about me.

Hello friend, I'm so glad that you're here!

My name is Cynthia.  I live in beautiful Portland, Oregon with my husband and our 2 awesome cats.
Even though this blog is a hobby for me, it's a true pleasure to work on and feeds my creative soul.  Your wonderful enthusiasm and support mean the world to me, and I thank you so much for reading!

Ok, if you've had enough about me, cool.  I totally get it.

If not, heaven help you. Read on...

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I think I was born shy and pensive. My family would heartily beg to differ with this description, since their nickname for me growing up was The Mouth; they claimed that I never seemed to stop talking.  But I think that was just a cover. Really.

[this shot of me says it all. so pensive.]

Growing up, my favorite activities were reading, lying on the grass daydreaming, and playing with our cats and dog.  I split my time between my Mom's house and my Dad's house, and was so lucky that both of these households were populated by women who believed in making a house a home.  Years later, I would realize how deeply that sunk into me.

Like many people, I spent my 20s and 30s working working working. Somewhere in there, I got married, and we bought our first house 6 months later. It was terribly exciting! Even though it was just a starter home, it was ours.  We worked hard in the house and in the garden to make it beautiful. We painted the ugly kitchen cabinets, installed laminate flooring, and planted flowers by the truckload.  [I didn't have the foresight to take pictures back then, gah]

Work kept chugging along.  I moved up the [admittedly] short ladder of a small financial services firm.  After 9 years there, I quit and started my own small IT consulting firm, specializing in supporting small businesses.

A few years after that, my marriage hit a bump.  A big one.  It didn't look like we were going to recover so I decided that a change of scene would do me good and would give me a chance to start over.

I decided to move to Portland. It was 1,000 miles away from my family and friends.  Though I would miss them dearly, I still decided it would be a wonderful new life for me.   To be honest I'd never felt like I belonged in my home state...it was always too hot, too loud, and too frantic.  I wanted to run.

So run I did!
I fell in love with Portland the instant I got off the plane for my first visit. The clear sweet smelling air, the gorgeous scenery, the incredibly friendly people.  I was home.

[this is the Portland airport parking garage. can you believe?]

During the 2 years it took to choose a Portland neighborhood and buy a house, our marriage went surprisingly into repair mode.  My husband liked the idea of Portland and once I got him up here on a visit, it was sealed.  As of this writing, we've lived here for 9 years and there's nowhere else we'd rather be.

So here we are. As of this writing, my IT business is in it's 12th year and a fair amount of my day is spent programming things like this:

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. It's challenging and pays the bills. But soul-affirming it is not. As you can plainly see!

That's why slowly, ever so slowly transforming our house into a home is so important to my emotional well-being.  And chronicling the projects here for the world to see is helping me to leave that shy girl behind.

And that's enough for now.   Wow you're patient.
I knew I liked you for a reason  :-)

XOXO,