This week something very important happened– I bought my first piece of REAL furniture! A pretty seafoam colored suede sofa. I love to decorate but I’ve never really had the money to get the things I want. I saved my money all summer and after much searching found a couch that I really like.

But before you see a picture of that, you have to see what our place looked like in the beginning. When we first moved here, the walls were covered with ugly, outdated wallpaper. It only took a couple weeks of putting up with that for us to ask the landlords if we could tear it down and paint. They loved the idea– no surprise there.

BEFORE:

So that’s what it looked like when we moved in. Except that as you can see, I’d already started tearing down the wallpaper border when I decided I should get before and after pictures. 🙂 Pretty “blah”, right? And not at ALL my style. Actually these pictures don’t do justice to how ugly the paper was, at least in my mind. Weird orange and blue with pinecones/pineapples… we never could figure it out exactly. I told Andy it was opressing me.
AFTER:

What an improvement!

I really like the pillows that came with the couch. 🙂

To make things fit nicely, my desk had to get banished to the funky little space right beside the front door. But it works, since now I can’t store random junk there like I was before.Then I have also planned to avail plumbing services by finding a reliable plumbing contractor .

What a difference, huh? I feel like I finally have a grown-up living room! Next project: bedroom. I will probably start ripping out wallpaper there this weekend.

Since the topic of baby gender came up after my last post and I have nothing better to do. 🙂
First off, I’ve had lots of really realistic dreams (unusual for me). However the boy dreams are always after the birth and the girl dreams are always of an ultrasound. A month ago I was positive it would be a boy.

1st trimester: 3 boy dreams, 1 girl dream
2nd trimester: 2 girl dreams, 1 boy dream

Now for the old wives tales:
-The “string test” says girl. They swear by this method at JC Penney Longview- it worked every time but once!
-The Chinese Lunar Calendar says girl.
Here’s some other info I found online:

You will have a boy if:

-baby’s heartrate is under 140 beats per minute- NO
-you are carrying low and in front- NO
-your urine is bright yellow- NO
-you don’t experience any morning sickness in the first trimester- NO
You will have a girl if:

-your baby’s heartrate is 140 or higher- YES (155)
-you are carrying high and all over- YES (I think, anyway)
-your urine is clear- YES
-you sleep on your right side- MOSTLY YES

So that’s a pretty obvious girl! Okay, so they are pretty darn goofy, but I’ve found over the years that I am rather superstitious. We’ll see if that wins out over my original intuition that it’s a boy in… 10 days.

If anyone has any other silly ways of predicting or wants to make a guess, leave a comment. I like hearing what everyone has to say.

It’s been a while since I posted because nothing much has been happening and I don’t like to post without pictures. At least I’ve been feeling lots lots better lately! I can cook again without feeling sick to my stomach, so I’m taking advantage and trying lots of new recipes.

So here’s what I look like these days– 4 months pregnant.

I hang out with friends and family whenever possible. Everyone but me is so busy! But this weekend Jamie (my sister) and I hung out with Melanie for a Girl’s Night. We’ve been friends with Melanie about 12 years I think, and dress-up is just as fun now as it was back then…

Pedicures are always good too. Yes, we all have the same Reef flip flops! Note my bump getting in the picture:

We also nearly got attacked that night by two giant spiders while on a walk. Sorry, no pictures. We weren’t about to go back to that spot!

Last week I made some autumn decorations. From scratch even!! I’m very proud of them.

That’s coffee beans and a pumpkin scented candle inside. Smells so good!

Here’s the swag I made for the front door, complete with quail:

And finally some fall foliage in my pretty pitcher. Nothing fancy but it adds a nice seasonal touch to my desk.

That’s all for now, but I hope you enjoyed the pictures. More to come later I hope!

Not too much has changed since my last post, except for the view to the North from our home here in SoCal:

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No, that’s not a cloud. We don’t live in the best part of town for optimal smoke viewing, but that immense body of suspended particulate is the smoke plume from the “Day” Wild Fire, a 120,000 acre blaze doing its best to burn up all the condors left in the world, and threatening a few towns and causing some rather severe highway closures. Here in safe Camarillo, though, all we really have to worry about is the smoke and ash stopping up our lungs and making our pretty cars all dirty.

In Baby news, Mollie has recently passed the 14 weeks milestone, which means our baby actually looks like a little tiny baby, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 oz. More on that as it develops.

Look! We’re not dead. We’re very much alive and have been busy, which has led to our lack of posting recently… First off, you should all know that I found a beer that was clearly made for me.

Black Toad is a dark, “chestnut” colored beer with a nut-y flavor, which is further more named for me, a man who appreciates a good dark beer.

One of the things we’ve been busy with is a fun trip to San Diego last weekend, to visit our friends Jubal and Suzanne Marlatt, and The Dinwiddie Family. On our way down, we found an interesting Vietnamese restaurant in Oceanside…

First off, when did “OK” become a noun? And, what really is an OK? Whatever it may be, it has another sign that claims that “We Carry: Dine In & Take Out; Special Order; Party & Birthday Group; Gift Certificate Available; Catering.” Last time I checked a “Gift Certificate Available” was a complete sentence. How do you carry a sentence? Go go Engrish!

Sunday in San Diego we spent the afternoon in Balboa Park. We went to the Natural History museum and the Air and Space museum, which were both very fun. We also saw a big pipe organ, and a tree with some mighty impressive roots, which are pictured for you below. I wish I had a person in the tree picture for scale, but those roots are probably a good 50 feet long.

This week, we’re off to a business trip in glorious Stockton, CA, which I’m hoping will go smoothly. More on that later.