Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year, everybody! It's been a busy few weekends for W. and I getting ready for the holiday and today we did the requisite visits to different family members houses. Tomorrow we finish up the visits with my immediate family coming over to our house and then the extended family gathering at my aunt & uncle's place. I'd write more but, frankly, I'm exhausted. Spent almost all day yesterday cleaning the entire 2400 sq. ft. house to get ready for the new year. Time for some rest....

Happy, healthy, and prosperous new year wishes to you all!

Curtains and blinds

Yay, we finally got some curtains and window treatments! Only did a few of the windows for now to try out the different vendors we're using and their products, but we're very happy so far. The curtains in the living room are a pretty dramatic red, but I think I like 'em. They're a faux silk material, fully lined, and they helped us pick the curtain rods and finials (did I spell that right?) that they're hanging from. If you look at the upper left hand corner of the first picture you'll see our rear speaker hanging riiiight next to the curtain rod. That's where the wiring is for that speaker and we would have had to move the pre-drilled (and pretty large) hole in order to move the speaker further from the window, which didn't seem to be worth the effort. So we had to work the curtain rod selection around it a bit, but it all worked out. Now the final thing we need to finish off this room is an entertainment unit for the TV and surround sound/stereo components. It's been a really tough search so far because nothing seems to fit both our large TV and W's oversized components, but we'll keep hunting.

The second room to get window treatments was the study. Poor W. was going blind because his desk faces the window and the glare coming through the temporary paper shades was making computer usage pretty hard. On the advice of the window designer lady we got faux woods blinds that are routeless--that is, it doesn't have holes for the strings to pass through so you can more fully block out light when the blinds are closed. The strings wrap around the invidual slats instead. W's loving 'em so far. Still need to get some curtains in here, but the new blinds are a big help for making the room look a little more polished. What would really help though is if we each cleaned up our desks :P

Finally, the last room we did was our bedroom. Here we got double honeycomb shades that you can pull up from the bottom or drop from the top for more privacy. They're like two layers of honeycombs you'd see in a beehive, only hollow, so the air in between actually helps insulate against exterior sound and loss of heat or A/C. The bedroom windows face out to the street so some sound insulation was important to us and anything that helps keep the heating bills down is a good thing. Can't wait to get some pretty curtains in here too to finish off the look. Notice W's very high-end end table, aka my stereo box. His actual end table is currently being used to hold the stereo components in the living room.

Wow, big haircut

I last cut my hair in September just before I left San Francisco (and got a great cut for free because I did one of those hair model things where you let someone practice new techniques on your hair). Five months went by fast and my hair was starting to look a little...just, eh. You know what I mean? So I finally made an appointment with my local hairdresser who I've been going to since college. Even when I moved to S.F. I'd often wait until I came home for visits to get my hair cut by her. So, obviously, I trust her and told her to just do whatever she wanted and to just give me something fun and with lots of layers.

45 minutes later and my hair went from right about at my shoulders to now ending just about where the back of my head meets my neck. And I love it! So fun, so different. No pictures to post, sorry; maybe later. Big changes can be a lot of fun.