More places to sit

Sandi and I took inventory of our places to sit and found it wanting.  It's fine for the two of us but if we want to entertain we need to spread out a little. 

We measured and debated and moved furniture around.  We decided against another full sized couch for two reasons: First we weren't thrilled with the 'we-have-a-place-to-live-but-no-furniture-so-let's-get-all-our-parent's-used-couches' look; and second, our family room isn't quiet as big as we thought.

A love seat seemed like a good idea.  So we went shopping and found this:

 

 

It's a little different than our brown couch and we like the contrast.  It goes with our walls.

 

It even goes with our Christmas tree

 

 

Next time you visit, you'll have a place to sit.



 

Oh! Christmast tree....

Sandi and I one light strand for our tree.  When I first plugged it in, it kind of didn't work.  I shook it and then it kind of worked. Good enough!  We'll put the light strand on and get more lights during the after Christmas sales. 

Within a few days the lights stopped worked.  I was more bummed than surprised.

 

I carefully removed the lights and then looked online for LED lights.  Fred Myer came through with 1/2 the regular price.  Within 24 hours I had the new LED lights on our tree.

 

 

Oh Christmas Tree!

It's that time of year again when people drive their cars with trees sticking out of their trunk.  Not wanting to be left out, Sandi and I cut down our tree on Saturday. 





We were over at Sandi' parent's house Friday night to celebrate my birthday.  We had BBQ out and dessert in that night - so fun.  Since the tree farm is way far away and her parents are half-way between us the tree far we decided to stay the night.  We left her parents after breakfast the next day and drove to the tree farm. 

Our criteria was a ceiling-height Nobile Fir with a fairly narrow girth.  We found our tree and I laid down on the ground and began sawing and sawing and sawing and sawing.  After a bit of a break (and time to marvel at how dull the blade was on the saw) I resumed sawing.  Finally the wood gave in and the tree toppled.  After shoving it into my trunk (with a Trader Joes bag tied to the end as a flag) we drove off with our trophy.

 

 Sandi is providing scale for our tree.

 

But... how do you really feel about our tree?

 

 

 

We hung our stockings on the mantle with care...

 

...in hopes that Santa soon would be here.

It is finished! 

We love it.

 

It's my birthday!

A few things came together nicely that made for a really fun birthday.  First, I donated blood a few weeks ago.  Normally, you just get water and snacks as a 'reward.'  This time, they handed out buy-1-get-1 coupons to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit at OMSI.  The second was a SQL database conference on Saturday a few weeks ago.  My boss agreed to give me a comp-day by attending this conference.  Put the two together and you get an interesting place to play hooky.

Now all we need is a good excuse to use it.  Enter my birthday (fortunately, Sandi had the day off too or this grand plan would have fallen apart).

We started out with a pre-breakfast snack

 

Followed by a coffee date at Starbucks (which we used a gift card I just got from work for my birthday).

 

We ran a few errands and then headed to lunch.  I was on a bike ride in downtown Portland on Memorial Day and came across Widmer Brothers Brewrey.  I knew that was where I wanted to go on my birthday.  We had a great lunch

on a beautiful but cold day in Portland.

 

We arrived at OMSI in the mid afternoon and dove into all things Sherlock Holmes.  It was a good exhibit with lots of hands-on things to do and learn.  We even got to help solve a crime.

 

We finished the exhibit with just enough time to explore the gift shop and the 'Industry' side of the museum (its old and tired and needs an overhaul badly).

 

After that we decided to take a walk to the Pioneer Square across the river.  By now, our beautiful and cold day turned into a very cold, yet still beautiful night.

 

We walked for about an hour and then headed home for dinner.

 

avocado chicken - mmmm

Last year, we got cheese cake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Since it wasn't broken, there was no reason to fix it.  This year I got Oreo Cookie and Sandi got Vanilla Bean.

 

Sandi and I had such a fun time - what a great birthday!