With every box I unpack, I vow to live a simpler life. 

This picture is taken out in front of our house, looking left. It is foggy (this is the fog belt) so you can't see the rows of houses cut out of the sides of the hills. You can see the college a few blocks away.

Favorite Things: Downtown West Portal

Marc always teases me about having romantic notions about common ordinary things. I have an idealistic picture of my two summers I spent with my friends Jen and Kelly in Cedarburg. I loved walking around the picturesque tree-lined streets and enjoyed the quaint shops and cafe's of the downtown. My best friend Lisa's apartment was a short walk away and we had bonfires and endless parties in our backyard cabana. I am always hunting for a little downtown area that feels as cozy and comfy as Cedarburg did those two summers. I had a small sense of that living off of Downer Avenue on the East Side. It was small, but it had that same sense of familiarity and friendliness. I spent many hours at the bookstore, the bagel shop, and of course Lixx for a frozen yogurt fixx. 

West Portal Downtown has that same feel. It is lined with great restaurants, interesting shops, coffee cafe's and even two Irish pubs! We are hoping one of the pubs will be like Paddy's Irish Pub on the East Side of Milwaukee (nothing can take the place of Paddy's!). There is a toy shop where I already picked up something for my adopted nephew, Sam, and a small cinema. The hardware store is friendly and well-stocked with everything a new tenant could need to get settled. I am sorry I don't have any pictures to show you, but I will take some and add it to the blog soon. I will be sure to take all of our visitors to the big city neighborhood with a small downtown feel.  

Boxed Out

We are still struggling with our internet connection. We have a dial tone but the internet only seems to work when we are on the phone. As soon as Marc hangs up with the service provider, the internet stops working. I am currently sitting in our temp. housing, away from the boxes, to give you this update. We are settling in and we even have some pictures on the wall! Most of the living room is cleaned out and my goal is to clean off the dining room table today. We hung curtains up because we realized our house was the only one with a bare window. I remember when I was growing up, my mom had us go through our house every night and close every shade. I think it is a big city thing because everyone's house is shut up tight every evening here. Not that I grew up in the big city, but my mom grew up in St. Paul and she probably thought you closed the blinds everywhere. 

Boxes!

We are officially moved into our place. I have not come back to our temp. house until now, so sorry for the delay. The movers did a great job yesterday. They put most of the boxes in the right rooms and did a good job setting up the furniture. Marc and I have put a big dent into unpacking, but we have a long way to go. We love our new kitchen, but we are quickly realizing how wonderful it was to have all of the cabinets in our old place. Marc is confident we can fit it all in. Three cable guys came today and they worked for over four hours setting up our cable; unfortunately, our phone is not working. We can't access the internet until we have a dial tone, so my blogs might be a little more sporadic. 

These are a few pictures from the big move-in yesterday but I will have more pictures as soon as we are a bit more settled. You can see the large boxes covering the window--we have removed them and even put curtains up! We are making progress. 

On another note, it is so cold here! It has been 55 during the day and I think we are the only ones on our block without the heat on. I wanted to turn ours on but it's July! It just seemed wrong. Have a great weekend!  

Goal

I met one of my goals today: my thank-you's are done! I need some addresses that are buried in our stuff, but the notes are written and stamps are on. The addresses will be easy once I locate my school address book which is packed in one of the boxes...

Other than that, I went to our house and thought about touching up the yellow paint, but I felt really lazy and didn't do it. I should have because our stuff is coming tomorrow, but I really didn't feel like changing my clothes and painting. I did take some pictures. The yellow is not quite as bright as it is in person, but you can get the idea. The room has so much potential! 

The other goal, another favorite things blog, may or may not get done...we shall see what the evening holds. I am really in my summer lazy mode! I am sure seeing our couch and all of our things again will motivate me to do something tomorrow!

Bright!!

I painted my sewing room and it is BRIGHT! The color never looks like it does on the card. It was called sun shower so I thought it would be really cheery. I do like it. I painted the ceiling a bright white so it is really clean and fresh. When I went down there today to prep for painting, I noticed that it is a nice, bright space. I will enjoy creating things and wrapping packages down there. I will post pictures tomorrow. Sorry for the short blog! Much more soon! My goal for tomorrow is to finish my wedding thank you's and write a blog about another one of my favorite places around SF. 

