A Little Christmas Decor

Decorating for Christmas is a favorite, but this year with a hectic school and work schedule before some late (for us) Christmas shopping and planning, serious decorating is taking a back seat.  Not to mention that parts of the house still looks a little like we just moved in, so decorations would probably just blend in with the mess.  Nonetheless, we did put up a few decorations to make things a little bit more festive around here, so we thought we'd share some photos:

We don't have any outdoor plugs near the front of the house, so our lights had to be inside for now.  We hope to have this resolved by next year!

Merry Christmas!!

Bathroom Art

Just thought we'd share a little something that we bought for ourselves in September.  We bought it from a local photographer here in Portland.  The photo was taken at a local salvage shop.  Can you guess where it will be going?

We are not only excited to have a little bit of art for our bathroom, but the photo also gives us some beautiful colors to pick up whenever we get around to painting.  See the blue on the bathtub toward the right.  Wouldn't that be a beautiful color for a bathroom?

Fall Flowers + Garden Projects

It's been a while since we posted anything about the house, hasn't it?  We've been very busy with work and the return to grad school.  Any free moment we've had has been spent keeping up with our lives (dishes and laundry primarily).  What little extra time we've had beyond that we've spent outside trying to get the yard ready for the winter.  So here's a quick update.  We had some beautiful late-blooming flowers around our yard this September and October.  Here are just a few:

After we cleared this corner of the yard a in late August, a mystery flower popped up.  It seems to be some sort of lily:

It finally bloomed in late September:

Here are some more little surprises that popped up in September and October:

In October, Matt's parents came for a visit and lent us some of their gardening knowledge and skills.  The biggest accomplishment of the weekend were two brand new raised beds.  In one we planted spinach and two types of lettuce and in the other we replanted the Chinese ground orchids that were already growing in the back yard.  Many thanks to Matt's parents for the help!

In late October, with the threat of overnight frosts upon us, we went out and winterized the banana tree and the orchids.  We cut the banana tree (which had gotten quite out of control) down to the ground and covered in in mulch to protect the roots from the cold.  If we get a really cold spell we will additionally cover it with thick black plastic.  Supposedly when the weather warms up it will start to grow new shoots.  We'll see!  To protect the orchids, we simply layered as much mulch as we could fit into the raised bed.  We'll continue to add more mulch as it starts to break down and we'll cover the whole bed if we get much really cold weather.  Hopefully they'll do just fine!

When school ends for winter break, our top priority will be finishing up the kitchen cabinets so that we can put away our dishes!!  Lets hope there will be a post about that before Christmas!!

What Have We Been Up To (part 2)

For the past two weekends we had the awesome opportunity to have a little family time right here in Oregon!  This is a rare occurrence since our entire family lives on the east coast.  My parents came out for a long vacation and got to spend some time here in Portland and take some time away to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.  They were here for the weekends on either end of their stay and we were excited to show them the house and some of our favorite spots!

In a few weeks, Matt's parents will be out for a visit and they'll be sharing some of their expertise to help us prepare our garden for fall!

Next post, we promise, will be about the house.  Look forward to it!   - Caroline

What the **** Have We Been Up To?

Somebody seems to have fallen off the blogging wagon in the last two weeks.  So what have we been up to around here?  Or rather, first, what have we been up to not around here?

Right after our last series of posts we headed out for a weekend in southern Oregon in honor of our upcoming anniversary.  We headed down to Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  We had a Groupon Getaway for a half-priced stay at the Lithia Springs Inn, which features private mineral baths in every room.

We've been to Ashland before so we spent most of our time exploring the area outside of the city.  We visited a the Tashi Choling Center for Buddhist Studies in a secluded valley south of Ashland.   The monastery features a 35 foot tall statue of Vajrasattva, the Buddha of Primordial Purity, which is one of the largest Buddha statues outside of Tibet.  The Mandala Garden, where the statue is located, was undergoing some renovations but it was still a beautiful place to visit.

 

We also did some exploring of the area around the Monastery.  We took a dirt road up to the base of Pilot Rock and drove part-way up Mt. Ashland to find some amazing views.

We ended the day with a wine tasting at RoxyAnn Winery, and of course a play at the Shakespeare Festival.  We saw Love's Labor Lost in the Allen Pavilion, which is an outdoor Elizabethan Stage.

We drove back to Portland by way of Highway 101 which runs up the Oregon Coast.  We stopped at the Oregon Dunes, which are the largest sand dunes we've ever seen.  We also visited the worlds largest known sea cave which is a popular resting place for Steller Sea Lions.  The drive from Ashland to Portland along the coast took about twelve hours, so we were happy to be back home and that we had Monday off for Labor Day!

Watch for updates on what else we've been up to in and out of the house coming soon (we promise)!