Snow Day

Full disclosure: it hardly ever snows in Seattle. Being extremely close to the water has that advantage. Therefore, when it does, it's kind of a cluster fudge around here. Also, where I live in Bremerton, being even closer to the water, it really never snows. So cut to a two weekends ago, I headed out to run some errands and then go over to the 'main land' to go to a party in the evening. after my Kitsap peninsula errands I headed over on the ferry to find that it had snowed an inch or two over in Seattle and the other main land areas, enough to be entertaining but not extremely treacherous in my little Honda civic. However, once I arrived back at my moms to collect my dog and head home, everything had iced over, and stayed that way through the entire next day, ratcheting up the treachery to an unsafe level. So subsequently, what I had intended to be a quick day trip turned into a 3 day ordeal. I headed home Monday evening and did an hour or so of yard work (since it still hadn't snowed at all at my house) before calling it a day and heading inside.

I love me a good day or two of sitting around and doing absolutely nothing, but after a day or two I kinda start to go crazy, so I'm glad I got some work in after all.

Then last Wednesday, The snow came in full force! I ended up stuck at my mom's house again and after a full day of just sitting around, I decided to brave the streets to the ferry, and almost took out two urban campers on the way! When I finally arrived home, it was clear that Thursday was going to be a stay at home day as well. Friday morning it was much warmer and raining, so I decided to 'dig' my way up the driveway (which basically consisted of me scooping the snow/ice that was left out of the way with a super huge metal dust pan) and made my way to work. Things have pretty much gone back to normal since then. there's still lingering snow/ice here and there, but not really on the roads. However our signature winter rain is in full effect!

Abbey update

Abbey had her surgery on Friday, she is also now up to date on her shots. yay!  Also, I had to order her a new name tag (her other one broke about a week ago) so that's on its way! word to the wise; go with stainless steel or brass for those things. the aluminum and plastic ones you get from those machines are $h%*ty!  Anyway, if you live in the Seattle area, the spay and neuter clinic in shoreline is the best, and, like, half the price of what Abbey's puppy vet wanted to charge. Amazeballs!!

She slept the whole day on Saturday after her surgery,

you can even see her little shaved belly and stitches!

I've definitely noticed a difference in her behavior once her heat had wrapped up, it turns out she had a false pregnancy, so the extra hormones had contributed to her irritability. She seems to be on the mend, still a little short on patience, but she hasn't been out to run in a while now! They said no running or jumping for a week, yikes! She was able to easily share space with children and other dogs without getting growly or defensive, so I'm hoping to put a new exercise regime in place so that will hopefully go away. She's still barky, but that probably won't go away ;)

I love her so much, she's such a sweet dog and I just want her to be at her best, I'm hoping that this will just curb her enthusiasm a bit, ya know? ;)

christmas and what not

Jared and I took a trip down the 101 for a pre-holiday vacation before he had to head off to Australia (where he is now). It was a great trip! Jared got a great deal on a surfing sweatshirt,

 We stopped at the dunes on the way to gold/nesika beach...

we also stopped to visit the dinosaurs (more on this in a separate blog)

There was great surf, and the beach was sunny and deserted. We played on the beach every day with abbey,

(we lost abbey's ball at one point...)

 and watched the sunset from the hot tub. We got a great deal on a rental house that was beautiful.

we even drove down into California for the day and saw a bunch of seals sunning themselves.... awesome! (sorry about my thumb in the pic)

all in all, it was a very relaxing and fun trip, and I'm pretty sure I want a farm by the ocean now....

The birds new homes

We have officially closed up shop for the farm! All the birds have new homes, and we're in the process of packing up all the stuff. We're getting the new larger storage unit on Thursday and we'll have a Uhaul this weekend to move it all out!
We've thoroughly enjoyed being able to learn on this property and are very much looking forward to getting everything into storage so that we can focus all of our attention on deciding where it is we want to land, so to speak. I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done as well, I'm very excited, as this is the first Christmas in 3 years that I will be able to buy Christmas presents, which is my favorite part! I'm actually looking forward to it this year ;)
I've also made Abbey her spay appointment. I'm hoping that it will help curb her aggressive behavior. She recently has had no tolerance for children, which simply will not do...

