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[kristopherkirkpatrick]

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[goldenseresinretriever]

You Catch More Bees With Honey: Chapter 9

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Reader

Part of the San Diego Dogfighters universe

Summary: Bradley Bradshaw, blindsided by a team he trusted like family has been traded to the San Diego Dogfighters. Across the country from the place he calls home, Bradley feels lost and betrayed. Not to mention the familiar faces and ghosts from his past that he now has to face every day at work. Bradley’s caught between wanting to show his former team the mistake they made in double-crossing him and wondering if it’s time to hang up his skates after one final season. You’re living your dream as the PR representative for the Dogfighters. When Coach Maverick made a bid to bring his godson to the team, you hadn’t batted an eye. Bradley was a good teammate, and a good player. Unfortunately, the Bradley that shows up in San Diego is nothing like your research suggested. He’s moody, irritable, aggressive, and angry, throwing a wrench in all your careful planning. What’s caused such a drastic change in him? And can you figure out how to help him before he makes a mistake you can’t fix?

Series CW: 18+ ONLY, swearing, dead parents, drunkenness, alcohol consumption, violence, sports violence, blood probably, angst, fluff, eventual smut, age gap (28 and 38), enemies to lovers, suggestive language, hockey inaccuracies etc. There will be individual chapter warnings. No use of Y/N.

Word Count: 5.4k

A/N: This is a repost of my completed series, You Catch More Bees With Honey. It was originally posted in November-March 2023, and was lost when my blog was deleted.

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You wake the next morning in the extra bed in Javy’s room. Your lower body aches and you let out a groan. Sun filters in through the gap in the drawn curtains, illuminating the empty bed next to you. Javy must already be awake. You roll yourself to the edge of the bed, fumbling with the nightstand to find your phone. You’ve got your usual slew of notifications as well as a text from Javy letting you know that he’s gone to breakfast with some of the other guys and the bathroom is all yours. He also lets you know that there’s a room key on the table if you need to go anywhere. You pull yourself out of bed, wincing at the ache between your legs that refuses to let you forget that you slept with Bradley last night.

You don’t regret it. After all, you’ve never felt that much pleasure before, and now you know that your feelings for Bradley might be reciprocated. What you do regret is how you handled the aftermath. You’re used to administering your own aftercare, of course, but something about up and running while Bradley was in the bathroom has guilt clawing up your throat. If he did have any feelings for you, were they gone after the way you acted last night?

While Javy had brought you pajamas and a change of underwear last night, you still need your clothes for the day so you steel yourself to face Bradley and slip Javy’s room key and your phone into the pocket of your pajama bottoms. You force yourself down the hallway back to your room, hand hovering over the wood before you force yourself to knock. You hear the scuffle of feet on the other side and then the door swings open. Bradley’s dressed for the day already in a t-shirt and joggers that he’ll trade for his practice uniform once you get to the arena. You dig into the carpet with your bare toes, averting your eyes to watch as shame warms your cheeks. Bradley doesn’t let you get away with it for long, a single finger under your chin raising your eyes to his. You’re terrified of what you’ll find there but where you expected the white-hot anger that you’ve seen burn in the whisky depths before, you just see a tentative nervousness, like he’s afraid of how you’ll react, or how you feel. You feel your tears from last night threatening to resurface and you long to bury yourself in his arms while he promises you that everything’s going to be okay.

“You okay, Honey?” He asks softly, his voice a gravelly rumble and you feel your lips quiver as his thumb moves to stroke over your cheek and you lean into the touch as you consider your answer. Bradley seems to understand that you need some time to think so he nods to himself, not slowing the brush of his fingers before he speaks again. “I’m going to go grab some breakfast, so why don’t you shower, and then we can talk?” He’s putting the ball in your court, letting you make the next move and you nod against his finger on your chin.

“Bradley Bradshaw, are you calling me stinky?” Your voice is rough from fighting back tears.

He chuckles softly, and there’s pure affection in his eyes that almost sends you to your knees. He pinches your cheek gently. “The stinkiest.” Your laugh is watery and hesitant but it’s there and Bradley smiles, his shoulders relaxing like he’s just let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “There she is.” He whispers gently and your heart aches in answer. Then he’s letting you go and stepping past you to head out, you duck into the room and you’re alone with your feelings again.

Your bed is still rumpled from your nap yesterday and it’s clear that Bradley stayed in his own bed last night. You collect your clothes, pick a soft lilac pantsuit today, and disappear into the bathroom to shower. As you undress, you catch sight of your reflection in the mirror and you remember Bradley holding your hand and gaze in it yesterday and that ache is back in your chest. In a quest for the normal, you bump one of your favorite playlists and let yourself enjoy a leisurely shower, singing along to your favorites.

When you exit the bathroom, you feel significantly better. Bradley’s in his chair by the window, sipping coffee and scrolling on his phone. The smell of it and whatever he got for breakfast is tantalizing and you bemoan the fact that you probably won’t have time to find breakfast before you have to head back to the arena. Bradley looks up as you enter the room, giving you a soft smile. “Hey Honey, breakfast is on the table.” You blink, surprised as your eyes follow his pointing finger to the desk by the television that’s holding a brown paper bag and another coffee cup. Propelled forward by the promise of food and coffee, you dart over, examining the cup before you look at Bradley, surprised.

“How’d you know my coffee order?” You ask as you take a deep sip and groan appreciatively as the sweet and bitter mix drifts over your tongue, warming you from the inside out.

Bradley smirks at you, “I have my sources.” You arch a curious eyebrow at him over the top of the cup.

“You’ve been going through my trash, haven’t you?” You tease, a smile tugging at your lips as you take another sip. He laughs at that.

“Actually, I texted Mickey and asked. I had to guess on the sandwich though.” You smile at that and dig into the bag. You pull out a package wrapped in paper and when you unwrap it, you grin at the bagel sandwich that’s stuffed full of egg, cheese, and a truly sinful amount of bacon.

“Bacon, you remembered…” you murmur mostly to yourself. You seat yourself on the edge of Bradley’s bed so you can be next to him for that conversation he mentioned earlier. You chew quietly for a few minutes, enjoying the food and Bradley drinks his coffee silently, turning back to whatever he was looking at on his phone.

Finally, you finish your sandwich, crumpling the empty wrapper and setting it on the small side table next to Bradley’s coffee cup, fiddling with your own. “Bradley, can we talk?” You hate how weak and desperate your voice sounds but you try to ignore it. He sets his phone face down on the table and turns to give you his full attention.

“As long as you’re ready, I am, Honey.” You twist your cup between your hands as you search for the words you want to say to him.

“I’m really sorry, Bradley.” You hate the way your voice shakes as you get the apology out. “I got overwhelmed and it scared me and I was alone with my thoughts and they got too loud and I just up and disappeared and to another guy’s room at that, after you were so sweet to me and you did a lot of stuff you didn’t have to do,” his eyebrows raise at that but he remains quiet as you continue rambling. “I didn’t mean to make you worry because it was good, really really good actually. It wasn’t anything you did, I mean. The reason I left.” You’re running out of steam and your hands are trembling.

Bradley reaches out wordlessly, taking the cup from your hands before you can accidentally drop it, placing it on the side table before he takes your hands in his huge ones. His thumb rubs your skin in those steady strokes that always seem to calm you. “Can I ask you some questions, Honey?” His voice is gentle, tentative like he’s trying not to spook a horse and you nod. It’ll be easier for you to answer specific questions than talk freely and you think he’s realized that. “What do you mean, I did a lot of stuff I didn’t have to do?” Your cheeks heat as you remember Bradley’s tongue and hands on you, in you, drawing out your pleasure like it was his only goal.

“I… uh, you uh, you wanted to pleasure me?” You wince at the awkwardness in your words. Bradley’s body goes rigid at your words and you see gears turning in his mind that you can’t seem to grasp until he looks at you with so much fear and dread in his eyes that his words catch you completely off guard.

“Honey,… were you a virgin…?” You choke at the question that comes seemingly from left field as you shake your head fiercely.

“No, no! I’ve had sex before, a couple of times, well maybe more than a couple, I just, I’ve never had a guy who wanted to do that kind of stuff…” you trail off and you watch Bradley relax considerably.

“What kind of stuff, Honey? Eating you out? Fingering you?” You’re almost jealous at how easily he’s able to talk about this like it’s something as simple as the weather.

“All of it.” You mumble and his eyebrows raise again.

“Then what was sex like for you?” He asks it like it’s nothing and you can’t help but feel shame and anxiety wash over you at the idea of telling him about your sexual experience. His hands that are holding yours squeeze encouragingly. “I’m not doing this to make you uncomfortable, Honey, and I don’t want you to feel like it’s something you have to be ashamed about, I’m just trying to understand where your head’s at.” Your shoulders relax a little at his words. Bradley’s not going to judge you, he doesn’t want to. Just like last night, he just wants you to feel good and it’s hard for you to wrap your mind around.

“Sex was mostly about the guy,” you explain. “He’d get off and if I was lucky I would too but not by anything he did. I had to take care of myself.” Your cheeks heat as fury blazes in his eyes. “I haven't been in a relationship or had a boyfriend since before… everything…” you explain. “And back then we were so inexperienced that it wasn’t the focus. And after that, it was all hookups and well yeah, it wasn’t about me.” Your voice trails off to a whisper. Bradley nods, turning your words over in his mind.

“So that’s why you just went right for it?” He asks and you nod your cheeks heating at the memory of Bradley nearly splitting you in half without any foreplay. “Jesus, you scared me half to death last night, I thought I’d really hurt you.” The worry in his eyes makes your heart ache.

“I’m okay,” you reassure him. “A little sore but fine other than that.” He grimaces slightly at that.

“I’m sorry, I was going to check on it again when I cleaned you up but you left before I could get the chance.”

“When you cleaned me up…?” You blink at him, surprised and he groans, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling before coming back to look at you.

“Aftercare, Honey, it’s a really important part of sex, don’t tell me you’ve never had a guy take care of you after?” You shake your head. “Jesus Christ, what kind of guys have you been fucking, Honey?” You know it’s a rhetorical question but you answer to try and lighten the mood.

“Bad ones, apparently.” He snorts a laugh at that before his eyes get serious again.

“So where do we stand, Honey? I don’t want to pressure you into anything because you said you were overwhelmed and that’s not something I want you to feel again, at least not because of me.” He looks so earnest and makes your heart ache because all you want is to climb into his lap and have him hold you. You’ve never yearned to be in someone’s arms more.

“I… I like you… a lot, Bradley.” You swallow hard as the words pass your lips. “But this is all happening really really fast, too fast. Like I said, I haven’t been in a relationship in a really long time and I was a different person then… I-I don’t know if I know how to be in one as the person I am now. I think… I think I need us to slow down. That is if you even want an us. But if you do, we’re going to have to pump the brakes, by a lot. It’s all a little overwhelming right now, and I need to slow down. I need to be able to breathe.” His face softens and he squeezes your hands gently.

“After last night, you really think I don’t want an us, Honey?” You look away, embarrassed when he phrases it so simply.

“I thought maybe your feelings might have gone away once we had sex…” You mutter and then his finger is under your chin again, guiding your eyes back to his.

“They haven’t, they're very much still there. And if you need to take things slow, we’ll take it slow. You set the pace, Honey. Like I said, the last thing I want is to overwhelm you.”

“W-would it be okay if we didn’t kiss…” you sputter the words out before you lose your nerve. “I-I just I’m not used to it and uh, I just-“ you pause since you’d expected Bradley to cut you off by now but he just nods.

“You set the pace, Honey. Tell me what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not and then we can move forward.”

“Uh… no kissing, on the lips at least, um, forehead and cheek and stuff are okay I think?” Your cheeks heat at the fact that Bradley’s giving you this kind of power, to tell him what you’re comfortable with and he’ll just respect that without arguing. “Definitely no sex… but hugging yes, cuddling would be nice.” You feel your cheeks heat more as Bradley’s mouth twists into a soft smile. Then he’s tugging your hand and pulling you into his arms. You relax instantly, melting against him. He presses his lips to your temple gently before whispering into your ear.

“This all good for you, Honey?”

“Perfect.” You whisper and nuzzle against his chest softly.

“Honey, can I ask you one last question?” You nod. “I know we’re slowing things down but we’re still an us, yes? There’s… there’s nothing going on between you and Javy… right? He told me there wasn’t.” You can hear it then, the hesitation in his words like he’s afraid that you’ll break his heart. You sit up at that, face-to-face with him, meeting his beautiful chocolate eyes with your own. You reach to stroke his cheek gently.

“There’s nothing going on between me and Javy. I’m not trying to catch a venereal disease. Honestly, I’m surprised we’re even friends.” Bradley barks out a laugh and his chest vibrates against you, making you smile. “And yeah, we’re an us. You’re the first person I’ve wanted to be anything with in a long time.” You tuck your head under his chin and he pulls you closer. “Thank you, Bradley.”

“For what, Honey?” You can feel the rumble of his throat as he answers you.

“For being okay with all of it, with me.” You murmur against his chest. His arms tighten around you.

“Always, Honey, always.”

***

The game is mostly uneventful. The boys put up a good effort but ultimately lost, 4-3. The mood on the bus back to the hotel was grim, the tension palpable, but the boys seemed to have slept it off as spirits were mixed this morning as the team boarded the jet to your next destination, Washington D.C. The match against the Capitals isn’t until Thursday, so the boys will be afforded some well-deserved downtime. You’re once again rooming with Bradley per Cyclone’s orders which you’re more comfortable with now that the two of you have set defined boundaries.

You can’t help the nerves that claw at your stomach when you think about them. Sure, Bradley had said he was fine respecting them but you’d given him almost nothing aside from the commitment that you were working towards giving him everything, but since you had no idea how long that would take, you feel like you’re denying him things he deserved to have in a relationship. He doesn’t seem to be concerned for now, at least. You just hope you don’t let him down.

Bradley’s once again carrying your garment bag over his shoulder as you approach your shared room. He unlocks the door and you head in as he holds the door. Your shoulders relax until you reach the main area and your face falls as you take in the bed. Singular. The king bed takes up most of the room and you can’t breathe. Bradley’s voice comes from right behind you as he reassures you.

“I can go sleep in Javy’s room tonight.” His hand rubs comforting circles in your tense shoulder. You turn to face him, hands twisting nervously.

“No, it’s okay. As long as you’re okay with it and we follow the rules, I’m okay with it.” A part of you longs to make up for the night the two of you should have shared two days ago after the more physical activities were finished. You want to know what it’s like to spend the night in his arms, to fall asleep feeling totally and completely safe.

“If you want me, Honey, you have me.” Your heart flutters at his sweet words.

***

Since there isn’t much for you yet, you come back to the hotel before the boys do. You’re anxious to get into your pajamas, eager to enjoy an early night after the excitement of the past few days. Maybe you’ll order room service and have your dinner in bed. Your daydreams are burst by the sight of a familiar face at the hotel bar when you walk by on your way to the elevator. What’s Cyclone doing here? Managers don’t typically travel to games let alone attend home ones but Cyclone claims that it’s good for publicity if it looks like he’s involved. Still, he’s never come on a road trip before and you’re awkwardly standing and staring when he catches sight of you and calls you over.

