Well Well Well...

I almost felt guilty about not posting anything for the past three months, UNTIL I got on here late last night and tried to use this nightmare of a picture up-loader and realized why I had sworn off "The Blogger". I finally got all of these pictures on here, but instead of seeing the preview of the picture all I can see is HTML jibber jabber. SO, you're gonna have to deal with the completely random order of these photos because I can't stand the thought of trying to rearrange them.




Oh, the back corner of the house is always a nice place to start! To the left is the garage which is FILLED with our stuff. We put an offer in on this house in June, didn't close till September 10th (never. buying. a house. again.), couldn't move in till the last week of September because we were getting the floors done, sooo yes I've had a whole month to unpack and decorate, I don't want to talk about it.



Now, this is where you have to use your imagination. I'm envisioning a "courtyard" feel back here, which is currently over-powered by this lovely "white trash" feel. The garage needs painting to match the house, and the lovely rotting siding at the top needs replacing. The previous owners thought it would be nice to leave all the crap they didn't feel like hauling off, in the basement. Yesterday we brought it all up and here it sits until we get that dumpster. I'm sure our neighbors love us. The shed needs a coat of paint but I think it could be really cute with some flower boxes?



These pictures aren't the best, I was in a rush to leave, but this is the side of the house (duh). Even though the yard needs a ton of work (I'm not a fan of the over-sized ugly holly bushes, rhododendrons, etc.), once we get it fenced in it will be a great little space I think. It's hard to find a cheap house, but it's even harder to find a cheap house with a decently sized yard. I would take an old run down house with a yard over a new house without yard any day.



This is the same side of the house taken from the front of the house, kind of. The previous owners had this cute little vegetable garden under those bent pvc pipes. I think the pvc pipes will have to go, but a vegetable garden would be fun!



This is the view from the upstairs bedroom. I rushed to take all these pictures yesterday because it was the only sunny day we've had in a long time. It's been raining and dark for days now (which I love).



This is the "mini-room" upstairs. It would be a perfect office or nursery :) Right now it's the perfect place to throw our crap so we can find some sanity in the rest of the house.



The hallway upstairs. Pretty boring.



This is the room across the hall from the mini-room. All of the rooms in this house are very small! Probably because the whole house is very small! Ideally this will be the guest room for all our lovely guests (come visit!!), but we are yet to be able to get the box-spring for this bed up the stairs (you'll understand when you see the stairway).



Ahh, the mini-stairway!



We had the floors all re-done because they were covered in nasty old carpet, and these stairs turned out to be this orangey wood. I love how rustic they look, although I never expected them to turn out like this!



Parts of the house like this need a bit of work. This is at the end of the kitchen. The door on the left goes outside to the walkway between the garage and the house. To the right is the stairway that goes to the basement (or the dungeon as we call it).



Right side of the kitchen....wait for it...




Left side of the kitchen! Hahah, this is the smallest kitchen in the world. When we were buying the house we'd always laugh about our skinny alley kitchen that is completely inaccessible if a drawer is pulled out or the oven door is open. My mom kept trying to convince me that alley kitchens are really "cool" in like New York and Europe....hmmm I'm pretty sure if I lived in NY or Europe I would think my whole house was really "cool", but this is Oregon City.



This is the dining room. The whole house looks a bit "dead" because we have absolutely nothing on the walls and barely any lighting. That standing light in the corner was left by the owners before us. I really need to decorate. Our dining table is my FAVORITE. My mom and I found it at a thrift store for $50. It had an ugly dark shiny stain on it, but once we refinished it it was perfect! I love the french legs. My grandma bought us the 6 white chairs when she was here visiting a few weeks ago--they are perfect! It's so hard to find wood-colored chairs that match a wood table (that aren't like $200 each), and we thought the painted white wood was really pretty with all the wood! I'm trying to find fabric to make chair cushions. To the left is the front door, to the right is the picture below.



This is what you see when you walk in the house. To the right is our bedroom (which you don't get to see quite yet), straight ahead is the bathroom (yes THE bathroom, there is only one, and it's munchkin-sized), and to the left is the stairway.



Bad picture, but this is the couch that I love! Brandon's grandma gave it, and the matching chair, to us because she didn't use it anymore (love free furniture!). I should probably do something with all those stacked boxes. We bought a bunch of lights to try out around the house week ago, but haven't quite gotten around to opening them.



I love thriftstore finds! This table was found by my mom for 5 bucks! It needs painting. I'm thinking a lacquered robins egg blue? I'm not sure yet.



The matching chair and the side table that Brandon's grandpa made before he died. Our living room is on the small side, and it REALLY needs some decorating love, but I like it. I love the rug but it's way too small for the room (even though the room is really small!), so we're looking for something bigger and more comfy looking.



Moving on to random events as of late! Brandon's other grandma passed away last week, so we went up to Washington for her funeral. It was really nice to be able to re-meet all of Brandon's family. This is Courtney and her sweet little girl Riley. She is soooo stinking cute, I couldn't get enough of her!



Yummy funeral potatoes! We took a ton of pictures but none of them turned out...something about that awful cultural hall lighting.



Daisy Duke cracks us up every day (even though most days I want to kill her). I had just brought our duvet cover out of the dryer and was putting the comforter back in it when I turned around and she was snuggling up in it. When I yelled at her she looked at me like, "What's your deal?! You didn't bring this super warm blanket out of the dryer for ME to lay on!?"



Real bad picture of the front of the house. The house is up a bit on a hill so I can't figure out how to get a decent picture of it. I swear it doesn't look this squished in person.



The DUNGEON! The unfinished basement in this house needs a serious rehaul, but it's a huge amount of space compared to the rest of our house! We plan on gutting it and turning it into a cozy TV/family room.



Manly man ripping out the wall so we can turn it into one big space. He thorougly enjoyed taking his anger out on this wall with a sledgehammer after spending 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast.



The woodpecker knocker. Unfortunately this guy had to go. I didn't have the heart to throw him away after all his days of dutifully knocking...so I "set him free" and relocated him to a nearby tree where he can knock away. I do LOVE having Billy the mailman bring our mail right to the front porch! Pretty darn cool.



Bran and his baby. She lays like this forever, I love it.



My Aunt Erika got to visit for her birthday which was fun! I can't remember what we were all laughing about...but it looks like it was really funny.



Brandon's mom is going to school to get licensed to take x-rays at the dental office she works at. Brandon was a very whiny practice-patient and kept telling her she was doing it wrong. We're so proud of her, she's the best dental assistant around!




Brandon spent a lot of time this summer up at my parent's cabin in Mosier. We went up there one Saturday so he could set up deer stands and tree stands. A few weeks later his dad shot a bear from that tree stand. I so don't approve.


WELL, that took forever! I've learned my lesson--don't save 3 months of pictures for one post! I'm going to go eat my honey nut cheerios now for breakfast. Have a good weekend!