Well, in case I don't get a chance to blog before, Merry Christmas everyone!!

Jared's home!

Jared is back from Europe tonight and will be home through Christmas, and I'm so glad! We have a lot of transition happening right now, and I'm really needing him here to help me get things squared away and make some of the big decisions. Abbey has grown increasingly aggressive due to the fact that she's not fixed yet. We wanted to hold off until she was 3, which she is now, and we're really in no position to be breeding her, so that's one decision I hope doesn't take too long to come to (my opinion: snip snip little one! get ready for head cone pics!)
Also, we need to finish getting the farm stuff buttoned up, and we will definitely need a bigger storage unit if that's the case, but do we stay at the current place, or look for a cheaper/better place elsewhere? decisions decisions...
I hope to get these issues as well as a few others cleared up over the next few weeks...stay tuned!

A week without Abbey

I decided to board Abbey for this last week before the family moves back into the remodeled house. Their dog, Stella, is back, and the small condo where they're staying is, I think, too small for both dogs all day, for a full week. The boarding place we take her to is wonderful, they will even play with her during the day so she doesn't go too crazy (being a border collie, she needs that exercise!).
I have to admit, I'm going to be a bit sad without her though! This will be the first time I've been completely alone since we got her 3 years ago. I've boarded her before, but it was always for a vacation, so I didn't have too much time to think about it.
I'm sure she'll have a great time, and I'll be so excited to see her on saturday!!

Faux-versary

This weekend Jared and I went up the peninsula a bit to Sequim for a weekend away, and to kind of celebrate our anniversary (since Jared will be on the road for our real anniversary). We've been curious about the area for a while, so it was cool to get to do that. We had dinner at one of our favorite dinner spots, Ajax cafe, over in Port Hadlock. It was amazing as usual, but we didn't get to the rental house until late on Friday so we couldn't really see the view, but, holy moly! It was so nice to wake up across the street from the ocean!

this is where Abbey decided to sleep...

We went to breakfast at a great local place then headed out to check out the Sequim Saturday farmers market. Sequim is the 'lavender capital of the world' so we picked up some loose lavender, as well as a few other treasures there. We went out to port Townsend to try and hit up a couple of favorite spots, but ended up 'killing' too much time at the coffee place. We missed our window for lunch and didn't feel like waiting for dinner, so after a little shopping (the fabric store there was having a huge remnant sale!), we went back to Sequim and ate at a great little hole in the wall Mexican place. Not quite as good as Cazadores, but it's hard to hold a candle to our favorite restaurant in Poulsbo!
We finished out the evening at the Dungeness spit, it was a bit windy, but man, what a view! You can literally see Canada! There's a 5 mile walk out to the light house there, but since it was pretty late in the evening, we decided to save that for another day. We couldn't bring the dog out there, so we brought her back to the rental house and played with her on the private beach there, it was pretty heavenly :)

 Dungeness Spit

it was pretty cold

the little sign next to the diaper says biodegradable diapers take a year.

they had this posted, what a great reminder!!

Sunday we had breakfast at the house before we checked out, then headed up to the sol duc hot springs. We soaked for a while up there and took a break for a lunchy snack, but when we got back the tub we had been enjoying was closed for a cleaning cycle, so we headed back to Port Angeles to check out a couple of shops and find a dinner spot, and boy did we! We ate at Michael's Steak house and it has definitely made our top 10 northwest best restaurants. Maybe it was because their menu seemed to be reading my mind (cucumber infused vodka bloody Mary? smoked salmon Alfredo?! chocolate mousse banana parfait??! where has this place been all my life?!?!?!?!!YES PLEASE!!) I don't remember the last time I ate that much or felt that painfully full, but it was SO WORTH IT. Thank you, Olympic Peninsula. once again, you didn't fail us, even though the weather kinda did. (65 and cloudy Sunday. meh.)

thank you oly penn!

