felices!

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

This house is a home.

Happy anniversary to us! We unlocked the front door to our home one year ago today.

December 3rd 2009, the evening we got our keys to our first home.

November 2010, one year, one pup, and one red door later.

The original living room. In all of it's pepto bismol glory.

A work in progress, December 2009. Adios to the pink walls, hello refinished wood floors!

A well loved and well lived living room...one year later.

Christmas 2009, we'd been in the house about one week at this point. Not enough time to get a tree!

Christmas 2010, our first tree in our 'new' house.


Dear F street,
we love you.
xoxo,
the irelands



One year down, a million projects to go...here's to the next year bringing us a dishwasher, new countertops, a water heater, radiant floor heating, new wood floors in the bedrooms, a vegetable garden, new gas stove, new vent, new cabinets, a new bathroom sink, new laundry room storage, new storm windows....
whew.
What have we gotten ourselves into?

Judy Garland

Look what I did! A little finger crocheted garland for my little frasier fir. Her name is Judy. I love her.

I miss the snow.

Just some stuff...ing...

Tomorrow marks my first Thanksgiving feast made all by myself. From start to finish, from sweet potatoes to pumpkin pie, it's all me. Mr. Ireland is on shift tomorrow, his first holiday shift with the Bellingham Fire Dept. Traditionally they buy the whole meal deal from the local grocery store. Which, I guess, is better than nothing. But since he was going to be gone all day anyways I thought I'd try to sneak my way in to see him. We've spent just one Thanksgiving apart since we started dating 10 Thanksgivings ago. It was our second Thanksgiving and he had this huge paper due and decided to stay, alone, and try to write it. Needless to say he got very little done, and we've never spent one apart since. We are not like obsessive Holiday people either, well, I am, but he's not and we've spent many a Christmas, Easter, even Valentines Day apart. But for some reason this one holiday has become kind of important to us, almost as important as Halloween (of which we've also only spent one apart). We are also very lucky, as his job or mine hasn't taken us away from the festivities. Until this year. So my plan? Volunteer to make his entire station Thanksgiving dinner. It's a win/win situation really. I get my mr. for the holiday and him and his crew don't have to eat box stuffing and dry potatoes (or at least I hope they won't be dry.) The only downside is this will be my first turkey, so we may just end up eating grocery store turkey after all.

The menu for tomorrow is fairly traditional, I didn't want to screw up trying to make something new like a fancy cranberry orange chutney, or a deep fried turkey (although this method may insure the firefighters have something to do), or go way back and try my hand at an oyster stuffing (plus, gross right?). So I'm sticking to the basics, plus you never know what other people like or dislike. But, man, I am really excited. So excited I've started tonight. The turkey is about ready to be brined, the pies are baking, and the sweet potatoes are roasting! Too bad you can't break the wishbone BEFORE dinner, I'd be wishing for everything to turn out yummy and for nothing to burn. But hell, even if it does I will be eternally grateful for a husband who is excited to see me, and his buddies who love to eat, and to my family who I'm going to miss tomorrow, and whom I will probably be calling numerous times to make sure I'm doing it right.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve friends...

All creatures...

It really is the little things, like sharing a sunset on Whidbey Island with your favorite person and your little wet dog. Thanks end of week week end, you did us good.

It's not the men in your life that matter...

It's the life in your men.

We're all mad here...

In my post of Halloweens past I could not find a good shot of Jesse's Cheshire cat from last year. I just stumbled upon this one on someones facebook page and had to share it. This is one of the costumes from our past that I am most proud of. He not only looked like David Bowie in Wonderland but he was comfy as a kid in a onesie all night long.

Orange you glad it's my birthday?

I yam.

all in all is all we are...

We had one fabulous hot mess of a halloween...we did Kurt and Courtney proud. We partied, we rocked out, and we slept all the next day. I love this holiday, and I hope yours was filled with ghoulish and grungey radness as well!

I am doll parts...

Bellingham Fright Night arrrrrre yooooooou reaaaaaddddyyyyy?????

Why can't men witch have babies?

Because they have Hollow Weenies!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even amidst all the muckety muck we've got going on over here, I still adore this little holiday coming up. And even though we will not be getting too elaborate this year, my heart will still be 100% in it. I love Halloween. I would serenade it with love songs if I could sing...I would write it poetry if it would listen. I just love it so much. And I just realized, today, how soon it is and I can't wait!

Otus Pocus

This is the greatest craft project I have seen, ever. Thank you, always and sincerely, Ms. Stewart, you are my hero.

When we were growing up, we being my two brothers and I, we would take these long walks through Marymoor park, through the open fields we would wander. I remember having great luck in finding owl pellets quite regularly. They were little bits of the macabre and science all in one little bundle. Awesome.

Macabre and Science. That could pretty much some up a lot of my experiences growing up. Hmmm...

Example 1: When we would go hiking at Mt Rainier my parents talked non stop of the Marmots, the little ankle biting creatures that would sneak up behind you and take nips at your feet. In my head they were a fantastical creature, a dark evil thing, something they had invented to scare us. It took me years to find out they were real, very real.

Example 2: Recently Jesse and I went to Roslyn for the weekend. While we were there I was feeling quite nostalgic for my childhood. We would take day trips just over the mountain and would either stop in Roslyn or detour through. One trip we made with my grandparents from Texas, while they were filming Northern Exposure. My grandfather got to meet the love of his life Maggie Oconnel/Janine Turner, and I had never seen my grandfather giddy before. But boy was he giddy. Anyways, the macabre. I have a clear memory of intentionally visiting the graveyard. And this wasn't the only one we had visited in my childhood. Every time we went through Port Gamble with my other grandfather we would stop at the cemetery. I remember the kids tombstones most clearly, shiver.

Example 3: My mother kept dead birds in her freezer. I'm smiling as I type this. It always shocked/s friends when I make that declaration. The thing is, they would hit our windows and die. We were so good at keeping our yard bird friendly that they would mistake our windows for more outdoors and kaboom! Another Towie for the freezer. While my dad was at work my mom would take us kids down to the Burke Museum with our bags of frozen birds and we would donate them. They stuffed the birds and kept them in these drawers. There was this huge room with rows and rows of drawers, all filled with dead birds. And the staircase down to this room was lined with bug collections in shadow boxes. I was hooked and from then on kept jars of mothballs filled with butterflies. With encouragement from my mother of course.

Example 4: I was Elvira for Halloween, when I was nine.

Macabre and Science made for a wonderful childhood. Full of exploration and wonder. The owl pellet can stand as a tangible symbol of my youth. It is both disgusting and beautiful. A strange body function of an almost magical bird. It represents the very real and logical and also the beauty and magic of our world, of death and decay. Plus, it's kinda like poop, which was, you know, also kind of important to my childhood.

whip our hair and just shake them off

Hats off.

Next craft project? Blossom hats? I'm going to have to find me some bowler hats...

(thank you geometricsleep for triggering this memory)

farm folk.

Autumn promises.

I did it. I went red. I smudged my eyeliner. I put on my orange red lips. And now I match the trees outside...although these pictures don't quite capture how RED this hair really is. I glow. I swear. It's good.

Anomolies.

the future is so clear...