My First House

Today I went with Michael and Kirby to the Parade of Homes.  They had some amazing houses, of course mine will not compare to these, but I still love mine.  I have been a little apprehensive about using so many different colors in the different rooms.  But, today I saw lots of color.  One house had probably 10 different colors throughout the house.

So, I believe I have chosen (for today) a green for the living room and kitchen.  In the kitchen I will accent with yellows and the living room will have the red and the black and white.  Oh, I can’t wait…….

So, Delaine and Jackson met me over at the house this evening.  Jackson even started cleaning for me!

I wanted to talk COLOR.  Of course, I have already decided the color for my office.  Now I’m trying to decide a color for the living room and kitchen.  I keep on coming back to green for the kitchen, but then I will see yellow and lean that direction.  Then, I saw HGTV doing a silvery gray and I loved it.  So many options!!!!

If I do a lighter yellow, I think I could run it through the living room, hall, and kitchen.  If I did green, I would keep it just in the kitchen.  Silver I could run throughout the house  as well, but I think I’m going to put that in my guest bedroom.

So, I think I’m going to go with a sunkissed yellow and accent with greens in the kitchen.  My couch is a brick red and my accent chairs are zebra print!  Any ideas on how yellow will look with this?  Remember, it’s a pale yellow.

I have included a picture of the kitchen and living room.

Well, I got some great news on the loan today.  The appraisal came back and all went well, much better than expected.   I thought I was going to have to correct a few problems before the bank would loan the money.  However, I spoke to my lender today and he said everything looks good!  YEA!!!!!  I can’t wait to start painting!!!!!

Speaking of painting, I have included a picture of the room that is inspiring my office/entertainment room.  Tell me what you think!

I love the wall color and of course the black and white with it. I love the pink, but don't know that I will do that because I will have red everywhere else in my house.

I will be going to the Tyler Parade of Homes with Michael and Kirby this weekend, so hopefully I will get some more ideas for the rest of the house.  My main goal is to go with fun colors.  I have been living for the past 6 years with white colored walls and am sick of it!  I need color!!!!!!

Thank you all for keeping up with our Seattle Trip.  I/We had a blast!  Sadly, I had to go back to work today and enter the real world again.  But, I have very exciting news!  While Erin is continuing her summer in Seattle, my new adventure is buying a house.

I have found a house and this blog will be turning into “My First House.”  Feel free to follow along as I twist and turn through the path of buying a house (I hope the curves are not as sharp as some of the ones we took on our way to Seattle!).  I know it will definitely be an experience!  Please feel free to comment and give me ideas while this is my first time ever to do this!  Most of all, ENJOY!

In the spirit of things, I have decided to continue with a blog of my own describing my summer as an intern in Seattle.  If anyone would like to follow me this summer, you may go to http://erinsseattleadventures.wordpress.com.

Thanks! ~Erin

Today, we decided to make the trip to the Pacific Ocean!  We knew it would be a little bit of a drive, but thought it would be well worth it.

We left later than planned, but it gave us a little more  time to sleep in.  We took the Ferry across to Bainbridge Island and then drove to Ruby Beach.  The ferry was actually right across from Erin’s apartment, so we didn’t have to drive very far.  We drove onto the ferry, and we were on our way!

We docked about 45 minutes later and made the longer than expected, 4 hour drive to the beach.  As expected, it was well worth it!

On our way, we drove through the Olympic Mountains.  While these mountains were not near as high as the ones we have driven through previously, they were still as beautiful.  Of couse they were very different.  In the Olympic Mountains, they have a few different Rain Forests.  On the sides of the roads, there were wild ferns growing, different looking trees with something growing on them, and crystal clear lakes.

The most beautiful lake I have ever seen was Crescent Lake.  The water was so blue.  We were able to snap a few shots of the lake and you can see a glimpse of the blue waters.

We also drove through Forks, WA.  This is where the movie Twilight was set.

We finally arrived at Ruby Beach.  We had a short little walk down to the beach where we had to climb over driftwood, walk through millions of pebbles, and wade through streams of water.

