Sebastian's Room

The photos I have in our house tour post were from awhile ago - we didn't even have a crib mattress in yet, and no baby yet either! Here's what we've done with the room since that photo was taken.

For Sebastian's birthday this year we made a couple of tweaks to turn his room from a nursery to a toddler's bedroom. We added the airplane and hot air balloon decals from Etsy seller Design Your Space.

We moved the letters that spelled out "cozy" that was originally over the changing table to this wall. He was standing up, pulling off the letters and throwing them during every diaper change. Ahh, the things that change once your baby becomes mobile. We got a Closet Maid bookcase from Target (before we were using a tall bookshelf we already owned placed on its side. It worked okay, but took up a lot of space and was kind of an eye sore). Sebastian kept mistaking the Chinese lantern we hung from his ceiling for a "balloon" so we turned it into one.

I think it's a really sweet room, filled with lots of homemade touches: we painted the clouds, the ABC animal paintings and the "cozy" letters, and made the curtains and the hot air balloon. It's fun, sweet and cozy, just like the little boy who sleeps there.

My Favorite Jeans

Today I'm wearing my favorite pair of jeans. I spent $75 on them a couple of years ago... an amount that I had never spent on jeans before. I'm usually an Old Navy clearance kind of gal. Anyway, I was shopping with two coworkers, and one talked me into splurging. Because I bought them at a higher end shop, I could have them hemmed for free, and since I'm short, that was a nice bonus. I love these jeans. Somehow, I managed to wear them all through my pregnancy - belted before I was showing, then no belt, then slung a little lower under my belly. I actually was wearing them the day I went into labor. I still wear them now - they've been good post pregnancy pants too, going back over the belly, and now they're belted again. They're soft and really worn in spots, and there are a few stains on the legs from where Sebastian has decided to set a piece of food or wipe his jammy hands. They fit well and are cozy and just make me happy wearing them.

 

It's really cold outside today - I think in the 50s. I'm happy to be wearing my cozy jeans and drinking a mug of peppermint tea, and counting down the hours till I can go home and start the three day weekend!

Corners of My Home

Interlude

I just took a very late lunch break to hit up the farmer's market I just discovered happens every Thursday from 3-7 at a park near my work. It was teensy, about five stands, but felt just the right size. Lately the city farmer's market has been so, so crowded that it's hard to just get in and get what I need. I bought some delicious looking zucchini, tomatoes, green peppers and two squashes - butternut and spaghetti. On the meal plan for the week is fried zucchini, stuffed peppers, tacos with fresh salsa, butternut squash mac and cheese, and meatballs with spaghetti squash. We're going to eat well this week.

I'm really looking forward to the long weekend. I remember last year I felt really balanced after labor day. It was the perfect mix of time spent at home with my little family, time with extended family, time with friends, organization projects and relaxation time. I hope we can do the same this year.

This Is Where We Used to Live: Part 4

This was our last house in California, and probably my favorite house we ever lived in. I think it was my parent's favorite too. We lived here for around a year and a half. It was all of eighth grade and around half of ninth, before we moved to Minnesota. It's funny, looking at these grainy images on Google Maps, that so far most of the houses I've profiled have looked really similar on the outside. I'm sad that I can't get an image of the Bakersfield house, but there's no street view option. Anyway, I remember them all as really different looking.

 

This one wasn't much to look at on the outside, but was really charming on the inside. I remember the day we drove past it, before my parents had toured it or signed a lease. We parked and got out and peered in the windows, and I was completely in love with what I could see. There were two bedrooms - one powder pink and one powder blue. There was a really leafy yard with a big deck and a little playhouse in a tree. There was a garden trellis covered in ivy that hid a small concrete patio. There wasn't a lot of grass in this yard, but it was sweet. Inside was a small living room and a fireplace that had a cute little country scene painted over the mantle. The kitchen had an eat in area, and a breakfast bar, and of course there was that pink bedroom. I may have had to rent my whole life, but I finally had a room with some color on the walls!

 

I'm sad we didn't live here longer, and that by the time we moved here I was a teen and didn't really play anymore, so I never much took advantage of that playhouse. Still, this was the site of my first serious crush, who lived around the block from me. We would sometimes walk home from school together, and I would think that meant he obviously loved me. I had my first boy/girl party in this house for Christmas, and he was the only boy who showed up. My brother went to his first concert while we lived here, and we spent a lot of time doing things like playing pogs, listening to Weezer and watching My So Called Life. I remember walking around the block to another friends house, and walking home to find my brother crying in the street the day Kurt Cobain died. All my memories here are very nineties.

