Moving In

Boy, I haven't been here for a really long time. I did know that I wouldn't have too much time for blogging during our move, but I hadn't expected that the move would demand ALL of my time.

We actually moved into our new home about two weeks ago, but the weeks before that were full with painting (as in painting the walls of a room), remodeling, cleaning, packing, end of school year stuff, etc. It was a very hectic time, and of course it is still very busy.

The nice thing about owning your home (among many others) is that you can paint your rooms in any color you want. That's what Kaefer and I did - she painted her room and I painted the master bedroom, the entryway, the living/dining room and the studio - so far. Color choices are sometimes hard, but so much fun.

 One of Kaefer's color choices - "Carolina Parakeet"

Me painting the master bedroom - "Seafoam Pearl"

The work on the downstairs bathroom was in full swing and I couldn't resist to take a picture of how to cut tiles.

Kaefer and the Geek assembled the new worktable for my studio - a nice sturdy table we had bought at IKEA.

Then came the moving day itself. We hadn't hired a big moving company but a small local business who moved just the big items - furniture, boxes - but all the packing and everything else was done by us. These guys were phenomenal! Of course it was one of the hottest days, but that didn't slow them down. They were pretty amazing.

My friend Jeanne helped with her truck, moving all the garden stuff and our office.

On the morning after our first night in our own home I walked through the house and took some pictures of the chaos.

 My studio

The living/dining room

Kaefer's room

A wonderful surprise awaited us when Sergio, who was tiling our bathroom, brought some Mexican breakfast his wife had made for us. The day before, one of our neighbors welcomed us with a plate of Starbucks treats - we had a wonderful breakfast this way, hearty and sweet. I was so touched by the kindness of these people.

We went back to the old house that day to clean it and clear everything out. The hardest part was to say goodbye to my little friend who had visited me almost every day since April 2011 - Geeda.



Now we are trying to make this house livable - unpacking boxes, assembling shelves, constantly searching for things. Some decorating in between to keep up a good spirit, like hanging up these beautiful Moroccan lanterns on the porch. My wonderful backyard neighbor had given them to me before we moved out.

A few days into living in this house I witnessed a beautiful moonrise from my bedroom window. If I had had any doubts before, I now knew that we made the right move.



During these stressful weeks of moving we have been blessed with wonderful people who helped us, friends, neighbors and strangers. We experienced a wonderful community around us, a great support web. We couldn't have done it this way without their help, their trucks, their food. It's amazing how little things can make someone's life easier. We feel truly blessed.

As this house seems to be...

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Moon Eats Sun

Yesterday we took a break from all the working on the new house, got in the car and went up North on I-5 to a location just south of Redding to watch the annular solar eclipse. It was quite a drive, but so worth it.

Yes, you can call us crazy.

The Geek had his small camera attached to the spotting scope and got some really cool pictures of the eclipse.

 Kaefer was wearing the sunfilter glasses we got for the total solar eclipse in Germany back in August 1999.

Of course she had to goof around!

 I loved how the beginning eclipse changed the shadows on the ground - it was fascinating and so beautiful.

 The moon starts biting into the sun - wonderful how she went up in front of the sun.

 The peak - we almost saw four minutes of the Ring of Fire - fascinating, gorgeous - I actually was (and still am) at a loss of words.

Slowly the moon leaves the center of the sun...

 ... and climbs up into the sky.

The shadows were still dancing on the ground.

It was a beautiful day.

Did you see the eclipse?

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Neither here nor there

The rhododendron in front of our house

Over the past days I have been pretty rare in blogland - and those of you who have read this post probably know why. We are busy working on our new home while slowly packing up our current home. We're neither here nor there - somewhere in between. Every day I pack the car with boxes and stuff and shuttle it down to the new house, piling things up in the garage. I can't believe how much stuff we have!!!

Meanwhile, work has started at the new house. The Geek took several trips under the house to check on pipes, wires, the wood under the bathroom that has some dry rot, and he always came back rather dirty - surprise, surprise.

Doesn't he look pretty professional?

This is the problem bathroom - when we saw it the first time, back in November, it had wallpaper that was striped in shades of pink, really retro. Unfortunately that was painted over before the house came back on the market in March and the only retro thing left were those pink tiles.

Not half as retro as it was before. Since we had to rip open much of the bathroom anyway, we decided to go with a fuller repair and get rid of all the tiles and also the vinyl flooring. At the moment the bathroom is a pure disaster zone.

Looks nice, doesn't it?

The Geek installed new locks

and we took a trip to IKEA for a new sofa and more shelves. The sofa - bright red - resides in the breakfast nook for the time being.

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Kaefer has been planning her room:

We discovered that there's hardwood under the carpet in the studio and the office. So we ripped out the carpet in both the studio

and the office.