The ocean was just as expected;  huge cliffs in the middle of the water with waves splashing against them, a lighthouse out on a small island, and ice cold water.  We were able to take our shoes off and walk in the water for a little while, not long though because our feet would become numb.  Erin was able to pick up a piece of driftwood that looked as if it was sanded down to be as smooth as a river rock. Along the beach we saw seaweed that looked so fake, muscles, crab shells, one dead salmon, and lots of driftwood and pebbles.  We finally trekked back to the car and headed back to the ferry.

The drive back was surprisingly an hour shorter.  I really did not think I drove that much faster than Erin!  We drove up to the ferry terminal just in time to pull back on to the ferry and float back into Seattle.

Today, we started the day quite leisurely.  We slept in and ate waffles at the hotel before we checked out of the Homewood Suites.  We then walked down a few blocks to Pike Place Market.  On our way, we visited the very first Nordstrom.  It was very neat to see all of the designer clothing that we couldn’t afford.  Then we took a short stroll to the Nordstrom Rack…this was more our style!

Pike Place Market was an awesome experience! When you walk in, the aisles are just filled with people bustling about picking out fresh produce, fish and flowers. They had to be the most beautiful flowers…and only $15 for a nice bouquet!  The market was filled with local vendors selling their wares–everything from hand-blown glass vases to old vinyl records. The atmosphere was very unique and a little smelly.  We also were able to see the first-ever Starbucks with a risque mermaid on the logo.

Afterward, we took the famous drive up Queen Anne hill.  We didn’t think we would ever make it to the top, the hills were so steep! We got an awesome view though.  we then tried to find the famous troll under the Aurora bridge but we didn’t have any luck…maybe that will be a project for me while I am here this summer.

We then went to see the salmon climb up the fish ladder at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. The directions that we had were not great, so we got a nice scenic drive to the Woodland Zoo, back down town, then back out again.  We finally made it, and it was definitely worth it!!!  The locks were incredible.  As soon as we stepped out of the car, we heard live music coming from the park area.  It was a community orchestra made of Boeing Employees that was giving a free concert.  As we headed down to the locks, we noticed a crowd of people gathered around a rail, so we had to investigate.  They were watching the U.S. Army Corps of engineers guide boats from the Puget Sound back into Lake Washington.  It was the best part of the whole trip!  We were in awe as watched the water level rise and fall so that the ships could pass from one body of water to the next.  There were two lanes that the boats could pass through, one small and the other large.  We waited in hopes that a large ship would pass through but to no avail.

After watching the ships pass through the locks, we proceeded to the famous Fish Ladder in hopes that we would glimpse the salmon working their way upstream.  Needless to say we only saw 2 poor fish in the viewing area.  They say that the best time of the year to catch them is in July and August, I guess we were a little too early.

After leaving the Locks, we made our way back Downtown so that Erin could move into her new apartment.  It was definitely an experience.  While Erin was checking in, Kristin was waiting in the car.  well, we had the bright idea to pull up closer to the door…that didn’t really work out as planned. Kristin almost hit a poor Oriental woman in the crosswalk and got yelled at by a local to “GET OFF HER PHONE!”  Well, she did make it back to the apartment, a little worse for wear, and proceeded to make Erin drive the rest of the way to the parking garage.

Erin did get moved into her apartment, after finding out that she had an unwelcome roommate that she did not know about until 5 minutes before walking into her apartment.  Let’s just hope that this is not a bad experience!

We were thoroughly exhausted after all of the moving in and decided to take it easy.  We ended up walking a couple of blocks to a movie theater and paid $10.50 for a ticket to a not that great theater.  I will say that the movie was worth it.  We highly recommend My Life in Ruins. It was a very cute movie!  We ended the day by having a Chocolate Tuxedo Cream Cheesecake and a Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake. Delicious!!

So today, we spent the entire day walking around the streets of Seattle.  Boy are we tired!  We began the day around 9, when we walked to the Monorail.  We took the short trip out to the Seattle Center, where we visited the Space Needle.  This was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair, which was held in Seattle, and it stands 520 feet above the Seattle skyline.  The view from the top was incredible!  However, it was really cold up there!

