Hello from Big Blue!

Brian welcomes you all from the porch of our new house, Big Blue.

So welcome to the new B&B abode. While this house is actually bigger than what we were looking for, it fit just about all our other criteria:

• We stayed in the Sellwood-Westmoreland neighborhood. This means that we can still walk to just about everything (post office, library, bank, grocery stores, coffee shops, food carts, restaurants, etc.), we're by 3 huge parks, we're right off the bike trail that goes up the river all the way into downtown, and we're near Jon & Lori (my brother and his wife). In fact, we're not just near, we're neighbors. We actually ended up buying a house 5 down from theirs!
• We wanted a house with lots of light. We liked a lot of things about the town house we rented but the dungeony feel of the main floor was not one of them. In this new house we rarely ever turn on the lights due to the large number (and size) of the windows on both floors
• Along with the light we wanted a really open feel where we could watch the kids or socialize with guests while cooking or cleaning up. This was hard to find in an older neighborhood so we knew we’d probably end up with a remodeled place or a teardown. In this case the majority of the first floor is one big room, stretching from the front porch through the living room, dining area, and kitchen out through the back porch

Looking from the edge of the kitchen through the dining area and living room out ot the front porch
(sellers furniture)

Looking past the wall where brian was standing through the kitchen and out the back door

We also really liked the "lodge-y" feel of the place with the pine trim,
and thevaulted ceiling and fireplace in the living room.
(seller's decor)

• Speaking of porches we wanted a place that had great outdoor living spaces. This neighborhood (and this street in particular)is one where folks are frequently sitting out on their front porches and catching up with other neighbors walking by with their dogs, etc.. Even more than that we wanted a place with a great back porch for sipping on some wine to relax at the end of the day or hosting barbeques with friends.
  

• We wanted a little grass for kids to play in, but not so much that mowing took hours (like our place in MN). And a patio for some outdoor furniture (which we just picked up...gotta love moving at this time of year for summer clearance sales!) was a bonus

bonus Calla Lilies out front

• We also were hoping for a decent sized office (as I work from home and Brian has his graduate studies as well as hoping to work from home in the future), a guest room for all the relatives coming to see J&L’s soon to be born kiddie and for other far-flung friends and family, and a place to read or watch tv separate from the main living room. Check. Check. And Check. Oh…and multiple toilets. :-)

We’ve only been here a week and we’re still working on unpacking boxes and figuring out where to hang artwork, but we’re already happier and more relaxed.

So come visit and check out Big Blue. The B&B B&B is open for business.

Becca

(The genesis of the name is pretty obvious...that might be one of our longer term projects to make the place not such a monolith of blue.)