CALISTOGA HERE WE COME

For the next few days I'll be.......

Drinking fine wine.....

Exploring castles.........

Mud bathing......

Dancing through petrified forests...... and

Enjoying an adventure in my beautiful home state of California with the best girl friends a girl could have.

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Here we go!!

CHEERS!

ON THE BOOK SHELF

A long time ago I found this great book shelf on Craigslist for $100.  The lady I bought it from said that it was originally a built in bookshelf that was torn out of an old home before it was demolished.  Saved from total destruction!  Its an amazing bookshelf too!  its about 10 feet long and almost 5 feet high.  It takes up a full wall but it also gives me sort of a mantel to play with also. 

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I've had the bookshelf a couple years now, and its always been painted this dirty orangey white.  It was all chipped, which I LOVE but the color just looked dingy and dirty.

So I gave it a face lift!  I didn't go over board, in fact, I painted it the same way it originally was because the paint that was on it was its original paint, I just whitened it up a bit.  I also didn't want to paint the whole thing because I LOVE the industrial look of the wood with the chippy paint. 

Of course I color coded all my books, but as you can see, I need a lot more books to actually make a statement here!

By the way..... Look at what new book just graced the shelf today!

It is our long excitedly awaited wedding book!  Designed by the most talented and wonderful CLEARY O'FARRELL PHOTOGRAPHY.  Cleary did such an amazing job capturing those natural and beautiful moments during our wedding.  I just can't say enough about how happy we have been with her work as well as her as a person.  She is someone that I will consider to be a friend for years to come!

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Take a look!

Our hotel room at the amazing Arctic Club Hotel in downtown Seattle.  That is a walrus above the room number!

My wedding party getting read at the hotel and goofing off!

All my girls carried hand painted fans from Spain instead of flowers.

There is little Liam, our ring bearer carrying his ring pillow.  And, our officiant dancing down the street!  It really was a day for dancing!

A mariachi band serenaded "Sin Ti" as I walked down the aisle.

The beautiful garden over looking the Seattle skyline where we had our ceremony.

The rings.

Curtis special dance with his mother (Garden Party by Rick Nelson.)  I love how Cleary caught her in her bare feet!

My friends know me all to well and snuck me in a bottle of Tequila.  :O)  (Thanks Chris!)

Our amazing rock-a-billy band at our reception, The Dusty 45's!  For their finally, Billy stood on top of the upright base, lit his trumpet on fire and played "Miserlou!"  Amazing end to the night!

Thank you Cleary!  We love you more than Bob Ross loves painting "Little Happy Trees!"

And that's the truth!

CHEERS!



SUNDAY BRUNCH ~ THE HANGAR INN

As much as I love to spend the weekend puttering around Seattle, I also love to spend my weekends puttering around Puyallup.  My husband's parents live in Puyallup Washington, and I have grown to really love this town.  I love driving through the small farms and old parts of town and I love the special weekend time we spend with my wonderful in-laws every week. 

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This weekend, we actually got a little bit of sunshine!  HOORAY!!  Since it was such a lovely day, and we were planning to visit the folks, I thought it would be a perfect day to have brunch at the Hangar Inn at Thun Field!

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Thun Field was first purchased in 1949 by a 32 year old John Thun.  At the time, it was 6 miles south of the city of Puyallup and was an empty field strewn with rocks.  John and his family excavated the property and paved the first run strip.  John was described as "bigger than life!  He was never afraid to take risks.  He always just had a way of making things work."  John opened his private airport in 1957 where he gave private flying lessons.  John and his wife Vera who was known as "Babe" lived in a house built along side the run way where they also ran a coffee and pie shop.

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Today Thun field is owned by Pierce County and Johns old coffee and pie shop is one of Puyallups funnest hang out spots!  A down home diner where you can eat some all American food cooked up right!  While enjoying a meal you can sit back and enjoy a perfect picturesque view of Mount Rainer as well as watch planes coming and going in all directions.

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A great place to fully soak in a happy sunny day while having a down home cooked meal.



CHEERS!

MORE ON FLOORS

Alright friends, I am seriously gearing up for the tearing up of carpet here at Casa Del Playa!  My mom is coming to visit here in a few weeks, so I've decided I have to wait just a bit longer, so that I don't put her through the disaster zone that will become our house for a few weeks!   We have definitely decided that we are going to live on our sub floors, but to catch some of you up, we are going to get crafty with them!

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We've decided that we are going to paint the floors white!  I can see some of you wincing out there!  I am well aware of the constant cleaning I will have to perform to keep the floors looking nice.  I figure Ill eventually invest in a rumba.  That should take care of things nicely, and probably scare the hell out of my cat on a daily basis!  However, there is a good reason that we've decided on white.  As much as I love this little beach condo.......... It only has 2 windows.  One large sliding glass door in the living room and one small window in the bedroom.  Oye!  Luckily I do face a good direction and get a considerable amount of natural light during the day, despite only having 2 windows.  So that is why my fine friends, the floor should be white!  To create more light!

