oh, the nature we have seen!

one of the really great things (of many) about living on the peninsula is that you're so freakin' close to wilderness/natural things/beaches/etc.

i'm not gonna' go into super great detail about all of the places we've been lately, but there'll be plenty of pictures!

approx 2 miles from our house is the incredible illahee state park.





i love it mainly because it's so close. i might try my hand at clamming there next year.

maybe.

also, there's a small beach in port orchard which is accessible by foot ferry.



it's particularly nice to walk on with a belly full of thai food from the farmer's market on saturdays.

one of my most favorite places so far though has been dungeness spit. (thanks go to glew for recommending it!)

it's all bluffs and forest and beach with views of the olympics! plus, on the way there, you'll find yourself at the corner of kitchen dick and woodcock roads. which, you know, funny.

















on the same day that we went to dungeness, leff and i also drove to hurricane ridge in the olympic national park.







it's really cool and all 'cause there are deer



but i'm terrified of heights so the drive up was especially anxiety inducing. (i should have taken xanex. i'm not kidding.)






we had lunch while we were there.



also, we did the museum thing. you're not surprised, right?







one last travel destination and i'll let you go. on thursday, we went to seabeck. this is the town.



i'm not kidding.

it was pretty great though because there are fantastic views of the hood canal.



and lots and lots of moss which i adore.







there was even a mosserfall underneath a tree on the beach.



to be honest, it was rather creepy under that tree. i kept thinking that i would find a severed foot. (ed note: i'm SO GLAD that i didn't.)

k, time to get back to reading gardening books! all of this nature stuff has really made us want to replant the front yard. maybe we'll have a casa rakkaleff sign made in national park service font!

ha ha! no.

catching up on kitsap

once again, many things have been happening and i've been taking my sweet time writing about them. in lieu of an apology, let's just jump into things, shall we?

the painting. (or, as i have referred to it many times in my head the painting.) the painting has come to a blissful halt. it's true, i still need to work on the game room but, for all intents and purposes, the inside of the house is now finished.

in other words, i painted the living room grey



and got the stripe on the stairs.



(this is what that part of the staircase looked like when we moved in. (full set here))

oh, look! stargazers!



have i mentioned my love for samudra yoga and coffee? (i'm sure i have. they're incredible!)

it should come as no surprise that leff and i were at their grand opening at the beginning of the month.



(seriously, if you find yourself in the evergreen park area of bremerton you should *absolutely* go to samudra!)

also in evergreen park (not permanently, of course) was this fire truck.



i think that it was a display for some local kids. whatever it was, it was hypnotizing. fuji and i watched it for about 15 minutes.

this next photo has nothing to do with anything, it's just a cute trailer in port orchard. how's that for a clunky segue?



moving on, pse has been handing out cfls left and right lately as part of project porchlight and rock the bulb. leff and i managed to exchange the incandescents that the previous owner of our house had left at the bremerton rock the bulb.



it was quite successful! here are all of the bulbs that had been traded in by 11:30 am!



what else? oh, yes! leff and i got a toddy coffee maker!



cold brew is deeeeelcious! i can't wait to try it with tea!

last saturday, we had our housewarming for casa rakkaleff. sadly, we didn't do a very good job of photo documenting things.

instead of regular name tags, we had mad lib ones.



(more here)

we were also able to add to the mustache guestbook. (although we missed several people. guess you guys have to come back!)

anyway, here's judystache.



i'll leave you as usual with three extra photos. cats!