mike and i had decided that instead of buying each other presents for christmas last year, we would take a long weekend trip. we looked into a few options, but quickly decided that we wanted to go to california. san francisco to be exact. my uncle lives there, we thought we would have a great time visiting him and seeing all of the sites. i had gone on a similar trip with my mom and grandma a few years ago, but mike had never been and i knew he would love it.

we went a few weeks ago and had a fantastic time. i knew that we'd have fun, but i was impressed with how much we were able to do/see in only 3.5 days, and yet i still felt like we had a relaxing trip.

we flew in on friday afternoon, which was nice because we had some time on friday to enjoy dinner at my uncle's house and relax after our flight.

on saturday we walked around palo alto and stanford's campus before going into the city for dinner. there is something about the energy on a college campus that i just love.






on sunday we drove up to sonoma for a day/night and were able to take a tour at one of the wineries. i'd never been on a tour before and thought it was so interesting and made me appreciate the wine even more.


monday morning we had a quick drive around downtown sonoma before heading back to san francisco.



but of course we got distracted by a few more wineries along the way. the views were so beautiful, it was hard not to stop!


mike looks extra tall in this photo. or maybe i just look extra short.


once back in san fran, we stopped at the golden gate bridge.





and took a boat out to alcatraz to take a tour.



we did the audio walking tour of alcatraz and we were both super impressed with the tour.



i didn't get a picture, but we also made sure to drive past the full house house before leaving the city. we're such tourists :-)

our plane left on tuesday morning and we were sad to leave, we had such a great time. i can't wait to go back!

we finished the half bath the same day we finished the floors. we still need to get some other accessories, but i'm not really sure what i want so i'm just going to wait and see what i find. keep in mind, this bathroom was bright yellow when we moved in: (picture with previous owner's stuff)

after we moved in we painted the baseboards white, painted the vanity and replaced the hardware, and painted the walls light green.

we also started removing the yellow paint from the back of the door, but ended up hanging the door back up before we completed that project.

we can't forget about the lovely built-in medicine cabinet complete with lights.

the floors in the photo above don't look all that bad, but they were cheap laminate and we wanted to replace them with the same solid hardwood we used in the rest of the house. and since we would need to remove the toilet to replace the floor, we thought that we might as well replace the toilet with a new one (old toilet didn't work very well, and it wasn't white). and if we replaced the toilet, we should probably replace the vanity, and the lights... you know how these things go.

i kind of took a risk with this bathroom, but i am very pleased with how it turned out. like the rest of our projects, i wanted something that complimented the age of our house, but i also wanted something that was a more modern. the dark color might not be for everyone, but i really like it. i think the dark gray is a nice compliment to the (now darker) woodwork, as well as all of the white in the room.

and we finally finished the door! this is a difficult space to take pictures of, sorry that these are so awkward!

i wanted to get a few pictures including the new light fixtures but that didn't really work when the fixtures were turned on. i'm really happy i decided to go with the black fixtures, they are a little unexpected, but i think that's a big reason why i like them so much.

we replaced the vanity with a new pedestal sink that fits perfectly in the sink nook and got a nice simple faucet. we couldn't find a mirror that fit the measurements of the space that we had, so we had this mirror cut to size and made a frame for it.

now we can check one more room off of the "really finished" list. we have several that are still on the "slightly renovated in order to tolerate living here, but still in need of a real renovation someday" list.

and the floors are finally complete.