Favorite Things:Sonoma

When people think of Northern California, they often associate it with wine country, more specifically, Napa Valley. Napa and Sonoma are two thin strips of fertile land about 45 minutes North of San Francisco. Sonoma is on the Western side of a small mountain ridge and Napa on the Eastern Side. When we were planning our honeymoon out to SF, we looked at both Napa and Sonoma for places to stay. In our research we found a little Inn called the El Dorado (www.eldoradosonoma.com) and we decided to stay there. It is right on Sonoma's town square which has an abundance of shops, wine tasting rooms, and restaurants. We were not disappointed. The front desk gave us a handful of free wine tastings for the local wineries and we were set for several days. We found the wineries to be extremely helpful in teaching us about their wines and proper wine tasting techniques. They were smaller, less commercialized wineries, but beautiful. 

On the Napa Valley side, we found other great wineries but it did not have the same feel as the Sonoma side. There was a lot more commercialization and a lot more people. The wines in both valleys are very good--some of the world's best. 

One of the unique features of wine country are the views. It is amazing to see grapevines in every available fertile space. Many front yards of seemingly single family homes were filled with vines! 

Some of my other favorite things about Sonoma include: The Girl and the Fig (mentioned in a previous blog), Jack London shopping center where you can find the best chocolates I have ever had and an olive oil press and store, and a multitude of fabulous cafe's and restaurants. If you are planning to come and visit us, plan on taking a day to taste and see what California wine country is all about. It is great for wine enthusiasts and non-wine drinking people alike. 

Painter's Tape

I wanted to make a little note about Muir Woods. I was not feeling very creative or descriptive when I wrote the blog so it is lacking some information. It is probably 30 minutes or less from downtown SF. It is a redwood forest and part of the National Park Service. It is close to the ocean and there is even a Beach close by called Muir Beach (I think). There is also a park right off of the Golden Gate bridge that is beautiful. It provides breathtaking views of the bridge, the city, the ocean, and more. It is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. If you ever have questions, please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail and I would be happy to respond!

I took the blue tape off of the living room and the space looks great. I spent most of the morning cleaning up the painting mess, looking for the main power box to turn on the electricity, and cleaning while waiting for my car to be delivered. I included some pictures of the new improved living room and a few houses by ours.  

Painting

We painted our living room today and we are excited to see how it will look tomorrow. As it was drying, sometimes it looked greed and sometimes it looked blue. I am looking forward to removing the tape and plastic tarps so I can put the rug in and see it all together. 

I was going to take some pictures from our neighborhood and the living room, but the camera needs new batteries. I will post a picture of our place and the neighborhood tomorrow. I did include two pictures of our backyard. I can't wait until our landlord hires the gardener! Marc and I would like to put a coat of paint on the shed too. It is quite an eyesore. Enjoy!

Update/Favorite Things:Muir Woods

I have been obsessed with home decorating shows lately. Something I've picked up on is that so many people buy pictures and decorating pieces with one room in mind. Meaning, you buy a picture for the living room and only think of it there.  

We seem to turn on the TV whenever the show "Freestyle" is on. It's a show that changes a room without spending any money. They put the important pieces back, but they look around the house for other items to coordinate the new layout and design. The rooms usually turn out really great.

We went to IKEA today to look for a rug for the living room and we found one that will work well in our space. We will hopefully be able to use pieces we had in other rooms to coordinate. We bought some paint to go with the rug but the only problem I have is that I think it is the same color we painted our bedroom in our other apartment...you just never know how it is going to look until it is on the walls.

FAVORITE THINGS: MUIR WOODS (www.nps.gov/muwo) I know it is not in San Francisco proper, but it is a quick drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to see fairy tale-like woods. For a nominal fee ($3) you can enter into the beautiful forest. When we were there, many of the longer trails were closed off, but the main boardwalk path, a mile long or so, was available.  

The pictures do not even do justice to them, you must see them for yourselves.     

(Marc took the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance tonight.) 

Painters Thumb

For those of you who have painted with me (Jen, Judy, Jon, Mom and Dad...) you know what a disaster I am with a paintbrush. This time was no different. Our landlord, Ed, had the floors completely redone. They are even more beautiful than they are in the pictures. I had a brand new brush and paint tray and I was determined to keep them clean. I don't understand what I do wrong. I was consciously trying and I was still covered with paint before the first wall was done. I don't know if I hurry too much, or what. I dripped on the floor a few times, but cleaned it up right away. Thankfully Marc is helping me with the final paint color. I think it will look really nice when it is all done. The room is a big space with a lot of windows, a fireplace, and a large doorway so it is going to be challenging to arrange. Our furniture is coming next week Thursday so it must be painted by then!

Earthquake!

