Our Move to the Lone Star State

     For the four years that we were in the Seattle area, the title to this blog seemed ironic because it's actually fairly cool up there for most of the year, with all the rainy and overcast days.  But now that we're here in Texas, the title fits again.  And it's true, too, because being a California girl living in the cold, grey Seattle area, I need the sun!

     So Mc and I were researching places to live, and we had a few essential criteria and a few that would be nice but aren't essential.

     The essentials:

1. Many, many sunny days throughout the year!  For the vast majority of the year in Seattle, it's either raining or overcast and everything is so grey; no matter how big the windows are in your house, it would still be gloomy inside.  I need the sun's warmth and light!
2. Dancing places, specifically West Coast Swing.  It's something I found out in high school that I have a passion for and it's something I did a lot in my early 20s, and I miss it.  I need an outlet for dancing, and West Coast Swing is my favorite style of dance.  Mc likes the Latin dances, so he can get his dancing fix, too.
3. Somewhere close to one of the voice-acting hubs in the country.  I'm still making steps toward getting into the voice acting business, and I will get more jobs if I'm in an area that's known for it.  That narrowed it down to Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City.
4. Good job opportunities for Mc.  He has very marketable skills and he could get a job anywhere, but there are more demands for his skills near bigger cities, and so we couldn't move too far away from major cities.
5. Has an ex-Mormon meetup group.  I belonged to one in Seattle and it helped me though a hard time when I was still fresh out of the Church.  Since I can't talk to Mc about a lot of the things I'm struggling with or frustrated with in that area, I need other people that I can talk to who are going through or went through the same things I am.
6. A little more on the liberal side.  I'm an atheist and there are many places in the country (the Bible Belt especially) where my kids and I would be harassed for my being an atheist, and none of us need that crap in our life.
7. Low crime rate.  Self-explanatory.
8. Good schools.  Also self-explanatory.
9. Lower cost of living.  Seattle has become one of the most expensive areas in the country to live, and so finding somewhere that had a lower cost of living would be pretty easy.  But we didn't want to be living paycheck to paycheck wherever we went, and so keeping housing and tax costs in mind was a must. 

     The non-essentials but what would still be nice:

1. Costco nearby: food storage!
2. Papa Murphy's nearby: the best pizza ever!
3. Cheesecake Factory nearby: awesome kale-quinoa salad... and cheesecake!
4. Roller skating rink nearby: it's something we liked in Seattle and we'd like to keep doing it.

 
     After taking all these things into consideration and narrowing down the different states and cities, we decided to move to: Austin, TX.

• Austin has a large amount of sunny days; the humidity isn't as bad as Houston (although my curly hair loves the humidity!), and it hardly gets any tornadoes, unlike northern Texas.
• It has West Coast Swing dancing.
• It's three hours south of Dallas and so driving to Dallas wouldn't be too bad for VO jobs if I get them.
• Austin has become a large tech hub over the past few years and so Mc would have no trouble finding work here.  Luckily, Amazon gave him special permission to work remotely and so he works from home for now.  So far the arrangement is working out for everyone and I hope it stays that way for a while!
• It used to have an ex-Mormon meetup group, but that's gone now.  There are two up in Dallas, but so far I haven't needed it.
• Austin is fairly liberal, and although Texas is the western-most southern state and there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians out here, the major cities themselves are more accepting.
• The area we live in has a low crime rate and very good schools.
• The cost of living is higher in Austin than in other cities in Texas but it's still affordable (and about half as expensive as Seattle!).
• There is a Costco, Papa Murphy's, and Cheesecake Factory nearby.  We also found an Austin-based restaurant chain called Torchy's Tacos and they're really good.
• There is a roller skating rink here, and they have other fun places like a children's museum, biking trails and things for kids to do.
• Austin is known for being really into music, art, and good food.  Can't go wrong there!

     So here we are.  We're renting a house for a year and we're currently talking about where around here we'd like to get a house of our own and when.  Interest rates are pretty high right now and so we're trying to be smart with our timing.  We'll see where things go from here, but for now I'm much happier already!

Backyard Deck and Updating the House

     It's been over a year since I've written here; I've had a lot going on and didn't feel up to writing, but now I'm motivated to get back to it.  We've moved down to Texas, and before I get to that I want to post about the last of the house improvements that we did to our Seattle house because I'm really proud of them!

     Back when we first moved into this house we knew that the deck would have to be torn down and rebuilt.  One of the previous owners simply had new boards placed over the old ones, which led to both layers rotting and to fungus growing in between the layers.  It was gross.  Not only that, but the railing was very wobbly and it was leaning out toward the yard, which we knew wouldn't be safe for the kids who were 5 and 3 years old at the time.