You feel like you’re being dragged by an invisible leash as you sidle up to the stool that he’s currently occupying. He’s sipping a martini that you try not to think too hard about given that it’s a little past 2 pm.

“Cyclone, sir.” You acknowledge him and he waves you off.

“No Cyclone, just Beau is fine.” You blink, stunned by his sudden change in attitude towards you. “Have you had lunch yet?” You’re too stunned to answer so you just shake your head. “Perfect, neither have I, come join me.” He waves down the bartender and lets him know that he’d like to move to a table at the hotel restaurant and you follow him, still in a daze at the whiplash you’re suffering. You sit down in a booth across from him and numbly take the menu the waiter hands you.

“So… Beau,” you force yourself not to grimace when you use his first name. “What can I do for you?” He gives you a dazzling smile that you’ve never seen before and you’re even more uncomfortable.

“I wanted to sit down and get a chance to get to know you. Your mother was one of my dearest friends.” You want to ask why if that’s the case, he didn’t know she was dead.

“Sure, of course.” This is the opposite of how you expected to be spending your afternoon but you decide to accept your fate and carefully slide your professional persona into place. “So, how did you know my mother?” You’re more than willing to play dumb to your advantage. Cyclone has no idea that he used to basically be a bedtime fairytale for you growing up, and you’re content to keep it that way.

“We met in college at Yale.” You nod along as he continues. “We were quite close until we graduated. I feel like I owe it to her to take care of you. It’s what she would want.” While you don’t doubt that he’s right because your mom had always seemed to carry a torch for her mystery lover, you’re not so sure she’d approve if she could see him now.

“Oh, that’s very kind of you.” You parrot obediently, turning to the menu to pretend to be making your selection.

“Order whatever you want, my treat.” He says, still wearing that dazzling smile. Well, now you officially HAVE to order something. At least eating will save you from having to talk. You have plenty of experience sitting quietly while self-important men talk at you so this should be a piece of cake. You wonder if it’s worth the risk to order the burger you’d been dreaming of all day instead of going with a more traditionally ladylike lunch option like a salad or soup. You decide on just going for the burger. You can’t afford to be hangry around this man.

Once the two of you have placed your orders you realize that Cyclone’s been staring at you for longer than you feel particularly comfortable with. You clear your throat politely. “Is there something on my face?” You ask, hesitantly, even though you’re pretty sure you know why he’s staring.

“It’s just, you look so much like her.” You stifle a grimace.

“Well, you know how genetics work…” you paste a warm smile on your face as you try to trifle a scream. “Does Dragon take more after your wife?” You know it’s a low blow but you’re hoping your charming smile makes the faux pas look ditzy rather than aggressive. Dragon looks nothing like her father. Anyone with eyes can tell. Her mannerisms, however, echo her father in more ways than you can count.

His brow furrows slightly and for a moment he’s the Cyclone that you’re used to seeing before he dismisses it with a shake of his head and a mutter of “Yes, yes she does.” He switches right back to this unfamiliarly eager man that you can’t help but wonder is the one that your mother once fell in love with.

Your mother had told you plenty about Beau Simpson without mentioning him by name. You knew he came from money, a long line of it, rooted in some financial corporation. He was a legacy admission to Yale since all the men and a few women in his family had gone there. In comparison, your mother had chosen Yale because they’d offered her the most generous figure skating scholarship. By all accounts, they should have never crossed paths in the first place but one day he was running late for hockey practice, shoving his way through a crowded hallway when he knocked her in the head with his hockey stick.

You do your best to imagine the man in front of you as the clumsy boy that your mother had told you about. He still had those green eyes but now they were cold and closed off rather than dancing with light and life that she’d always described as spring incarnate. Cyclone clears his throat as he asks.

“So, what year did you graduate from Yale?” You arch a surprised eyebrow at the question. He’d been the person to interview you, he of all people should know that you didn’t graduate from Yale let alone attend.

“I didn’t. I went to the University of Wisconsin.” You answer primly, doing your best to keep the awkwardness out of your voice. His eyebrows rise.

“Oh, I just assumed since your mother went to Yale…” He trails off.

“Yes, and my father went to Brown.” You add. “The Ivys weren’t really for me, though.”

“Your father went to Brown.” He repeats, brows furrowed.

“Yes, but Mom never really cared about that kind of stuff. They met at a coffee shop in Hartford.” You shrug. “They didn’t really care where I went to college, just that I was doing what I loved.”

“And what was that?” Your breath catches in your throat. You swallow, hard before replying.

“Figure skating.”

“Like your mom.” You nod. You don’t want to talk about it, not really. You never do, but you know you have to power through this lunch. You take a deep breath and pretend it’s Bradley sitting across from you instead. Talking about your mom always seems easier when it’s with him, even more so than with Mickey and everything’s easier with Mickey. You try not to think too hard about what that means as you field Cyclone’s questions about your life.

***

You’re already lounging in bed when Bradley gets back and you don’t miss the way his eyes soften with fondness at the sight of you under the covers. Your cheeks heat as he gives you a smile, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed after toeing off his shoes. “Hey Honey, how was your day? Bugs said you left early so I hope you got some well-earned rest.” You sigh, slumping against the pillows.

“Well I mean I did, but not as much as if I didn’t have lunch with Cyclone.” Bradley’s brows furrow and he frowns.

“Cyclone?” You nod.

“Apparently he flew in for this game because he and the Capitals’s head coach are fellow Yale alumni.” You roll your eyes as hard you can and it elicits a chuckle from Bradley. “Anyway I walked by him at the hotel bar when I got back from the arena and he invited me to have lunch with him.”

“What did he want?” Bradley asks warily.

“To talk about my mom. He claims to want a relationship with me, says it’s what my mom would have wanted.”

“Is it?” He asks, his hand finding your ankle over the sheets and rubbing rhythmic circles into the joint. You shrug.

“I think if my mom wanted a relationship with him, or for him to have one with me, she would have contacted him. He was an NHL player for God’s sake, she could have found him if she really wanted to.” Bradley nods silently, keeping up the soothing pattern on your covered ankle.

“Is that something you want?” He finally asks. “A relationship with him?” You frown slightly. You honestly hadn’t given it much thought. You turn Bradley’s words over in your mind as you once again fall into that comfortable silence that you’ve come to enjoy sharing with him.

“I don’t know. I know there’s a chance I get to see another piece of her, you know? A piece that no one else can tell me about. But I don’t know if I’m ready for that, and I don’t know what Cyclone would even want out of a relationship with me. I’m not about to dig out my mom’s old college clothes and play dress up for him, you know?” Bradley’s brows furrow and his grip on your ankle tightens, his fingers stopping their soothing motion as his jaw tightens and his expression hardens.

“If he even so much as SUGGESTS that,” Bradley growls and you suppress a shudder at the pure venom in his voice. You wave him off.

“I’ll kick his ass before you even get the chance.” You reassure him and he relaxes slightly. You give him a soft smile in response to his fierce protectiveness and you’re reminded of the way he’d gone for the defenseman that attacked Mickey the other night. This is another side of Bradley that you’re seeing and it makes you feel even more safe in his presence.

Your eyes fall on the Target bag in his hand and arch an eyebrow nodding in its direction. “What’s in the bag?” you ask and watch pink splotches climb up his neck as he rubs the back of his neck ruefully.

“A couple of the guys wanted to stop at Target to get some stuff so I went with and Mickey helped me pick some stuff out.” He passes the bag across the bed to you, the pink reaching his cheeks as you peer inside, eyebrows going straight up. “You said you didn’t bring anything except your work clothes so I thought you’d like some other options. Mickey picked everything. I figured he knew what you liked and your sizes.”

“Thanks,” you stammer, surprised by Bradley’s thoughtfulness. “How much do I owe you?” He shakes his head gently.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s my treat.” You open your mouth to protest but he gives you a firm look and you roll your eyes, turning back to the bag. Inside are a pair of jeans and a chunky sweater that you know you’ve been eyeing for a while now and have definitely mentioned to Mickey in the past. Under those are a couple of tasteful graphic tees that scream Mickey and make you giggle as well as a denim jacket that goes with all of them. There’s also a simple black peacoat at the bottom of the bag. That you know deep down has to be Bradley’s choice despite his earlier comments. As you pull it out a pair of simple black gloves also tumble out.

“Gloves seem a little excessive, don’t you think?” You ask as you turn them over in your hands.

“Hardly,” Bradley replies. “I won’t always be around to keep those pretty hands warm.” You feel your cheeks heat as he takes your hands in his, bringing them up to his lips and pressing a soft kiss to them. “You wanna go out tonight?” You shake your head, leaning back against the pillows and snuggling into the covers.

“Room service it is then.” He decides and gets up to grab the menu.

***

Later you’re curled up in bed, eyelids heavy as you wait for Bradley to get out of the shower. Your eyes fall on the remnants of your dinner strewn on the table and you smile at the memory of throwing french fries at Bradley while he took it all in good fun before smearing ketchup on your cheek in retaliation. The click of the bathroom door alerts you to his return and Bradley pads over to the other side of the bed. “You ready for bed, Honey?” He asks, and you nod sleepily. “You sure you don’t want me to sleep in Javy’s room? I already cleared it with him in case you changed your mind.” You shake your head and he chuckles softly. “Words, Honey.”

“Don’t go, Bradley, want you to stay with me.” Your voice is addled with sleep but you manage a groggy smile at him as his eyes eyes soften as he climbs in.

The bed is big enough that you could easily pretend that he’s not there but you’re not sure that’s what you want. You want to feel what it’s like to fall asleep in the comfort of his arms. But what if that’s not what he wants? What if it’s too much temptation for him? You don’t want to hurt him by making his life a living hell. Your thoughts are still racing for a few minutes after Bradley turns off the light and plunges the room into darkness. They get louder as you’re left alone in the blackness with them until Bradley breaks the silence that’s anything but comfortable for you right now. “Honey, get over here.” You turn in the dark to try and make him out as your eyes adjust. The rustle of the sheets helps you piece together that he’s holding his arms open for you and you scoot across the bed without a second thought, letting out a breath of relief as you curl against him and he chuckles in your ear at your eagerness.

“Goodnight, Bradley.” You murmur, sleep already eagerly leading you down into the comfort of his arms.

“Goodnight, Honey, sleep tight.” You drift off to sleep to the feeling of his lips pressing against your temple gently.

[nessa-mayfield]

MAIN BIO — THE WALKING DEAD;

❝ 𝑰 𝒘𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅 ❞

𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲; Vanessa Elizabeth Mayfield

𝗡𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲; Nessa, Ness, Nessie, Lochness, Nes, Monkey (from Daryl)

➥ born in California

➥ 4 years older than Max

⤷ 𝘜𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘉𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘺

➥ When she’s 10, the whole family move from California to this town in Indiana called Hawkins.

➥ Their mom, Susan fell in love with a guy named Neil when she’s 8 and get married soon after, and that’s when they’re introduced to their new stepfamily

➥ Max was 6 when they move

➥ Only reason they moved from San Diego California was because William — Billy, their new stepbrother started causing trouble, enough so that they want to move for a “fresh start”

➥ She, like her sister miss their dad in California

⤷ 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝘥

➥ They stay in Hawkins Indiana for 4 years

➥ Long enough that both girls hope they won’t move again, long enough that they do make long lasting friends

➥ Vanessa even finds out one of her newfound friends is a dealer, and they live nearby, so she’s got a pretty decent supply of weed to help with anxiety

➥ But then again, nothing lasts forever, and despite their protests, they move to this little trailer park on the edge of kings county, in Atlanta Georgia. When she’s 14, and max is 10

⤷ 𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘺 𝘢 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵

➥ Both Neil and Billy are abusive

➥ She takes the brunt of it willingly if it means it’s keeping her sister safe, and thankfully it seems to work.

➥ Not that long after moving, she decides to go exploring the forest near their new home

➥In doing so, she almost gets shot by this wiry looking guy, crossbow aimed at her as she emerges from the trees into a little clearing with an old picnic table

➥She’s immediately raising her hands with a “don’t shoot!”

➥ Soon she learns this kid’s named Daryl, and he’s got an asshole of a dad too

⤷ 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳

➥ And they eventually become close friends, and that picnic table in the clearing becomes “𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘵”

➥ Since she’s working like a billion jobs to help out her mom, she saves up enough money, wanting to buy daryl a phone for his 18th birthday so they can keep in contact if anything happens

➥But it’s after one day when he doesn’t come to their spot that she starts to worry

➥The next day he shows up looking seriously beat up and right then and there she decides that it can’t wait until his birthday (which she’s sad about)

➥So next time they meet, she’s got a little wrapped box, telling him to open it and “it’s a surprise 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 early birthday gift. I was gonna wait till you’re 18th, but you definitely need one cause…y’know… and my number’s already in it.”

➥They also develop a code word if they need to meet up urgently, or for anything urgent really.

⤷ 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘊𝘩𝘶𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘢𝘣𝘳𝘢

➥ Often they’ll sneak into each other’s rooms, having mastered it by now

➥ She also took the liberty of having a first aid kit underneath the table for if either of them need it

➥ Or if she needs to help him or vice versa since the woods is what separates them, him living up in the mountains, and her in the trailer park at the edge of kings county

➥Throughout the years as they grew up, she lets him drag her along anywhere (𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩 𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘪𝘮)

➥ So most of the shit he gets up to with Merle, she’s there too, keeping an eye out for Daryl's safety

➥ And you know how it is when you’ve got your first serious crush when you’re young, you’ll gladly do anything to stay near them

➥ But also because she cares about him and wants to make sure he’s safe, that someone’s actually looking out for him, and so Merle doesn’t drag him down

➥ He gets along with max too, both of them exchanging cds and ganging up on her to decide that teaching Nessa how to skateboard is a lost cause.

➥ Has anxiety

➥ Definitely overprotective

➥Even living in a trailer park on the edge of kings county, she 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 has come across Shane & Rick before

➥Probably bailing out Merle on occasion, they don’t necessarily get along, men like him remind her too much of her stepdad and brother, and it’s Merle, so he’s…Merle.

⤷ 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭, 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮

➥ She also takes him to his first fair when there’s one in town

➥ Once the apocalypse starts, they’re separated, and it’s only her and max, surviving in this new world

➥Until she’s accidentally shot with… you guessed it, a crossbow bolt, right as they’re coming out of the trees

⤷ 𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱

⤷ 𝘚𝘰 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭'𝘴 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦

➥ Soon as she sees him, she’s grinning

➥ “We gotta stop meeting like this”

➥ And then she's passing out, knowing that Max will be safe with Daryl there

➥ She makes friends with the kids easily, specifically Sophia

➥ She remembers being that age, being terrified of her stepdad, of her stepbrother, trying to shield max

➥ While bonding with the rest of the group, neither Max or her put up with any of Shane's bullshit

➥ They’re both there when the herd hits after the CDC

➥ Max runs after Sophia and someone (Glenn? Shane?) has to hold her back from physically running after her, putting a hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming her sisters name

➥ At the farm it’s not 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 Sophia they’re looking for, it’s also Max.

