It hardly seems possible that we have owned our home for over a year now; these are the second holiday greens we have hung on our front door.

If you are reading this because you are redoing your own mid-century modern home, stay tuned. We’re getting ready to gear up for our kitchen remodel, and hope to write more frequently this coming year.

Though we aren’t retro purists, we seem to be naturally collecting items and furniture from the period. We’re curious. Are you going to have an aluminum tree for your mid-century home? Regardless, enjoy your holidays.

If you are friends and family, reading this because of the link in our e-message, we hope you enjoy seeing a bit of our life in La Grande. We’re always up for visitors, so let us know if you’ll be heading this way.

We wish all of you a happy and healthy 2008!

It’s always difficult getting house projects done in the holiday season, but we thought adding a holiday wreath to our new mid-century home was a step in the right direction.

This house has an unusual design. In December, we spent quite a lot of time figuring out how it is laid out. The design involves several boxes that are put together in an interesting way. Mostly this is because of the way the house is laid out on a hill, but partly it seems to be a quirk of the designer.

We need to figure out how each part of the house is connected to all the others before we can decide where to go next. It is going to be quite the challenge.

The house has been fairly extensively remodeled in ways that don’t particularly work for us. We are spending quite a bit of time thinking through how we want to use the fairly limited amount of space the house offers. We are probably going to do an extensive remodel of the bedrooms and bathrooms, but haven’t decided on the specifics.

The prospects are exciting. With January quickly approaching, our house adds a flavor of anticipation to the celebration of the New Year.

With that thought in mind, we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Holiday.

This is a picture of the view from the front of the house.

It’s not spectacular, but it is quite nice. From the backyard (which is pictured below) you can walk up the hill and the view is quite spectacular.

Since the emphasis of Mid Century Modern style homes is for many larger windows, the view from the living room is quite expansive and impressive.

We anticipate spending lots of time looking out the front windows.

The front yard is filled with old juniper bushes that we will eventually remove. We will probably put in some kind of a terraced front garden similar to the one the next door neighbor has. It is quite nice.

We have never had a home with so many views before.

We are really looking forward to it.

The second picture is of the view from behind the house looking up a steep hill. The house is cut into a steep mountain that looms up behind it. The property sits on the edge of the La Grande city limits and the Urban Growth Boundary.

Even if the Growth Boundary is expanded, which is unlikely any time soon, there is little chance the property above us will be developed. The uphill land is designated as a “geological hazard area”, which means it would be very expensive for anyone to build on it.

Coming from Portland, where houses are being crammed into every nook and cranny, this is something we value highly.

This is the front view of our new home in La Grande.

It doesn’t look like much, but it gives you a general idea of what the design of the house is. We’ve figured out that the house design is “Mid-Century Modern”. We’re in the process of learning what that means, exactly.

The deck you see has a very nice view of the Grande Ronde Valley. From the back yard you have a view of a very steep hill.

The house sits on the edge of the La Grande City Limits and on the Urban Growth Boundary. We also learned the hill directly behind us is a “geographic hazard area”, which isn’t as ominous as it sounds.

What it means is that if the Urban Growth Boundary is ever expanded it will be very expensive to build there. In other words, no McMansions will be built and our back yard view will be preserved.

This is extremely important to people who have fled the urban disaster the Portland/Metropolitan area has become.