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So now I need your help!  Even though the floors are going to be white, I still intend to have some fun on the finish.  I plan on using a water based high gloss sealant to make the floors uber shiny.  Then add just a touch of whimsy with some stenciling.  The question is... how much stenciling?   So, take a look at some of the pictures below and tell me what you like the best.  Keep in mind, our new curtains have a pretty busy damask like pattern on them.  Also, I could only stencil the bedroom and leave the rest of the house just plain old white, then I could possibly go a little bit more crazy.  Anyway, look for yourselves and leave a comment and tell me what you like!

Super cute and I feel like it adds a lot of texture.  It could be totally overwhelming though.

I do love Chevron prints.  Maybe in the bedroom?

I really love subtleness of these stencils.  Simple but lots of fun.  What color though?

I really like the white on gray in the last one.  It embellishes the space without necessarily being a focal point.

Thoughts?

HONEYMOONING IN COSTA RICA!

Last October, Curtis and I spent our two week honeymoon in Costa Rica.  It was the first time either one of us had been out of the US.  Well, that's not entirely true, I've been to Tijuana once, but I don't think that really counts.  Anyway, we decided to be completely adventurous and not plan a single thing.  The only thing we did plan was our first night's hostel room and our last nights.  The rest of the trip was completely up to us as to where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do and how long we wanted to stay. 

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For those of you who don't know Curtis, this was an enormous leap of faith on his part because he has to plan EVERYTHING!  He was so nervous going into it, but he got the hang of it really quick and enjoyed every minute of it.  Bless his heart!

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We had the best time you could possibly imagine.  We had been warned by several people to not do certain things or not go certain places, and not to trust the monkeys.  lol   We were very cautious the entire trip but not a single thing went wrong.  I was actually counting on something going wrong since we didn't actually plan anything, but nope, everything went as smoothly and as wonderful as possible.

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Through out the duration on the trip, Curtis and I were sending long emails to our family and friends telling the story of all our adventures.  It's actually what made me think about starting up this blog.   After we got home, I started working on putting a book together to commemorate our amazing trip.  The book wound up being about 50 pages and contains many of our photographs and snip its from the emails we sent to all our friends and family.  It finally arrived in the mail the other day, and I'm so elated with how it came out!!  I used Shutterfly to make the book.   I just had to share with you!

We visited San Jose, Tortuguero, Cahuita, Puerto Viejo and Monteverde.

We stayed mostly on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica because we had never seen the Caribbean sea!

Here are a few more pictures of our trip.  We have so many good ones, its hard to just pick a few to share.  By the way, all these photos were taken on my 35mm Ricoh film camera!  Some of us still believe in the old school ways!

This is a picture of the stair case at our San Jose hostel, Costa Rica Backpackers

After a few nights in San Jose, we took a tour bus and 2 water taxi's to the small town of Tortuguero. 

This is a local "Soda" in Tortuguero.  This is one of my favorite pictures.

Tortuguero native riding his bike down the the main road in town.

Curt and I on the water taxi.

We got to see a Camen on the way in.

I've got a Coconut!!

Tortuguero is a nesting ground for Giant Green Sea Turtles.  Our group found a nest of baby ones and we were able to carry about 40 of them by hand to the ocean.  One of the most amazing experiences of my life!

This was our lodgings in Cahuita at Cabinas Algebra.  Our hut was called the Taj Mahal.  Curtis wasn't fond of it, but I LOVED it!  It made me feel like we were Swiss Family Robinson!  Howler Monkeys would sing us to sleep at night and spider monkeys would wake us up in the morning. 

This is Charlie Brown.  He pretty much ran the place at Cabinas Algebra.

Our hostel at Cabinas Algebra was just across the street from Playa Negra.  I ran down the beach to snap a picture of this lone surfer.

From Cahuita we took a short bus ride to Puerto Viejo where the breeze was warm and the palm trees grew sideways.  This town is very easy to loose yourself in.  Its so beautiful, and the atmosphere was amazing.

This is my prize photo on Cockles Beach in Perto Viejo.

Yeah I took the camera with me everywhere.

Curtis taking a dip!

We took a white knuckled bus ride up the side of the mountain to get to Monteverde.  Such a gorgeous town, tucked inside the nooks and crannies of the mountainside.

Got to see some amazing bugs while we were there!

My whole reasoning for wanting to visit Monteverde was to hike the suspension bridges.  I needed to get my Indiana Jones on!

Give me something architectural and I go crazy.  :O)

Well there you have it.  If anyone is interested in hearing more about our adventures in Costa Rica, leave a comment and maybe Ill post another blog with our travel journal!

CHEERS!