a few things:
1. curt found the rest of the stones that form the path up to the shack/ art studio. much less tricky to get up the hill...he also planted a few things and put in some nifty solar lights. it looks amazing back there. just a taste of what's to come over the next years (decades?). now we just have to deal with the massive fallen trees up past the shack in the "national forest" part of the yard.
2. thank you grace for your sweet words! fun to see our little home on design*sponge
3. vacation time! be back in a week with some more updates.

new duvet cover (thanks ma!) and a lovely table setting courtesy of L. he takes his jobs very seriously...

a few more photos as we start to put the furniture in the rooms.

the kitchen is up and running, my gourmet magazine is in it's rightful place and the table can be set:

the living room is coming together...still missing a couch, but we have good music and nice light.

and our first guest! he gave it 2 thumbs up and exclaimed, "respekt".

the photo taking slowed a bit this weekend...not for lack of work, for sure. we're both a bit too exhausted right now to remember to document. Mr. L gets here tomorrow so it's crunch time to get things in order for his visit. oh boy!

i forgot to post photos of our newly white kitchen as of last week:
this weekend was massive clean-up/ move-in time. it took me 3 days to clean the oven. i don't think it's been cleaned before. ever. and i've never seen grease like that before. ever. ed helped clean it up ed-style: with his shirt off!

while curt dealt with wrangling all of our interior doors back in to place, i got our kitchen in to order and galen put in our stained glass window.can i just mention (again) how amazing this window is?????? more photos to come. brilliant boyfriend...
curt finished up the mess i started with our new ikea rolling cart. love the cart, hate the instructions.
then dinner. the first cooked dinner in our new kitchen. yum....
oh, i almost forgot to mention...friday early early morning (after hanging the curtains that evening) we had an earthquake! not normally a big deal in california. i've slept through many or just been too lazy to acknowledge the shaking, but this one was in right in our backyard....almost literally. everything is still standing (k'nahora nicht poo poo poo)...it didn't even knock over the loofah in the shower. scared the crap out of us. shoes, flashlight and phones by the bed. emergency preparedness kits coming soon.

another one i forgot. by curt's explicit request:

after first coat in the kitchen and a 10:30pm run to in-n-out burger for fortifications:
american preperation:
german systematic organization:
!!!

well it seems that it's not fair to start every post by saying, "big weekend". but it's really true...big weekend again.

friday we started in the bedroom. curt's closet looks mighty fine up in the front room:
so we focused on my closet back in our bedroom. gotta love a boyfriend who wants your closet to be as nice as possible....
mine was really really really funky:
the ceiling wasn't even really a ceiling, just dirty soundboard and unfinished wood panels. curt refashioned some old wood that we ripped out from the house in to a new ceiling. he even cut a hole for a ceiling light:
now my closet looks like this:
yeah, i know. it's kind of sick that we have a pink closet for me and a blue closet for him...i don't even know what came over me. i was at the paint store and the can of "ballet slipper pink" just fell off the shelf and jumped in to my hand. but oh my god! i have a pink closet! it's so pretty...

oh and this:
went to this:
much better. it's like a little jolt of summer everytime you open the door!

after all the dirty work we needed a little bit of fun, so we moved the new guest bed in to it's proper place. thank you craigslist.

friday afternoon ma and pa came up to help out again. they were hoping they'd be moving us in to the house but no such luck. week 3 in the tent started last night, but i think it's done. i know i've said this before, but i think we're moving in (fingers crossed). i can't take it anymore. i've reached my "oh isn't it cute that we're camping in our backyard?" quotient. it's not cute anymore.

remember the kitchen chaos? this is 500x crazier....
knowing that it wouldn't happen if we were already moved in, we decided to go ahead and paint the kitchen now instead of waiting. and yes, curt is right...painting is all about the prep. thank god the german blood runs thick in his veins cause i'm a lazy painter. without his fastidiousness we'd have a splatter-painted house. so we covered the floors and moved the stove and fridge to the middle of the room. first coat will be tonight. it's primes, caulked and ready to go.
the bbq that the boys put together will come in mighty handy. ma and pa scrubbed the nastiness out of the kitchen and figured how the cabinets should be used.

as that was going on, we (well, galen assisted by curt) put in our new beautiful front door.
sunday night we couldn't move. bedroom floor is painted. door is in place ready for a knob, kitchen patiently awaits it's first coat...

as a last minute bit of fun we moved one piece of furniture in to the living room and then held up our stained glass window and took turns looking at it from all of the different rooms.
close up with back-light:
blurry view from outside the bedroom windows (the floor was still wet...)

big sigh....the floors are done. we're a little bit nuts after spending so much time with the wood...we each have our favorite boards. pretty nice looking, eh?
and a sneak peak of the bedroom with the floors painted. i'll take another photo after the floor gets another coat...
this means possible relocation from the tent on friday? saturday? oh boy....the tent has been real good to us but i'm ready for a bedroom.