Taking Up A Collection.

This is our collection of Jason Munn Screenprints. I fell in love with The Small Stakes a couple years ago and introduced Simon to his work this September at Bumbershoot's Flatstock. We picked these out and had them wrapped up a few minutes after we found his booth.

  

  

  

  

  

We tried to restrain ourselves since we only have 500 square feet of wall space. I think we did pretty well. What do you think? Hugs. xox=vv.

Closing Day.

Hiya Lovelies. I am sorry I have been really absent this week. I have a pretty bad cold (read: No packing what-so-ever has been accomplished). Hopefully this is closing day and tomorrow is moving day (we have a rental truck reserved and appointments with the cable guy and washer/dryer delivery men). I hope we will be settled soon.

I know I am always saying that. That I will catch up soon. I whole heartedly think that the moment you begin thinking about a feasible new direction in your life that you become unsettled. That is what has happened to me. I have become unsettled and I hope to be on the other side of that soon.

When I am, I have a lot of projects in mind and I have a lot of changes I want to make. I am seriously considering the abolishment of monthly reviews. Why? Well, I always want to hoard every photo for the months end and I always want to save every story for the review. When the time comes though it is a lot of work to get all those photos together and I feel pressure to say something interesting with each one. Which I have been failing at greatly.

Instead, I would like to post more often. I still dream of balance. I want to comment on all of your sites and tell you how wonderful and creative you are. I look forward to that. Until then, please know that you are ridiculously talented and terribly inspiring! Hugs. xox-vv.

February In Review.

Hello lovelies. Do you know that this place makes me nervous? I never know what to say or how to say it anymore. I feel overwhelmed and typically when that happens I procrastinate. I want to share with you, but I get scared. So, with that in mind I am going to attempt something slightly different. This month I am going to give you the review in several installments.

I took a lot of pictures today, but this is the only one that came out "share-worthy." This adorable little kitty is from the Lovely Lisa Solomon. As a matter of fact, February was full of AMAZING gifts from the most INCREDIBLE people. Definitely more photos coming soon. Hugs. xox=vv.

News & Reviews.

Oh hello again lovelies! Oh boy, am I ever behind with my January review. Oh my goodness, I apologize! You only have to wait a moment more (I know these reviews are just sooo exciting) because I want to share some nice news with you.

First of all, February 4th marked the first anniversary of the vegasandvenice blog.

Secondly, we put an offer on this one bedroom one-and-a-half bath condo this morning and a few hours later we had mutual acceptance! I am very superstitious (dunno why) so IF we close it will be in a little more than three weeks. Yay! I feel positive that there will be more about that later. Now, lets start the January review.

Sadly, we will be leaving this lovely view behind. What could be better than the city and the mountains and the ocean? Talk about a million dollar view. This is the Space Needle from my pillow. Conveniently, I did not even have to lift my head to watch the fireworks on New Years Eve, which was nice because I was already asleep.

I am starting to see a theme with this whole "review" thing. Trees. Apparently, I take a lot of tree pictures because they always show up in the monthly review. I did not even know I liked trees so much.

Do these pictures even need explanation? Probably not. Cute sleeping Charlie Pup and his grumpy one-eyed side kick (who is really not so much grumpy but instead quite cuddly).

These are from the Press condos in Seattle. We had a great tour and a nice visit but decided it was not the right place for us. Lovely, but not the right place.

Sadly, we felt the same way about the Decatur. It was a bit too far from our desired location, but I loved the view.

You know what else I love? You. Thank you for all of your support. I am sorry that I could not finish this post last night (I wasn't feeling so great). We watched Marie Antoinette and cuddled which was very, very nice. I send you all some of our extra cuddles. xox=vv.

November & December In Review.

Hello again Lovelies. I found some pictures from both November and December. I hope you like them.

This beautiful snow came shortly after we put the house on the market. Six inches of lovely white snow! The whole world seemed strange and exotic. Walking Charlie by the nature reserve at the end of our street we could hear the trees crack and groan as they were overtaken by the ice.