Last night I felt what I thought was an earthquake. Marc didn't think it was but I don't really think he was completely awake. It felt just like I thought it would and there was even a rumbling sound. When I woke up, I had to check the local news just to see. It was registered as 4.2 centered in Oakland. For those of you who don't know your geography, Oakland is right across the bay from SF. I didn't cause much more than a few broken windows in Oakland and Berkley and a few power outages. You can read more about it on the local news. (cbs5.com)

Prime Time

With the assistance of Marc, the wallpaper is completely off and cleaned up. It wasn't too bad and now we are ready to prime. I am priming the walls tomorrow and Saturday we are going curtain shopping at IKEA and the mall. We have both found that it is a lot easier to match the paint to the curtains instead of the curtains to the paint. We know we want to paint the room a blue/green, but the exact shade is to be determined.

 

The ugly sconce also got a face lift. I painted it silver and even found new glass shades, but they were too big. You can really see the gross paper here! Enjoy the ugly pictures! 

We received a call late tonight from Rebekah, the owner of the other place we really liked. She said the doctors she was going to rent it fell through and it could be ours...we are happy with our little yellow house.

Big Job

I forgot my camera again so I came back to the temp house to eat lunch and take it with me. The wall paper is coming off fairly well. One wall came up with no effort or releasing agent. Thanks to my best friend, Lisa, I am a semi-pro wall paper taker-offer. We took off some that really didn't want to come off in her house. I almost feel guilty that this is coming off so well. I am 2/3 the way done with one of the other walls. The top part is coming off with no problem. There is a thin layer of paper with adhesive under it and it is coming off after I spray it with Diff and scrape it off. Pictures later today...

Keys!

We have the keys! We looked the place over with our new landlord, Ed, and signed away. There are only two things that really bugged me about the house: the two types of wallpaper in the living room and the back yard. One wall in the living room had wallpaper from the 70s. It is textured orange and brown stripes. (If you look closely on the picture of the dining room with the black light fixture from yesterday's blog, you can sort-off see it.) Two of the other walls are in a white on gray stripe from the 80's. The fourth wall was in the color of fresh paint like the rest of the walls in the upstairs. It was really strange to see such an odd combo since the rest of the downstairs was completely redone. 

The backyard is another eyesore. It is overgrown with weeds and needs to be raked. There is a pear tree in the back yard full of pears. (They should be ready in two weeks!) It also has two other lovely trees of good size. As we were discussing terms, I asked if we could do some touch-up paint in the spots where there was wear and tear. He said we can paint any room whatever color we wanted if we didn't get too wild. I was going to wait to broach the wallpaper issue, but I decided to give it a go... he said we can redo it so I will be stripping wallpaper in the next few days. We are excited to be able to take some ownership in the space. As for the backyard, the landlord is going to hire a gardener to come and clean it out then we are going to take it from there. It has a lot of potential so we are really excited about it. I forgot my camera so I will take some before and after pictures and post them tomorrow. Thanks so much for reading!

Favorite Things: Fisherman's Wharf/Alcatraz

Since our housing drama is over (we sign the papers tonight!) I decided to do a new series of blogs about my favorite things to do around SF. For those of you coming out to visit, you can use it as a planning guide. For those of you who do not have plane tickets purchased yet, maybe it will whet your appitite to come visit. Did I mention that our place will have a guest room? We would be happy cook you some meals, take you around, and wine tastings as well! I will also include some pictures from our honeymoon as well as current pictures. Please let me know what else you want to see in the blog or if you have any questions!

Fisherman's Wharf (www.fishermanswharf.org) and Alcatraz (www.alcatrazcruises.com)are two of my favorite places in the SF area. Fisherman's Wharf is the northern most part of San Francisco proper. On a quick drive through it may seem like a tourist trap with cheap shops filled with trinkets and tacky t-shirts. However, it also has the oldest sourdough bakery in the city (www.boudinbakery.com) complete with museum and bakery tour, Maritime National Park which is the only floating park in the country (www.nps.gov/safr), and Ghirardelli Square (www.ghirardellisq.com) ... need I say more? You can also see sea lions on Pier 39!

Since watching Escape from Alcatraz with my dad as a kid, I wanted to visit the infamous Rock. Marc and I took the tour while we were out on our honeymoon. (How romantic!) I will admit that at times it is a little eerie, but above all, the views are second to none. You have a breathtaking view of the Golden Gate Bridge on one side and the San Francisco skyline on the other, and the Bay Bridge on the other. Alcatraz cruises take off from Pier 33 which is just a short walk from the heart of Fisherman's Wharf. It is a short ride over to the island where you can watch a movie about its history and take a self-guided audio tour. The audio tour guides are actual prisoners and guards who spent their time on the rock. 