➥ She’s out there just as much as Daryl looking for her sister

➥ She does bond with Andrea when she learns that she also had a sister named Amy who died in the attack

➥ But then she goes and accidentally has to shoot Daryl, and I’m not saying Nessa is overprotective at times, but…

➥ Yes it’s possible the blonde is sporting a black eye or busted lip not long after Daryl’s brought up

➥ And no, she will not be apologizing anytime soon

➥ And at the barn she sees how much the Greenes don't want them to do this, and even if she doesn't want to, Shane already opened this can of worms so it's not like she can do anything to stop it

➥ So when he hands her a gun, asking if she can do this, she nods, taking it, avoiding looking anywhere but at the barn, bracing herself.

➥ Then those doors open

⤷ 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦

➥ Taking a breath, she starts to shoot as soon as the walkers start pouring out

➥ When they seem to stop, she lowers her gun, breathing out trying to steady her racing heart

➥ Something tells her this isn't done yet...and sure enough...

➥ A few seconds later, there's the tell tale signs of another walker - actually walkers, slowly making their way out

➥ Like they were waiting to make their entrance

➥ She raises her gun again

➥ Braces herself

⤷ 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴… 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴… 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯… 𝘕𝘰…!

➥ She's vaguely aware that Carol screamed, that someone, Daryl maybe, is holding her back

➥ And a second later, her gun slips from her hands, her knees buckle and she's falling, not even realizing she'd screamed out the last part herself

➥ Because it wasn't just Sophia that came out

➥ Shuffling along right beside her was Max

⤷ 𝘔𝘢𝘹… 𝘎𝘰𝘥… 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘹… 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘹𝘪𝘦…

➥ Tears blur her vision, and someone's holding her back now

➥ Dale.

➥ He's whispering comforting words

➥ His Grip tightening as someone — 𝘙𝘪𝘤𝘬 — steps forward, and does what no one else seems capable of doing

➥Two gunshots ring in the air

➥ And then silence.

➥ She's not sure how long she sat there crying

➥ But it's Andreas hand on her shoulder that brings her back to reality

⤷ 𝘈 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘹

➥ As her brain so readily provides

➥ She shrugs off the hand on her shoulder, standing, taking a step towards her sister's body, before changing course and going back to her tent

➥ Because Max was mauled, she never gets a proper close look (𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳. 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺)

➥ Quick to zip it up behind her, not in the mood to deal with the outside world.

➥ she also smokes a lot, it helps her anxiety

⤷ 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦

➥ She's devastated when Beth dies, having thought of her as a sister figure, reminding her of Max

➥ It’s also around then that she and Maggie really bond, knowing what it’s like to lose your sister, and your only family really

➥ Sees rick as a father figure

➥ And she absolutely adores Carol

➥ if she was able to find any notebooks on a run, she grabs it as well as any writing utensil handy and keeps up her tradition of writing

➥ 5”7

➥ still an anxious nerd

➥ In the aftermath of the prison falling, she escapes with Beth & Daryl

𝙁𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙢; 𝙏𝙒𝘿 & 𝘾𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙮

𝙁𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙞𝙢; 𝘼𝙗𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙣

⤷ 𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 & 𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗚

⤷ 𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱

[memes-saved-me]

Billy never liked himself, who he was or the way he reacted to certain situations. He liked the way he looked and the way people looked at him, but deep down it was just a shell. Something to help hide who he really was. A scared kid who wanted out.

That was why he couldn't understand why Steve was with him. Why he patched him up every time he turned up covered in his own blood, fresh bruises and a few times, a broken rib. The way he sat him down on the counter in his bathroom and cleaned off the crusted blood, wrapped him in a blanket and kissed his temple like he cared. Cared about Billy more than he cared about himself. The way he didn't ask or comment, he just helped and that was what Billy needed. Help.

Steve loved Billy more than he could even understand, more than he had ever loved someone and at times it scared him. Times such as the late night phonecalls from Billy asking if he could come over because he needed help, needed patched up. Or the late night talks about where the bruises came from. The nights that Steve sat awake, knowing he couldn't take him away from that, not yet.

It took a lot longer for Billy to realise he loved Steve, loved him more than life itself. Took him even longer for him to admit it, because admitting it made it real and that was terrifying to Billy. Terrifying because he had someone else to worry about, someone he worried about a hell of a lot more than himself.

It terrified him when he found Steve at the edge of the woods with his stupid bat, waiting for something to come at him. Terrified him when he saw the hurt in his eyes everytime he cleaned him up, or when he would bolt awake trying to fight something that wasn't there. But the worst was when he lay there in the early morning, knowing that he would take on the world to keep this snoring, drooling idiot safe.

Except, when Billy sat at their table drinking the coffee they made from their machine in their kitchen all of that felt like a distant memory. The nights of worry and pain long gone, the nightmares never left but they stayed that. Just nightmares, fears of long ago monsters that were no longer around to cause harm.

Steve no longer worried about late night calls or broken ribs, he worried about bills and if the dog had been walked that day. He didn't need to clean Billy up anymore or think of ways to get him out because he already had.

They had already packed up and left, moved to some barely standing apartment building in San Diego. Leaks, broken furniture and getting time off for the holidays were what filled their lives now. No more being scared or worried because all of that was gone.

Billy still didn't like himself at times, didn't like the way he would flinch if Steve accidentally dropped something or a door slammed. But now he knew that it wasn't his fault and he knew how much be meant to people, knew he was worth caring about. Knew he loved Steve and Steve loved him, that was all he needed. All he wanted and he had it.

They had eachother and always would.

[starbuck09256]

A picture in the sand

Episode Fic

Unruhe

Pictures in the Sand

Author: @starbuck09256

For: Kasey Slippin Mickeys

Rating: Teen (I did use the f word not sorry)

First a huge Shot Out to @gaycrouton for putting this goodie together. Girl you are fantastic. I can’t wait to read your fic and everyone else's! 

My prompt was Unruhe and that it should take place in Traverse City with another woman goes missing. I followed it mostly. I rewatched the episode about 9 times, which isn’t bad I like the ep anyway. Here is my angsty (as requested) interpretation.

Not gonna lie, I’m really terrible at procrastinating so this is very much not Beta’d I apologize for spelling and grammar errors. Just happy to barely make the deadline. 

6am Dana Scully's Apartment

She wheels her suitcase next to the end table. Not paying attention she swings it to far and the picture frame on top falls and shatters to the newly stained wood flooring. “Shit” Scully mutters before moving her suitcase to find all the shards of broken glass. She picks up the frame staring at a picture of her and Melissa at a family picnic at the beach from a few years ago. Melissa’s glowing smile staring back at her, she traces the pattern of Melissa’s dress remembering Melissa spinning them around in the sand, letting the tiny pebbles crush against their toes. Like they used to do in San Diego.  Melissa had been galavanting around the world and had just gotten back her smile to be with family, the lightest Dana had seen her in the last few years.  Scully thought it was just because Melissa had finally gone to all the places she talked about endlessly in the dark confines of their shared room. Scully sighs, she remembers that dress Melissa wore in a different context too, one where she is helping their mom pack it away in a donation bin. Melissa so much taller than Scully, it didn’t make sense for Scully to keep it in the back of her closet as a reminder of the women who embodied the bright color and flowy design. The picture inside the jagged frame not scratched and torn right on the side of Melissa dress. The irony isn’t lost as she sits there on the floor where Melissa bled out in between the wood slates a bullet meant for Scully, a life meant for Melissa. She can’t help feeling that the last two years have been so unfair, she is no closer to justice for her sister, no closer to finding the answers of where Duane Berry took her. Now as the nightmares have increased she thinks of the women in Allentown all dying slowly, she wonders if she is next in line. If this picture of her and her sister will find its home on her moms mantle along with catholic candles that flicker in and out of all the lives tragically cut short by senseless violence. Scully presses the picture into the front pouch of her suitcase. Vowing to find a new frame to hold the precious photo right when she gets back from their new case in Michigan. 

She’s only been to Michigan a couple of times. The only real fact about the state that she loved is no matter where you are you are within 7 miles of water. The water calls to her, always has, from years of watching her father navigate it’s depths to summers spent at camps with giant lakes that at night made you feel like you might as well be in the middle of the ocean.  She remembers briefly staying once and seeing the shores of the great lake as it extended out for miles. From her seat at the window she looks out to the expanse of trees and meadows the clouds just above the horizon. Mulder shifts against her. His head resting in her lap on his coat. It’s been a weird few months between bounty hunters and his moms stroke he is more restless than normal. The case brought to them because of the weird photo of a girl seemingly screaming into the camera. Mulder ever elusive with his information he likes to dangle clues and hints to her but never the full story. It use to be fun, this game they play him trying to get her to open her mind to the fantastic to make connections and leaps with scraps of information. Now though it just gets on her nerves. Why not just tell her the facts? Does he think she is so closed minded that she will refuse to go? She wants to refuse. Start standing up for herself more, part of her is tired of seeing these women taken, beaten, lives destroyed in the end does it even matter the how? Is the why so important? What about stopping it? Lately she feels like they are only there for the aftermath, taken to a point so far outside of plausible. She’s getting tired of being taken herself. He mumbles in his sleep and shifts closer to her. That’s the real problem she thinks, how close they are and yet not at all. While they spend endless hours together, eating, sleeping in crappy motel rooms, driving miles and miles of road and for what? to be put in danger constantly?

The larger part of her though finds it still so thrilling. The challenge the way his eyes light up when he gets a new case and they go back and forth it's why he dangles clues and hints. He loves seeing her mind work, and in truth she loves the challenge.  She looks at the photo again, the edging is distorted the colors blending together. She isn’t sure how you would capture an image like this, how the abductor took such a photo. She presses her finger down on the edge looking at the long lines on the side, a face to the far right what is that? A reflection? She wonders what the image is trying to say. She thinks of the photos of her and Melissa torn and stuffed into her roller bag under the seat. She thinks back to all the photos she has taken over the years the others that grace her mantel in tiny rows. Her brothers photo with his new wife how he blames her openly for Melissa's death. As if she didn't already blame herself. She thinks of those women in Allentown how they said they are all dying, the photos they showed her of others like them that have passed on. She has an appointment in 3 months for more scans. She joined the mufon group and has been getting emails of members passing away one by one. Leaving children and husbands behind. She would only leave behind sad plants and half finished articles for medical journals and Mulder. How would he do with a new partner, she thinks back to Jerry whom he just described as a colleague. Is that all she would be to him in the end? A colleague a good friend? There have been moments when she thought they would be more. Melissa certainly thought they would be. Melissa's’ constant insistence that Mulder was the compliment to Scully's stubborn soul. Scully wonders if this is going to be the end will he be her last? She's never missed having a lover. But lately she wishes her bed wasn't so lonely. Now as Melissa has pointed out she has in fact put everything and everyone on hold for this search of theirs, to find answers for him and now for her. In the past she has found men who are obsessed with things it seems. The latest one resting in her lap. She swallows hard, sleeping with Mulder would be a terrible idea, but if there weren't consequences because she would be gone in a few months? She tries to clear her conscience about it all, her recent scans were fine but the emails of more and more members with the same type of cancer in exactly the same spot are more than scaring her. Mulder is scared too, she now stops mentioning when another one has been laid to rest. She’s seen his fear shining into her eyes when she gets even a cold. Imagine what cancer from a lover would do to the man?  She would never do that to him. If the dedication he has for his annoyingly little sister is anything. The rabbit hole he would fall down if they were more and she was taken by the disease from her abduction would kill him. 

She thinks about her mother and father, how after his death the strong capable of anything Margaret Scully faltered. At first her mom said she could pretend for a few minutes in the morning that he was still at sea, that his smile would grace her eyes soon as he would sweep her into a deep hug that warmed her bones. Then she would remember, remember that time was short. Missy's death certainly didn't help. Losing a child is something that no parent should ever bare. She had asked Dana to give her antidepressants, and while it scared Scully to the core it renewed her mother's faith in God. That that was the only way she could keep going, knowing that her Ahab would be there waiting for a life eternal and her sweet daughter's spirit would be free. But Melissa's death had done the opposite for Scully, she has scene so much injustice so many things that make her doubt God's word that now she has become skeptical and even cynical  in so many ways. Mulder has seen it in her and while she wears her cross everyday part of it is just because it reminds her of Melissa. It reminds her to try and fight. She will fight till the bitter end. Even if that is sooner than she wants to believe. Mulder shifts slightly again and she moves the picture through her fingers. Tries to put that skepticalness to the side. Tries to think like Mulder would. Why would the killer leave it at the scene? How did he get it beforehand? Was he stalking her? She taps on the photo again and moves back to the case file, shifting just slightly careful to not disturb Mulder. 

She reads the report over and over until her eyes want to water at the dry dead air of the cabin. The sun is seeping through the light onto Mulders hair now, his features almost boyish in sleep. She is usually the one sleeping against him even if flying isn’t her favorite thing. She squirms in her seat a bit wishing secretly that Mulder would wake up so she can lay against his shoulder and catch a few minutes of sleep herself. She moves her hand, fingers brushing through his hair. She knows he doesn’t mind, though he still teases her a little when she does it in doctor mode. She sees his small smile and he starts to move. She gives him a soft smile back as he rubs his eyes looking at her with the translucent clouds shading the sun as it shines dimly on her hair. He reaches up and touches her cheek to sweep a stray strand off her face. “Your turn” it’s almost a whisper. She smiles gratefully as he moves and positions his jacket against his shoulder for her to rest against. She sighs as she snuggles into the warm fabric. Mulder pulls the shade down against the morning dawn as they continue to soar through the air. 

2 hours later

She wakes dimly to the voice of the captain letting them know they are starting their dissent into Grand Rapids. Traverse city looms another 2 hours away along the lake coast. It’s interesting the rules they have made through the years. They never discuss a case on a flight and so that time has been devoted to them reading books sometimes playing cards. Arguing over which mythical creature is the most likely to exist. Or more often than not it’s like this morning's flight snuggled against each other asleep. She hears Mulders soft snores against her head. The last few months she has been more worried about his sleeping habits especially after she told him what she found in Allentown. More often he comes in with dark circles and the extra coffee through the day has not gone unnoticed. She can’t complain though, because despite all of this he still is there in the morning to greet her, with a steaming cup to chase away her own night terrors. Places like planes offer a few moments of peace that the other one is safe, and that they are together. She tries not to analyze it too much. Tries to rationalize the fact that they have been through some truly horrible things and are bound to have some strong ptsd and codependency issues. She doesn’t want to love him that way. She likes them just being friends. She wants a bit more out of life, especially if there is less available to her, seeing all of these things over the years she is wondering what she is really fighting for anymore if not for Melissa maybe she would have already left. Is it to be flying off to save women from abductions? Is she trying to find validity in her choice to prove to herself that giving up medicine to become an FBI agent was really the best decision? Is she now leading herself down a path to have another Jack or even worse another Daniel? 

She knows that Mulder is in love with her. She knows that he has become just as dependent on her as she has on him. She doesn’t want that, she doesn’t want a world where the two of them can only exist with the other. She has become consumed by this quest of his and paid so dearly, and now here they are chasing a lead on a case they really have no business on. She knows that it’s about the picture. He sees something or knows something she doesn’t. She’ll have to wait for the drive into town to find out.

