Happy Halloween!

Tonight was a lovely Halloween. We stayed in and drank wine with friends and gave candy to little kids and made them all tell us what their costumes were. Yes, we're those people. And tiny kids dressed as superheroes and fairy princesses ruled the neighborhood. The leftovers will be abandoned at work tomorrow for other people (Whoppers and Almond Joy, we are keeping the leftover Twix and Heath bars).

And I have clearly been listening to the radio too much while driving around for work. Because right now I am irritated at the pop music industry and their need for maudlin love songs (ahem, paging miss Adele?) There are more things to sing about than luuuurve. Which is why I have to post this new Florence and the Machine video. She is one of the only things I am hearing on the radio right now that I am excited about at a Neko Case level. As in, I think she is as talented and as weird and I am excited that she is on the radio as much as she is. And this new video is awesome.



Also, pretty!

The other favorites of mine that I can't believe are getting as much radio play as they are are The Black Keys. If you're going to sing about love, this is the way to do it.



They have such a good, gritty sound and that drummer makes me want to dance! What are you listening to right now that you are excited about?

The other thing I am loving right now is a blues musician named Rory Gallagher. Sometimes Matt will say, "oh, you should listen to this, you'll like this" and be completely correct and it will be somebody I never would have known about otherwise. So this is the song on repeat on my iPod this week:

God I Am Terrible At Titles

Had a nice weekend with my dad, my mom is in Utah visiting her granddaughters and Matt is in Reno checking on the house. We hung my mailbox (finally!) and got plants for both our yards. And then last night my neighbors were throwing away camellia bushes because they were mislabeled white/full sun when they were really pink and didn't care for sun at all. Which sounds like most of my yard. So those are going in back hopefully after work today.

Also, I have a job interview today! Cross your fingers for me, it's a soils job similar to one I had in Reno for FOUR YEARS so I am optimistic. Based on info from a friend that works there it would mean some annoying office politics but it would be work that I am good at, plus a salary, benefits and a 10 MINUTE COMMUTE.

WANT.

And since I miss Matt:

I love Peter Gabriel. Also my husband.

Hi Again

So it seems like this is a once-a-week blog lately. That's about how exciting my life is right now. If one of these other jobs pans out and I suddenly get a normal sleep schedule and a normal commute I could see going back to three or four posts a week but I am just not doing projects like I have been in the past.

I come home, do some laundry, clean up the kitchen and take a shower. Then I have dinner and fall asleep, usually to reruns of The Big Bang Theory. My garden projects are in limbo until we decide what to do. And the house is getting painted, one bit at a time, but it is all neutral colors or colors that don't show up on my camera (mad photography skills here).

I hope to get some projects taken care of this weekend and have some pictures to show for it. I just pulled my squash plants out and about half of my tomatoes as it has gotten wet so they are just sad and sloppy now. So once I finish cleaning up out there I want to redo the foundation plantings around where the veggies will go again in spring. Roses, lavender, gaura and loropetalum are the current front-runners as this is only a moderately sunny area and I want to keep the back comparatively more traditional. I have fantasies of dogwoods and rhododendrons for the full shade...

The front, I have other ideas for. We are waiting for a permit to take out the street tree and once that is out we are taking out the sad fruitless mulberry too. And the lawn. It is going to be a big project. And a decent amount of it hinges on what I can get the landlord to fund. There is a nonprofit that will replace the street tree but I want to replace the mulberry with a (very fruiting) navel orange, with a Western Redbud on the side. Currently it is 90% lawn with a couple of small beds up against the house that I have mostly filled with succulents. I want to do a nice mix of low-water stuff like ceanothus and more lavender with succulents. I have some volunteer agaves in pots that will be going in, and the "fence" between our yard and the neighbors is made of yuccas and I want to break that up a little bit and clump them around other places in the yard so they don't look completely random over there (ha).

And I just wanted to share a cute new blog I found, The Color Issue, it is full of fun inspiration  (just what I need right now as the holidays loom).

Pictures soon, I promise!

I Was Over It, But Now I'm REALLY Over It

Years ago I saw the Keep Calm poster somewhere and ordered one from Barter Books. I actually took it down because I got so sick of it, and stopped reading a snotty decor blog after she started printing her own and selling them with no effort to give Barter Books any kind of credit. Somebody in the UK has also started doing this, but they have also attempted to sue Barter Books to stop 'em from selling the posters. Crazy? Yes. But there has also been a decent writeup of the whole story, here. And I have decided that I really like The Hairpin. I think it was what xojane.com was kind of going for, but it doesn't piss me off. And my new favorite decor blog is here. Any new favorites, ladies?

I am trying to pay off some stuff so I am between projects and not doing much exciting stuff right now but I am sure reading a lot! Gotta love the library! And whoever got me hooked on Ngaio Marsh, thanks again! By rights, my house should probably be cleaner, based on what I am reading about everyone else doing ;) Maybe this weekend...