Why Fall is my Favorite Season

Posted in Holiday, Life, Seasons, Seattle by beckyjael

I go through phases. Sometimes I call it Fall. And other times Autumn. I really love the word Autumn, but Fall comes so much more easily. Autumn is one of those words to me. When I say it, it feels a bit presumptuous, like when someone is trying to seem smarter than they really are. I find that I am not brave enough to use it all of the time, even though I love it so much. And then I think how weird it is that I think you have be brave to use a word. Or that I love a word. But there it is. And whether I call it Fall or Autumn, I love this season so much.

I love the changing colors of the leaves, the gradual merging of green to yellow to orange to red. How the colors make the trees glow in the sun. The leaves laying on piles at the base of the trees, occasionally floating up and around you in a small wind or with the passing of a car. Or as we discovered last year, being fiercely swept away by the howling Snoqualmie gusts, nothing small about it. Vu recently discovered that my type of person has a name. Leaf Peeper. And the lucky souls that have fulfilled their own life long ambition of enjoying New England in the fall contribute to 3 billion dollars in tourist revenue annually. Hopefully soon I will be among the contributor’s. It’s on the bucket list. The list that only seems to grown, and never diminish, despite the items that get check marked.

I love sitting on the couch with a book and a blanket, listening to the sound of the rain falling. And now enjoying the fireplace as well.

I love hearing the crunching of leaves under my feet. Although I don’t get that much anymore, thanks to my beautiful rain. I was able to enjoy it this Fall though, and for 3 days I was happy that it wasn’t raining.

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14Oct2014

Summer Hikes

Posted in Seattle, Travel by beckyjael

This summer Rachel and I tried to go on as many hikes as we could. We would go on the Saturdays that Vu was in class, but we only ended up going about once a month. There are a lot of hikes in the area that we have never done and have wanted to. This was actually a really nice summer this year in Washington. Sometimes a little bit too nice for me… I don’t enjoy the heat. At all. And yes I know that our heat is nothing in comparison to most other places, but that was a huge reason why I moved here. However, it was nice to be able to enjoy it and be outside.

In April we started with Tiger Mountain. It was pretty, but the whole thing looked the same. An incline with moss covered trees.

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2Sep2014

Bow Tie Baby Shower

Posted in DIY, Party by beckyjael

A couple of weekends ago I threw a baby shower for my friend Carrie and her baby boy due in October. Her nursery colors are orange, royal blue and grey and she wanted a bow tie theme. I had so much fun doing this and I am so excited to meet Benson in a few weeks.

For the decorations I made paper dot garlands, fabric banners, and a tissue paper tassel garland. I had a bunch of cobalt bottles and vases that I used for the our wedding so I pulled a bunch of them out and added a few orange flowers. The “It’s A Boy” banner was from another shower Carrie had earlier that she let me use too.

When the guests arrived I had them fill out little “Wishes For Benson” cards that I made.

For lunch we had chicken salad sandwiches, bow tie pasta salad, orange and blueberry fruit bow ties and crunchy Cheetos, with orange creamsicle punch to drink. I made the napkins and silverware into little bow ties, and made bow tie ribbons around the mason jars for the drinks, both of which I saw on Pinterest, but I was really happy with how they turned out.

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20Aug2014

Glacier National Park

Posted in Travel by beckyjael

In July my Mom, Dad and little Sister, Chani, all flew into Seattle and then with Rachel we all drove out to Montana. We spent a few days camping in Glacier National park and then a few days at a family reunion. I have wanted to see Glacier for a few years and it was beautiful. Lots of mountain vistas and waterfalls, both of which I am a huge fan of. We were planning on going to Banff in Canada, but that didn’t end up working out and I was very happy with Glacier as the alternative. We still want to make it back up to Banff sometime though. We went when I was a teenager and the glacial melt, white/blue water lakes are amazing. I ended up having surgery to remove my gallbladder a week and a half before we left and so I was still recovering a bit and I didn’t feel up to doing as much hiking as I would have wanted to do in Banff so I thought it worked out pretty well.

Our first day in Glacier we hiked Avalanche Creek and towards the beginning there is a really cool waterfall, just the first of many I would love. It is on the side of the trail in a ravine. It’s really more a series of small waterfalls as the river runs through the ravine.

The trail took us up to a lake surrounded by a few different waterfalls. Which to be honest was a little bit disappointing. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as some of the other lakes and waterfalls. Continue reading →

4Jun2014

House Tour + Housewarming Party

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Party by beckyjael

Things with the house are finally mostly finished, and it feels so good to just be at home. Both Vu and I often say how much we love living here. Our latest adventure with home ownership was one that really freaked me out. We had tent caterpillars. I get all creeped out and itchy just thinking about it. Disgusting!!! But it is worth it to be able to have a home we love so much. So finally here is the photo tour. Welcome to our home! 🙂

Warning, there are a lot of pictures. I hope you like it!

The entryway.

I love the video my church came out with around Easter, “Because of Him”, so I wrote down some of my favorite parts of the text and that is what I used in the quote boards. I cut 3/4″ plywood to 14×14″ and painted them white, then used a stencil to pencil in the letters until I got them where I wanted them to be and then painted it by hand. It would have been faster to use a stencil I could just paint through, but I couldn’t find one with simple letters and that would fit all the text I wanted to get on. It took me about a day to paint it. The “Because of Him” parts are a 1/4″ piece of board that I cut to 13 1/2″ long and glued on after I painted it. The nail board is of Angel Moroni, but I want to make the strings thicker, I just ran out of embroidery thread and haven’t gotten more yet. The bottom middle white piece is 1/4″ plywood that I glued large popsicle sticks to in a herringbone pattern and then painted white and attached a knob to hang something from. The canvas prints I had printed from Costco, their 14×14 gallery wrap.

