Random personal updates

Do you know what happens when you have a busy spring and summer and then your laptop dies? I don't know either, but you sure as hell don't blog. Many of you know this already from Facebook, but Greg and I got married in June on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Getting to have all of our closest friends and families with us for a week was fantastic. I had no idea how much love everyone would surround us with during that time. Getting married is super fun and I can't recommend it enough. Exactly a week after our wedding, the Supreme Court made marriage legal for everyone in the US and our marriage felt that much more special. We were giddy.

My family, spearheaded by my eldest brother Chris, spent the six months prior to our wedding making us tiki mugs. The first night in Hawaii we met up for dinner and one by one everyone brought us a wrapped mug that they had carved and glazed themselves, from my little nephews and nieces to my parents. It was overwhelming in the best way.

Zwucker is our portmanteau.

Can you even?

I learned a few things getting married, namely that I don't understand wedding photography at all. My nieces are beautiful and photogenic, so why not set them up so they look like they're watching TV while I get my picture taken?

DON'T LOOK AT ME. DON'T YOU DARE LOOK AT ME!
ALSO, LAURA YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT WEARING LIPSTICK. I SHOULD'VE DONE THAT.

Greg and I are not terribly comfortable in front of the camera, but I think we knew that.

How long do we have to stare at this green screen while she photographs my back fat?

Luckily we loosened up after a few maitais.

Me and my sister reenacting a childhood dance

I'm not changing my name and we're not having babies, so future big news around here will be limited to the gardening and pet variety (if I can convince Greg to get a dog and a cat).

In gardening news, I'm barely watering anything and seeing what survives! A roster of the departed will follow soon. Happy Monday! Yay marriage!

Toiling in the basement. Again.

Back when we had our earthquake retrofit, they had to cut into the drywall in our basement. That happened almost two years ago and yet I haven't wanted to patch this area because I hate drywall repair.

At some point in 2014 Greg screwed the old pieces back into place and I threw one compulsory layer of joint compound on top. It sat like that for a very long time, and every time we watched a movie down there I'd say, "I should really do something about that," and then I would ignore it. Because patching is the pits.

Because we did a shitty job getting the drywall pieces back in place, I had to do one billion layers of joint compound, with all the sanding that comes between coats. Of all the projects in the house, I really wish I had hired the drywall mudding and cornering out. I hate it and I'm not good at it. I've spent months of my life working on the walls in this room and they still look like shit.

Anyway! It became very clear that the entire room was in need of repainting and since I am trying to be a little less of a dictator around the house, I relented to Greg's one constant request: to paint the basement dark.

As I've covered before, Greg hasn't always felt like this was OUR house. I bought it, I picked out all the decor, and I just let him live here. We have this frequent push-pull where he complains, "You never let me choose anything in the house!" and then I run through the house pointing out all the things we've purchased together, and then he says, "I want to paint the basement black," and I screech "NO!" and then he's proven his point. And you know what? He doesn't really want a black basement but we're both stubborn enough to go through with painting it that way, just to spite each other.

If this isn't clear, I'm so excited to marry Greg. I'm crazy about him and I can't wait to be his wife.

When it became clear that the whole basement needed to be repainted, I suggested painting it navy blue. We tried a number of different colors that looked great in other people's rooms but didn't work for us. We finally settled on Blue Note by Benjamin Moore. If I wasn't already marrying Greg I would marry this color. It's so delicious and it's perfect for a room where we watch movies. It's so much darker than I'd ever choose normally, so Greg gets a gold star for this one.

But first I had to deal with the windows, which had never been painted or trimmed out.

And we needed to deal with Hall and Oates/Beavis and Butthead over the fireplace (free artwork left by the previous owners).

I haven't replaced the window hardware because I'm afraid it will disintegrate into rusty pieces and I'll never find a replacement.

I think, for never having done this before, I did a pretty good job. We then spent a Saturday installing baseboard and window trim.

And Hall and Oates got replaced with a new cover. I want to repaint it black because I feel like it needs to be darker. We're toying with the idea of building a teak mantel over the fireplace, which will fix that whole missing brick issue.

And we hung a sweet bamboo curtain to obscure the storage area and provide some texture. Now we'd like to stash a bar in there.

We spent another Saturday hauling the old couch up the stairs, and boy, was that fun! The pleather was peeling and splitting or we would've just kept it down there. Instead we bought the comfiest (though not the most attractive) couch we could find at Ikea: the Kivik. This room is for watching movies, so function trumped form.

I also mounted and hung the tiki masks we bought in Hawaii. I glued lights inside so their mouths light up.

We still need sconces over the TV, a skirt board along the staircase, new stair carpeting, a new area rug, a perfect mid-century modern credenza under the tiki masks, window treatments . . . there's still so much to do. I also kind of want to drywall over the wood paneling in the stairwell even though I really don't want to mud any more drywall seams. And it would be a total bitch to drywall around the stair risers. And yet . . .

Maybe I'll just wait for a super nice weekend to do that.

To recap, when I moved in:

After the first go-around with redoing the room:

And now:

We're getting there.

The happiest place on earth

Last week Greg and I traveled to Anaheim to go to Disneyland with my brother, my sister-in-law, and their two girls, along with a smattering of grandparents and friends. We went swimming a lot, rode as many scary rides with my mom as possible (my dad's not a fan), and I bored Greg discussing the landscaping in and around Disneyland.

We also spent a few nights at Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Room. We love tiki and my brother really, really loves tiki, so we had a great time. I accidentally bought too many tiki glasses.

The trip was expensive, even staying at the cheapo Best Western, but it was so much fun. Screw dinners and flowers, I think the most romantic thing in the world is Greg voluntarily spending his vacation time with my family and allowing three little girls to demand that he hold their hands, go swimming with them, sit next to them on rides, or not hold my hands so they can. We don't want kids of our own but I am so grateful to my siblings for giving me such wonderful nieces and nephews. I miss them so much now that we're back home.

Phoebe having a staring contest with Greg

I missed my garden while we were away and it was noticeably larger when we returned. It rained the whole time we were gone, GOOD JOB PORTLAND!

I tried not to be that annoying girl taking photos of the landscaping, especially when I had such cute little girls nearby, but I snapped a few with my phone. California Adventure was particularly nice, with lots of desert plants, including a mass planting of Agave americana that I wanted to photograph but there were so many strollers between me and it.

But really, I bought too many tiki glasses. What was I thinking?