As they reach the drugstore she is lost in the sea that is the investigation, while she looks at expired film heating beneath it parts of the edging make sense, if the film is expired and the heat has distorted the edges. But the screaming that is odd, when she points these things out to Mulder he finally explains his theory. She sees a photo booth in the drugstore small and yet she wonders if the film has been tampered here too. Mulder must think something similar as he grabs her hand just as she finishes her questions to the owner.  “This film shouldn’t have the same distortion if my theory is correct.” he mutters pulling her into the small intimate photo booth. She sighs “Mulder,” she starts but he pulls her down and she is sitting right next to him and he’s smiling and pointing to the camera. She gives him the look, the one that shows she is not amused, but he wraps his arm around her leans forward to start the series of 5 photographs of them. He tries to do bunny ears and the camera catches her laughing at it. She sticks out her tongue in the next and so does he.  The third picture is just them stern and serious. The fourth a soft smile from both of them. The fifth begins to click and he makes a kissy face and her grin lights up the tiny booth. Its short lived and while she thinks the exercise is pointless the film proves to be unaffected. She waits for Mulder to throw the pictures away but he doesn’t he pulls out his wallet and tucks them in with a 20 dollar bill and 2 ones. She shakes her head, he asks the owner if they can take a few more photos with the same film. “I think the picture is the key to this Scully,” he leaves and she follows him out. 

They drive to the girls house, pictures on the fridge of a normal couple. Lost in moments together, traveling, and laughing. She wonders if they will find this girl alive, if these will be the last time she smiles. She thinks of moments when her and Mulder where sure that it was the end. She thinks of the pictures of them in his wallet. What a stranger would think. What she thinks of this closeness that has grown between them. 

He takes the camera “Watch out scully it’s loaded,” and he points it right at her but the picture that comes out is of the girl distorted again and she looks up at him confused. He starts to tell her more about his growing theory, how these pictures are the key  Psychic photography. She hates this, she hates looking at cases and having him come up with something so crazy she has to try and wrap her mind around it. She always gives him the benefit of the doubt listens to his theories, but sometimes she just wants a simple explanation. Maybe she is just burned out. It happens to everyone with all the things that have happened to them she hasn’t had a chance to take a break. She wants to talk about this more but as always he is already getting ready to leave. “He was here I think he stalked her.” As they step out into the bright sunshine her phone starts to ring, letting them know that Mary has been found wandering and disoriented.  

At the hospital Scully is faced with looking in the hollow eyes of the woman on the fridge, one that won’t be smiling again as pain and inevitable death beacon her near. The scans don’t lie, Mary is facing a very difficult road of recovery if that is even possible. As Scully stares at the scans as Mulder goes to grab them something resembling coffee she thinks of Betsy in Allentown, about those women with tumors at the same spot as Marys unfortunate lobotomy. Mulder has sense Scully's distance and luckily has chosen to back off, leaving her with the time she needs to figure things out. Scully is deep in thought when Mulder returns he sets down the coffee letting the steam rise up and wafted into her nose. It’s a beautiful smell coffee, seems the fine people of Traverse City understand its importance. Mulder touches her shoulder gently a sad smile across his lips as he stars at the scans once more. Just as the uniform officer comes in and tells them another woman has been taken. Anger boils through Scully, whomever this guy is he has no idea what he is doing and unless they find him soon she is afraid of another poor woman facing the same fate. Mulder throws the rental keys to her knowing that right now he needs time to look over the details from the officer, starting working up a profile right away. Precious time is ticking fast as she presses her foot down on the pedal. This is her strength driving fast and a little more reckless than Mulder ever has. It annoys him, how much she speeds and whips into places. It’s why he drives most of the time in reality. Because she got tired of hearing him complain about her going to fast, but time is of the essence.  They are following a patrol car the blue and red lights flash into the fading sun. As they race around the corner. Mulder finally looks up at her his voice catches in his throat. “Mary will never be the same will she?” Scully shakes her head in sadness. “We need to find this person, and fast” She nods and throws the car into park, throwing her seatbelt off dashing to the scene. They need a clue, a hint, and hopefully something more than a screaming girl in a fucking polariod.  

Just as they get there they realize that the rush wasn’t necessary, Scully needs to review the file as Mulder heads right inside to assist.  Another man dead another woman taken and nothing to go on. Mulder doesn’t find any cameras or film, in the car as he was thinking through the profile he wonders about the word Unruhe, a place? A thing? A person? It sounds like it’s a word. He asks one of the officers to use the computer quickly typing the word into a search box as he continues shuffling through 1040s and spreadsheets. Scully walks in the file in her hand, a killer like this she thinks might have been there might have been at the scene. As they argue again over the photograph she feels the frustration of the day, of the inevitable failure that might await them if they can’t find something quickly.  Mulder is ready to head back to Washington, to find the clues that have eluded them so that she can save the next victim. Both of them know that time is limited and Alice doesn’t have long, while she thinks him going back to Washington is a mistake, it’s really not that long of a flight and the bureau does have some fantastic resources. She sighs hangs her head and works her connection. It seems that for them, when they go their separate ways they form a complete picture in the end. 

 She watches as he races out leaving her the keys to the rental car as he hitches a ride back again. She works through the evening and well into the night in a small motel with a view of Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. She opens the window and listens to the water softly kissing the sand while the moonlight shines off the lakes black opals and into the darkness. Mulder calls her lets her know his planes has landed and he has been able to get a forensic photographer to help him first thing in the morning. She lets him know that Mary Lefont died and she fears that the same will be true for Alice if the construction owner has hired men off the books. Mulder sighs, “You caught that Scully, you found us a tangible lead as soon as I find something out with this photo I’ll call you it should help you refine it” She hums in response right now she is looking at a list of 300 people in the apartments next to the latest abduction. She sighs and says she is tired before hanging up. She knows that sleep will be hard fought tonight, it’s already almost 3am. She walks out of the hotel towards the Bay listens to the waves as they crash against the shore with a dullness. While the stars shine brightly out beyond the black depths of the lake she thinks of Mary, about those pictures of her smiling in those photos on the fridge. Her toes are in the rough sand from the lake, not like the sand that she and Melissa danced to in the photo. She wonders of Alice's family will have similar photos on their mantel of another woman taken in her 30s. She hopes that the station can pull up something on the construction workers, they need this lead. Regardless of the success Mulder thinks he will find she needs the tangible investigative skills of the mortal realm. She walks back to her room, letting the moonlight chase her form across the soft swirls of the water. She falling into a lifeless deep sleep while the dull ticking of Alice's life lingers in the background. 

In the morning after she wrestles Gerry to the ground. She thinks back about the pictures she has of Ahab of the two of them at her medical school graduation, her white coat and his proud smile. She wonders after all the terrible things that have happened to her would he still be so proud? Or would his smile have dimmed like that glossy paper it was printed on. Would her own eyes shine as brightly as they did that day ever again? Or had the 3 months she missed, the sister she mourned be evident through the lense. She knew the risks was aware of the horror she would face. Lately she feels as if she is facing a far more looming nightmare. Another birthday another lonely night with no prospects of changing. Mulder and her might be pushing that line in the sand between acceptable partnerly behavior but it’s a not a road she is ready to take, nor is she sure she wants too. She loves him, she knows this after so many dangerous situations, hours and days spent together how could she not. She thinks of the other pictures she knows he keeps in his wallet. The one of him and Sam, sometimes she thinks she still sees that young innocent kid staring back at her. His devilish grin when he shows her the fantastic. The way his face lights up just a little when she pulls out his favorite sunflower seeds when he was sure they were out. Does he see it in her? Does he see the young agent who was new to the field but prepared for the boys club? Does he see the same smile and young ambition she once was so consumed with that she let the rest of her life slip away? She’s getting older her birthday just passing and she thinks about the fact that now she is as old as Melissa was when she died. She thinks about the pictures they won’t take, about the people now missing from the Christmas dinners, the Sunday brunch, the nephews birthday parties. Her phone rings and it’s Mulder he booked the first flight back and is already on his way to the precinct. She wants to know where Alice Bryant is she wants them to win one for once. Mulder wants her to wait until they can interrogate Gerry together. They are so good together, she knows. The two of them play off each other so well with suspects. Mulder seems crazy and she seems scary and she loves it. She loves the power it gives her. She loves seeing justice and fear mingle together in the room. She hopes they are scared, hopes that the suspects feel even the small degree of fear that they cause their victims to feel. It is that feeling that has kept her with the FBI, she loves being the one to find the evidence and then confront the suspect with her findings. Mulder is in a way the perfect partner for her. He steps back lets her take the lead, knows that if anyone will find something tangible to hang a case on it’ll be her. 

Gerry gives them a location, and as they race to find her, she can’t help but be angry at Gerry seeing her as troubled. She isn’t troubled is she? Conflicted? Scared? Maybe. She doesn’t want to overthink a psychopaths words. She learned long ago from Mulders profiles how they use words and gestures to gain trust. Luther Lee Boggs being a prime example for them both. 

Scully races up the hill hoping and praying that they can find Alice alive, and hopefully not as damaged as Mary, but as she makes it to the top, Alices still form crushes her thoughts. She touches Alices’ cold skin, her cheeks. Watches as the CS tech starts to take photos of the scene. More photos, more death, and now another body. At least Gerry is in custody. At least they saved the future woman that he might have tortured and killed.  Mulder meets her at the car, her anger rolls off her in waves like the lake shore. Maybe tonight she will sit on the shore and cry, no one would be able to hear her sobs over the water. She wants to leave to go home and fix her broken frame try to not think of photos and sand and lives that could have been. She can’t drive and though she wanted to be in control she hands the keys to Mulder so they can drive back to their hotel and clean up. She needs to wash the failure she feels down the drain. It doesn’t work that way, Gerry shot the police officer that was processing him, they put out an APB but her mind can only race about possible new victims he already might be on his way to take. 

They look at the photo of the officer on the paperwork, Mulder is right the photos are probably the key. God who else did Gerry take a photo of? Who else is going to deal with a madman telling them they are troubled and killing them to fix it? 

Apparently the benefit of Traverse City being smaller than most major metropolitan areas is when you need to steal something you pick the same drugstore you stalked your victims. Gerry has assaulted the owner and taken more film. They walk through the drugstore one more time, she thinks of the apartment complexes on each side and tells Mulder as such as he once again puts money into the photo machine. She looks at him in curiosity, last time they went in this time he is letting it roll without them. HIs theory has developed and isn’t ready to share just yet, she knows he will explain in the car. She wants to get going, he tosses her the keys and she walks out into the bright sun. 

She doesn’t remember much she remembers her foot hurting from the injection remembers the struggle as she tries to get her gun. She wakes strapped to a chair with Gerry in the dark corner as her eyes try to adjust to the light. Her arms taped down roughly the large sheetrock tool on the shiny metal table. She wants to plead in a responsible way. Gerry knows that this is the end, she can’t let him think that she will be part of his prize. She doesn’t remember much of her German important phrases and it takes her a few moments to come up with what to say to him. Especially since conversational german was the only class she ever got a B in. Luckily the words are there, as if her mind knows to channel the knowledge buried so deep. Gerry gets up to grab the camera, she sees her chance if she can get the tray she can cut her restraints and take him out. She needs to stall, she needs Mulder to have time to find her. She wants to give him time, She asks Gerry about his own Howlers about the trouble with his father. She channels Mulder and knows what brothers will do for sisters. Her own brother would do for her and Melissa. Gerry pulls the tray away and takes the camera to take her picture once more. She struggles with thinking that the photos she took with Mulder in that small cramped little booth won’t be the last ones he sees of her. He will see her on the floor of the padded room in a weird distorted photo that will filter into his dreams for years to come. But luck is on her side and she is able to convince Gerry to take a photo of himself. The camera flash is almost blinding, she knows he is sick she just needs to show him that this has always been about him and not anyone else. The photos come out in a small series of flashes, they wait for the polarization to show the image. She feels vindicated when they show him dead, show him his fate. That justice is finally with her. She just hopes it doesn’t plan on taking her with him. Gerry flips through the photos over and over. Questioning the images, like Mulder did. What do they mean? She hopes they mean that her life will be hers again, that she will be able to see the waves and shore once more. But Gerry thinks it’s about time, that his time is ending and he must hurry. Fear runs through her body a surge of adrenaline as she tugs and struggles against the restraints. She thinks about the time she almost drowned, how it felt struggling in the water, wondering why something so beautiful and peaceful would try to take her life. How she would gasp and flail her arms in sheer panic, like now as she hears Mulder calling her name. God Mulder please please prove that picture true and he does. Thank god he does. She feels him release her final bonds reach out his hand to take hers. She feels the storm calming inside of her, like Mulder is a life preserve her around her waist pulling her up against the tide. She walks out of the dark trailer, walks past the paramedics straight to the lakeshore. She takes off her heels, the prick of the injection still stings but the sand and the wind and the waves cradle her in their embrace. She takes a deep breath, lets the air of the misty water fill her lungs up. She takes a moment to look down at her feet in the sand and as she looks up she almost swears she sees Melissa in the distance dancing on a distant shore. 

tagging @today-in-fic @gaycrouton @xfilesfanficexchange @improlificinsarcasm

[dritaent]

Patina green

#Patina green free

Used for gutters, metal roofing panels, downspouts, cupolas, louvers, edge metal, flashing, step flashing, leader heads, gutter accessories, conductor boxes & skylights. Our collection of treasures is constantly changing but always inspired by great fondness for fine textiles, artisan-made jewelry, laugh-out-loud words and botanicals all around. Patina Green sheet metal is vastly used for it's similarity to aged copper. Our collection of treasures is constantly changing but. At Patina Green, we celebrate the art of living creatively and all that is perfectly imperfect. At Patina Green, we celebrate the art of living creatively and all that is perfectly imperfect. photography and website design by Melinda Ortley. There is a Royal Stencil pattern available for every decorating style! We are continuously updating our stencil collections to offer you everything from timeless patterns to the latest design trends. Patina Green is a gift shop located in the center of historic Concord, MA. Patina Green Home and Market, 116 N Tennessee St, Suite 102, McKinney, TX, 75069 9. Find quality garden & patio products to add to your Shopping List or. Simply choose the best stencil paint color to match your decor to create a coordinated look. Patina Green Get color data for 15,000 Pantone Colors Pick colors and share palettes Convert RGB/CMYK/Hex/Lab color equivalents to. Shop for Cast Aluminum Path, Walkway and Area Light, Patina Green (1) at Harris Teeter. It is not a powdered, casein-based milk paint. Stencils give you endless custom color options. Cone 10 (Dry Material) Description: Previously called Riverstone Matt we had changed its kaolin and therefore changed its name. General Finishes Milk Paint is a premium interior/exterior mineral based paint named for its low-luster sheen. Use them to stencil patterns on walls, wood, concrete, furniture, tile, fabric paper, cork, canvas, and more.ĭecorating with stencils is economical! All you need are some basic Stencil supplies and paint to create a patterned wall or surface at a fraction of the cost of wallpaper. With minimal care, stencils can be used repeatedly for many different projects and on multiple surfaces. We are taking every precaution possible in the care and handling of items.Our stencils are laser cut in our San Diego, California, USA studio from durable 10mil Mylar plastic sheets.