Since it was so much fun (backbreaking, really) we also decided to rip out the carpet in the living/dining room and get hardwood instead. 

Cool teenagers work with a lollipop in their mouth. 

Two days ago the hardwood was put down. Next week it will be sanded, finished and sealed. All three downstairs rooms should be done by next Thursday, which means I can move into my studio!!! I can't wait.

And this is me, fighting decades-old layers of dust and cobwebs in the storage area behind the garage.

I won! (for the time being...)

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75 Years

This month we celebrate the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75^th anniversary. After only four years of building, it was finished in 1937 and became a new landmark that is known all over the world. Thanks to the engineering mastermind Joseph B Strauss and architects Gertrude and Irving Murrow it didn’t become the eyesore of concrete pylons and yellow stripes that the navy was in favor of, but turned into one of the most beautiful suspension bridges on this planet. Watching its tall rusty-red (called “International Orange”) pillars in the setting sun takes one's breath away.

One of my dreams from a rather early age on had been to see the Golden Gate Bridge with my very own eyes. I had seen pictures of it and on TV, in various movies, and I had promised myself that one day I would cross that bridge. 

This day came in late February 2001, a drizzling, cold evening. We had just landed in San Francisco and were driving north to what might become our new home. And although the fine rain drops collected on the windshield of our car, we could see the majesty of this beautiful bridge that stood with its hundreds of lights before a dark sky. I had goose bumps all over while we were passing under the first pillar and then the second one. 

Over the years we have found many wonderful places that offer a fantastic view of the bridge. One of my favorites is from the Marin Headlands where you can see the bridge with San Francisco in the background. This is spectacular when the sun hovers deep over the ocean, casting its golden-red light onto the bridge and the city. It is wonderful when the fog rolls in and covers parts of the bridge. More often than not we actually didn’t see the bridge but saw faint outlines in the fog. Another favorite is the view from Baker Beach from where I took this photo.  

Since that very first rainy day we have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge many times. We walked it enjoying the ever present wind and chilly conditions. My Girl Scout troop did its bridging from Brownies to Junior Girl Scouts here, walking the entire length of 1.7 miles from the Fort Point lookout to the Marin side. Whenever we come back from Germany we have to cross the bridge and that is when we think “we’re home”. But no matter how often we cross it, I still get goose bumps – those of the really good kind.

Cross-posted over at Vision and Verb, where a coolaborative group of like-minded women from all over the world share their passion for photography and the written word

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Owls for the Party

It's Friday - yay!!! That means Paint Party Friday!!!

The e-course "How to Paint an Owl" with Juliette Crane is over (sigh). This was the first e-class where I kept the pace and even finished three paintings. Or almost finished them, since I feel there still is a little bit I want to add to each of them.

 6 x 6 canvas

 6 x 6 canvas

8 x 10 wood panel

Please come on over and join the party. There are so many wonderful artists and their work to see - it's a real party for the eye.

Wordpress bloggers, please read: I have been unable to leave comments on some Wordpress blogs. It seems that Blogger users have to be enabled on Wordpress blogs to comment there. Since there are Wordpress blogs where I can leave comments without any problems, I assume that each Wordpress blog has to enable Blogger users to comment. Some of you I contacted via email and left my comment this way, but not all of you have your contact information on your blog.

A Name Calling Owl

Don't get ideas when you read this title!!!

This is actually this week's challenge at Photo Art Friday. Since I hadn't participated for such a long time, I wasn't sure whether I would be up for it. Out of curiosity I checked what the challenge was for this week, and I was totally tempted. Bonnie asked us to "showcase a piece of photo art that references, in even the most oblique way, the title of one of your favorite books". Now, that sounds like a great challenge.

I chose my all-time favorite, a small book that I have loved for more than twenty years, "I Heard the Owl Call my Name" by Margaret Craven. It's the story of Mark Brian, a young Anglican priest who has not long to live and is sent to the Indian village of Kingcome in the wilds of British Columbia.

With all those pictures of the Great Horned Owl I took last year it wasn't hard to find "the base". I used two of Bonnie's textures, "Old Ornate Linen" and "cancel the cost" as well as some detail (an eye) of a piece of art by the First Nations that I saw in the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver.

The recipe:
- crop the original photo so that I only have Mama Owl. Blur the entire photo (Gaussian Blur) at 100%, then use a layer mask and the brush tool to get the owl back.
- levels, brightness and saturation adjustments
- "Old Ornate Linen" in blending mode overlay at 100%
- copy, blending mode soft light at 100%
- "cancel the cost" in blending mode overlay at 54%
- add the text
- levels adjustment
- add the second photo (the eye) in blending mode exclusion at 64%

And... I recommend the book. It's a great read, done in a weekend. If you like "quiet" books, this is it.