Hooray for the sunny weekend

Spring is definitely upon us here in the PacNW! It's been beautiful and sunny this last week/weekend, but my allergies have been bothering me in varying levels of severity since last Thursday, and I noticed when Jared and I went to Portland last week (which for some reason didn't make it into my last blog post) that our car was covered in yellow dust. The cedars. wonderful. I love the cedars, but when they pollenate, holy moly. It was worst last thursday, and better ever since. I'm hoping to inundate my system with homeopathic remedies, and lots of sleep and exercise. That usually does the trick for me.
I was able to get a bit of rest this last week/weekend in the midst of getting-ready-for-tour craziness this last month. As I mentioned, we did a mini road trip to Portland last week. It was a whirlwind, there early and back by the evening to move the chickens (which did make it into the last blog, lol shows where my mind is). As for this last weekend I kinda took it easy. Saturday I had dinner with a couple of friends I hadn't seen in too long (we definitely need to make it a monthly thing!) and then spent sunday with my Mom. We went to lunch at one of my favorite places in bremerton, then on to the farm so I could get a little work in.

I got a row of potatoes planted,  hope to get at least one more in that section....fingers crossed for more sunny days!!

my mom played with Abbey, who looks like she got some sweet air a few times! Go Abbster!!

It's rainy today, but I wore my new (to me) supercute summer dress anyway. I decided on a tshirt and faux leather bomber to go with since it's blustery and coldish, and I think I made it work. What do you think?

v-neck t-shirt: Old Navy; Dress: vintage (Ebay store: ebay store: that makes me feel pretty); Jacket: xhilaration; loavers: Tods

Jared is back in seattle today and tomorrow for two nights of shows in town, then back on the road. My current Jared-is-away movie obsession is breakfast at Tiffanys... I think I might be scared if I actually knew how many times I've watched it so far! ;)

Busy hard workin weekend!

Jared and I (with Abbey's help of course) moved all of our strawberries to the Lincoln property this weekend! We are in the process of moving out of the property on Hwy 3 that we have tended for the last 4 seasons and will be focusing on just the one property over on Lincoln in Poulsbo, WA. All of the chickens and remaining ducks are over there, and now that the strawberries are out, that just leaves the sunchokes! Then we have to move the bird houses and remaining fencing and we're outta there! We hope to have all of this complete before Jared has to be in Seattle for a couple of the band rehersals in two weeks, so we'll see....
Here's the husband, hard at work!!

 here's what a truck load of strawberries looks like... we had 2 by the way...

 here's a few more, see I work too!!

It was sunny most of the day on Saturday, and rained most of the day on Sunday, but we got it done! I think that it would be realistic to say that there are close to 1000 plants that we moved. (we originally planted 300 2 years ago, and we kinda just let them go.... until now) I'm so looking forward to fresh strawberries!!!  Abbey was a very good girl too, she had fun chasing the chickens around and was very respectful of the bashful ducks. (one was nabbed by a bald eagle last weekend, we scared the eagle away just in time, and it only got her leg, so she's mostly hanging out in the chicken tractor while she's on the mend) There's 4 survivors from our original flock of 20, 3 years ago.

So me and my sore muscles are back to Seattle and back to work today! Managed to get the boy out for a walk right after nap #1 today, and it was a success! We walked up to Trader Joes, and wandered around the neighborhood for a bit while he had a bottle, made it back home for some down time and 'solid' food before nap #2, no melt down mid walk! yee!

I also wore one of my favorite outfits today! My style is pretty casual, obviously, and I have this great vintage sweater that it's a struggle for me to NOT wear every day. I got it last year on a camping trip Jared and I took to Port Townsend.  I also was able to mix it with my favorite sweat pants too. I try not to wear sweats out too much, since being a nanny can be a slippery slope fashion-wise, I do have a few pairs that aren't too shlubby to mix in.  This top is one of my faves too, it's this super soft muslin-y square necked number with mexican style embroidery=l.o.v.e.

 

hat: Jessica Simpson, Top: vintage, sweater: vintage, sweat pants: forever 21, wing tips: Dr. Martens

I will be working a full week this week and next week, and I'm really looking forward to it. I can't believe it's almost April already...wowzer