Free Trees!

Thanks to the City of Burbank, we are now the proud owners of four new trees!

The first three trees came from the program Made in the Shade sponsored by Burbank Water and Power.  I called the department and three days later they sent over an arborist who helped me decide where to site the trees to shade our house and lower energy costs.   He provided me with a list of about thirty trees to choose from, I made my choice, and one week later, they dropped off three full-sized trees along with all the equipment needed to plant them (stakes, ties, etc.).

The London Plane Tree

 

Two Peppermint Trees

Then Dev and Travis did the hard work of planting them.  (The hardest part is actually not digging the holes, it's pounding in the stakes.)

 

Dev and I spent hours researching all thirty tree types before settling on a London Plane Tree for the front and two Peppermint Trees for the back.  (It took some negotiating since apparently Dev and I want very different things out of trees.)  Both tree types are very common all over the city (along with crepe myrtles, magnolias, and sycamores - the plane tree is a close relative of the sycamore). 

A full-grown Peppermint Tree looks like this:

Photo from mtlawleyshire

 

A full-grown London Plane Tree looks like this:

Photo from Indiana State University

The second program was even easier.  The city's Parks and Recreation Department will provide you with free trees to plant in the parkway, that strip between the sidewalk and the street.  And for this program, the city even plants them for you.  I called the city's Forestry Department, they sent out someone within a few days to mark the place on the parkway where the tree should go, and then this weekend Dev removed the bricks that were covering our parkway. 

 

 

On Monday I called the city again to let them know the bricks were gone and today, Wednesday, two city workers arrived at 8am and planted our tree.

City workers planting our tree, as viewed from the window because I was too shy to have them see me photograph them.

There are only three parkway tree options offered so it was a much less grueling research process than the first program.  I love the Chinese Pistache we chose, especially because the tree is famous of its beautiful fall color even in southern zones.

A full-grown Chinese Pistache looks like this:

Photo from Texas Tech University

Or this in the fall:

Photo from Texas A&M University

We are planning on buying one more, a Japanese maple, as part of the front landscape redesign we're working on now and then we can just sit back and wait a few years for them all to fill out.

 

Just one of the many, many reasons I love Burbank.

Before and After #7: Guest Room

One thing I've always wanted in a house was a comfortable, private place for guests. We have a lot of overnight house guests, usually at least one or two each month and sometimes many more, and I know everyone is a lot happier when they aren't sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. So we decided to have the kids share a room so we could dedicate one of our three bedrooms to guests, at least until the kids are older.

BEFORE

AFTER

We started, as always by tearing out the wall-to-wall carpet and removing the acoustic ("popcorn") ceiling. We also discovered that one wall was covered in a thin layer of cork so we spent several extra hours tearing off the cork and then scraping and sanding the wall underneath it. Dev covered the wall with several layers of plaster and the result is so perfect, it's as smooth as glass - I'm really tempted to plaster all of our interior walls to get that same smooth finish.

Then we added a little extra insulation everywhere it was needed before adding the new crown and base moulding and trim around the windows and doors.

 

After buying sixteen (!) different paint samples, we painted the room in Frazee's Seattle, a cool pale gray, with the same Valspar Subway Tile white trim we're using in the kids' room and elsewhere throughout the house.  We also replaced the awful fluorescent light fixture with a ceiling fan.

 

The old light fixture and popcorn ceiling

Just like in the children's room, we painted the built-in cabinet white, though here we painted the inside a bright jewel green (Valspar's aptly named Lovely Green). And if I wasn't already grateful to Suzan for painting the built-in in the children's room, I certainly am now - it took me weeks of painting to finish this cabinet.

 

 The raccoon hanging out in the closet while we build a custom shelf for him in the hallway
 

(The house came with a total of five built-ins - two we tore out, two more we painted white, and the last one in the back room, mercifully, we are leaving as-is. The choice is an aesthetic one - the unpainted wooden cabinet looks appropriately natural and rustic in an indoor/outdoor room with an exposed beam ceiling - but frankly, I don't think I have it in me to paint another built-in cabinet even if I wanted to.)

Finally we replaced the hardware on the built-in cabinet and all the outlets and switch covers and replaced the cheap plastic blinds with pale gold silk curtains backed by a set of blackout curtains.  Dev also installed an electrical outlet in the built-in desk part of the cabinet so guests can use it as a handy place to charge their phones.

 

Then, the fun part: decorating. We moved in a bed, a table, a nightstand, and a rug - plus I made a sort of second nightstand out of an antique steamer truck and added a chair I found for free on the curb and reupholstered (I originally wanted to use this fabric to make curtains but when I saw its price tag I decided to use it on the chair instead). 

Plus new bedding and finishing touches like a set of house keys, printed address cards, matches, tissues, some books and magazines, hangers, a nightlight, and a guest book.

 

  

 

We still haven't found just the right thing to put above the headboard, but I love the shelves we installed on the far wall to match the trim:

 

 

 

My newest piece of taxidermy, a quail

Some interesting items on the green built-in shelves:

 

A taxidermied mole,  two petrified fruits, and a tortoise shell.

Dev mounted this Figeater beetle he found in the yard.

 

Julie made this bronze casting of a beaver skull.

I found these antique photos of 1920s-era China in a junk stall in Shanghai.

We tried to decorate this room in a fairly neutral way with things like paint colors, etc. since when Beatrice inherits it later we'll have to re-do it all again anyway, but I think it should make the transition smoothly.

Beatrice helping us at the hardware store

 

The only thing left to do now is to we replaced the cheap hollowcore door with a nice solid wood door, but we'll do that as part of the hallway project we're working on now.  And someday we'll refinish the floor along with all the floors in the house, but that's a big project we probably won't tackle for several years at least.  So, at least for now, I think we can check the guest room off the list! Everyone is officially invited to come and stay in it (and use our soon-to-be-updated guest bathroom, too).

All About Arthur

Arthur just turned fifteen months old and he's on the move!

He loves tea parties, bath toys, swimming pools, splash pads, water tables, scarf dancing, sand boxes, carousels, trains, airplanes, drums, ball pits, climbing up slides, and anything stick-like, from swords to empty gift wrap tubes.

He also loves Village Drum Circle: Drum! Play! Love!, the music class he takes through the Burbank Recreation Center. He's the youngest in the class but he keeps pace with everyone else, particularly when he's engaged in scarf dancing, his very favorite activity.

 

 

Playing with his favorite toy, the Discover Sounds Sports Center my parents got him for his birthday:
 

At library story time: 

Having a tea party with Genevieve and Celestine:

One of my proudest parenting moments: It was so hot recently that I took Arthur to a mall play area just to be somewhere air conditioned.  Of course, I wasn't the only mother who had that idea, and so the place was packed, mostly with much older kids between the ages of six and ten.  I sat next to two teenage boys who had brought their younger sister to play there and overheard them talking. 

"They call this place the Fun Zone," one of them said, "but I think every kid in here has been crying. Except that one little dude in the red polo shirt.  Look at him go! He just goes for it, he's not scared of anything!" and so on. 

Naturally, Arthur was the little dude in the red polo shirt.

Playing music and dancing with his sister (the photos are all blurry because he wouldn't stay still):

Playing with train tables at Barnes and Noble and Peekaboo Playland:

 

Drawing with crayons (and occasionally eating them):

Ready to go to bed, with his blanket and his sleep rabbit:

I just signed him up for the same type of "pre-preschool" Beatrice did at his age, I can't wait to see him in action there.