#Patina green free

We are offering free doorstep drop-off (Concord and bordering towns only) or $8 flat rate shipping. New products are added to this site daily! Call us at 97 for FaceTime shopping or special orders. Our showroom is all about artful display…a place where vibrant color, delicate fragrance and crusty paint combine to create a uniquely joyful experience for our visitors.Ĭurrent Promotion: In light of the COVID-19 crisis, Patina Green has created an online pop-up shop. Patina Green Home and Market is a lifestyle market and farm-to-table restaurant, serving real food and offering curated collections in historic downtown. Our collection of treasures is constantly changing but always inspired by great fondness for fine textiles, artisan-made jewelry, laugh-out-loud words and botanicals all around. Patina Green is a gift shop located in the center of historic Concord, MA.Īt Patina Green, we celebrate the art of living creatively and all that is perfectly imperfect.

[stainyourhands]

Next in this resistance series

Dan leaves the hotel with the sunset.

Tommy follows him, walking a block behind, as he crosses M and P on 16th.  Tommy ducks behind a taxi as Dan turns onto U, then stops, looking both ways, before using the same strange series of knocks he had used the night before.

Tommy ducks into Busboys and Poets, orders a beer that he doesn't have to pay for when the barista recognizes his face.  He slips her a $20, anyway, and hopes it's enough to buy her silence.  Not that it'll matter.  Tonight's the night.

He'll confront Dan, or he won't.

They'll save Lovett, or they won't.

The horrible price that Tommy never asked Jon to pay will prove worth it, or it won't.

Tommy clenches his fingers around the beer.  He would give almost anything to be here, drinking an over-priced beer in a resistance-extension bookstore, rather than back in San Diego digging up dirt in an orange prison jumpsuit.  He still hears the screams at night.  He still remembers the stench of fear.  He can still feel the hardened shell he'd built, callous upon callous around his heart, to protect the memory of everyone and everything he cares about from being burned alive while he was in there.

He would give almost anything.  He would not give the haunted look that's settled in Jon's eyes over the past few months.  Nor Lovett's freedom, traded in a devil's bargain, for Tommy's own.  And certainly not whatever dangerous, hair-brained scheme Dan has been cooking up that will almost certainly end in trading both their lives for his.

Two for one is a deal I'm willing to take, Dan will almost certainly say.

Fuck that.

Tommy's been trading on his ill-earned freedom for months now.  Flinching at shadows and hiding behind his fear of what might have been if he'd stayed in that prison cell and what might be if things got worse.  But now the worst has happened and it's almost a relief to replace with fear with regret.  Regret that he wasted so much time sleeping in the guest room, burying his nightmares in Lucca's fur.  Regret that he returned to Jon and Lovett”s bed only to watch on the sidelines as Jon pushed Lovett to SF.  Regret that safety was more important to him than savoring the last, bittersweet months they might have had.

As Tommy finishes his beer, the regret slides away.  Regret is unproductive.  Regret pales in light of the imperative to give himself one last chance.

He's standing in front of the dark, innocuous spot door to The Gibson before he realizes he's slid his glass down the bar or smoothed out his shoulders.  He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and picturing Dan the night before, the beauty of his fingers as they'd danced across the wood in a complicated knock.

Tommy is met by a harried waitress this time, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail and an American Flag pinned jauntily to her vest.  She doesn't invite him in, but she doesn't push him away, either, so he steps around her and into the speakeasy.  It's darker and less friendly that it was twenty-four hours ago, nearly empty except for the hushed voices filtering through from the courtyard.

Tommy's stealth lasts until he trips over the last step, his shoe thumping against the stone floor as he catches himself, fingernails scraping against the brick wall.  He curses, inwardly.  Ben curses, outwardly, as he spins around, his eyes wide and bright in the thick red lamp light.

"Tommy."

Dan doesn't turn around.  He clenches his fists against the table in front of him, his shoulders slumping as he pushes forward, his elbows bowing inwards and the muscles of his back rippling under his thin blue button-down.

"Ben," Tommy nods. "Dan.  I followed you."

Ben's eyes flick from Tommy to Dan, but Tommy ignores him.  Dan leans further against the table, his voice hoarse as he chuckles darkly. "No shit."

"I knew you were up to something." Tommy crosses to the table, stands close enough that he can feels the waves of heat roiling off Dan's tense shoulders. "I want to be a part of it."

"I know," Dan whispers, closing his eyes tightly. "That's why I kept you out of it."

"Dan-"

"No." The table groans as Dan raps his knuckles against it.  His eyes fly open, as clear and blue as Tommy's ever seen them. "You have a black mark, Tommy.  You can't be a part of this."

Tommy pulls his mind away from the passport in his back pocket, the treason stamped across his photo. "I don't care."

Dan shakes his head.  The red light gleams off the white and grey hairs that are outnumbering the brown these days.

"Would you like anything to drink, Mr. Vietor?" The waitress asks, appearing in the doorway.  Her hair is now in a tight braid.  The Flag pin is still askew.

Ben shakes his head, crossing the room to take her elbow and lead her away.

They're alone in the warm, DC fall air, and as Dan turns towards him, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, Tommy can see the beads of sweat at his hairline. "What do you think will happen, huh?  If you're caught?  They don't throw you in jail for a second treason charge."

"I know." Tommy holds up a hand to hold Dan back. "Come on, you know I know that.  Don't treat me like an idiot."

"Then don't act like one," Dan snaps back. "Someone has to look after your fucking life, as you seem awfully hell bent on throwing it away."

Tommy flinches.  He burned his enlistment papers months ago.  He burned his handgun application with it. "Life isn't worth living," Tommy spits back, "without Lovett in it.  Not that you'd understand that."

Dan's eyes widen and he takes a step back, jerking against the edge of the table, good as if Tommy had slapped him.

"We've been waiting," Tommy continues. "For fucking years, Dan.  Loving and waiting and you've been- what?"

Dan's voice is so low that Tommy has to strain to hear it. "Making the world safe for you."

Tommy sighs in exasperation.  They've been having this argument, in metaphors and similes, for long enough that Tommy's heart has started to close over the hole he's left, open and waiting, for Dan to fill. "Newsflash, the world isn't safe.  It's not going to be.  All we have is this moment, right here, right now.  We have-" he swallows, realizing the words are true only as he says them, "forgiveness for Jon and an opportunity to save Lovett.  And we have each other."

Dan swallows, his adam's apple thick in the open vee of his shirt. "Lovett would want you alive."

"You too, Dan," Tommy corrects. "What the fuck do you still not understand about that?"

"I can't- Tommy, fuck, I can't do this right now.  Lovett needs me to be thinking straight.  You- He needs you."

Tommy reaches out, tugging at Dan's crossed arms and pulling him a step closer. "He needs you, too.  Just you.  That's all any of us have ever asked for."

Dan's face twists.  His eyes are shining, bright and wet. "I have to try."

"I know," Tommy whispers, closing the distance between them.

Dan's lips taste like salt.  He smells like sweat and fear.  He melts into Tommy's chest and Tommy's mouth, and the fourth chamber of Tommy's heart beats wildly against his rib cage, reaching out towards Dan, like it always has.

Tommy pulls back, just far enough to press his lips behind Dan's ear. "Let me help." Dan shakes under his hands and Tommy spreads his hand against the base of Dan's spine. "Let me help keep you alive.  For Lovett." He presses his lips to Dan's clammy skin in a close-mouthed kiss. "For Jon." Again. "For me." And again.

Dan's entire body shudders, and Tommy loses track of time as they stand there.  Under the DC night sky, the stars and the artificial tea lights, with Dan's beer warming as his elbow and Dan's walls thawing in his arms.

When Ben appears in the doorway, though, his shoulder pressed against the worn wood and a soft, concerned smile on his face, Tommy squeezes the back of Dan's neck. "Tell me the plan."

"Okay." Dan steps back, straightening his shirt and glancing away, hiding the flush of his cheeks and the warm blue of his eyes in the table.  He smooths his hands over the table and the building plans crinkle under his fingers. "These are the plans for-"

Tommy leans closer, his shoulder tight against Dan's as Ben joins them.  He squints in the dim light, until he can read the name in the corner.

Tommy gasps.

"-Devin Nunes' office."

[livingcorner]

42 Furniture and Fixtures in Your Kitchen + Amazing Kitchen Home Tours – Toot Sweet 4 Two

42 Furniture and Fixtures in Your Kitchen – is that even possible? After all, when you exclude all the things in the kitchen’s cabinets and drawers, such as kitchen utensils, tools, gadgets, cooking implements, supplies, equipment, accessories, pantry food, refrigerated food, etc., what’s left? Just a table, a few chairs, maybe a hanging light, and some decorations, right?

You're reading: 42 Furniture and Fixtures in Your Kitchen + Amazing Kitchen Home Tours – Toot Sweet 4 Two

Well, let’s look at the picture above of a beautiful white kitchen in a smaller L-shaped kitchen space.

Furniture and Fixtures in This Space

In that picture, this is what you see from left to right:

Kitchen chairs (similar but two different kinds; did you catch that?)

Kitchen table

Placemats

Dinner plates

Salt and pepper shaker

Vase with flowers

Three overhead hanging lights

White ceramic vase to the left of the sink

Window shades

Glass jar with kitchen tools to the right of the sink

Basket with different dried bouquets

Several canisters with dried pasta

Two hanging ledges/shelves

Wooden vase with eucalyptus leaves (top shelf)

Another basket with pinecones (top shelf)

Two more glass canisters (top shelf)

Three gray glass bottles (bottom shelf)

Two separate plants in two separate pots (bottom shelf)

Two small carafes – maybe oil & vinegar? (bottom shelf)

Stove/Oven

Range hood

Two wooden chopping boards

Two more glass canisters

Refrigerator

What you don’t see, but still in this kitchen area, are:

Drapes (they are off to the left; I cropped them out of this photo)

Hardware for the drapery and window shades

Light bulbs

And that’s just in this small kitchen!   27 things just in that one small area!

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This post is one of 55 lists of 42 household items in this series.  This endless, unremitting, ongoing series…

Let’s back up a minute…

If you are new to this blog, welcome!  I create lists of 42 for home inventory purposes.  I started this series of household inventory lists several years ago because I’d been working on my own personal household inventory list.  You see, I have a vested interest in knowing what is in our home, and documenting it, so that should an emergency occur again, we are not left relying on memory.

If you are a new reader to this blog, we lost our home in the 2007 Southern California wildfire known as the Witch Fire and we were sorely unprepared for the recovery process.  Since I’m doing this for myself, I decided to share on my blog so that if readers want to do the same, they have some basic tools with which to start!

Here’s another photo of this beautiful kitchen so that you can see the drapes and the amazing vaulted ceiling!  From this vantage point, this kitchen area isn’t small after all; it’s just limited on counter space and kitchen amenities.

Getting back to this list of 42…

This list of 42 furniture and fixtures in your kitchen is meant to include items that are moveable in your kitchen, i.e., not permanently attached to your home.  For example, kitchen cabinets are attached to your walls, but a free-standing kitchen hutch or buffet it not.  Why am I sharing this distinction with you?  If you are, indeed, creating a list of personal property for your homeowner’s insurance company for a loss you have suffered, items that are permanently attached to your home are usually covered under the “dwelling” portion of your policy.

Read more: What is the origin and meaning of the phrase “all day” when used in a commercial kitchen?

So, in the case of this beautiful white kitchen that I’m using as an example, the sink, oven/stove, range hood, and flooring would all be considered part of the “dwelling,” so you wouldn’t include them on your list of personal property.  But, always be sure to talk directly to your assigned insurance claims adjuster just to clarify these distinctions.

Discloser:  This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.  Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Here’s more kitchen furniture and fixtures inspo for you… the photo above is a different beautiful white kitchen!  This one has more of an industrial vibe with a large center workspace island made of wood and steel and vintage-inspired industrial bar stools.  What a great space!

Are you working on your own home inventory project, whether for personal use or as the result of a homeowner’s insurance claim?  If you are struggling with this endless project (it took me 9 months of working nights and weekends to create our personal property inventory), I’ve created a tool to help you see it through.  The Complete Book of Lists: Room-by-Room Checklists for Your Household Inventory Project combines the 55 lists on this blog plus 20 new lists and rolls them up into one eBook with 75 different home inventory checklists – all for the low price of $9.99!

Check out the complete book!

Here’s a great panorama view of a different loft kitchen.  This one is both black and white with lots of cool industrial details, including similar vintage-inspired rustic kitchen stools, that make this kitchen a standout!  I guess I’m attracted to these loft-type spaces.  In my mind, that’s been a dream of mine – to live downtown in a loft apartment with an amazing view.

Wait…I’ve already been there, done part of that!  I did live downtown in an apartment with an amazing view!  It just wasn’t a loft.  And I’ll let you in on a little secret…living downtown in a busy city, even in a high rise building, can be very noisy!

We lived there for 13 months while we rebuilt our home after the wildfire.  While our apartment, located on the 8th floor of a 9-story building, had an amazing view of San Diego Bay and the city to the west, it was incredibly noisy.  Sirens going by day and night!  There was a hospital located about a mile from us and all I can assume is that more than half of those sirens were ambulances heading towards the hospital.  When you romanticize about living is a great downtown space, that’s one of the things you don’t think about – noise.

This beautiful country farmhouse kitchen features a rustic kitchen island that’s the definition of a working table and an equally rustic hanging pot rack.  There’s even a vintage radio next to the sleeping kitty.  Full of country charm with light streaming through the windows, who wouldn’t want to wake up and watch the sunrise in this charming kitchen?

One more panorama photo of another beautiful industrial-style kitchen space to inspire you before we move on to the list of 42, this one with a cool brick wall.  These rustic bar stools are sure popular, aren’t they?  By the way, in the kitchen space above, the kitchen island is not permanently attached to the floor (see the “crawl” space?).  This leads me to  believe this particular kitchen island would not be part of the “dwelling,” but rather “personal property.”

42 Furniture and Fixtures in Your Kitchen

Your kitchen isn’t just about what you can stuff into your cabinets, drawers, and pantry, but also includes the furniture, fixtures, decorations, dinnerware, and other tools of the trade needed to make the most used room in your home an enjoyable retreat.  Check out this list of 42 Furniture and Fixtures in Your Kitchen to make sure that nothing is forgotten!