After we descended, we made the short trip to the Experience Music Project, which is a very cool museum dedicated to the history of rock music.  The design of the building is very unusual, which you will see in our pictures; the inspiration behind the design was smashed guitars.  (Let us know if you can see that!) Some of the exhibits that we saw included the Guitar Gallery, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a hands-on lab to experiment with different musical instruments, the Jim Henson Gallery that had some of the old puppets, and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

Next, we trekked down to the harbor to board the Argosy Lakes Cruise, which was a two-hour cruise dedicated to the homes of the rich and famous.  We were the first people to get to the dock, so we thought there might not be that many people going.  However, we were wrong!! After we chose our seat and got comfortable, a lady that only spoke very accented English decided to wiggle herself into the tiny spot between Erin and the couple to her right!! If this wasn’t annoying enough, she then proceeded to call her husband over as well, who plopped himself on top of the couple next to us!! For the rest of the cruise, we had to huddle together to avoid them.

Along the cruise, our tour guide Kelly was wonderful in pointing out the various attractions along Lakes Union and Washington.  We were able to witness a seaplane take-off and also land.  We saw numerous floating houses that went for a pretty penny.  The “fixer-upper” that was built in the 1800s was relatively cheap at only $700,000!  Most of them were in the $1-3 million range.

We passed under the longest floating bridge in the world, saw a river otter, a pair of bald eagles, and passed the wetlands of Washington!  We also saw the home of Bill Gates, the founder and CEO of Microsoft!  His home was 66,000 square feet in size and contained an indoor/outdoor pool, 24 bathrooms, and a library with revolving bookshelves! He recently hosted a small dinner party where all 50 Governors and their wives attended. Before a guest arrives at the Gates home, they fill out a questionnaire about their likes and dislikes, such as music that they like, temperatures that they like, and other personal likes.  When they arrive at his home, they are given a lapel pin that is encoded with all the information they gave on the questionnaire.  When the guest walks into a room, the temperature immediately changes to their personal preference!  Very cool!

Other interesting homes that we saw were of the CEO of Starbucks and a previous Home of the Week from the Wall Street Journal.

At the end of our cruise, we were able to glimpse the houseboat that was the setting of Sleepless in Seattle! We learned that the entire the film was being made, it did not rain a single time!!! The director had to hire the Seattle Fire Department to spray the houseboat so that it would appear that it was raining! Sounds expensive!! Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the cruise except for the horrible sunburn that I received!

After the cruise, we walked back to the Experience Music Project to eat lunch and finish the tour.  We took the Monorail back downtown and then walked a couple of blocks to the Seattle Art Museum.  We wish that we had pictures to share of our experience, but unfortunately photography was not allowed.  However, there were many interesting works of art present, including some Native American art, a toilet, and a coat made out of military dog tags.

We then walked around to the front of the museum, and lo and behold! there was Erin’s new apartment!  We walked back to our hotel, but stopped along the way to eat gelato.  We thoroughly enjoyed our day, and hope to spend a more relaxing day around Seattle tomorrow. ~Erin

P. S. Pictures are now added. Thank you for your patience!

First of all, we would like to apologize for our blog being posted a day late.  We were so exhausted once we made it to our hotel; we could not think to write anything. Also, a quick note from the editor, we would like to retract the caption on the animal from the Wednesday Post.  The animal that we thought was a deer was actually a Pronghorn Antelope (Thank you for the observation, Robert/Daddy!).  This was exciting to hear, especially since deer are common in our “neck of the woods.”

Pronghorn antelope, not a deer!

Thursday, we started off the day on time ,once again…Wow, we are doing good.  We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to Shoshone Falls.  On our way, we saw an elk and a family of beavers. It would be nice to say the elk was in the wild, but it was not.  It was still cool.  The beavers, however, were in the wild.

The waterfall was amazing!  It was funny, because as we were driving down into the canyon, it seemed small.  We were kind of  disappointed.  Then, we realized we were just seeing the top of the falls.  It was definitely worth it.  No disappointments here!   It was absolutely breathtaking!  The Shoshone Falls, which are located on the Snake River, are known as the Niagara Falls of the West.  They are 212 feet high, making them 36 feet taller than Niagara Falls.   As you look at our pictures below, you will notice the rainbows in the water.  This was a wonderful experience!

