Ringing in 2013

Happy 2013!!!

A few months back we decided to do something a little different for New Year's Eve. Instead of staying in town and going to the same parties we usually do, we thought we would get out of town. Not only would it give us the opportunity to do something new while ringing in our first New Year as husband and wife with just the two of us, but it would also give us a drama-free New Year's Eve. Sounded like the perfect way to start off 2013 to us! 

On our way. 

We headed to Redmond, where our timeshare has a great location, for a few days in the snow. A few days with no plans at all, except to relax and enjoy our time together. And that's exactly what we did! No obligations, no stress and no drama. Again, perfect! 

PDX Wedding Celebration: Setting the Stage

We know we've been promising more recaps from our Tiki Wedding Extravaganza for a while now and have kept you all waiting. We wanted to make sure to share our photos and video with our close friends and family first. Yes, there IS a wonderful little video that my friend, Brea, made for us. It's simply perfect. Since we still have one very important person to share them with, our Maid of Honor, we are going to kick-off with the recaps for our Portland wedding celebration.

Our Portland wedding celebration was held at our home, Knotty Cakes Ranch. We made lawn signs that were put out to mark the way through the neighborhood to lead guests to our house. It can be a little confusing trying to find our house the first or second time that someone comes over and we wanted to make sure that everyone easily found the way. And by "we made" the lawn signs, I mean, I gave our Maid of Honor the info and she did all of the graphics work.

Lawn signs leading the way to the reception. 

Grateful!

2012 brought us a bounty of reasons to be grateful. Getting married this year meant numerous opportunities to spend with friends and family and no end to parties that were had. From bridal showers to our cock n hen party to our rehearsal dinner to our Portland wedding celebration (pinky swear photos are coming soon). The reasons from those alone where more than enough reasons to be thankful. But, the reasons just kept coming.

We are so blessed for our amazing friends and family who traveled over 2000 miles, each way, to be a part of our big day. We loved being able to share Maui, an island we both love, with all of them. Even better, we were able to pledge a lifetime of love, happiness and trust to each other on a beautiful beach under a coconut groove. It was truly one of the best moments in our life together.

Surrounded by ohana on our perfect wedding day.
photography by Sara Sanger 

Reader Suggestions?

After taking a break from all things wedding and all projects on Knotty Cakes Ranch, we are back in action! Even started working on the thank you notes for the gifts from the at home reception. We'll be honest, it's been a very slow start on those. Thankfully we have a year from our wedding date to get them all done.

Because of putting everything on hold we have a ton to share with all of you. But, where do we start? That's where you come in. We'd like to know what you've been waiting to see more of. Is it the wedding related DIY projects, wedding and PDX reception recaps and reveals, Knotty Cakes Ranch projects or other fun happenings that have been going during our happily married bliss? Take the poll below and let us know!

Project Knotty Cakes Ranch

There seems to always be some kind of project happening at Knotty Cakes Ranch. Recently, we were trying to figure out which direction we wanted to go with a new front door. We even posted a blog about it. Would you believe that we ended up not going with any of those doors? Ha!

We made a huge, 6 page list of all of the house projects we still have left to do. Some of them are easier items like picking the colors for our home office and we've already checked that one off the list. Others take a bit more time and effort like replacing the flooring in our kitchen and bathrooms. We sure will be glad when the ugly linoleum that's in those rooms now is gone, but it's going to be a bigger project to do it all and we still have to figure out what it is that we are even wanting to do. And what kind of tile we want to use.

Would any of these look right in our kitchen?
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What's Behind Door #1?

We have a couple projects we are currently working on for Knotty Cakes Ranch. One of them is trying to figure out which front door would be best for the house. The house actually still has it's original door and if it wasn't so damaged, we'd consider painting it and leaving it be. However, with the damage and also thinking that the design of the door doesn't go well with how the outside of the house is now painted and decorated, we decided it was time to replace the door.

To keep with the mid-century look of the house, we turned to Crestview Doors to find the perfect front door for Knotty Cakes Ranch. They have a handy dandy Door-O-Vision tool on their site where you can upload a picture of the front of your house and try different doors on it in different colors. Since we are not ready to post full pictures of how Knotty Cakes Ranch currently looks on-line, we used an old picture of the house before the front was all painted. When looking at the door choices, think of the house painted charcoal with red trim and white accent.

House with current door that you can't see behind the old screen door.

Saying Good-Bye to Summer

And we thought things would slow down once all things wedding related came to an end. Who were we kidding? Things have been non-stop since the at home reception. As much as Drew and I would like a weekend to just cuddle and watch movies the whole time, if just hasn't happened. Instead, I launched my own home business, we've been working on more Knotty Cakes Ranch projects, we've been going through all the wedding and at home reception photos and having a bit of a social life (outside of the wedding), again.