Kitchen table

Kitchen chairs

Area rugs

Draperies, rods, brackets, valances, curtains, shutters

Blinds or window shades

Lighting – overhead, lamps, sconces and light bulbs

Kitchen hutch, kitchen buffet

Kitchen bar stools, counter stools

Stepstool

Bench or benches

Decorative knick-knacks

Pictures, prints, photos, posters & frames

Plants and plant containers

Hanging pot rack

Refrigerator, freezer

Microwave, microwave cart/stand

Stove and/or cooktop

Oven – single or double

Range hood

Dinner plates, salad plates, dessert plates

Pasta bowls, cereal bowls, fruit bowls, dessert bowls

Cookbooks

Bookends, cookbook holder

Bookshelves, ledges

Water glasses,  tumblers, juice glasses

Cups and saucers, mugs, travel mugs

Wine goblets, champagne flutes, cocktail glasses

Dessert, parfait, mini glasses

Flatware set; butter knives

Serving spoons, serving forks, gravy ladles

Ice tea spoons, mini spoons & forks

Candles and candleholders

Vases

Lazy Susan

Chalkboard, chalk, clipboard, pens

Grocery bags and totes

Serving bowls and platters

Baskets and trays

Pitchers, carafes, decanters

Gravy boat, candy/nut dishes

Canisters

Free-standing kitchen island, kitchen island cart

Whew!  Did I leave anything out?  Let me know – I’ll add it to a future list!

What furniture do you need in your kitchen?

So, what furniture do you need in your kitchen?  Obviously, answering that question starts with evaluating your space.  Depending on the size of your space, the actual “furniture” in the space is contingent upon your available space.   I’m linking to a couple of decor bloggers for some great kitchen decoration and decor inspiration.

The above photo is of Karianne’s gorgeous farmhouse-style kitchen at Thistlewood Farms.  The actual furniture in this kitchen space includes the two kitchen counter stools, a freestanding kitchen island, and a kitchen hutch to the right displaying all her dishes.  What you can barely see peeking over the end of the other counter are four more white counter stools.

And her kitchen fixtures include that gorgeous chandelier, a beautiful range hood, rug, and other things you can’t see off camera range.  Karianne’s home is stunning – I encourage you to visit her beautiful blog for more design and decor inspiration!

The side-by-side photos above are of Taryn Whiteaker’s contemporary kitchen from her blog by the same name.  The actual furniture pieces in her beautiful kitchen are the “live-edge table,” kitchen chairs, kitchen counter chairs, area rug, and two amazing industrial-style open shelves.

That live-edge table truly elevates the space to fine kitchen dining, doesn’t it?  The kitchen fixtures that we can see in these photos include the great lights she’s selected hanging over the kitchen island and above the open shelves.  Be sure to visit Taryn’s blog for more great decor ideas and lots of beautiful tablescapes!

This amazing French country kitchen belongs to Karen at Sanctuary Home Decor.  Even though the only actual “furniture” pieces in this space are the kitchen counter stools, I had to share this gorgeous kitchen with readers!  Isn’t that range hood amazing?  And the beams in her kitchen…no words!  Karen has two homes; be sure to stop by her blog to see even more amazingly beautiful home decor.

This beautiful white modern transitional kitchen space belongs to Tana at Your Marketing BFF.  In this photo, you’ll notice the following pieces of kitchen furniture:  chairs, kitchen table, bench, kitchen counter stools, and hanging lights. Did I mention that Tana is my website’s designer?  We met many years ago at a blogging conference and became fast friends.  Not only is she an amazing website designer, but she’s a great teacher about all things blog.  Be sure to visit her site not only for decor inspiration but for help with all your blogging questions, too.

Read more: The Best Way to Clean Every Type of Kitchen Flooring

And Randi’s kitchen from her blog, Randi Garrett Design, is the ultimate in feminine glam!  Gold lighting fixtures, gold drawer and cabinet pulls, gold faucet on the sink, and gold controls on the stove, elevate her kitchen to rock star status!  Check out her blog for gorgeous design inspiration not only for the kitchen but for the rest of the house, too.  Oh, by the way, her site, too, was designed by Tana at Your Marketing BFF!

Last on the kitchen home tour is a beachy vibe with a modern twist.  This colorful kitchen breakfast nook started with a modern simple round pedestal table.  Adding the casual wooden wishbone armchairs painted aqua transform this nook to beachy casual and the aqua chevron-striped window shades add to the contemporary look.  The drama is added by hanging two identical paintings sideways, one upside down.

These two paintings flipped sideways are called Delta Dream and were created by my father, Chuck.  He was an Air Force pilot whose hobby was art; he passed away after a long life of creativity in 2013.  I miss him every day but I’m fortunate to be surrounded by his amazing talent displayed in my home.  He created many beautiful works of art throughout his life (both paintings and sculptures) and I’m thrilled to be able to share the paintings with the world.  Reproductions are available on Great Big Canvas.

Will you do me a favor?  Would you share my post on social media?  The pinnable images at the top of this post and the one below are for your Pinterest boards so that you can bookmark this post and come back to it later.  Thanks for sharing!

And don’t forget to sign up to receive my newsletter in your inbox.  As a thank you, I’ll send you a freebie!  Look for the sign-up boxes near the top of this post and again at the bottom of this post.  Thanks so much!

Tootles,

Related Posts from Toot Sweet 4 Two’s Archives:

42 Must-Have Kitchen Utensils

42 Pantry Foods to Stock for Emergencies

42 Things in Your Living Room, Family Room, and/or Great Room

You Might Also Like:

The Forest Modern: Our Chic Black Butler’s Pantry from Shauna at The House of Silver Lining

Kitchen Stalking – The Most Incredible Kitchens Around from Coco at Coco Cozy

Our Best Tips for Styling Open Shelves in the Kitchen from Cathy and Garrett at The Grit and Polish

Clean Your Messy House Like a Total Boss

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These simple, yet actionable tips will refine your routine leaving more time for you!

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Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Kitchen

source https://livingcorner.com.au/42-furniture-and-fixtures-in-your-kitchen-amazing-kitchen-home-tours-toot-sweet-4-two/

[geekprincess26]

Four Weddings and a Blizzard: Chapter 2

Written for Day 3 of the Jonsa 2017 Summer Challenge hosted by @jonsa-creatives.  I chose the “Fixations” theme.

“I never did get that girl’s fixation with flannel,” groused Jon Snow.

Sansa Stark grinned.  “Come on, Jon,” she teased.  “You’re from Wisconsin.  Surely you understand the whole state’s fixated on flannel?”

Jon Snow rolled his eyes at her, and Sansa caught his lips turning upward for a fraction of a second before they reverted to their customary frown.

“Right,” he replied, “but she’s a lot more fixated than 99.9 percent of the state.”  He gestured in the general direction of the lake for emphasis, as if the water itself would turn to flannel on cue.

Sansa grinned again.  Her sister Arya had married Gendry Waters that afternoon on a plot of wooded land they owned in the forests of northern Wisconsin.  It was the last day of August, and a hint of autumn had colored the breeze that had ruffled the bride’s hair into her groom’s face as they had spoken their vows under a white wicker arch in front of the lake.  Gendry had outfitted his groomsmen, including Jon, in blue jeans and gray plaid flannel shirts at the behest of the bride, who had in turn chosen gray flannel shirtdresses for Sansa and the other bridesmaids.  Arya herself had worn an enormous gray-and-blue plaid flannel sash over her plain linen wedding gown and tied a matching strip around her bouquet.  The bridesmaids’ bouquets had been tied with strips of blue flannel, and the entire bridal party had spent the hours before the ceremony draping flannel cloths over the tables inside the white vinyl reception tent and tying pieces of flannel around Mason jars full of sunflowers.

If Sansa had still been in high school, or even college, she would have spent the day with her nose planted in the air and her classiest black heels fused to her feet.  But she was years past high school, college, and a failed attempt at graduate school, and more than years past cringing at the sight of sunflowers paired with witch hazel or gray shirtdresses paired with brown hiking boots.  For one thing, the black pumps would not have gotten her anywhere near the site of the family photo shoot on the mucky ground next to the lake, let alone through the entire photo session; and she could never have gotten this far away from the reception tent without her boots. Sansa, who had spent her first two and a half years after dropping out of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Rhode Island School of Design at a succession of temp jobs, was by no means ungrateful to have landed a secretarial position in the English department of the University of Pittsburgh six months ago.  However, after four hours she had had her fill of hearing remarks, both innocent and snide, about what a shame it was for such a brilliant and talented girl as Sansa Stark to have to stoop to working as a secretary.  Besides, she had not seen Jon Snow for some time, and she had promised Arya she would ensure that he did not spend the entire weekend apart from the ceremony holed away in his hotel room.  Not that she would have blamed him entirely for holing himself away.  For one thing, Ygritte, Jon’s girlfriend, had unceremoniously dumped him the day before they were due to leave New York for the wedding.  For another, Theon Greyjoy, who was Robb’s and Arya’s most annoying friend and quite possibly the world’s least deserving groomsman, had made matters worse by greeting Jon straight off the plane by asking him if that meant they could go out chasing girls together all weekend.

But Sansa had spent two years holed away from the world at large after dropping out of graduate school, and she regretted it now; so when she had noticed Jon’s chair at the head table sitting empty, she had made her excuses to Arya, left the tent, and tramped a half-mile or so along the lakeshore.  She had found Jon leaning against a rock, taking pictures of the setting sun with the ancient analog camera he’d carried with him for the entire weekend.  

“Well,” she said now, “Arya is Arya.  If she likes something, it just sort of becomes a fixation.”

Jon’s lips turned up much more decidedly.  “Aye,” he agreed.  “Remember when you were all helping me move to New York from Philly, and she was practicing her martial arts maneuvers on Gendry?”

Sansa, who could never in a million years have forgotten the experience or the expression on Gendry’s face as her sister had knocked him flat on his back for the hundredth time, bent over with laughter.

“Oh, I remember,” she said at last.  “Or how about when you and she were helping Robb move me to Pittsburgh from Providence, and she spent the whole trip playing those God-awful tapes half the night because she wanted to learn Russian?”

Jon’s smile widened.  “Right, with Gendry in the front seat the whole time,” he recalled.

“Poor Gendry,” they said in unison, and this time Jon actually grinned.  

“Well, he’s stuck with her now,” he said fondly, and Sansa returned his grin.  

“I heard she’s bribed the editor of the New York Times to use the word ‘FLANNEL’ as the answer to one of its crossword clues in tomorrow’s edition,” she answered, and Jon let out a bark of laughter.  

“‘Arya Stark’s favorite wedding decoration,’” he said, curling the front two fingers of each hand in imaginary quotation marks, and Sansa giggled.  Three years ago, when Sansa had left Providence with her tail between her legs, Jon had helped Robb and Jeyne move her to Pittsburgh, and on that trip they had discovered how much they enjoyed both the Times’s crossword puzzle and beating Robb at Trivial Pursuit.  Ever since then, in between road trips – Jon and Sansa had driven with Robb and Jeyne from Pennsylvania to California when Robb had gotten his public relations job in San Diego, and Robb and Sansa had returned the favor when Jon had moved in with Ygritte – they had enjoyed trading puzzle hints and texting each other random odd facts, which had turned into longer chats about their everyday lives and favorite books and everything in between.

After a few moments, Jon’s smile faded, but just then a red beam from the setting sun snuck out around a layer of glimmering clouds behind the lake, and his eyes widened silver against the golden light.  He positioned his camera carefully and began snapping away.  Sansa smiled and fished her tablet out of her shoulder bag.  She scrolled through the app screens until she found the program she wanted, then opened it and began swiping her fingers in myriad patterns across the screen.  After several minutes she felt Jon’s eyes on her and looked upward.  He flushed and gestured toward the tablet.

“I didn’t know you drew – on that, I mean,” he said.  “Sorry.”  His flush deepened; he had always avoided bringing up Sansa’s stint at the Rhode Island School of Design, and so had Sansa, who for a long time after its end had not so much as touched a piece of clay or chalk.  Now, she only shook her head.

“No, it’s all right,” she said.  “I haven’t been doing it for long.  But I read about this program online, and it looked like it would be interesting to try.  That, and my therapist encouraged me to try it.”  She shrugged.  “Plus, it’s not sculpture.  Drawing was never one of my niches back in the day.”

Jon nodded intently; but his gaze was one of empathy, not pity, and Sansa’s chest, which had tightened as she spoke, began to relax.  Not even Arya knew she had begun doing anything related to art again.

“Do you like it?”  Jon spoke so softly that Sansa barely heard him.  She looked up from her tablet and raised one eyebrow at him.

“The therapy or the art?” she asked.  Jon’s face reddened as he gazed out over the lake, although Sansa could not be sure how much of that was due to the rays of the setting sun beaming scarlet through the clouds.

“Both,” he said.  “I – well, if you feel like saying anything about it, and – I figured after all of this settles down – I’m thinking of moving out of New York, and it can’t hurt to talk to somebody impartial with different ideas.”

Sansa’s eyes widened, but she said nothing for some time.  Eventually Jon turned his gaze off of the lake and onto her.  He must have thought he had offended Sansa, for he looked crestfallen.  She hastily strode to his side and put a gentle hand on his arm.

“I think it’s a terrific idea,” she reassured him, “and I’m not just saying that either.  If it weren’t for my therapist, I don’t know if I’d have made it through this weekend.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy as hell for Arya and Gendry.  But I hate that this all makes me think of Joffrey, and I hate that I got so used to being with that scum that I fell apart so badly I couldn’t handle grad school without him, and  I really, really – ” her voice caught an edge, and she cleared her throat – “really hate being Sansa the spinster secretary when my man-hating sister is starting her happily ever after, you know?”  She shrugged and thumbed a tear away from each eye.  “It wasn’t really supposed to happen like this.”

Jon nodded, and his jaw twitched.  It took him a few minutes to reply.

“No,” he said at length.  “It isn’t.  Not that I get it exactly the way you do, but I do get it.”  He sighed, and his voice grew a bitter edge.  “You’re not supposed to be looking at engagement rings one day and get told you’re too boring to build a life with the next.”  He leaned down, retrieved a rock from the ground, and tossed it vehemently into the lake.  The ripples had not yet disappeared when Sansa realized that her hand was still on his other arm.

“You’re right,” she said, and Jon, who had just bent to pick up another rock, jerked around to face her.  His mouth was set in a tight line; but Sansa had felt the pain of both Joffrey Baratheon’s presence and his absence in her life too acutely not to recognize it on another’s face, or to miss the layers of moisture glinting on the surface of Jon’s eyes in the last rays of the sunset.

“You’re right,” she repeated.  “Sometimes you get a shitty ending instead of a happy one, and you end up being happy you’re a secretary instead of being horrified because you wanted to be a famous artist.”  She shrugged.  “Or a shitty middle.  Or a shitty…something in between.”  She squeezed Jon’s arm gently, and his whole body trembled when he exhaled.  He took a step toward her, and she thought he might say something when the loud twang of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” echoed across the grounds from the direction of the tent.  Sansa released Jon’s arm at once and nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Oh, brother,” she said when she could speak again.  “She’s more fixated on that stupid song than she is on flannel, and – oh, shit!”  She whirled to retrieve her tablet and throw her bag back over her shoulder.  “That’s their first dance!  And the next one’s supposed to be us, and – ”

Jon stared at her, bewildered.  “Us?”

Sansa gestured at him to hurry.  “The bridal party – next song – we’ll have to run!”

Jon’s eyes widened, but he retrieved his camera at once and turned to follow her.  They raced back the way they had come, and burst into the tent not a minute after the song had ended.