 

I really liked this house, but I didn't particularly like this time in my life. When I started high school, I was having a tough time with my friends. One of my best friends got a boyfriend and had frozen me out, spending all her time with him. I can't say that when I found out we were moving to Minnesota that I was sad. I was ready to move on. Still, this was a darling little house.

This Is Where We Used to Live: Part 3

In continuing my trip down housing memory lane, we come to this little house that we lived in when we returned to Dixon in 1991. We lived here until 1993, when our landlord sold the house, and we moved to a different rental house a few blocks away. My apologies to the lady doing her landscaping that Google Maps caught!

 

This place looks somewhat different, but also very much the same as when we lived there. All that landscaping was not there when we rented it, it was just grass in the front yard. The next door neighbor's home was all sand and cacti back then, as you can see it still is in the photo. My brother and I adored this, as we were really into the Nickelodeon show "Hey Dude," and the house next door provided the perfect backdrop for our pretend dude ranch (our bikes that we rode up and down the driveway were our horses). If I had to go back to one of the houses we lived in and live in it now, this one would be a contender. It was a one level ranch with a large eat in kitchen, big dining room (that was all pretty marble tile) that opened up to the living room. Down the hall was a bathroom and three bedrooms, and then a second bathroom off the master. My room had a really nice, shady window. For one of my birthdays my parents bought me a desk and a typewriter, and I'd sit under the window and type up teen fiction. Our yard was really nice here too - it had a patio and lots of fruit trees. In the summers my brother, cousin and I would play deserted island outside for hours, climbing the trees and plucking down ripe plums and eating them still warm from the sun.

 

I'd love a house like this now. It had big windows and fruit trees, and the yard wrapped around both sides of the house, which would be plenty of space to set up a garden. Plus, that huge dining room/living room would be perfect for cozy evenings with family and big parties with friends. It wasn't a huge house - I'd guess maybe 1,500-1,700 square feet? But it just really epitomizes that nice, open California ranch style house. And I have a lot of good memories of being a kid and pre-teen here.

This Is Where We Used to Live: Part 2

The next house we moved to was in Lancaster, California, and since we only lived there a year ('88-89), I don't remember the address, so I can't look it up on Google Maps. It was a new construction house, and fairly bland from what I remember. All the houses in the neighborhood looked the same, and all I recall were the half moon shaped windows above everyone's garage. Our particular house was blue and white, with beige carpet inside, and an unlandscaped backyard. There was a dog run on the side of the house, which was good for the dog we ended up adopting that year. Lancaster and Palmdale both experienced a big real estate bust in the late 80s/early 90s, and we saw some of that in our development. Many of the houses were empty or boarded up, and tons were for sale. We lived in this big, brand new house because my aunt and uncle were in real estate and couldn't offload this property, so they rented it to us for super cheap.

 

After that, we moved to Bakersfield, California, a place where I have many more memories. My parents found the house we rented - a peach stucco little thing with a scraggly yard, lots of wallpaper, a wood burning stove and lots of olive green carpeting - late one night when we were visiting from Lancaster. When my mom saw it in the light of day, she cried. I don't blame her... it was  a really ugly house. Still, I fell in love with the school I attended and the people I met. They were all very welcoming to us, and we made a lot of close friends. My mom stayed at home with me and my brother, and during the summers us and the other families in our social group used to go on all kinds of "adventures" that were mostly free things: going to the park, walking around the mall, playing at the McDonald's playland, swimming a neighbor's pool and touring open houses. I used to love this, and would always pick out a room to be "mine" and make up stories about the people I imagined lived in these staged-with-props homes. Hah, I was a real estate junkie even at age 10! Across the street from the peach house was a cul-de-sac where three little boys my brother's age, and a brother and sister a tiny bit older than me, all lived. We would go over to their houses to play, and spend time wandering in and out of all the neighbors yards. Our experience living in Bakersfield is a great example of community and imagination meaning more to a kid than a great house. Sure, I lamented the fact that I couldn't paint my room pink, and looking back, I'm sure my mom was sort of embarassed by our ugly house. But we had some great fun there - meeting new people, playing with the rusty swingset and big patches of clover in the yard, playing Super Mario Bros. in the winter with a log on the stove.