A week off.

I've had a lot of time off due to the holidays and it's extremely refreshing. We've been to a lot of family get togethers, had some of our closest friends stay at our house, enjoyed slow mornings together and spent a lot of time working on the house. Here are a few moments.

Oh, and the decision to paint my studio floor white evolved into us tearing down the carpet squares covering every surface, and tearing down a sagging plaster wall, and learning drywall skills. I suppose a before and after will be in order once it's all done. 

The struggle with the spritz cookies.

Spritz cookies are my dad's favorite. Spritz cookies are a struggle.

Over the years we have learned that there are three variables that can go horribly wrong when making spritz cookies. Number one - the cookie press/gun. Number two - the dough consistency. Number three - the flavor of the dough. Failure to succeed at any of these variables can result in: hand cramps, crumbly cookies, cookies in the shape of mushed blobs, cookies with too much almond flavor, cookies with no flavor, or a wasted hour of your life.

This year we went through three guns and in the end decided to finally retire one of them. And after a couple of sheets of un-recognizeable, but tasty, cookies blobs we finally succeeded in making a few trays of perfectly wonderful spritz cookies.

Blanket of white.

Even though I was running a few minutes late for work this morning, I stopped to snap some pictures of the blanket of white.

The first few days.

(Andrew with the best treasure we've found at the house so far.)

The first few days of owning a home were intense. Three non-stop days of cleaning, scraping, painting, prying, fixing, and all of the aches and pain that go along with that. Oh, there's so much to do.

One of the first things tackled was to remove all the overgrown bushes from the front of the house. My dad and Andrew handled that and the response that we got from the neighbors was overwhelming. We even had people bringing us additional tools to get the job done more easily. It's becoming clear to us that the lady that used to live in our house was not a neighborhood favorite. 

Thanks to the help of many family members, we accomplished about 85% of my goal to have the living room and dining room painted and all carpet removed by Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, when all your lamps are in storage and your rooms don't have ceiling lights it's a little hard to work past 5pm. I took a vacation day tomorrow so there's still some time to reach that goal. I just hope that the old powdery-flowery scent in the house will get thrown out with the mauve carpet in the trash. 

Homeowners.

We became homeowners today. Neither of us believed it was actually going to happen until it actually did considering all the let downs we've experienced in this long process. I'm extremely excited to get the keys this afternoon.

The house was built in 1925 and this photo was taken for the home's property card in 1958. I have to thank Christopher over at Cleveland Area History for finding this image for us. It's really awesome to see the house in it's near-original condition. Unfortunately all those trees have disappeared since then, the doorway has been remodeled, and we no longer have wood shingles. Nothing inside of the house appears to have been updated since the 60s or 70s. The house sits in a historical district and it's really inspiring to see how most of the other historical homes in the neighborhood have been maintained in such a nice way. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I'm really looking forward to it.

(A more up to date picture of the house can be found here.)

Jens Lekman always makes me think of the fall.

I took an impromptu walk yesterday after my breakfast mocha + bagel at Phoenix. If I had planned ahead, I would have brought my nice camera with me since the last remains of fall were there just barely hanging on. Instead, I did my best with my iPhone camera. I imagine this was probably one of the last walks I'll take around the lake this year before the snow covers the ground for good. I didn't listen to any music even though the season is perfect for one of my favorites, Jens Lekman. It was nice to just hear the silence and crunching leaves on a slow Sunday morning. 

‎"It's happening people, say 'Hi' to the flakes!"

Bon Hiver!

There's never been a time in my life when I wasn't entirely thrilled at the sight of the first snow. I mean like, going out into the open air and welcoming it with a smile. It's a bit magical. It happened here last night. And as anyone who lives in a snowy climate knows, eventually the magic dies and we start complaining about never seeing the sun again come February. But for the first month or so I like to embrace it. 

When the winter starts to get depressing I like to curl up under a blanket with something hot to drink and watch Northern Exposure all over again for the twentieth time. It's like the second family I never had, living in the town I've always thought I would live in. It's my cold dreary weather comfort. There's this little piece of it that I think of every year when the first snow comes. I love it because they share my enthusiasm for the moment.