“Oh, there you are, Sansa,” Arya said, and turned toward the head table.  “Right.  Bridal party – out!”

Chairs scraped, bridesmaids giggled, groomsmen took hasty sips of beer as they stood, and Theon Greyjoy gave Jon a very amused look.

“So, Snow,” he said, “I see it didn’t take you long to find a girl.”

Jon flinched at that, and Sansa swept to his side, raised her arm, and smacked Theon straight across the back of the head.

“You heard her,” she said and jerked her head toward the dance floor as Theon cursed and clutched his own.  “Bridal party – out.”

She whirled around and marched to the middle of the dance floor, where the bridal party members were still shuffling to get into place – except for Gendry, who grinned and gave Sansa a high-five.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all weekend,” he muttered.  “Guy’s a pain in the ass.”

Sansa found herself grinning back at him.  When she turned around, she saw Jon standing next to her, rubbing the back of his neck.

“You hit a guy for me,” he said at last.  Sansa did not know whether he was horrified or amused until one corner of his mouth quirked upward.

Sansa shrugged.  “You hit a guy for me once at a wedding,” she replied.  “I still owe you for that.”

Jon shook his head.  “You don’t owe me anything,” he said gruffly.  “Besides, that was Jory’s doing too.”

Sansa nodded.  She had not thought of Joffrey’s attack on her at Robb’s wedding for some time; and when her memory had visited that night before, she had often struggled not to panic, let alone been able to bring it up to anyone aside from her therapist.  But Sansa did not panic now, and Jon was not just anyone, and she took a deep breath.  Then she smiled at him and nodded toward Jory, who was sitting next to Sansa’s parents with his wife Beth.

“Tell you what,” she said.  “If we can both get through this dance without tripping over Arya’s sash, I’ll get all three of us a drink.  Deal?”

Both corners of Jon’s mouth tilted upward this time.

“Deal,” he replied.

[globemodularinteriors-blog]

Interiors Of Modern Kitchen Designs With Latest Technology

When you live in an extraordinary atmosphere, each choice you make depends on a certain something; survival. Every one of your decisions are limited to common sense and need to give you the best life you can have in the cruel conditions. Consider the desert for instance. The greater part of the structures there are produced using stone, earth and dirt in light of the fact that those are the materials promptly accessible. Obviously the homes that ring a bell are the Spanish style homes. You'll as a rule discover them in hot dry spots with desert plants in the nurseries and sun warmed tiles on the rooftop, an ideal case of living in an extraordinary atmosphere. Here's all that you have to think about Spanish homes that may very well persuade you to move to the desert.

Spanish design was first found in America in 1915 at the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. Modeler Bertram Goodhue planned a structure he called the California Quadrangle in Balboa Park. This case of stucco dividers and red tiled rooftops went wild in the American west. Designers started developing homes with these highlights entirely through the 50's.

Most of Spanish homes discovered today are a mix of styles. While keeping up the great stucco dividers and red tiled rooftops, you may discover a Mission style chime tower or a Monterey style second floor overhang. Since it's highlights are regularly developing, it's simpler to knot it under the Spanish style name since that is what it's moved toward becoming. With all the various instances of Spanish homes, the alternatives are boundless, making it an extraordinary open door for home developers.

Outside

One of the principal things you may see about a Spanish style home is the white dividers. Periodically the stucco is painted white since white mirrors the sun as opposed to holding it's warmth. A decent commonsense decision for a desert home.

The second greatest characterizing highlight of a Spanish home are the red tiled rooftops. Dirt is anything but difficult to stopped by in desert territories so it bodes well to use the material for your home. Also the significant detail it gives the outside of your home.

Here's the place we begin discovering differences. While stucco consistently has some spot on the outside of a Spanish house, you may discover stone or block too. Generally it makes a visual element as opposed to an intentional decision.

At the point when most of your house is level and plain, you must have an eye for subtleties. In the Spanish home, you may find that piece in a designed tile highlight. Perhaps its on the means prompting your front entryway or possibly it's your entryway patio zone. That brilliant shading will give you the pop you're searching for.

While you have a lot of example over your head on the rooftop, why not include some underneath your feet? Instead of a solid or black-top garage, consider utilizing block or stone to give your Spanish home that lux feeling.

Most the majority of the great Spanish homes are deviated in structure. In the event that you have a fabulous front entryway, possibly in a pinnacle like the one above, grasp the engineering and make it stand out with designed tiles or arranging or whatever you have to do.{found on jaureguiarchitect}.

Searching for somewhat more shading for your Spanish home? Time to snatch the paintbrush. Pick a brilliant shade that matches any designed tile you may have and paint your window scarves. You'll be shocked at how much only a little paint will influence your house.{found on rddavisarchitect}.

Here and there the front yard of a Spanish home will be a patio of sorts with a door what not. On the off chance that that depicts your Spanish home, unquestionably grab hold of the chance and locate a marvelous entryway. Substantial iron is ideal and any example will do.

Garden care isn't simple when you don't have the assets to pay another person to do it. Instead of cutting and weeding, spread your front yard in arranging. The hot dry atmosphere amounts to nothing will get excessively tall and look excessively wild.

When you live in a zone with snakes and coyotes and huge bugs, clearly you may lean toward a shielded open air living space. On the off chance that a Spanish home is huge enough, it may very well element a yard rather than a patio. Canvassed in tile, it's the ideal spot for outside relaxing and pruned plants.

Need to give your patio somewhat more enthusiasm than simply pruned plants and a couple of seats? A pergola with an open air chimney makes a flawless seating territory and offers you the chance to add more stucco to your home.

Open air seating niches are consistently a fun element in a yard. Make a seat look incorporated with your home to make a little spot to conceal away from it all in your edge of your patio.

Everybody who has structured their very own home knows the estimation of independent territories for isolated purposes. Transform house space into yard space so you can highlight an open air lounge area and an outside family room, both separate from one another and your pool.

Do you have children in your Spanish home? At that point a yard canvassed in porch pavers probably won't be the best alternative. Give them some grass to play on and they'll adore you until the end of time. Prepare for outside blazes and film evenings on the lawn.

Is it accurate to say that you are searching for an approach to modernize your Spanish house without losing it's creativity? Think modern. With iron rimmed windows and direct highlights, you'll carry those Spanish nuts and bolts to a refreshed beauty

It's not astounding to discover numerous outside highlights on a Spanish home within too. A few rooms may have stucco dividers rather than drywall which gives a lot of surface and enthusiasm to fabricate your brightening on.

Like the outside, stucco probably won't be the main thing you'll discover on the dividers. Stone makes an extraordinary emphasize in provincial homes and you'll see it goes flawlessly in Spanish homes as well. Light shades will coordinate your stucco perfectly.{found on bjdhausdesign}.

While numerous Spanish homes are standard stature, there are a not many that component high roofs. Stick with effortlessness as you embellish and don't give all that divider a chance to space go to your head so your eyes will be attracted to the things that matter.{found on markweaver}.

When you have that tallness on the roof, you can't resist the urge to incorporate some wooden pillars. Regardless of whether you need them crude and natural or smooth and recolored, that significant detail will pull all your wood furniture in the room together.

Obviously it isn't hot throughout the entire year which is the reason numerous Spanish homes have a fantastic chimney. It may very well have a stout mantle or perhaps it goes right to the roof yet in any case, make that the point of convergence in your living space.

How about we talk about lighting. You may have effectively seen that a significant part of the lighting in a Spanish home is created iron related. Something overwhelming and dim will contrast your light stucco and stand it's ground against your dim woods.

Would we be able to discuss Spanish furnishings? As you're hoping to outfit your Spanish home, you unquestionably need to search for wood pieces. Substantial dull emphasize tables, high headboards, profound rich wood conditions that will fill your space with history.

In addition to the fact that furniture should be wood and substantial, you'll help yourself out if it's unpredictably cut also. This is a gesture to the Spanish Baroque plan and fits impeccably in your smooth stucco filled home. Detail should as much as possible.

Furniture isn't the main spot you can include some overwhelming cut wood. In case you're thinking about a kitchen makeover, discover a few cupboards that fit that overwhelming wood portrayal. Extra focuses on the off chance that it has that cut detail like the remainder of your furniture.

Wood pieces for modular kitchen delhi aren't the main ones with shading in a Spanish house. Spanish stylistic layout isn't reluctant to grasp rich gem conceals. Brilliant reds and blues, brilliant yellows and oranges, you'll see it in a Spanish house since that is the place it has a place.

https://globemodularinteriors.com/

Talking about example, you'll be glad to realize that with regards to designed tile, your Spanish house is your canvas. Give your kitchen a major articulation with some designed backsplash. Spread your shower in your preferred plan. It's every one of the a chance to make your home a more joyful spot.

Last however positively for modular kitchen not least, you need to give your draperies some genuine idea in your Spanish home. All things considered, you have the hot sun coming into a living zone toward the evening so you need substantial blinds that you can near assistance keep your space cool. Ensure that they're hung high and wide to benefit from your windows.

[kristopherkirkpatrick]

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[krystangreen-blog]

If you’ve never been to Oceanside on a visit to San Diego, make it a must-see this year. This coastal city, affectionately dubbed O’side by residents, is one of only 14 designated California Cultural Districts in the state. Easy to get to, it’s the last stop on a Coaster ride from downtown San Diego to North County.

Once thought of primarily as a military town with Camp Pendleton on its northern edge, it’s come into its own with a burgeoning culinary and art scene that includes new restaurants, wineries, and breweries, plus emerging cultural, artistic, and tourist attractions. The many things to do in Oceanside won’t disappoint.

Hit the Oceanside Beach

It’s SoCal, after all, so the beach usually tops everyone’s must-do list. Oceanside has plenty of choices with nine public beaches. Perhaps the most popular Oceanside beach is Pier View South on the south side of Oceanside Pier. It’s adjacent to Pier View North. It’s also a short walk down The Strand to Tyson Street Beach and Wisconsin Street Beach.

Harbor Beach, adjacent to Oceanside Harbor, is the largest beach in Oceanside and is equally popular. Both beaches are lifeguard protected and have numerous amenities. Paid parking lots fill up fast. The blocks surrounding the pier have paid parking, but a street parking is free a couple of short blocks away (if you can find space).

Walk, Drive, or Pedal The Strand

The Strand is a 1.5-mile-long street that runs parallel to the Oceanside shoreline from Breakwater Way on the northern end to Wisconsin Avenue on the southern end.

All summer, you’ll see cars crawling along The Strand as people check out the waves and the crowded beach scene. Cars share the one-way, single-lane street with pedestrians, dog walkers, bicyclists, and surreys.

Dine on the Oceanside Pier

Historic Oceanside Pier is the largest wooden pier on the West Coast. It’s a two-minute walk from downtown and a four-minute walk from the Coaster station.

This neighborhood icon provides visitors with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and is a favored spot to watch whale migrations and frolicking dolphins. Ruby’s Diner, a Swing Era inspired eatery, sits at the end of the pier serving classic American fare including hamburgers with fries, sandwiches, soups, salads, milkshakes, and fabulous views.

Fishing is allowed on the pier, and there is a bait shop at the pier’s halfway point. You can get great photos of the coastline from the end of the pier.

Make It a Family Day at Tyson Street Beach and Park

Tyson Street Park includes Tyson Beach. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see Lifeguard Tower 5 on the beach. You can access the park via The Strand, which runs between the grassy park and the sandy beach. Another access point is at the top of the hill at Pacific Street.

There is a colorful multi-level stairway leading from the metered parking above to the park. You’ll find picnic tables with benches, a public telephone, restroom and shower facilities, an expansive grassy area for lounging, a children’s playground, and of course beach access across The Strand. The beach between the flags is marked for swimming only, no surfing.

Channel Your Inner Hodad at The California Surf Museum

Whether you’re a seasoned surfer or a dedicated hodad, you know that enthusiasm for surf history and surfing, in general, is peaking. The California Surf Museum is an international repository for surf history, presenting all aspects of the surf lifestyle and culture to the public.

Be awed by surfboards, surfing equipment, bios of surf greats, surf art, memorabilia, photos, videos, magazines, and all things surf related on your visit to one of the best things to do in Oceanside.

Experience Regional Art at Oceanside Museum of Art

Oceanside Museum of Art is located blocks from the beach on Pier View Way with views of the ocean and Oceanside Pier.

This fine arts museum presents regional and international exhibitions of contemporary art designed to surprise and engage visitors. You can expect landscape paintings, art quilts, architectural glass, studio furniture, neon sculptures, and other examples of fine art that represent community culture.

Kids will appreciate the interactive nature of the museum.

Take a Self-Guided Mural Tour

You can learn a lot about a community through their public art, particularly their street art. Oceanside, which is a state-recognized cultural district, has several vibrant murals throughout the city that pop off walls to grab your attention.

See all two dozen of them on a self-guided tour that follows a carefully designed map from your smartphone. Drive or bike the route and soak in the Oceanside vibe.

Explore Oceanside Harbor Village

One of Oceanside’s favorite waterfronts is picturesque Oceanside Harbor Village. You’ll find a collection of nautical-inspired souvenir, gift, and apparel boutique shops, and casual to upscale waterfront dining.

Popular things to do in Oceanside here include renting paddleboards and kayaks for a cruise around the harbor, joining a sport fishing excursion, or simply fishing from the harbor pier.

A wide sidewalk with occasional benches encircles the harbor for seal-watching or a relaxing sunset stroll. Paid parking lots are conveniently located all around the harbor, and a free lot is on the east end through a tunnel.

Taste the Wines of Orfila Vineyards & Winery

SoCal wineries have established themselves as a competitive California wine force, and Orfila Vineyards & Winery in Escondido is among them. The vineyard has been a San Pasqual Valley wine producer for 25 years, but they just opened their new tasting room in Oceanside in 2019.

Known for French and Italian varietals, guests can choose from the winery’s standard six tastings, or the expanded eight tastings, plus glass. A menu of small plates is available. They also host music, art, comedy, trivia, and other events, so check their schedule to see what’s on tap during your visit.

Hit the Links at Oceanside Municipal Golf Course

If you’re ready for some golfing in Oceanside, the Oceanside Municipal Golf Course in the San Luis Rey Valley is the place. This 18-hole public course overlooks the valley’s scenic hillsides and native habitat.

The course has a grass practice range, two well-manicured putting greens, a grill for light bites, and a bar for post-round relaxation. The course hosts annual qualifying matches for the PGA Farmers Insurance Open held at Torrey Pines.

Take a Selfie on Waverider Helicopter Tours

Here’s a new attraction to Oceanside that’s a perfect fit for ‘adventure selfie culture.’ Impress your friends with an Instagram photo of your feet dangling from a helicopter high above the Oceanside Pier and the Pacific Ocean. You can do that and more aboard Waverider Helicopter Tours.

Rides go from ten minutes to 75 minutes for up to three passengers at a time. Get a bird’s-eye view of Coastal California from Laguna Beach to downtown San Diego and inland to wine country. Ask for the Ultimate Selfie Package.