95% Ours

Ed called us at 10:20 pm pacific and if we have jobs (which we do) we have the place! We won the San Francisco housing game! We need to fax him letters from both of our workplaces and we can sign on Saturday. In all honesty, we are really lucky to have a place so soon. The first property we actually went to see was on Saturday. In all, we looked at 5 places. (Only 3 of them we liked.) It is a beautiful 5 minute drive to my school through a very nice upper class neighborhood and about a 12 minute (with no traffic) drive for Marc. Thank you for all of your thoughts, support, and prayers! (Pictures of the inside of the house.)

The Yellow House

We met with Ed and Jennifer (the homeowners) and it is looking very positive. We talked with them for quite awhile and they are going to let us know tomorrow. It is a huge space. It has a generous living room and dining room, smaller but brand new kitchen. There is a short set of stairs to the upstairs where there are two bedrooms, a full bath, and a sun room. There is also a downstairs where there are two more large rooms and another full bath. To top it off, there are many large closets. We will keep you updated!

The Search Continues

We have another place we are going to look at tonight. (It's the cute yellow house pictured above.) The homeowners are having an open house on Saturday, but I thought I would get a head start and call them. I arranged a viewing for tonight, but we are not the only ones who jumped on the property. There will be at least one other perspective tenant at the viewing. This house has everything on our "wish list" so we are really looking forward to seeing it.

I also talked to an agent who rents many units around San Francisco. (I connected with them thanks to my new friend, Les Morris, teacher at WP.) They did not have any units available, but they gave us valuable tips on how to secure a place. They said that they are not personally interested in a bribe or even getting a cash deposit, they are looking for good people who want to stay for more than one year. The recommended filling out a generic application and writing a cover letter which they helped me with. Overall, they said to just be ourselves. I feel better about apartment hunting now and will stop acting like I am at an audition... hopefully this apartment hunting drama will be over soon and we will have a place to call home.  

Bribes etc.

After teaching art this morning, I ventured over to Oakland to do a little shopping. The traffic was really crazy, but the views of the city were remarkable. The fog is so interesting here. As I was coming over the Bay Bridge, it looked like a wall of fog separating the city. As I sit and write this, it is floating by in chunks covering my view.

As I was coming into our place, I ran into one of our neighbors, Jill. She asked me about myself and I told her a bit about the apartment hunting drama. She said we should pay the potential landlady off! She said we should give her the equivalent to one month of rent so she could go on a vacation or something and really want to have us live there! This is crazy!  

Tonight we went to check out another apartment. It is a single family home with a garage. It is located on a hill roughly above the Giant's stadium. I really liked the gated door. When we walked up the stairs, we saw people on every possible writing surface in the space filling out an application. She brought 30 applications and after twenty minutes into the open house, she was out! The apartment does not have the curb appeal the other one does, but it has a lot of character. The kitchen is big with a little breakfast nook. The living room and dining room are charming and have a lot of 1920's charm. There is 1 and 1/2 bathrooms. There is an extra bedroom, office with a door to a deck, and up about 5 stairs is the master bedroom. It is a very nice space, but I can't imagine competing with 30+ other applicants. People kept piling in after us! As we drove away, we saw two remarkable views: the Bay and the San Fran. skyline. What a great apartment! We should have brought pastries!

The pictures I included are by request: East and West outside our temp. housing door, a vertical shot of our building. In addition, the potential new apartment, and a close up of the potential apartment's door. 

We just received a call from the potential place we visited yesterday. We did not get it:( She didn't give us a reason but I sure hope she didn't pick the girl who brought the pastries. Back to the drawing board...

Now Auditioning...

Last night we went to a pool party at Marc's boss's house. It was warm during the day but it is surprising how cool it is at night. We made a fire in his patio fireplace and had S'mores. They had a plum tree and a lemon tree in their back yard which was fun to see. The plums were delicious and they said that it bears fruit year-round. I was talking to Amanda, Marc's coworker, Dave's wife, and she talked about her experiences apartment hunting in San Francisco. She is also from Wisconsin and said she felt like she was auditioning for an apartment and practically needed to bake them brownies to get a place. 

After church today we went back to the apartment we visited yesterday. We brought her some paperwork and there were other people looking at the space when we arrived. They brought her bakery from Whole-Foods! It was in a box so I didn't see what it was, but she went on-and-on about how good it was and how much the homeowner would like it. As they were leaving, the homeowner, Rebekah, said she liked them and she would let them know. We were still there, so when they were gone, she said she probably wouldn't rent it to them because there were three people and she likes to rent just to couples. 

