Home Tour: the bathroom

Welcome to our bathroom! To tell the truth, this is so far my favorite room in this little house: it's so bright, so big, so new, the view is amazing, -- I just love it! I think that when we move out of this house one day, I'll miss the bathroom the most. This is why I decided to document it in this post, to keep the good memories alive as long as possible. 

I love coming here after work, taking a shower and switching to home mode, letting the water take away all of the unrelated thoughts and problems. When I have extra time in the evening, I fill the bathtub with bubbles, grab a book or a magazine, and just take some time to myself to relax.

Did I mention the view? This is the first bathroom in my life with windows, and it has four windows! I can actually have live flowers here all year round. My favorite part of the morning is coming to the bathroom, opening the curtains and letting the sunlight in. In winter we used to say "Hi!" to a moose in the backyard; in spring we observed a white bunny jumping on a lawn and a cherry tree blooming; now the window view is so colorful and the tree has so many leaves that we don't even need to hide behind the curtains! 

Decorating a cake for the 4th of July - fresh berries

Last year Ben and I made an ice cream Independence Day cake, and it was a challenge in hot Moscow weather. This time we decided to have a baked white cake with mousse and decorate it for the 4th of July with fresh seasonal red and blue berries. I feel more and more interested in actually decorating and styling food, I love the visual part of the cooking experience more now than I did, so it seems less important which exact recipe of cake to use.

I decorated our 4th of July cake with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and dark chocolate covered açai berries. I wish I could find red currants and blackberries, as well, but the stores didn't have any. At the very end I used some dark chocolate to grate on top of this berry field. You can also imagine it being sprinkled with white powdered sugar - unfortunately, by the time I started taking the pictures, it melted on the fresh juicy berries, but I didn't really notice and didn't add a new layer. I think it looks glorious even without any powder.

Right after I got finished taking the photos, we heard roaring thunder and it started heavily raining. We called Ben's parents and invited them for an early 4th of July tea party. We ate the cake, looked through the art books we thrifted last weekend, listened to the rain outside and chatted about dreams, space shuttles and weekend plans.

Farragut State Park

There is so much going on every day in summer (and wherever I go I have at least one camera with me) that I end up not having time to post about all of the wonderful places we visit, people we meet and things we do! I can't complain, though, I like this kind of life. Today I want to share the photos from a trip we took last weekend to Farragut State Park - it's only 26 miles down south of Sandpoint, which makes for a perfect adventure with limited driving.

This Idaho state park is located on the southern tip of the Lake Pend Oreille and it used to be a WWII era naval training station: there is still a museum and a few architectural objects in the woods from that time. Other than that, there are plenty of camping sites, we spotted a few cute cabins right at the tip overlooking the lake and the mountains (as Liz Lemon would say: "I want to go to there!"), even camping places for people with llamas! I mean, traveling and camping with llamas - it must be the best thing ever! 

Well, at least we want to try and rent a cabin there. There is a big lawn in front of the cabins where I want to put a few soft blankets on the ground and do Idaho stargazing at night. I'm usually not brave enough to stay in the woods/mountains with wild animals and lay there watching the stars. But in this case it's ideal: the sky is clear in the park, there are no city lights, cars or other civilization messes, and at the same time, I'm not too far from the people and the cabins! I really hope we can fit this little adventure into our schedules, maybe in August or early September. It's hard to tell since we have so many plans and adventures in mind for this season.

a week or so ago

I can't move on without leaving a note about Father's Day 2013. It was such a great weekend! We had breakfast with Ben's parents at "The Readery," which is our favorite place to eat so far this year. We had so much fun putting together a gift bag for Ben's dad.  The pink toenail polish for Sam-dog was the highlight. It was hilarious to reveal that the "dog's dog" had hot-pink nails. He didn't even notice, of course, and sat patiently while we petted him and painted them.

In the evening we went to the city beach and had an "international meals" picnic with friends, watched a train shooting fire while driving across the bridge (scraping the track), and enjoyed the lake Pend Oreille sunset.  If you're visiting Sandpoint - no matter what you came here for... go to City Beach, 3rd avenue pier, the bridge or anywhere overlooking the lake and watch everything change colors, and say "Hi!" to the mini Sandpoint Statue of Liberty!  Sandpoint is the best in summer!

Lomography Monday: Montana, farmers' market, blueberries and a cat

One of the many reasons I love film photography is that you can actually put a roll of film somewhere in the house and forget about it for a long time! Or sometimes you can just leave it inside the camera, put it on a shelf and not use it for awhile. This is exactly what happened to this roll of film from last summer! We have quite a few cameras around the house (I should count them and make a list when I have free time!), so it just happened that I took my Golden Half on a hike recently and without any thought opened it to load a new roll of film.. Luckily, I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't empty - I had to actually develop the photos to remember when they were taken! I absolutely forgot about all of these and I'm so excited to share them now!

So, here we have: Ben and I at the farmers' market in Sandpoint, pictures from our August road trip to Bozeman, Montana, our awesome friends, the house where Ben used to live, the blueberry farm adventures, Uno the furry cat and my ladybug garden shoes! I'm left to wonder what was on the pictures that I wiped out by opening the camera oh so mistakenly. From now on I'll try to stick something to each camera with a roll of film in it to avoid flashing the memories in the future.

it's raining non-stop and we're camping at home

This is what we've been doing for the last two nights and we are not getting tired of it! It is pretty cold and miserable outside, the rain doesn't want to leave our town, my feet are constantly wet, and I could write a big long story about how we were trying to get to work the other day... BUT we have a house tent now! 

We came from work yesterday and realized that there was nowhere to go without getting all soaked, and nowhere we actually wanted to be in this weather, so we should stay at home! I love summer, and I want it to be hot and sunny again, but I have to admit I loved the idea of pulling on my fluffy red socks, making hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, cuddling in a big pile of blankets and pillows, and watching a show on Netflix. Let's pretend it's November just for a few days!

We built a tent, filled it with everything soft and cozy, turned on the Christmas lights, played with the Photo Booth on the laptop and listened to the rain hitting on the roof. Sonya bunny loved the camping experience the most: she kept reorganizing our blankets, moving the pillows and digging everywhere - it's very funny to watch her, I actually should make an Instagram video of her next time!

Last time we camped indoors was 2 years ago, also in June. It happened in Moscow and we shared the tent with my cat Sima.

So, my camping stats as of today: indoor camping = 2 times; outdoor camping = 1 time, in the backyard. We have to do something about it this summer!