls, clean up will be quick and then on to the next step(s) - texture, priming and painting

only one electrocution!

 i've never seen so many wall treatments in one house.  paneling, wallpaper, wallpaper inside the cupboards, windows behind the paneling, 2 -3 layers of contact paper in the kitchen... 

behind this paneling was an outlet that got me when i tried to move it out of the way.  it was just a tiny zap but, it made me feel funny!  here's the little rascal:

my favortie part of the day was destroying the "elivs" bathroom.  why elvis?  well, that is joelle's description for the metallic aqua vanity (love that word) and what used to be a sparkley mirror.  we're sort of in the middle of deciding what to do with this bathroom so, it may be mismatched for a bit.  overall - it was a very fun but,  long day.

 

oops...i forgot the ladder!

taking wallpaper down is not as hard as i thought (thanks to 1 part fabric softner, 3 parts water and a sponge) but, it would help if i could reach higher up the wall.  here's to finishing tomorrow!

 

in other news

we're engaged!    

in a friendly  bar in the tribeca neighborhood of new york city, ray decided that was the moment he had been waiting for.  we decided to keep it a secret since it was joelle's birthday but, we were allowed to tell the bartender so he snapped a picture for us!  

so much for secrets!  the cat was let out of the bag the next morning  and the celebration just became bigger!