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.