Sunday, August 16, 2009

too much?

eggplant

Michael is making amazing progress on the kitchen. After months of building cabinets, installing appliances, doing electrical work (and other boring stuff), we’re almost ready to do the fun stuff! If you’ve never built a kitchen from scratch (and really, how many of you would be that crazy??), you might not realize how many different stages there are or long everything takes (or how most everything requires a power tool that makes me nervous). But now—NOW—we are ready to start picking the wall color, the ceiling color and, most importantly, the photos that will hang on the walls. Finally- it’s MY turn!!

japanese eggplant

The living room is a lilac color. If you haven’t seen it in person, you might be wondering why I picked purple. Sometimes I wonder why I picked purple- it’s not like it’s my favorite color. I don’t even HAVE a favorite color. But, now that 1/4 of the wall space of my entire house is painted purple, I feel committed to making it work. Since you can see through the kitchen to the dining room and living room, I’d like all three rooms to feel tied together.

purple peppers

red onions

And so, that is how I came up with the idea of lining the walls of my kitchen with photos of purple foods. The photos above were taken on a recent trip to the Farmer’s Market- eggplant, (purple!) peppers, and red onions.  I’m hoping to include grapes, plums, blackberries/blueberries, red wine, and maybe even beets and radishes. I had a pretty cool shot of some red cabbages, but Michael said they looked like weird alien brains. He’s not entirely convinced that photos of purple foods is what our kitchen needs… he thinks the house may have reached its limit for the amount of purple it can pull off. Too much purple? Never.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Yin and Yang

DSC_0954Alert, curious, active, and adventurous

DSC_0964Sleepy, lazy, and the biggest scaredy cat I’ve ever seen

Sunday, August 9, 2009

30

On a recent visit to my parent’s house, my mom gave me an envelope with an assortment of pictures from my childhood.  Natalie Age 3 cropped This is me at age 3. I have very clear memories of how much I loved that dress. I think I wore it several times a week. I was pretty cute, I’ll admit it.

Natalie Age 10 croppedThis is me at age 10. The 80’s were not kind to me. For goodness sake- I am wearing TEDDY BEAR EARRINGS! And you cannot possibly imagine what it took to make my bangs look like that. I do look happy in this picture… perhaps someone saw my sweatshirt, took extreme pity on me, and gave me a hug?

Natalie Age 13 cropped Things did not improve for me in middle school. This is me at 13. We had a dress code, which looking back now, I am very grateful for. Who knows what I would have turned up in. I seem to have given up on the perm by this point, but I’m not quite ready to lay down the curling iron or my hairspray. I also seem a bit suspicious of the photographer (or perhaps I just caught sight of myself in a mirror?)

Natalie Wedding picture cropped This is me at 23, when I married Michael. Much better, yes?

 

I turn 30 in two weeks. That seems like a lot of years. I’ve always looked forward to getting older- I’m not sure why. When I was younger, it probably had something to do with the fact that I would eventually be able to wear makeup and drive. Now, I’m excited about getting older because I’m looking forward to (hopefully) becoming wiser and kinder. Growing older means living out my days with the most amazing man I know; growing and learning together. I can’t imagine a more lovely thing to look forward to.

Friday, August 7, 2009

thursday night in the country

Michael and I were delighted to have some good friends joined us as we set ablaze a massive pile of construction waste. We’ve needed to burn the pile for quite some time, but we’ve been waiting for the weather to cooperate. We don’t have any malls and the nearest grocery store is 10 minutes away, but you just can’t do this in Cary, you know?

fire m,k ,j

fire couch 

fire chair

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

job searching

An email I received yesterday:

“Dear Natalie,

Thank you for your interest in employment with _______  Community College.  You recently applied for a position as an advisor through our online applicant tracking system.  Unfortunately, it has been determined that funds are not available to fill the position at this time.  Please visit our website periodically for other openings and/or the status of your application.  Best wishes in fulfilling your employment needs.

Sincerely,
Human Resources”

Well that just sucks.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

walking a cat

DSC_0843

(Notice who’s feet those are… not mine. I would never try to walk a cat.)

 DSC_0848

Why do I love this cat so much?

DSC_0842

(He looks downright slim here, doesn’t he? It’s the camera angle, I’m afraid.)