We continued traveling through Idaho and Oregon.  We did not get a very good picture of the Oregon welcome sign, because it was hidden behind a tree.  We learned an interesting thing about Oregon that all their gas stations are full service.  We did not have to pump our own gas!  I think I might move here.  However, they did think Erin was a “SIR.”  This was funny to Kristin, not so much for Erin.  (I told her she needed to grow her hair out.)

While in Oregon, we passed through more mountains.  It was interesting that these mountains were different from any others that we had seen previously.  We can’t exactly explain the difference, just look at the pictures!  We did have a very steep descent on one specific mountain where we stopped at the viewpoint and took pictures.  Kristin was driving at this point was scared to death!!!  I stayed at 45 mph the whole way down and was so worried the brakes would go out!  We did think we were going to see an 18-wheeler use the runaway ramp.  We had the camera ready, but the truck just had some bad exhaust.  While this would have been an exciting and exhilarating event, I guess it was better for the trucker that his brakes were working.

We finally made it into Washington where we enjoyed the beautiful scenery of farms, apple trees, and grape vineyards.    This made us want to sing “America the Beautiful.”  In fact, we did try this and even tried harmonizing.  We made it through the first phrase and then could not stop from laughing to sing the rest. We traveled through the Snoqualmie Mountains, where we saw people learning how to ski–at least that’s what we think they were doing.  I (Kristin) even got to hold a snowball!!!!  This was the most exciting thing of the entire trip (remember I’m a Texas girl!)  We made it to Seattle about 7:30 and checked in.

We took a brisk walk down to Pike Place Market and saw Puget Sound.  After meeting some pretty interesting people on the streets, we decided it would be best not to be walking down the streets after dark, so we headed back pretty quickly.

Altogether, this was a great day.

Today was a very long day, but it was all worth it.  We planned on going through Wyoming, but ended up not.  Erin’s dad suggested a more scenic route.  This took us about 2 hours longer, but we enjoyed it!

We started off this morning about 9:00 as planned.  We got just on the other side of Denver when we spotted a scenic outlook.  We, of course, had to take it.  This took us about 5 miles off the road, but it was so foggy once we reached the lookout, we couldn’t see a thing.  We did, however see a sign to Buffalo Bill’s grave.  Twenty minutes later, we were back on the interstate.

We traveled through the Rocky Mtns.  The highest point that was marked was at 11,013 ft where we went through the Eisenhower Tunnel.  We actually saw snow on the side of the road.  Also, because we were so higher in altitude we were warned about any bottles we have might burst.  We assumed anything in the ice chest would be fine and PRAYED that anything outside of the ice chest would not blow up.  Well, as we hit the higher altitudes, we hear a pop.  We both freaked out, not knowing what it was.  We pulled over at the quickest and safest place.  We could not find it.  Not the bottles of water, the Dr. Pepper, or the mustard.  Finally when we pulled over for lunch, we realized it was a bag of unopen chips.  Thanks goodness it was not a liquid!!!!  Yea!

For a picnic lunch, we stopped at the Glenwood Canyon.  The Colorado River ran through the middle.  The Glenwood Canyon lasted about 12 1/2 miles.  While traveling through the Rocky Mtns. and the Canyon, we went through 7 tunnels!

We entered Utah, and the scenery changed drastically, from beautiful tree lined mountains into practically a desert.  This, however allowed to go just a little over the speed limit.

While traveling through the first part of Utah, we saw a herd (does 5 count as a herd?) of deer.  At least, we think that is what they were.  They were just hanging out beside the side of the interstate watching the cars go by.  I’m sure that’s the most exciting thing they can do out there!

Our next stop was in Salt Lake City.  We saw the state capital and the Mormon Temple.  The temple was beautiful, I will have to say though it was very odd.  They had a wall all the way around the “temple square”.  Makes you wonder what goes on back there!

We saw the Salt Lake, but not much.  Unfortunately, this was a little farther off the road than planned.  We did snap a couple of pictures of what we could see.

We finally made it to Twin Falls at 11:00 pm.  WOW, what a long day!   – Kristin