The more we see the space, the more we love it. It is still lacking the two things we wanted, but we think it will work out fine. It has a large living room with stained glass windows. There are built-in bookshelves and glass French doors. The dining room is huge! It has a built in buffet with shelves and drawers. It is a big open room to the kitchen which was just recently redone. It has mostly stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and lots of cupboards. (It even has a dishwasher! We have one in our temp. apartment and I have really gotten used to it!) It has three bedrooms which would be great for all of our hobby-stuff. There is a shared backyard where we can put our grill. There are two bathrooms and the master bath even has a foot washing basin! (pictured above) 

Rebekah said she liked teachers and we had nice, honest faces. Hopefully we passed our audition...

  

We will post news as soon as we hear...

More Spaces to See...

We checked out a few places in one of the areas we had not yet checked. We found a great place with only two inconveniences: laundry and parking. The washer and dryer were new, but in the garage outside. There were no spots offered to park, only street parking which she said was always available. The space was really beautiful with built in bookshelves and shelving in the dining room. The kitchen was brand new with a breakfast bar. The entire place had a lot of character. We are going to visit the space and talk with the owner again tomorrow. She was really sweet and said that she liked school teachers and thought she knew Marc from somewhere. She kept giggling and saying that he had a familiar face.

We also drove down to San Mateo which is south of SF. I really liked the stucco houses, many with white picket fences. The downtown area was cute. The inconvenience with that area is the commute. It is 20 minutes for Marc without traffic and probably 15 for me. This afternoon we are venturing out to the "suburbs" for a barbecue with some of the people Marc works with.   

Fresh Start

I woke up today feeling like my mind was clear. My best friend, Lisa, called me and said, "Everything always falls into place and this will fall into place too." She is right. We found some more listings and we are going to explore some different areas today. More updates later...thanks for reading!

Homeless in San Francisco

We are back in square 1. Or maybe even square 0 or -1. We checked out two condos in the area we were originally hoping to get into. The first one was absolutely filthy. It has a lot of storage and great room dimensions, but it was painfully outdated. The view in the far distance was the bay and mountains, but the near-by view was the one and only Cow Palace. (see it to believe it! www.cowpalace.com) The second condo was much cleaner and a little off-set to the large Cow Palace, but it was still outdated and had an unusually large number of mirrors. To top it off, as we were driving down the street nearby, a fleet of five police cars blazed past us. We went a few blocks further to see a dozen or so officers with their weapons drawn. This is not a place we would want to bring our mothers.

When we were looking at different areas to live in before our move, we were considering an up-and-coming area called Emeryville. For those of you in the Milwaukee area, it is very similar to the new Bayshore Mall area. We found a listing for a brand new three-story house. As all the other listings like this, it was too good to be true. It was in fact new and beautiful, but around the corner were houses and barbed wire fences you would not want to live near. 

My mom said, "You must feel out of place." She was right. We do. It is difficult to live out of a suitcase without your familiar things around you. I had some extra wedding pictures so I put those around the place and it feels a little better. So here we are, back in square one. Homeless in San Francisco.

And More Cheeseheads...

Tonight I went to an event at Paper Source (paper-source.com) called "girl's night out." We made three projects, ate great food (most of which I had no idea what it was--I love San Francisco's food!), drank great drinks (the umbrella was in my drink), and met new people. Our first project was a necklace charm. I don't have a picture of it because it is currently drying and looks pretty cloudy right now. We took a silver base and picked out different decorative papers to place in it. We then used a special glue that forms a clear seal over it. The second project was a note/bill organizer (the long green and pink piece in the picture). The final project was a votive candle holder in which we designed the outside using paper and string. I worked next to two fellow knitters who filled me in on all the great knitting shops as well as a pottery shop that offers classes. The two ladies were a lot of fun, but what do do you? Ask them for their number? It is a bit awkward meeting new people and making new friends! When I was purchasing my things, I struck up a conversation with the woman who worked there, and she was from Milwaukee's East Side. Two in one day!

Marc took the other picture while I was out. 

A view from above...

Here are some more pictures taken from our temporary house window without Alcatraz in the background (for those of you who think an Alcatraz view is creepy). Those of you planning to come out, the Alcatraz tour was one of my favorite things we did while we were here. It is so well done and the views from the island are unbelievable. 

If you want to see something on KD's blog or have questions, feel free to let me know!