The main living area’s are on the second floor, and all form one large room. We really like this layout (except that I have to always have the dishes done before people come over).

One of our favorite feature’s of the house is the wood floors. They are beautiful! Followed closely by the stone backsplash and the cabinet/counter area in the “dining room”. The builder called it a butler’s pantry, but I wouldn’t call it that. However I am not sure what to call it.

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3Jun2014

Olympic National Park

Posted in Travel by beckyjael

Over Memorial Weekend I went camping to Olympic National Park with Rachel. Vu couldn’t come because he had class on Saturday and was going on his 6th week of being on call for work. We left in the afternoon on Friday and drove to the campground. We went to the coastal part of the park. This was our second time to this part of the park, the first time was 9 month’s after we moved to Washington, 7 years ago. We really love this park. We are both a huge fan of water: ocean’s, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, rain, etc… which was a big factor in our decision to move to Western Washington.

Even though Rachel and I always talk on the phone a least a couple of times a week, we still didn’t have enough time to catch up on everything we wanted to share with each other in the four hour drive to the campground. I love being a twin! We stayed at the Kalaloch campground which is in the most southern tip of the coastal part of the park. We love this campground because it is right in between all of the beaches, which is our favorite part. The whole drive, from Snoqualmie to Kalaloch, the roads were lined with tons of these yellow flowers that I love. They remind me of Wisteria, but yellow. We got to the campground at 7:30 and set up camp and then started a fire to make tin foil dinners and s’mores. We LOVE tin foil dinners. We aren’t the most experienced fire starters, so I was very happy that we were able to successfully cook the dinners.

I have seen a ton of different ideas for s’mores so we tired out some ones that were new to us. Our favorite was the Andes mints. But the Samoa’s were really good too!

On Saturday we drove to Ruby Beach and walked around the beach for a while. Then we headed up towards Forks and La Push.

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15May2014

Magnetic Wood Holiday Board

Posted in Decorations, DIY by beckyjael

I LOVE Holidays! I LOVE decorating! I LOVE making things out of wood! And I LOVE changing things up! So ever since I saw this tutorial a couple of years ago, I have wanted to make one. I finally had the time (and my own saw) to make it. I followed the tutorial but with a few changes.

Instead of using one large piece of bead board, I found bead board slats and cut them to the length I wanted and then glued them together. I did not do this as perfectly as I would have liked and now that I have done it once, I could do it much better a second time around. But lets be honest. I never get around to a second time, I always move on to the next project. So it is good enough.

I also couldn’t find any roof flashings, which is what the tutorial uses for the metal magnetic part. I don’t even know what they are. And neither did the lovely people that work at Home Depot. Every Home Depot employee I asked stared back at me blank faced. So instead I wandered around the store with a magnet looking for flat pieces of square metal. I found one that was 12″ square, but I have no idea what it is actually for. It was in the back of the store around the metal plate things that go over your heating vents. Whatever those are called. Anyway, I liked the nice even edges and I know from experience that cutting metal with perfectly nice straight edges is impossible, so I decided to keep it that size. Which meant I decided to make bigger, more elaborate holiday pieces. To cover more area. No teeny tiny decoration on a huge piece of metal for me please. Which means that I turned a 2 day project into a 2 week project. Yay! As Vu would attest, this is pretty much how every project of mine goes. Why would I want to make things simple or easy? Come on. But I love the process and the result, so it works for me. Even if Vu says we will never pay someone how much it would cost me (in time spent) to make it. Which is also why Vu’s dream of retiring early to run my craft business will never come to fruition.

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6May2014

House Building GIF

Posted in Life by beckyjael

We bought our house in the beginning of April of 2013, but then had to wait for them to build it. Those 9 months seemed to last forever. They started construction at the end of July and I would go up after work as often as possible to watch the progress. We were very anxious for it to be finished and I was excited to watch it go up. It was a very happy day in the middle of December when it was finally finished and we were able to move in. We have loved living here so much, we feel so blessed to call it our home. We have also really enjoyed furnishing and decorating and getting settled in. Vu in particular LOVES his “man cave” and it did turn out pretty awesome, even if he has to put his work office in the closet. We have also learned a lot about being home owners, this being our first time. There are a lot of things that we had never thought about before. In case any one is wondering you have to connect the water line before you can run the dishwasher. It works much better that way.

I put together a GIF with the pictures I took as they build it. I love seeing the changes in the seasons and especially the tree out front as the leaves change color and fall. For some reason the quality of the pictures decreased in the GIF but I had a really hard time getting it to save at all, so you know. I am still very new at Photoshop so I was happy that it actually works, seeing as I am so great with technology… But I am learning.

It snowed the week we moved in, I love seeing everything blanketed in white.

26Apr2014

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Posted in Holiday, Life, Seattle by beckyjael

A couple of weeks ago Rachel and I went to the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley. We went on Saturday and decided we were not going to do that again. It was a beautiful, perfect sunny Washington day, so of course everyone else decided they also wanted to go to see the tulips. The traffic was terrible. But the tulips were beautiful. We had a really good time and hopefully will make it an annual tradition. Vu went with me last year and once was definitely enough for him. It’s a good thing I have a twin sister to go with me.

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