The following few pictures are in a previous post,

but I'm including them here again for an easy comparison to how it looks now.

A few months later I got fed up with procrastinating the deck and I tore down what I could.

Here's what I uncovered:

 

Because I'm overweight and the under-layer was in such bad shape, I didn't feel safe on top of the deck to take down the rest of it, so a few months later we hired someone to take down the rest for us.

Then the deck area sat like this for over a year and a half, even through the new window and the landscaping we had done.  We just kept the door bolted shut so that the kids wouldn't be able to open it and fall out.

Tracy, the man who did our retaining walls, also does decks and so we hired him again to build us a new deck.  

 And it looks great!  It's sturdy and just the right size and very well-made,
and I love the flagstone that Tracy used to cover and shape the stone slab landing.

     I didn't get a picture of the deck once Mc finished staining it, but now it has a darker brown color and it looks nice and it's more protected from the rain.  (And we did end up repainting that siding to the left of the new deck where the old deck used to be).

     Then Mc and I decided to move that coming Summer.  I'll cover that in the next post.

     We cleaned up the house really well and had an open house, but no offers came in.  This worried me because the Seattle housing market was hot at the time and similar houses were getting offers and closing within a week or two, and we were competing with other newly-built houses in the area.

     The feedback we got from those who attended the open house was that our kitchen looked outdated, namely the countertops and the flooring.  When we first moved in I didn't like our countertops either—I thought the color was ugly—but prospective buyers were more picky now than I was a few years ago.

Getting completely new countertops is expensive and it takes a long time; I had to do something quickly, so I hired a company to resurface our existing countertops, and they turned out pretty good.

     We also repainted the garage doors and the trim around the entire house so it would match the trim on the windows and so it would look more similar to the exteriors of the new houses that were recently built in the area, which it did!  Mc and I painted the trim of the porch the same color as the exterior walls and removed the roofing material, which improved the curb appeal quite a bit (the porch was the last thing we did and I didn't get a picture of it before we moved).  I also changed out the house numbers to stand out more and be seen easily from the street. 

Before, looking rather drab and old:

After, with a crisper and more modern look:

     With all those improvements and a slight price reduction, we finally got an offer; after a little bit of negotiating, we accepted it.  I'm so pleased with the work Mc and I did and that Tracy did!  I just wish it didn't take something big like moving to get me motivated to make the changes that I'd wanted to make for the past three years, you know what I mean?  But you know what: at least we can say that we left the house in much better condition than when we bought it three years before.  😊

Retaining Walls Finished!

     Today Tracy, our landscape/hardscape guy, finished with the retaining walls and the window well in our backyard!  Here are the before, during, and after pictures.  :)

Before

During

This is the root system of the cursed bush that I cut way back.  That thing is huge!

Goodbye, fir tree.  He saved the hydrangea bush, though.  :)

After

It looks so much cleaner.  And he saved two more of our flower plants, too!

 The dark soil is some kind of mulch; our dirt doesn't absorb water very well,

and so this stuff will help with water absorption so things don't flood when it rains.

I used to have to practically force the kids to go out into the backyard to play,

but now they ask to go outside!  They love it!

 He used our existing rocks and blocks up on the hill so that we could utilize what we have.

These are now blocking up some rather large holes under the back fence where the soil eroded away.

More rocks to cover up the drainage pipe, and there's also a gap here which allows access to some water basin things and shut-off valves that we will need access to at some point.

He regraded the dirt in the back there so that it would be level all the way around the window well

(and now the side gate can open easier, too).

I looked up pictures online of window wells, and I really didn't want to look out of my window and see what looks like the inside of a metal bucket.  So he made a window well for us out of the same blocks and capstones that he used for the retaining walls.

  This is what I see when I look out the window.  I love it!

     It was a two-week project and Tracy worked alone.  He did an excellent job!  He was very precise with his measurements and his leveling and with the spacing of the blocks, and very exact when he cut the capstones to fit together (that was the most time-consuming part of the whole project).  I very much appreciated his attention to detail.  His work and the final product were absolutely worth the money!

     Next on the list is the deck!  Tracy also does decks, and so we'll have him back to do more of our upcoming yard projects.  I already love this backyard so much more than when we first moved in, and I actually like being outside now!  And now that everything is where it needs to be, we can start watering the grass again.  ;)

Plant-Based Diet

     Back in March one of my friends sent me a coupon code from the Safeway/Albertsons monopoly game; it was for a free cooking course from an online cooking school called Rouxbe.  I checked out the terms of use and it was legitimate, so I signed myself up for it and it was great!