We've started preparing the yard at Knotty Cakes Ranch for the arrival of cooler temperatures. This requires cutting back many plants, like the banana and ti leaf plants, wrapping their stalks in burlap and putting mulch around the base to help protect them from frost. It's ironic how as we've been preparing the yard for winter our hibiscus plants have been blooming like we're in Hawaii.

One of many hibiscus from our backyard. 

All the Small Things

With less than 2 weeks until we leave for Maui and less than 3 weeks until the wedding, our time has become very precious. We have been busting our butts to get so much done before we go to make sure we aren't scrambling last minute. Especially since I work 9 days in a row starting tomorrow. This past weekend was the last weekend we had off together before we leave and made sure to fully utilize that time. This resulted in some serious crunch time to get things done this weekend.

Remember before when I talked about how I should be doing something for the wedding and felt like I was in the middle of the eye of the storm? Yeah, I don't feel that way anymore. Either does Drew. Now it's go-go time! And there's no room for cry-cry! There has barely been time to even clean the inside of Knotty Cakes Ranch. Thankfully, Mom came up and helped us out in that area. We wouldn't have got it done with out her and would have hated coming home to a messy house after our wedding.

It's go-go, not cry-cry.
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Engagement Party 1 Year Ago

We can't believe it's already been one year since out engagement party. Especially since that means that our wedding is in less than 4 weeks now. WOW! Less than 4 weeks to go!

We thought it'd be fun to re-visit our engagement party and re-live that fun day filled with friends and family. Mom threw the engagement party for us at our house since most of the guests live closer to us. She thought it would be easier for all of them to attend. It was also closer for family driving down from Seattle.

Invitations to our engagement party were sent out and the day for the party finally arrived. Mom and Maid of Honor, Nicki, came up early to set everything up for the party. Mom even made a Paradise Delight cake with layers of guava, lilikoi and lime all topped with whip cream and guava glaze. Drew helped them set some things up while I was off being a proper bride-to-be getting my hair done all fancy.

I'll let some photos from the party tell you the rest of the story.

Mom putting the finishing touches on the cake. 

The Second Reception

Sorry I haven't been around for a couple days. Making big lifestyles changes has me very busy! So does all of this wedding planning. Especially since we are not only having a destination wedding, but also a celebration of our wedding once we return home. It’s like planning two weddings in one.

When we decided to have our wedding on Maui, we didn’t want to leave anyone out of our celebration even though we wanted to have a very small intimate wedding. The best way for us to do that was to have another celebration once we returned home to Portland. We let everyone know that we would be doing this and then it sunk in how much extra work it was going to be.

Don’t get me wrong, we are happy to do it. In fact, we are really happy that we will still get a chance to celebrate with all of our friends, no matter how many there are, and with all of our families, no later how big they may be. We just hadn’t taken into account how much extra work it would be when planning our wedding to also plan a reception at home.

Laying a Pathway

From the very beginning when we purchased Knotty Cakes Ranch, we felt that it needed a pathway leading up to the front door. It has a curved driveway and as a result does not have a straight path to the front. This actually ended up being a pretty quick project that was completed in less than a day. It made a huge difference on the look of the house and we are very happy with the way it turned out.  What do you think?

First we tried laying out the path in a couple different patterns to find the one we liked best.  We went with placing the stepping stones to look like diamonds to complement our front window.

Our friend, Jon, helped Drew lay the ground barrier and place the stones perfectly.

The hardest part was laying the stepping stones equal amounts apart.  Of course, Drew measured it all out.

Love the finished look with the red lava rock added in!

We even added a few diamonds in the front for people to step on when getting out of their vehicles.

ChiChi worked so hard on the path, she thought she'd unwind with a beer afterwards.

Oh, ChiChi! Looks like you drank too much!

All photos are personal photos.


No animals were harmed in these photos. Come on people, she licked a can and then was laying in the sun!

Cleaning Up the Front Yard Take 2

The landscaping at Knotty Cakes Ranch has been in need of great repair even before we moved in. The "clean up" that the previous owners did to the yard to sell it was less than desirable.  Basically, they cut everything down and threw in a bunch of bark dust. Yeah, it looked bad! Real bad!

We had done a bit of clean up on it the year before, but there was still a lot more to be done. We set out on a Saturday with help from Mom and my best friend, Nicki, to pull the yard into shape as best as we could.  We planted tons of bulbs, pulled weeds, trimmed grass, laid rock, planted shrubs and tress and started a pathway to our front door. After many hours and a lot of work, we had a front yard that we were much happier with.

Last year we cut this juniper back, but it never filled in like the other one, so we decided to take it out all together. Made a huge difference in the look of the yard.

Nicki and Amanda laying lava rock.

Nicki's got some muscles!

Nicki and I had to go back to Home Depot for more rock and stepping stones.  We loaded this baby up all by ourselves!

