Yikes...

Sorry anyone who still looks at this! It's been far too long. I know. I know.

So many new things.

Including this girl:

(taken when she was only 9 weeks old)

 Who now looks like this:

(taken this week, at 6.5 months)

Her name is Penny. She is sad here because she was spayed last week and must wear this for a while longer. 

And from now on, for at least a while, you can find new posts at soweboughtaduplex.tumblr.com. It's just easier. 

Happy Birthday Oliver!

One of my favorite annual traditions since marrying into the Maduro/Dusedau family is making our little cousin Oliver's birthday cake each year. It started with a baby chick cake for his first birthday, last year I went crazy with a green dinosaur at his request and THIS year, for his big 4th birthday, I wanted to do something that stuck with the "Science" theme of his party - thrown jointly with his best friend OB (Oliver Benjamin). 

SO...taking inspiration from Pinterest, and with advice from Sara and Keeley - who've tackled this cake for their own kiddos, I made what looked like just a nothing-fancy vanilla cake. 

Oliver and OB had to help finish it, by putting colored sprinkles on the top...(the final ingredients for this science experiment)....

THEN...I cut a slice- revealing that the sprinkles turned the cake RAINBOW inside!!

So fun to see their amazed faces and squealing excitement!

 

I'd say it was a hit. 

Now I need to start planning next year's cake...

Big Lou...

Our neighbors stopped me on my way to the garage this weekend - asking if we or our tenants happened to lose a GIANT LIZARD. Um, no.

Apparently, hanging out in the sun in our neighbor's for the last couple of days is a Tegu Lizard - a large Argentinian reptile. They look like this:

Apparently they are pretty harmless. They think he must have been a pet that escaped. They were canvassing the neighborhood looking for his owner, and in the meantime - have named him Big Lou. The wife imagines a future where he becomes our streets version of the Loch Ness Monster - appearing and disappearing like the stuff of legend.

Chocolate Cookies...

A recipe for Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies is up today on Saucy Little Dish. Click here to go see!

Yum!!

Oh the bathrooms...

 While our kitchen is brand new, our hickory floors are delicious and even our patio is coming together, our bathrooms are still in their gross original state. The previous owners had a love of weird 70's tile. At least our half of the duplex has neutral colors.

We'll get around to redoing the bathrooms eventually but in the meantime, we're just trying to make them as clean and livable as possible.

First task - redo the nasty caulk around the tub.

We scraped it off...

...and applied the new stuff as neatly as possible.

I would still love to just blow up the whole room, but for now, at least the dirt we see in the caulk is OUR dirt.

A new addition to the neighborhood...

 

In mid-October, our Echo Park extended family gets a little bit bigger. Neal's writing partner and his wife, two of our best friends, are expecting a little boy. Nick and Chelsea live two and a half blocks away so I expect we'll have a lot of babysitting in our future.

 Last weekend, Rachel, Ashley and I threw them a "Baby Warming" - we didn't dare call it a shower.

A pile of great food, a bunch of wonderful people, cute presents and lots of advice and words of wisdom.

 

 This will be a lucky baby with these two as parents...and with the rest of these people as a support system.  Excited to meet him.

Insta-Bench...

Neal had the awesome idea to push the planters back a foot or so from the edge of that concrete level, making a bench for people to sit on.

Before our housewarming party, I whipped up some basic pads to cushion our guests behinds. Don't look to closely at the edges, this was not a very neat job, but I think they are pretty cute.

I also made some thinner, simpler ones for the gross built in bench on the lower patio.

I used basic drop cloths from Home Depot and filled it with some polyester batting.  A little embroidery floss to "quilt it". All done while watching Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.