Wordpress bloggers, please read: I have been unable to leave comments on some Wordpress blogs. It seems that Blogger users have to be enabled on Wordpress blogs to comment there. Since there are Wordpress blogs where I can leave comments without any problems, I assume that each Wordpress blog has to enable Blogger users to comment. It's sad when I can't leave comments...

Home Sweet Home

So. A few weeks ago I mentioned here that I have some big news to tell you. Honestly, I couldn't wait to tell you!

We bought a house. Now for many of you buying a house might be something quite normal. It is not for us. We grew up in a culture where the majority of people rent the place they live in, mostly apartments. For us, owning a home never was a priority, we were quite happy with our rental situation.

Over the years here in the States (yesterday exactly 11 years ago we made the big move from Germany to California) we looked for a home on and off. Our wish was to stay in our neighborhood because it meant that the Geek could walk to work and we only needed one car. This, of course, always limited our search. Finally, house prices were so incredibly high that we could never commit to such a big investment and change to our life. We were happy with renting.

Last November, however, this changed. On a Sunday afternoon we were on our way to the park when we saw an "Open House" sign on a street close by. As we usually do, we just went out of curiosity and, I suspect, because the thought of owning a home was lingering somewhere in the depth of our hearts. The house we looked at that afternoon was a gem. It looked like nothing from the outside, and inside it was bright and colorful (an artist had owned the house) with a gourmet kitchen and a huge beautiful garden.

We didn't get that house. But it had sparked something within us that led us to contacting a realtor and start a serious house hunt.

Oh my!!! At the end of our first outing with our realtor we already found THE house. At that time, however, we shied away from the price. A week later, however, the price was considerably lowered and we took Kaefer there (we couldn't buy a home that she wouldn't like). Just like her parents, she fell in love with it at first sight. So we made an offer, right before Thanksgiving. And waited.

Well, the house was pulled of the market... There went our offer, our hopes. It was a huge disappointment, although we told ourselves that there certainly is another home out there. Somewhere, there is the place that is meant for us.

Winter really is not a great time to look for a home. Inventory was low, most of them were short sales or foreclosures, a few regular sales. Nothing came even close to the home we fell in love with. It was depressing and frustrating. An emotional roller coaster. In the end, all of us were waiting for "our" house to come back on the market.

In March, we got notice from our realtor (who had stayed in close contact with the representative of the bank which by now owned the house) that the house would come back on the market very very soon. We decided not to go on vacation over spring break - you see, we really wanted this house. It came back on the market right during spring break. I won't tell you of the hectic few weeks that followed, the entire process - but, since last Wednesday, when we got the keys, it is ours.

Our home.

It is an older neighborhood with houses mainly from the 40's and 50's. The homes in this neighborhood are all very individual, no cookie cutter, and there are all sizes of them. It seems to be very mixed, and that is exactly what I like. It has lots of mature trees - right next to our home is a huge live oak that is about 250 years old as one of my new neighbors told me. He also told me that the wild turkeys often hang out in the redwood trees right across the street. Oh what fun - I love wildlife (as long as these turkeys don't come into my yard and rip everything up!). I already met some of my future neighbors. They seem to be very sweet.

The window and the open door downstairs to the left belong to my studio - yes, I'll finally get my own studio!

The kitchen - this was our compromise since I had dreamed of a big open kitchen. Well, I didn't get that, but I am fully happy with this one.

The family / dining room

The master bedroom. There is a second smaller master bedroom which will become Kaefer's room of course. She is super happy to have her own bath and walk-in closet (and I'm happy, too, because she has to clean it as well!)

The view from our bedroom

 And this, my friends, will be my studio. It has excellent light and a door to the garden. Eventually we will probably put a glass door in or cut a window in the existing door.

 The garden. I'm planning to get rid of most of the lawn (at the front as well) and have flowers and perhaps a cherry tree there. This, of course, is a big project and will take some time. Yesterday I already planted some veggies in the raised beds that are there.

I cannot finish this post without a few words about our realtor, Toni D'Angelo. Honestly, she is the BEST realtor in the world. Quite frankly, without her expertise, knowledge,  negotiation skills and feeling for people we wouldn't have gotten this home. She was always there with advice and encouragement when we (well, I) felt depressed or frustrated about the entire house hunt. It helped that she has a good sense of humor and we just clicked. She had listened to what we were looking for and she never ever showed us a house in a neighborhood we didn't like. When we had questions - she was there to answer them. Simply put, she is an amazing woman.

When we entered our home first time as its owners, we found this in the kitchen - left for us by our realtor. Sometime soon, there will be a pink dogwood in front of our house.

Now comes the fun part of de-cluttering and cleaning, and eventually moving. There is some work that needs to be done at our new home before we finally move in. Slowly slowly we're occupying our home.

By the way - we still will be a one-car-family. The home is further away from work, but the Geek has decided to bike every day. That will be an excellent workout!