Amanda laying more rock.

Drew and Nicki planting new mini-trees in the front.

Mom made the plant bed in front of the garage bigger.

 We planted this tree last year and it's doing great.  Looks even better with the new rock around it.

We repeated the mini-tree and shrub combo three times in the front yard. You can also see we started playing around with our new pathway.

The front yard looks so much better now. Notice Cupcake to the right? Both him and Radish love to walk up and down the new pathway.

Lots of Updates Coming Soon!

Oh, we have been busy! Tiki Kon 2011, Knotty Cakes Ranch continues to be painted, the lanai continues to be landscaped, Trader Vic's Portland, Adele, The Go Gos, visited the beach house and so much more. We have tons of pictures to post and will hopefully have time to do some of it this week. Cheers to that!

Painting of Knotty Cakes Ranch

The painting of Knotty Cakes Ranch is coming right along.  We are busting our butts trying to get all of it painted and as much of the landscaping down as possible before summer's over. Being in Portland and all you never know when that's going to be.

Wall Unit

When we first moved into Knotty Cakes Ranch, we found a wall unit at Lounge Lizard that was in need of some repair, but was such a great price we couldn't pass it up. Almost a year later, we finally got around to tackling the task of repairing the wall unit. It involved a lot of cleaning, light sanding, reataching venner in some places, refinishing the wood and restaining it in some areas. The work all paid off and the wall unit is now hung. We think it looks great!  

Cleaning the wall posts.

Refinishing the shelves.



Putting all doors into the shelves.



Perfect fit and looks great between our living room and dining room.



Knotty Cakes Ranch Updates Keep Coming

We've been plenty busy over here at Knotty Cakes Ranch trying to do as much as possible before our engagement party. In fact, right after the holidays we pledged to get as much as possible done on the house before summer got here.  Here's a look into some of the stuff we've been doing.

We hung framed photos taken by photographer, Sara Sanger.



Another view of the photos hung in the dining room.



Drew painted one of the walls in the dining room a bright vibrant orange.

Can't get enough of this orange wall.

Hung our Shag print, The Tall Order, on our new orange wall.  Don't you love the way the colors look together?

Hung our Shag prints, The Refill and The Road Runner, on our gold wall in the living room. We purchased both of these prints at the Shag store in Palm Springs.

Picked up these great chairs for our tiki bar at an estate sale around the corner from our house.  Mom is going to be making new seat covers for them.

Formica Ordered!

We got our Formica! We were really happy to both get gift cards from our parents for Christmas to be able to order our Formica. We got a call yesterday that said it had been shipped and was on it's way. We are so excited to be finally fixing the counters in our kitchen.

We also picked up a great color of orange, pumpkin patch, to be used in the stairwell down to where we are building the basement tiki bar and also for one wall in the dining room. We've been really wanting to paint orange in the house somewhere and we're glad to have finally figured out where the perfect place was for it. Photos will be coming soon!

Last, but not least, we have decided to return the main bathroom back to it's original color of pink. We were playing around with making it aquamarine for a while, but decided that the pink bathroom needs to be honored. After debating over many different colors of pink paint we finally figured out which one we thought would look best. Of course, it's called Flamingo Dream. We also picked out the bubble gum VCT for the floor. It's going to look fabulous with the gold speck Formica in there when we are all done. Long live the pink bathroom!

Moving into 2011

Finally all of the holiday stuff is done! We were so busy and attended so much it took some time to get all of it up. We are happy to now be moving into the new year and getting busy on Knotty Cakes Ranch. We have lots to do and lots to share. Stay tuned!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We’ve been having a lot of fun decorating Knotty Cakes Ranch for our first Christmas here. We put lights up on the front of the house, decorated the tree and did a little decorating throughout the house. We like to go with the concept that less is more during the holidays and try to give it a retro vibe. Hope you enjoy what we did!

They had some great flocked trees were were got our Noble Fir from. Maybe next year when Chi Chi isn't so little we can get one.

All the lights on the tree.

Unfortunately, many of our ornaments were broken during our move. We won't go into what happened to not upset anyone, again. The only plus side to it was being able to get some really great new ones.

Tree's all decorated and looking great with the new ornaments.

One of the few ornaments that made it. A gift last year from Mom.

How many people do you know with an artichoke and a sushi ornament?

Mermaid, cupcake, woody, pineapple, jelly fish, frog prince, robot, space invader and so many more!

A close-up of our pink tree decorated with cupcake ornaments in the kitchen.

Loving our new wreath made from all vintage ornaments.

Did you know that poinsettias are a tropical plant? Funny they are associated with Christmas and snow.

Simple decorations go far.

Gingerbread house Amanda made and won for best house at 2008's Festival of Trees.

Knotty Cakes Ranch via early 1960's film.

First time putting up full lights on a house. Love that it's our house!