     The course I took was called "Plant-Based Cooking" and it focused on a plant-based diet: no meat (including fish), no eggs, no dairy.  In the beginning of the course they explained why they use the term plant-based rather than vegan: "vegan" has political and ethical implications to it, while "plant-based" refers only to the food and culinary skills.  They also refer many times to the Standard American Diet (SAD) which is meat- and dairy-centric and high in processed foods, because that's what we in this country have to let go of in order to eat more healthily.

     One of the things they linked early on in the course was a video of a man named Dr. Michael Greger, an American physician, author, and public speaker, who explained how the top 15 causes of death in America as of 2012 when this video was made (except accidental injuries) can all be prevented and sometimes reversed by adopting a plant-based diet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30gEiweaAVQ  It's a 55-minute-long video but it's well worth the time.
And I just found four shorter videos on YouTube which are titled "Why doctors don't recommend veganism".  They're so good!

• With Dr. Greger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajhX5jWmlL0
• With Dr. Barnard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLeee0HRyHM&spfreload=5
• With Dr. McDougall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuOa3avtdNA
• And with Dr. Goldhamer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ef16V_6Vvo

     What I loved about the course is that the demonstration videos were excellent and they showed me how to do the various cooking methods--- boiling, simmering, steaming, roasting, sauteing, etc.  It gave me the knowledge of how to cook so that I could later focus on what to cook.

     The kids were surprisingly open-minded and willing to try what I made for them.  Little One has a new-found love of couscous and the course's recipe for "power cookies", and Baby Girl tried a lot of new vegetables.  We've switched to Almondmilk which the kids like and Mc thinks it's okay, too (I actually don't like the taste so I've basically stopped eating cereal altogether).  We don't eat meat anymore for the most part, and we've been eating a lot more vegetables.

     One of the first things the course covers is where you will get your nutrients now that you're not eating meat or dairy.  Dairy actually isn't a very good source of calcium, but it's one of the most popular sources in Standard American Diet; and meat is an easy source of complete proteins and iron, so you have to eat different combinations of other food to make complete proteins.  Here are where you can get the nutrients you need on a plant-based diet:

• Protein: legumes (beans, lentils), nuts, seeds, whole grains, and vegetables
• Calcium: green vegetables, beans, fruit, and some seeds
• Iron: spinach and other leafy greens, quinoa, pumpkin seeds, lentils, white beans, etc.

     During the course I did do the plant-based diet and I lost about 8 pounds.  As I cut out sugar from my diet I've been able to taste the natural sugars and sweetness levels among various fruits and even vegetables.  And it's hard to describe, but my body felt cleaner inside.  Since the course ended I've gone back to just a vegetarian diet but I've eaten processed food and sugary snacks a bit more and so my weight has leveled out again.  Because I am overweight and because I have a family history of diabetes, I need to lose about 80 lbs. to be at my ideal weight.  My goal is to get back to the strictly plant-based diet so that my whole family will be healthy and so I can start to lose weight again.

     This was an excellent course.  The demonstration videos, the explanations, the motivation pages, all of it was excellently done.  If you come across one of the monopoly coupon codes for a free cooking course with Rouxbe, take it!  You won't regret it!

New Bedroom Window

(I changed up the background of my blog today.  The other background was a too blue and cold-looking for me, and I wanted something new and different with a little more color.)

     This is one of about 20 house/yard projects on our list of things that need to be fixed or improved.  Some projects are small and some are large; some are cheap and easy fixes while others are pretty expensive.  I would call this one a medium-sized project.

     We are using the downstairs bedroom as a computer room, and because it has a closet it's technically a bedroom.  But the only window we had in the room was 6' above the ground and very small--- much too small for a proper fire escape--- and so it's officially labeled a nonconforming bedroom.  It also lets in way too little natural light.  I wanted a window on the south-facing wall that lets in the sunlight throughout the day, that faces the backyard so I can be in here and watch the kids play, and so it's the proper size and height for a bedroom window.  Here are some pictures.

Before

As you'll see, we had to cut into the foundation.

The room.  This is the middle of the day, and look at how little natural light there is!

Where the window will go.

During

The initial cut into the sheet rock.

That grey part on top is the foundation.
We had to move some wires over, but luckily no plumbing needed to be rerouted
(the kitchen is right above this room).

That's what the foundation looks like on the inside.  Pretty cool!

 The Finished Product

Installed, framed, and the wall repainted.

Look at all the natural light we have now!
(And please ignore the mess--- we're still putting the room back together).😉

     This project took a long time to do and it was expensive, but it needed to be done.  Now that this is checked off of our list, the next project is to fix up the outside of the house around the window and then landscape the backyard.  Onward we go!!