November was a particularly nerve wracking month. Our house went into escrow and my stomach went into knots. I thought that buying a home was a tumultuos experience but I now firmly believe that it is not half as bad as selling one. I took these photos while I stood waiting in the cold for a very thorough house inspector to complete his work.

On the 22nd of December our escrow closed and we left our first home for the big city. It was somewhat bitter sweet. I know the house is in very good hands though, and that makes me feel better.

In November we also lost our beloved family car. It belonged to my great uncle, my grandparents, my step-mom, my aunt and finally my dad before he sold it to us. This is a picture of it moments before the donation company towed it away. We brought a new car into the family which has turned out to be the perfect city car. We named it Link. Charlie likes Link.

Everyday things became less mundane from the front seat of our new car. Isn't it interesting how that happens? How your perception is altered by the smallest changes in your environment.

In the last few weeks though, our entire environment has drastically changed. We love it and we are adjusting well. It has the strangest mixture of feeling completely like home while at the same time feeling completely foreign.

We celebrated New Years in the most mundane way though. We had a tennis championship on our Nintendo Wii. My mom (who was visiting) won by a land slide even though it was all completely new to her. She decided to leave her job to become a tennis pro and is now sponsored by Nike. True story.

This last group of photos are somewhat random. A quick project in our new space, a glimpse of our new kitchen and lastly the most beloved contents of our security deposit box. Hugs. xox=vv.

October In Review.

Oh hello Lovelies! Oh I hope you are having a fabulous weekend! We are off to a good start here. Finally recuperating, we spent the day relaxing. Tomorrow, off to the city for a visit. I will have to take a bunch of pictures, but before I start thinking about that, here is my October in review. I hope you like it.

This month we only had a couple of events so photos are awfully mundane and involve a lot of local shops and restaurants. In one of our local "malls" these hanging baskets caught my eye.

Next to El Pollo Loco, my favorite fast food restaurant is Taco Del Mar. I only like one though, no other location makes food that is very good. For a few months I was absolutely addicted to their burritos. Mmm good! I took these pictures to document their yumminess. Next time I might actually take a picture of the food. That would make more sense wouldn't it.

These lovely plants are three of the seventy five that we planted a couple months ago. He wanted to document his favorites and took these pictures earlier this month.

This abandoned truck lives on the other side of the lake at the end of our street. It's door handle has a knitted cover. Yep, a knitted cover. I am sorry the pictures of it did not come out very well. I really wanted to share it with you.

Mmmm, Changs. As I mentioned earlier Mongolian food was the only thing that tasted any good to me while I was sick. Of course it is a million times better when you are well. I highly recommend Changs if you are ever in the area!

A little over a week ago we put our house on the market. A very nice family looked at it twice yesterday and Halloween proved to be a good time for flyers because we were cleaned out in a single night. We are keeping our fingers crossed. This little birdie was happily lounging in one of the three very large pines in our backyard.

Oooh, Last Thursday we saw Regina Spektor in concert and it was absolutely fabulous. I loved her opening act Only Son. His cd has been on repeat all week! Check out Museum if you can. We stopped by the lovely Schmancy which just happened to be next door. You can see a couple of pictures on Flickr.

Since this month was not terribly exciting, I thought I would share these pictures of our October 2003 trip to Florence, OR. We visited with the dearest of friends and went for a group dune buggy ride, which was one of the most fun things that I have ever done!

Halloween was quiet here this year.

Oh lastly here are a few pictures of Charlie. In the first one, I love that you can see his little foot in the background. In the second I love that he is sleeping with his tongue out and in the third it really looks like he is sticking his tongue out at us. He knows that he is not supposed to rip up his blanket and was giving us what-for.

Well, I am thinking of you all and missing you! I hope you are all doing very well! Talk to you very soon I hope! Hugs! xox=vv.