A few photos of Seattle

My camera is so big and heavy that I was enjoying using my iphone to take photos and video. But it was time to get the real camera out and take a few photos. The first time we ever stayed at this hotel was when we flew home from Paris. In the health club there is a black and white photo of the silhouette of the space needle looking through some sort of structure. I always liked it and I wanted to know where it was taken from. After researching it a little we found the view point park the other day and I took quite a few photos. It had quite an amazing view from this little park in the midst of a residential hilltop neighbourhood overlooking downtown.

Getting Excited!

I'm getting excited about decorating Aubrey's new room. It's quite a bit larger then her old room and she's not a baby any more so it's time for some colour and fun!
I've decided on a pink/orange them with a vintage/modern style. I might even paint a wall the orange I'm using for the dining room...not to sure yet. Maybe just a piece of furniture.
I just ordered the above to vintage linens from etsy for sooo cheap $6 total including shipping!
I'm hoping to make a duvet cover and some pillows out of it.
The colour scheme was from an alphabet poster that I found on etsy and decided to recreate myself which I will get printed off.

Playing with Paint (again)

So I've been trying to frantically pick paint colours for our apartment because they are coming to carpet the place next weekend and we want to paint before that happens. I first picked a dark teal colour because I thought blues would work well with the brown carpet but it felt too safe, so now I'm back to my original colour choice: orange! I was too scared to do it, but now that I can see what it would look like in this photo I like it. It's a small wall, so I don't think it will be too scary.
I still like brown and think it will go with the orange.
I have a Florence, Italy photo I took on canvas which is a panoramic to put over the fireplace that has bright orange, greens and browns in it that I think will tie it all together.
Now it's just a matter of finding the right shade of orange! Any suggestions out there? Do you know of an orange that you've seen in person that looks like what I'm looking for??

I have a huge list of things to buy from Ikea but we'll have to start with only a few things, can't do it all at once! Once we have our new carpet we will buy a new bed for Aubrey, a couch and a dresser for our room. We will be without a few things, but I think we can manage for a little while. We are going to use our patio table and chairs inside as our dining set for the meantime!

PS. Any suggestions on what to do with the 2 sets of corner windows - window coverings etc?
Especially in the dining room where a curtain would be in the middle of the wall behind a hutch??

We found a place!

Well, after a last minute check on the computer this evening a new place came up for rent so I called and within the hour we went and saw it and signed an application.
Here's the link: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/2046300655.html

It's in the area and ward we wanted and it's just a block away from a great playground and a 15 min walk to a little village and shopping and an even bigger playground as well as a community center where they have some toddler activities and an outdoor swimming/wading pool.

The place is the best we've seen so far (within our budget anyways). The bedrooms are large and the closets are large. The living space is a great size and it's the largest kitchen we've seen. It's not super new but it might be the newest we've seen too. It has lots of cupboard space which we need, along with an extra outside entrance straight into the kitchen.
It has a balcony the whole width of the apartment (about 30ft) so it should be large enough for our BBQ and our furniture. We can even keep the kayaks on it. We were concerned about actually finding a place to keep them. It also comes with a storage locker for all our Christmas and camping gear. There are a couple small common yard areas but are quite nice and might be useful for taking photos in. There are 2 pretty steep stairways up to our unit, but that's the only sacrifice - that and there isn't any laundry in the unit, but in the building. It's a triplex, so there's only 3 units so it shouldn't be too bad. At least I don't have to go to a laundromat. The triplex is 3 floors with parking and storage on the ground level, then one unit is the whole 2nd level and our unit and the 3rd unit splits the top floor with all the entrances on the outside.

The landlord gave us this month free so we are going to get the key tomorrow and then we can go and paint or do whatever we want in the meantime. It takes about 10 days for the moving company to move our stuff, so we won't move until it can get here.

We were worried about passing an application as they do a credit check etc. and our credit doesn't transfer from Canada to here. But no credit is better then bad credit. The fact that we own a house and have good credit seemed good enough to this landlord. He said ultimately he has to know if the tenants will be good tenants and he was happy with us as his tenants and offered to give us the keys right away...so I guess that means we're accepted??

