A Mother Son tea party

One of Mr. W's co-workers has a son that was in Deuce's class at the old school and we became fast friends. I'm always posting photos of my tea travels and she mentioned at the company summer picnic that she would love to join me sometime and that her son might like it too. Of course I loved that idea! It took a while for us to get all coordinated and scheduled (she's getting another degree right now on top of working) but we finally had our tea.

The boys were so sweet and did a nice job or trying new foods and using their table manners. Their attention span waned pretty quickly though so she and I did our best to make it through the courses quickly.

Scones with lemon curd AND jam.

We had such a nice time. I need to plan of these types of mother son outings.

Final decisions made for the nursery.

We got so much accomplished this weekend, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm feeling such a sense of relief about it! I had received an email that Stars Antique Mall was having a sidewalk sale this weekend so on Friday I took Baby Boy over there to scout for high boy dressers. I really wanted to work with a CLer who refurbishes furniture in shabby chic style, but she has a 6 wk lead time and she doesn't respond much to email; I decided she wasn't reliable enough for me at this point. I really need to be able to unpack baby clothes and things into the nursery so I can have a sense of relief.

I really wanted an ivory colored dresser for this room to coordinate with  the rest of the nursery furniture, but I feel guilty about painting real wood or wood veneer.  These are a couple dresser options she sent me, and admittedly they would be super cute painted, but they don't look like they are in horrible shape so I'd have some guilt.

 

I found this dresser at Stars, which was cute and I loved the shape and amount of drawers, but it was pink, and I hate pink. I certainly wouldn't feel guilty about painting this one, but frankly I don't have the time for that right now. I have enough work cut out for us just getting the side table painted and finished. And I really shouldn't be sanding questionable paint right now.

We realized we needed to pull the trigger on everything, so we decided to go for the oak highboy dresser with attached mirror which I found at City Liquidators and that we'd go with the new glider from Good Night Room. It is admittedly dull and doesn't have a tufted back like I was looking for, but I'm running out of time and need to commit. We bought the dresser first to be picked up later that day and then headed to suburbia.  I was delighted to learn that they added a few new fabrics to their selection and one of them was a plum colored twill. Not only does this fit into the color scheme of the room best, I was starting to get disappointed I'd have to settle for a practical neutral in there, but it will be less likely to show the dirt than a cream colored one. The only downside is that it has an 8 week lead time and we've put this decision off till the end. That's okay though, even though it will arrive approximately 4 weeks after baby arrives, I will still spend plenty of months nursing in it.


Here is the dresser freshly cleaned and oiled. I had a chance to sort all the baby clothes too so I'm feeling good about everything.
 
One other thing that needed to be accomplished was finding some sort of cabinet or wardrobe to store all my table linens which had been occupying the closet in the guest room. Now that it is the boy's bedroom I need to be able to move all their clothes over from the closet in the nursery.  While driving to my dr apt this week I drove by a yard sale and saw half an Eastlake dresser. I stopped by on my way home to investigate. It is in really rough shape, but they only wanted $20 for it. The lock escutcheons are original, but the pulls are dreadful 60s era hammered pulls. I'm sure I can find a set of antique hardware to fix this up, and I might eve have it refinished at some point, but for now, $20 is exactly what I need to solve my linen storage problem.

A drive out to Milwaukie

When I drove out to Casa de Tamale for Candlemas, I brought along my camera to take a few photos of the awesome olf neon at Pietro's Pizza. I think this must have been the original location since it has such an awesome sign. In the 1980s there were many locations including the Pietro's Engine House Pizza Parlor where my family walked to dinner every Friday night in Irvington. I've never eaten at this location, but have long admired its neon.
Admittedly the photos would be better at dusk. The neon shifts so that he looks like his feet are moving very quickly. On the north side of the sign the neon was actually on, perhaps because this side faces the highway more?Next door there is a Mid Century bowling alley which has a neon sign of its own.That building has a pierced concrete block exterior screen. And a rather dull paint job.

I love a good deal!

