the girls. i look slightly cowed.
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Jane is 6 months old today. She is enjoying a short morning nap and then off to the pediatrician for vaccinations! What a dubious way to celebrate! I am so excited to see how much see weighs though…We might even go crazy and break out the rice cereal for the first time tonight.

Telfer has had another strange schedule week and has been home for vast swaths of time. Luckily, we really like each other…He is now painting the hallway downstairs. We still have so much painting to do, especially upstairs.

Cate is over at Grammy & Papa's at the moment. So fun that they live close to us. Cate and I had a lovely time at the children's museum last week. We capped our afternoon out with a cookie at a nearby bakery. This week Cate has been calling us "Mom and Dad" instead of Daddy and Mama. Hello, aren't you supposed to be 2?

It's been such a nice week with my girlies! If only Jane would sleep a little bit more and scream a little bit less in the night… Here are a few things I wanted to share:

• We just got this print in the mail for our kitchen. It's so specific and librarian-like. Love it. I am off to hunt up a frame today.

• I made this dinner the other night from a recipe in Sunset. Oh my goodness. So good and so easy. I used the frozen tilapia from Costco (cheaper than halibut).

• This video has been linked around the web quite a bit but it's so creative and makes me smile. Cate loves it too.

 

 

march bookshelf
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Theme for March: great titles. I love all these titles. Has anyone else noticed that short story collections seem to have the best titles? I am very partial also to The Wild, Unwilling Wife (bought only for the title at a yard sale a long, long time ago). Every library school student knows Bud, Not Buddy as the title that can screw up your library catalog search (the NOT boolean operator is key).  Even without the great title, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women's Work" is one of my favorite books ever. 

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories | Alice Munro
Assassination Vacation | Sarah Vowell
Bud, Not Buddy | Christopher Paul Curtis
A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Essays | Rebecca Solnit
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Haruki Murakami
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel | Aimee Bender
The Wild, Unwilling Wife | Barbara Cartland
The Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories | Lydia Peelle
The Secret of Lost Things: A Novel | Sheridan Hay
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It: Stories | Maile Meloy
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places | Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi
Life is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days | James and Kay Salter
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt: Essays | Nick Hornby
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read | Pierre Bayard
The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy & "Women's Work" | Kathleen Norris

 

putting pooh to bed
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Cate is really into putting Pooh to bed. And Jane is really into watching Cate put Pooh to bed. I love having two children! Cate was so hard to entertain when she was Jane's age but Jane is just completely enamored with her sister. I just set her in the bumbo or the bouncer in view of her big sister and Jane is happily entertained. Wonderful to watch.

Telfer had vacation last week and we had such a fun time together. We took the girls into Seattle to meet Aunt Liz (and the little girl she nannies for) at the Aquarium. We also stopped by Top Pot Doughnuts and Pike's Place Market.

Telfer spent much of the week working on our covered back porch area. It was pretty dingy and we are back there a lot – up and down the basement stairs, getting into the refrigerator, and coming to and from the house. It looks so much better:

Note: we found this photograph of this woman's [HUGE] face rolled up in one of the cupboards of our house. We couldn't resist framing it…and it makes me smile every time I walk up and down the basement stairs.

Chris & Mendy joined us for our big Oscar party this year and Telfer won $40. Beat all of us soundly! I even got to see The King's Speech the day before the Oscars (loved it).

Telfer's been back to work this week and today is the first day I am semi on top of things. You know it's time for a shower when you have worn the same workout clothes continuously for TWO runs (yesterday and today). I am really excited for this afternoon though. I have a sweet girl from our church coming to babysit Jane while I take Cate to the children's museum. It's literally our first outing together (alone) since I went into the hospital in June! About time, no?

 

Our living room/dining room is a lot like our house in California – long and narrow. It's been a bit of a challenge to arrange our furniture in this house.  

Here's the room after my parents and Telfer finished scraping wallpaper and painting. We didn't document some of the process as much as we like because well, we were a bit out of sorts at this point (ahem, three-month hospital stay).

The rug came with the house and basically the previous owners stained the floors AROUND the rug but not underneath the rug. So we decided to live with the rug and cover the weird floors. The rug bridged the rooms in a not-so-fluid way – it extended through the footpath from the front door to the kitchen so after a few months you could see dirty footprints on the rug. Also, a light oatmeal rug is not what I would choose with two children and a dog who throws up with the least provocation. 

We had a wonderful guy build bookshelves around the fireplace and Telfer painted them. We are a big believer in bookshelves around fireplaces. It makes the room feel so much cozier.

Telfer arranged our furniture when it arrived from New York and this is basically what the living room looked like when Jane and I finally came home. Thankfully, he left the book arranging to me. I was so worried he would start opening boxes and throwing books on the shelves. I seriously may have cried a bit over the situation. He waited. 

And here's the room decorated at Christmas. 

So a couple of weeks ago I was looking at living room arrangements and showed Telfer a few examples of what I liked. Within minutes we were moving around the furniture. Against the windows, the sofa blocked a lot of the light in the room. When you live in Western Washington, it's not a good idea to purposefully block out light. We are using the sofa (and a new sofa table) to divide the living room and dining room. 

The new rugs don't cover the floor's major imperfections but we decided we just don't care that much. The flow of the rooms is just so much better now that the floors don't even bother us a bit.

The dining room table is a hub. Henry is right there on the window ledge, Cate is usually playing with her kitchen stuff right next to him and Jane is watching Cate in her bouncer. Pretty sweet. 

I was pretty nervous picking out a bold rug. We never purchased rugs for our house in California because of cost and I really didn't know what I liked. So, I am feeling pretty great about this rug from West Elm. The dining room has a really basic jute rug underneath the table.

Eventually, Telfer is going to build a window seat and we'll put up sconces on either side of the wall. Sounds like another electrical project for RJ! But for now, we are so pleased with the results of our switcheroo. It's amazing what two rugs, a sofa table, and rearranged furniture can do for a room. What do you think?