We'll finalize everything tomorrow after church and then we'll be off to visit our friends who live an hour south of here!

More Shopping

Yesterday and today I was fortunate enough to get Aubrey to sleep while walking in her stroller so I wasn't stuck in the hotel in the dark and quiet for 3 hours.!
Yesterday I got back from seeing houses around 12:30 and tried to get her to sleep but it wouldn't work so I went out for a walk downtown and she crashed. I put a blanket over the stroller and did some shopping. Prior to this she has been impossible to take shopping - grocery or other. She won't sit in carts or stay in a stroller, she wants to walk and be free and get into everything. She's definitely in her "terrible two's" and is trantruming etc. So this was a pleasant surprise to be able to do something I wanted to do, and in peace and quiet!
Today we went to a park and played then went and saw a rental (it was terrible like most of the others) and then headed to the mall. It took a while but she finally fell asleep and I was able to do some more shopping. Yesterday she slept for 2 hours and today only 1.5 hours. (Normally she sleeps 3, but I'll take it!).

Anyways, here are a few finds. I got it all at Ross - like winners but cheaper.
Jacket: $30
Boots: $20
Shoes: $12
Grey shirt: $10
Black shirt with lace $10
Not too shabby.

Fun at Value Village

As I was driving around to look at rentals yesterday I came across a Value Village, so of course I had to stop. It might have been the cleanest VV I'd ever been in!
I bought Aubrey a few more small books as we've exhausted her small collection that we brought with us. I found a cloth book that I've been looking for to use on Sundays. It has zipper, snap, shoe tying, buckle and velcro activities. I also found her a fisher price doll house. She played with it there forever even though there was no furniture in it! The kitchen has a built in oven and fridge with doors that she loved playing with. I had wanted to get one but they are so expensive and thought I'd wait. I finally found the price tag on it and it was $6.99 so I had to buy it!
It folds up pretty good and is in good condition, just needs a soak in the bathtub!

On another note, we are loving our iphones! They are expensive but worth it!
Last night I downloaded a free LDS app that contains all the scriptures, all church magazines, all the hymns and all the videos of conference and everything in text, video and audio. I think it's pretty amazing to have all that with you on your phone. I don't have to add heavy books to my diaper bag on sundays anymore! And I'll always have some reading material on the go.

Still House Hunting

We have had a hard time trying to find a rental that will be right for us. There's such a huge range to look at here - in price, in size and location and it's a little confusing!
We've picked 2 different areas (at opposite ends of the city) that we like best and now it's just hard finding some places in those areas that meet our needs and budget.
Yesterday we went to church in our favourite area to find Jared's last mission companion sitting in the same row across the isle from us! He had mentioned that he had a companion from Seattle but didn't know if he even still lived here (it was 10 years ago) etc. But there he was with his family: 2 little boys and one on the way. So they showed us around. Aubrey stayed in Nursery the whole time and didn't even flinch when we left! There was a play slide - so that makes sense. There are a lot of young families in the ward with a large primary and a huge nursery - they have 2 classes!

The GPS on our new iphones are a huge help in getting around. I've spent this last week doing nothing but driving - looking through areas, driving by rental listings to narrow them down to view. We've seen a handfull and there's a couple that are close but not perfect.
We saw an absolutely beautiful little house with a nice yard a patio that all the landscaping and maintenance is taken care of in the rent, it had all hardwood floors with a new maple kitchen with granite countertops a living and a small family room a master with lots of closets and an ensuite bath (3 beds total) with a storage shed in the back yard and an apple tree . . . but the neighbourhood is TERRIBLE, it's run down, it's close to a nice area and a huge great park and playground but it just didn't seem right. I went home, looked up the area on wikipedia and found out that because of its multi-culturalism there has been gang activity including the crips and the bloods and so, it's off my list. It's really very sad though as now I compare everything to that house! We will stick to the good areas even if it means an old ugly kitchen and other compromises...I guess.
The photo above is the neighbourhood that we like best but is really expensive. It's a nice clean hilltop neighbourhood of the views of downtown.