It's Not Easy Being Green

We've been experiencing the unusual in Portland for the last two weeks now - a snowy winter. We generally get snow at least once every winter here in Portland, but it usually melts within a day or two. This snow just won't go away! In fact, it just keeps snowing more! Luckily I have an all wheel drive Subaru plus chains so we've still been able to make it over to the house and our daily trips to Lowes and Home Depot.

With the frozen weather, both of us have had plenty of time off of work which means plenty of time to work on the house. We didn't leave the house until after 11:00 pm most of the past week. We are working our buns off to get this place as done as possible by next week because no matter how far along we are, we have to move on the 31st. The good news is I finished painting the other two bedrooms this week. The bigger bedroom (which we'll probably rent out) is a light brown and the smaller bedroom (which we'll use as an office) is a buttery yellow. I'm really happy with the colors and how everything turned out. Choosing the color for the living room has been an entirely different story.

We decided that we wanted to go with a green for the living room. Turns out that green is a really difficult color to get right. Thank goodness Lowes sells their paint in sample sizes. The first green we chose was too "pea soup." It reminded us a bit of The Exorcist. The next green was too minty, kind of like the color of hospital scrubs. The third green was getting better but we felt it was too gray. At this point we felt maybe green just wasn't meant to be, so we tried a red. We quickly scratched that idea thinking it might be too dramatic for our living room. We decided to go back to green and keep trying. The fourth green had too much of a teal undertone. At this point I was pretty fed up. We had spent the last two days working on the house for over 11 hours each day. It was still freezing and snowy and I hadn't finished my Christmas shopping. I was beginning to get frustrated with the whole process. I decided I was choosing a color and sticking with it. I went to the display area, chose green and said, "This is it, what do you think?" Jesse's response: "looks good, but are you sure you want to do this? You're going to buy a whole gallon of this before trying it out on the wall? What if we don't like this one either?" My response to Jesse: "I don't care! I just want to be done with this. If we don't like it we'll have to live with it for a couple of years until we get up the effort to redo it." We tried it out on the wall next to the four other greens, waited for it to dry...and we liked! I think it's what we were looking for all along. The winner is the one on the far left.


While I've been working on the painting, Jesse has been tiling the bathroom floor. My mom was planning on coming up to help us with the tiling. She's done many tiling projects over the years and was going to be the expert. Well, with all the snow she couldn't make it up to our place. We knew that we needed to get the tiling down in order to put a sink and toilet in and we were worried about waiting any longer on this project. So we decided to go for it on our own. After a phone converstation with my mom and some internet research, we started laying the mortar and tile. Jesse spent many hours on his hands an knees getting every tile perfect and making sure everything was level and staright. I am very impressed with finished product.

We headed down to Crow to spend Christmas with my parents and sister and her husband. We woke up to it snowing outside (of course!), had breakfast and opened our gifts. Jesse got a tool belt and some new tools to put in it and an iPod Shuffle. It was the Christmas of hats for me. I got a Seattlt Sombrero for the rain, a soft knit earflap hat and a Universtiy of Oregon baseball cap. We having a full Turkey dinner tonight and Pavolova for dessert. Pavlova is an Australian dessert I fell in love with when I lived their in college. It's meringue, whipped cream and fresh fruit. Delicious!

We head back to Portland tomorrow. We still need to grout the floor, tile and grout the shower, paint the hall and paint the living. Hopefully we finish this over the next few days. Uh....yeah.

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope your all with family and loved ones celebrating the season!