another rain walk...

rainy dayz...

We have been hitting up the indoor play park at the local community center. It is awesome to be able to take a 5 minute walk and let the boys run all their pent up wiggles out. Plus, I ran into my old boss from Coffee Bean who is also now a stay at home mom... It is great having a play date for the boys and me!

We are heading into the winter lull waiting in anticipation for Spring... the rain seems to be never ending. Which I don't mind so much, but it does kind of ware on you. I just keep reminding myself that the rain is what makes it so beautiful and green here, that helps... a little.

I picked up some cheap umbrellas at Ikea last week... The boys were super stoked, I had checked at freddys, but didn't want to shell out 15 bucks a piece...

I guess I should have known Max would need a heartier umbrella, this is how his cheap umbrella looked by the time we made it to the community center... seriously only a 5 minute walk.

So guess who had to give up her umbrella for the walk home. The boys stayed nice and dry, I was soaked.

house is coming along...

We are still here and alive... Our house is getting settled in. We have been painting, and building shelves, arranging and re-arranging cupboards and closets...

Things I Love about our little home..

• It is comfy, super, super comfy. It is the first house we have really felt at home in. We loved the little milwaukie house, but our landlord... who was super awesome... was around allot, we never really felt like it was our home.


• I got to paint a wall in the living room, beautiful and horrible asparagus green... I love it.


• Like the Milwaukie house, every window I look out I see green.


• My bedroom is big... It is painted a deep warm grey color... and has dark brown roman shades.... It is like a comfy cave, I sleep awesome in there.


• I got a portable dishwasher! Awesome, I may be in love with that appliance.


• We have hardwood floors throughout the house... I love them.


• I can walk everywhere I need to go, and am only 5 minutes from NW Portland, and I get to drive over the St. John bridge allot. I love it!


• The backyard is perfect! and as soon as I finish the garage, my work space is going to be awesome!

We are still working on the house, I will post pictures as soon as we get everything settled. Right now I am working on finding the perfect robins egg color to paint the small space between the cabinets and backsplash!

December.. ..

December 2009 was crazy busy and stressful. I am glad it is done... I hope you all had a joyous wonderful holiday season, I am already looking forward to spring.. ... I hope this winter goes by fast....

We are all moved in to our new house, we are re-adjusting to living in a small house. I seem to move furniture everyday trying to make the best use out of the space. We love the neighborhood, we have an awesome 12 year old neighbor boy named August...ummm coolest name ever. He loves the boys, and has taken the red cross babysitting class... total score for us! That means we may get more date nights without having to beg people related to us.

The backyard is great, and will be perfect for the summer, But I don't have a dishwasher and this is killing me, like seriously killing me. ...

oh burdy... ...

I love seeing my stuff featured...

check out presents of minds gift guide... what a cute little robot.. ..

moving out, and moving on... ..

Hey remember this post... and this post...

Well, the a** that left last year at this time, is coming back. And guess what since we didn't want to buy him out, or sign another year lease, (we were planning on moving in June/July) He wants us out. Are you kidding me! He wants us to move out by December 31st. He e-mailed this to us on Thanksgiving. I guess he felt since he made the holiday season so sucky last year, he was going to try and out due himself, and boy has he! What a mess I got my whole little family stuck in!

The sad thing is he is being an ass. The saddest thing for us, is we aren't surprised... Looking back now I wish I would have been more convincing on getting my mom to move out of this house in the first place. But I wasn't convincing enough.

My little Milwaukie house is now the home to a cute little old lady. I asked my old landlord if he could just kick her out, obviously he couldn't... haa haaa

So we started the scramble to find a house! The good thing is we are working with a mortgage lender to start getting our credit in order to buy next year... but in the meantime it is still renting for us!

I found a couple houses... one was way out in SE in Suburbia... convenient for commuting, very safe for walking to the park... but waaaaayyy out and super suburban and lacking allot of character... I am not a huge fan of suburbia.

The Second, was a really nice house in the Kenton neighborhood, It was the cheapest of the three. Super cute outside house built in like 1912... but inside, the owner had gutted it and made it all super modern... like glass and chrome coffee table modern, I felt like he kind of ruined the house.

The Third and Winner of the Raetz house lottery, was the cute little 1950's house pictured above. It is only 800 sq ft, so little may be an understatement, but every square inch of that house is usable and open... I think we are really going to love it. The huge draw of this house is it is in the St. John Neighborhood, right down the street from the St. John Community center. Great Park, Great classes, and a great Pre-school. Also we have restaurants, coffee shops, a theatre pub and tons of fun little places right down the street from us. I will barely have to use my car... and I am sooooo stoked on that, after being stuck in the Couv where you have to drive EVERYWHERE it will be nice to be able to just walk to where ever we need to go.

The Bonus, a huge, clean partly finished detached Garage, that is going to be an awesome work space for BurdyFlyAway.... I just have to do some insulating, otherwise I may freeze out there.

my personal sweat shop....

We are busy over here... getting christmas shop orders out, and working on crafty wonderland stock... yay.... glad I can con my mom and sister into being my little sweatshop workers...