Ethiopian food with my girls

Miracle of miracles.  I have Holie, Katherine and Dasa in the same place at the same time.  And Hugo as an added bonus!

Deschutes with the Czechs

Another favorite place to take Dasa's family 

Cannon Beach

 A

gain, way colder than expected for Czechs used to going to the Mediterranean beaches.

Isn't Hugo handsome?

My Rin too

And Lada?

Aish, so much cuteness!

Outing with the girls

Katherine was getting her hair cut so I took the girls for a little wander through portland.  I love these kids.  These are just some fun pictures from the sculpture garden of the Portland Art Museum 

Clackamas River

Smoke in the air and coooooooold water.  Fall in Oregon.

Dasa is here!

Finally!  My dream came true.  Data and her family is here for the next 9 months.  I am so excited to show them around my home the way Dasa showed me Czech.

Here's our first trip to the gorge

 Hugo and Rin

Ponytail falls 

 Lada

 They are here!

Bountiful harvest

Holy tomato!

I think I will not run out of dilly beans this year

Architectural photography

So the architect wanted pictures of the house so he could submit them for various awards.  The only problem is that we live in the silly house, and are busy people.  We didn't have art up on half the walls, the garden is a disaster because I focused on the veggie garden this year and I let the rest of it hang for this year.  There are holes where things didn't come up, other things are too big for the space I put them, all the background shrubs and trees are tiny and don't give the intended structure... all in all a disaster.  

It took me a week and a half of full time work to basically move all of our stuff (clutter in architectural terms), do some emergency garden attempts at beautification. It was so hard since 1. I was removing all trace of us, and 2. I am a biologist darn it!  I'm no interior designer!

One of the fun things had to do with the bedroom art.  We've been working on art for this room for a while.  A lot of it went up in the past month in preparation (it does look so much better now, moved in etc).  This particular wall was driving us nuts though.  Nothing really worked.  We have a particular Portland artist that we absolutely love.  Her name is Laura Buchan and she does biology inspired woodwork.  We've seen a bunch of her stuff at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, but there were two particular pieces we loved for the wall.  The museum helped us track Pennon down, but when we got it it looked funny on the wall all by itself.  Just for the heck of it I contacted Laura and asked if she wanted to come help place it in our house.  And she did!  So Laura and Eric hung our new art and we loaded her up with garden veggies in thanks.  It was very fun and Laura is a really cool gal. 

The second adventure came when we hired a cleaning crew to come help clean.  When I called to hire them, I explained the architect situation, that we need a beauty clean and that it is a big and window filled house.  i.e. I need help.  They blew me off of course, but when they showed up mid day the day before shooting, they had a panic attack (I had sent pictures that apparently no one looked at).  3 extra crews were called in, an outside window cleaner contracted... All in all is was a huge production that they tried to blame me for not informing them.  Ha.  Why does no one believe me when I say it will be a big deal?

So heres my crappy camera showing how it looked on the day of the shoot.

My friend Jordan came out to take the pics and we spent the day from 9 am to 10 pm running around opening doors and windows, closing them, moving furniture...

It was exhausting.  By the time we finished, all the restaurants were closed, so on top of everything, I made ratatouille from the garden for dinner.  I think I deserve a little rock star status for that one. weeee 

happenings

Eric's beard is so long I can braid it.  

Makings for dilly beans!

Garden dinner