I'm not quite ready to post photos of the middle bedroom which we use as an office yet. But here are a few progress photos. I don't have any true before photos because this room has always been to scary to photograph, not an Oprah expose on hoarders scary, but scary nonetheless. Unfortunately it has always been a dumping ground for stuff we don't know where else to put and Mr. W has a bit of a cardboard addiction. This room was the nursery for the previous owners. They had glow in the dark stars and a cardboard constellation on the ceiling for their son. The celestial theme somehow made them think that painting the ceiling a dusty plum color in a small bedroom was a good idea. It just accentuated the low ceiling height here and made this modest room seem tiny. Oh, and they painted all the trim periwinkle blue. Now, I'm seldom a fan of painted woodwork, but periwinkle? Really?So here is where we started prepping the room. Notice that that dormered ceiling slope is not just dark because of the shadows, rather it is painted the same dark color as the ceiling making that little corner a place where light goes to die. Another point I'd like to make is that I have always loved these 16 lite window sashes. That is until I had to wrap each muntin with blue painter's tape. So tedious!!!
Here is one coat of Benjamin Moore's white on the trim and Linen #__ on the ceiling. That sloped plane still casts a shadow, but now it isn't as extreme.
Another view of the white washed room.Here two coats on the ceiling and trim and one coat of #__ on the walls, except for that slope which has the ceiling color. I wanted to be positive that it should be the wall color, so I saved it for last. And my verdict is yes, having it broken up by the ceiling color draws more attention to this funny corner.Painting complete and we're ready for new carpet!One last look at the gross, blue, commercial grade carpet in this room. Seriously yuck, I wish we could have replaced it years ago!And now with the new grey, wool carpet installed. We are only going to move a few furniture pieces back into this room to stage it for moving. The Steelcase tank desk and vertical file cabinet and the black lingerie cabinet from our bedroom. Our Realtor thinks it is too crowded in our room, but I need the storage space so it can't go in the POD. I want this room to look bedroomy too, even though we use it as an office, so I went to Target and bought some simple white, Shabby Chic curtain panels and tension rods for the windows. They are way too long though, but I have a quick fix, no sew idea for them.
I realized after we moved everything out that the Steelcase desk chair form my FIL was leaking oil, and a caster keeps popping off driving Mr. W bonkers. He wanted to pitch it, but I'll put it in the POD too and fix it later. In the mean time I started looking for an inexpensive, moderny looking chair. I wasn't sure if I should go white moulded Ikea style or something a bit more Ballard Design by using an upholstered dining room chair in white, like this. A helpful Nestie suggested this chair which is awesome, but a bit more than I was hoping to spend. Plus, would it work in the Mt. Tabor house? I found this one at Cost Plus and Mr. W approved with the caveat that I had to get a chair cushion for him too. I drove out there and tried it. It was super uncomfortable and hit my back in the wrong spot. Plus it wasn't unfinished metal. The metal patina was painted on; I knew it wouldn't take much for this chair to look like crap. But I found this chair which is similar to the other white leather desk chair, but much less expensive. Plus, all furniture was 25% off so I got it for $97. As I drove home it occurred to me that it wouldn't go to waste in the next house anyway. While it might look too out of place in the formal study on the main floor, It would be perfect as a desk chair in the boys' room. Perfect all around!
On my way home I also stopped to get a ready made frame and a custom matte. It turns out Aaron Brothers is out of business so I went to Michael's. Mr. W has this nerdy engineer graph of Napolean's March to Moscow that he was wanted to frame for years. I thought it would be a nice simple, graphic piece and large enough to fill the wall above the tank desk. Turns out Michael's was having a 40% off sale on all their frames so I got a nice substantial black frame for $29. Yay for good prices on items to stage our office to sell!

Memorial Day Camping trip

16 years ago Mr. W and a few of his fraternity brothers who found themselves living and working in the PNdub planned a Memorial Day camping trip. Being novices and non natives they selected Crater Lake as their destination. Little did they know that the campsites there are typically snowed under still by Memorial Day weekend. Yet every year since they have ventured out into the funky hinterlands to make fire and sleep in the woods. They have mostly learned their lesson and select campsites east of the Cascades so they have a better chance of dry weather in May.
This camping trip is actually the origin of how we met. My friend Ms. H was working at an interior design firm in Seattle with Mr. Z. He invited her and Mr. G to join his college friends on a camping trip near Grand Coulee dam. The bachelor Mr. W was in rare form, trying to get a 'chick landing strip' sun burn, receiving punishment from a spank machine, and singing inappropriate drinking songs so loudly that he got the entire group kicked out of the campsite forcing everyone to relocate to BLM land. She found him to be so delightfully obnoxious that she decided he was perfect for me. I was still living nad working in NYC; it was then that she decided to use him as bait to assure my return to the PNdub. Working with Mr. Z's then girlfriend she hatched a plan to set us up over the internet. Both of us single, we each reluctantly agreed to correspond to each other over email, what did we have to lose really?
Surprisingly her plan worked. Mr. W and I enjoyed our 'conversations' and continued to correspond for 8 months before I moved back home to Portland. We've been together ever since.
Being the perpetually creative men that they are, each year they try to out do themselves with over the top camp site activities. From pinatas and fire surfing, keg kickball, disco croque, The Price is Right complete with the wheel (I won a console tv in the Showcase Show Down that year; yes, one of them hauled a console tv all the way into the woods), drive in movies, and nearly drowning when a visiting WASP took the helm in a rented boat one year, the Memorial Day Camping trip is always memorable.
The way Mr. Z runs the trip is to assign different duties or meals to each camper. With communal meals no one gets burnt out on cooking and we have a lot of variety. The guys also like to compete with who has the best meal. It can be challenging year after year and we also have to contend with preparing foods that are vegetarian and vegan.
This year our family is paired with The General's for Sunday night dinner. I have learned to stay the heck out of it. The men decided to do bento boxes and incorporate in karaoke as the special activity this year. Mr. W received a karaoke machine from his brother this last Christmas and we have yet to use it. He ordered a ton of CDs and we put together our own binders sorted by artist or song as well as our own song request slips. This has been top secret and he keeps reminding me not to tell anyone. Honest, my lips are sealed.
I had promised to prepare some cookies for a Neighborhood Association event and thought I may as well make some for the camping meal while I was at it. But what kind of cookie goes with a bento box? I initially thought a green tea something or something with lychee fruit would be nice. Mr. W and The General didn't have much of an opinion. I did an internet search and came up with these green tea cookies. I thought the great pop of color would be perfect. Shortbread is a great tea cookie so I also wanted to try them out for future Mah Jongg parties. They are wonderfully buttery and the green tea flavor is not too overwhelming.For the vegan option I decided to adapt these goji-almond oatmeal cookies by substituting margarine and vegetable shortening for the butter and cornstarch and water for the eggs.* Having nothing to compare it to I think they turned out great, but then oatmeal raisin cookies are my all time favorite cookie!Not surprisingly Fred Meyer did not have all the ingredients I needed so I ventured out to Uwajimaya in Beaverton. There I was able to find the matcha and the goji berries along with miso paste and some other things Mr. W needed for the savory part of the meal. I rarely have a need to shop there, but it is a great store with so many hard to find items; I really ought to remember it more often.
*1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 2 tbsp water