Learn California Mission History at Mission San Luis Rey

Dubbed the King of Missions, Mission San Luis Rey is the largest mission in California. The extraordinary architecture at The Mission includes hand-painted colorful murals, hand-carved wood doors, original hand-hammered copper baptismal font, and numerous Baroque and Classical updates.

The architectural beauty alone is worth a visit. Self-guided and docent-led tours are available. There is also a museum and gift shop on-site.

Surf the Waves with Sumo Surf Tubes

UP Sports Oceanside Surf Shop has added a newcomer to its range of water sports equipment — sumo surf tubes.

You can rent these wacky looking red-and-gold inflatable surf suits and hit Oceanside’s famously consistent waves for the entire day for only $25. You can even rent them by the week at discounted rates. If standing on a surfboard isn’t your thing, enjoy the thrill of the wave anyway with a sumo surf suit.

Attend an Event at Junior Seau Oceanside Pier Amphitheatre

The Junior Seau Oceanside Pier Amphitheatre, located next to the Oceanside Pier on Pier View South Beach, has been a local landmark since its original construction in 1919.

The famous amphitheater has hosted everything from the annual Samoan Cultural Celebration to live sunset jazz performances to sustainability festivals. The versatile venue hosts numerous cultural and community events year-round, but particularly in the summer, so check the schedule.

Learn Natural History at Buena Vista Audubon Society Nature Center

Located on Oceanside’s southern end, the Buena Vista Audubon Society Nature Center is the perfect place to spend a few hours with the kids learning about local natural history and the importance of conservation efforts by everyone.

The nature center provides opportunities to explore the lagoon and birdlife, native plants, and endangered species at the lagoon in an interactive and informative environment.

Get Your Adrenaline Pumping at GoJump Oceanside

For the adrenaline junkies of the group, GoJump Oceanside has just the thrill you’re looking for. It’s SoCal’s only tandem sky-dive experience with Pacific Ocean views.

You and your instructor step off the custom-built Sky-dive Aircraft at 13,000 feet within a mile of the Oceanside shoreline and take in full ocean views during the entire free fall. You’ll find the Sky-dive Center on Oceanside’s northern end at 480 Airport Road off the 76.

Join a Whale Watching Excursion

Whale watching is a classic SoCal experience, and there’s no better place to catch a whale watching excursion than Oceanside Harbor. The best time to go is from December to April when gray whales are migrating to breeding grounds off Baja, Mexico, and passing by the San Diego/Oceanside coastline.

Tours go year-round though, because there are always other spectacular marine mammals around, including sea lions, dolphins, and blue whales. Head to Helgren’s at Oceanside Harbor for experienced captains, and licensed boats with up-to-date equipment. 

fishing pier is your spot. It’s set in idyllic surroundings where the view is beautiful and always changing.

There are plenty of nearby amenities, including restrooms and places to eat. Street parking is free.

Step Back in Time at Heritage Park Village and Museum

Walking through Heritage Park Village and Museum is like walking through downtown Oceanside at the turn of the century.

The buildings assembled in this heritage village are original structures like Oceanside’s first General Store, Portola Inn, Libby School, Blacksmith Shop & Livery Stable, The Blade Newspaper, a doctor’s office, and the city jail. You can visit the charming historic park Wednesdays through Sundays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Guided tours are available on weekends.

Explore the Local Art Scene at First Friday Oceanside ArtWalk

First Friday Oceanside ArtWalk is a self-guided art walk along Artist Alley in Oceanside. It’s the first Friday of every month from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Visitors will see all kinds of art by local artists. Pop-up art galleries include custom jewelry, painting and portraiture, glasswork, woodwork, live music, dance performances, and poetry among other artistic expressions. Find Artist Alley a half-block east of Coast Highway between Mission Avenue and Pier View Way.

Join the Fun at Thursday Sunset Market

Oceanside’s Thursday Sunset Market goes beyond your typical farmers’ market. If that’s all you’re looking for, no problem, just come earlier in the day. After dark, it grows into a hot spot of eating, shopping, and entertainment in a festival-style atmosphere.

The market features live music, foods from around the world, an arts and crafts fair, and a farmers’ market all rolled into one.

Cruise The Strand with Wheel Fun Surreys

Wheel Fun Rentals is located beachside at the Oceanside Pier. It’s the perfect spot to grab a wheeled rental to cruise up and down The Strand alongside the beautiful, blue Pacific Ocean.

Though they rent an array of sports equipment, including bikes, specialty bikes, standup paddleboards, and more, colorful surreys provide the most family fun.

Go Deep Sea Fishing

Deep sea fishing excursions leave from Oceanside Harbor daily. You can join half-day, full-day, multiday, twilight, and nighttime fishing excursions with Helgren’s Sportfishing and Whale Watching Center.

They’ve been guiding fishing trips for over 40 years, know all the best spots, and what fish to expect where and when. Their boats are USCG licensed and equipped with state-of-the-art navigation, safety, fish-finding, and communication equipment.

Watch the Paul Mitchell NEON Supergirl Pro

There’s a surfing competition of one sort or another nearly all summer thanks to the great waves off of the Oceanside coastline. The biggest annual event is the all-female Paul Mitchell NEON Supergirl Pro, where top female surfers from around the world come to compete and share the surf lifestyle.

You’ll see more than 150 top female pro athletes from surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding. The wildly popular event includes sustainability organizations, surf industry village, seminars, fashion, yoga, pro autographs, free Paul Mitchell hairstyling, music, and food, plus the planet’s best female surfing.

Experience Your First Grunion Run

If you’ve never experienced a SoCal ‘Grunion Run,’ here’s how it’s done. First, a grunion run is when thousands of little silvery fish ride the waves onto the beach at night to spawn. To experience it, you’ll need to time your visit with the most likely beaches on three- to four-day intervals occurring just after high tide following a full or new moon.

If that seems like too much calculating, you can also Ride O’side and stop by the Oceanside Welcome Center and grab a pocket map of routes and sightseeing opportunities. (Please scooter with care.)

Indulge in Authentic Japanese Fare at Ramen MENMA

Fresh on the culinary scene from Tokyo, Japan, four-time Michelin Bib Gourmand Master Chef Ryuichiro Shinagawa, recently opened Ramen MENMA on Mission Boulevard just off Coast Highway. You can expect authentic Japanese gourmet ramen handcrafted from natural ingredients — no artificial seasonings or chemicals.

Ramen dishes come in standard, deluxe, and mega portions; hot and cold dishes; and vegan options. The restaurant has a long list of Japanese-inspired appetizers, plus wine, beer, and saki. You can top off your meal with mochi ice cream in four flavors.

Take a Culinary Journey at Exhale

Exhale is a newcomer to the Oceanside culinary scene and has taken the city by storm. With a unique fusion of white oak wood-fired, grilled, and smoked Mexican dishes, this culinary journey is a must. Their signature handmade blue corn tortillas from Oaxaca sourced masa provide the canvas for Chef Daniel’s creative cuisine.

The modern, chic restaurant has an urban vibe with garage-door-style windows, stainless steel finishes, a black and gray color palette, edgy street-style art, and casual outdoor dining. You can expect dishes like smoked brisket tacos with mole Oaxaca, peanuts, queso blanco, grilled spring onions, and grasshopper crema.

Find a Table

Grab Dinner with a View Hello Betty Fish House

Does it get any better than seafood with an ocean view? Hello Betty Fish House is an Oceanside favorite serving fish tacos, peel and eat shrimp, grilled fish platters, steamed mussels, Baja ceviche, and so much more.

The two-level restaurant with a beachy vibe is at the corner of Mission Avenue and Meyers Street, a block from the Oceanside Pier and South Pier Beach. The restaurant has Happy Hour on the rooftop deck Monday through Friday, brunch Saturdays and Sundays, Taco Tuesdays, and premier sunset views every day.

Find a Table

Experience History at The Fin Hotel

The Fin Hotel is a 27-room boutique hotel on Oceanside Boulevard that’s within walking distance of downtown, the beach, and the Coaster. The historic hotel was built in 1927 and was all the rage with LA celebrities in the 1930s and 1940s.

After a long period of decline, it was recently renovated in 2018. Guests can expect tastefully reclaimed historic charm combined with modern amenities — simultaneously elegant and straightforward.

[newstfionline]

The U.S. joined the ‘Great War’ 100 years ago. America and warfare were never the same.

By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post, April 3, 2017

At night when things were quiet in the “jaw ward,” the wounded doughboys would take out their small trench mirrors and survey the damage to their faces.

Noses had been shot off in the fighting at Saint-Mihiel. Chins were destroyed in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Mouths had been torn apart in the battle of Belleau Wood.

It was 1918, and Clara Lewandoske, a 25-year-old Army nurse from Wisconsin, was caring for these cases in a Red Cross hospital in Paris. “They were wonderful boys,” she recalled, and rarely complained.

But at night, if she saw one with a mirror, she would go to his bedside and start chatting. “Get them off of the subject,” she said. “Invariably, you’d get them to sleep.”

In time, they got used to their injuries. “We all did,” she said. “It was just one of those things.”

Lewandoske and her “boys” were among the millions of Americans who served in World War I--soldiers, sailors, nurses; white, black and Latino--who were caught up in the cataclysm, which the United States entered 100 years ago on April 6.

Among them was an Army sergeant from Iowa named Arnold Hoke, who would one day become Clara’s husband.

Tens of thousands from their generation would perish on the battlefield--25,000 in one six-week period alone--and many thousands more would die of disease.

Others came home physically or emotionally broken.

This month, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National World War I Museum and Memorial, in Kansas City, are marking the anniversary with exhibits, lectures and commemorations.

World War I started in Europe in the summer of 1914, and ended on Nov. 11, 1918. The United States entered the conflict after France, Russia and Britain had battled Germany and its allies for almost three years.

And American might was brought to bear against Germany only in the closing months of the conflict, but just in time to help reverse the enemy’s huge, last-gasp offensive and end the war.

The United States, although badly divided, had been provoked to join the war by the sinking of neutral American ships by German submarines, and by a secret German deal to offer Mexico the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if it joined the German cause.

The offer, outlined in the “Zimmerman telegram,” was sent in code by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman to the German ambassador in Mexico.

It was intercepted, hit the newspapers March 1, 1917, and created a national uproar.

Five weeks later, in a one-paragraph congressional resolution, the United States declared war.

In those days, it was called the “Great War,” or simply “the world war,” because no other like it was imaginable.

Along with staggering death tolls, it generated memorable literature, geopolitical upheaval, hope, disillusion, Hitler, the Russian Revolution, and the seeds of World War II.

For Americans, it provided, among other things, trench food called “corn willy,” the Selective Service System, the double-edged safety razor, and George M. Cohan’s anthem, “Over there.”

Send the word, send the word over there That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming The drums rum-tumming everywhere.

But over there, the Yanks would find nightmare landscapes scarred by trenches and shell holes, and “mud that swallowed men, machines and horses without a trace,” wrote historian David M. Kennedy.

There were horrific weapons like the flamethrower, the machine gun, and phosgene gas, and the bullet-swept region between the lines known as no man’s land.

It was “industrialized death,” as the late art critic Robert Hughes put it.

When the U.S. entered the struggle in 1917, the conflict already had claimed 5 million lives.

But the Yanks were game.

So prepare, Cohan’s lyrics went, say a prayer, Send the word, send the word to beware We’ll be over, we’re coming over And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.

Sgt. Arnold S. Hoke and his men had just hauled a supply of rations and ammunition overnight to their comrades at the front, and by the time they arrived the food was cold and congealed in grease.

In the dark and the rain, he and his detail had gotten lost, and they had not found his company until after dawn.

But the famished soldiers gathered in a patch of woods in the Argonne Forest, in northeastern France, to devour the food anyhow.

“The men lined up, and they started to dish out this food to them,” Hoke remembered. “The captain told me to--he knew I’d been up all night--and he told me to go over there in the basement of this farmhouse and get a little sleep.”

Hoke, 25, was a veteran who had served on the Mexican border in 1916.

He had been honorably discharged and had reenlisted after the United States entered the war.

A native of Spaulding, Iowa, he was assigned to recruit local Iowa men for what became Company M of the Army’s 168th Infantry Regiment.

By mid-1918, he and his men already had been through a lot, he recalled in a tape recording he made on April 12, 1971, that is now part of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

Often, the soldiers would talk about what they would do when they got home, “all kinds of silly things,” Hoke said. He planned to go to the local drugstore and have a thick pineapple malt as soon as he got back.

One doughboy, a man he had recruited from Atlantic, Iowa, said he figured he would be wounded, lose a leg, and meet his comrades at the train station. “I’ll get back home before you guys,” he told his buddies.

He’d have a hollow artificial leg, fill it with whiskey, and pass it around so all the boys could have a drink.

As Hoke rested in the farmhouse that day, German artillery had zeroed in on the trees where his comrades were eating.

“They threw a salvo of shells into this woods,” he said. “And they caught our men all lined up waiting for their chow.”

Fifteen to 20 men were killed, and about 30 were wounded, he remembered, including the man from Atlantic.

One of his legs had been practically blown off, Hoke recalled, and was just hanging by a few ligaments. He was conscious as he lay on the ground, and didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain.

“You guys thought I was kidding,” Hoke remembered him saying. “I’ll meet you at the depot with that wooden leg full of bourbon.”

Hoke said the soldier was taken to a battlefield dressing station, where the damaged leg was amputated. But the man died in an ambulance en route to the rear.

“I apologize for a rather unpleasant war story,” Hoke said on the recording. “Let me assure you there’s nothing pleasant about war, in any shape or manner, and I just hope that nobody will ever see another one.”

The day after he got home from France, he went to the drugstore and got his pineapple malt.

Nurse Clara Lewandoske recalled only one night when she fell apart during the war.

It was in Paris’s Lycée Pasteur, a high school that had been made into a 2,400-bed hospital, during a period of heavy fighting, when the wounded and sick soldiers would come pouring in from the front.

Some of the cases were horrific.

She once found a soldier who had wandered from his bed.

“It was a gorgeous moonlit night,” she recalled. “I came out in the hall. Here was this patient sitting in the doorway. He had taken his bandage off, and it looked like half of his head was gone. It was a horrible sight. It shook me more than anything else in the whole war.”

“We got him back to bed, and he died before morning,” she said.

Lewandoske had 36 patients in four wards to care for. At night, she and other nurses walked the corridors with lanterns shrouded with denim, to guard against air raids, she recalled.

They often worked on patients by candlelight.

One night it got to be too much.

“I was a pretty calm individual,” she said. She had been orphaned at 9 and raised by the family of a local minister. Back home, she had once assisted at a surgery done on a dining room table.

But during an awful night in the hospital, with soldiers crying out from all over, “I did cave in,” she said. “I got hysterical.… We just couldn’t get around to everything. We had hemorrhages … [and] a lot of sick boys.”

It was heartbreaking. “We were mother and sister and home to them,” she said.

On Nov. 11, 1918, the war ended with an armistice. She happened to be in downtown Paris when word came.

“All hell broke loose,” she recalled. “It was a terrific thing. You didn’t know whether you’d survive to or not.… It was just the wildest time.”

American nurses were hugged and serenaded, she said. “We saw our chief nurse … she was quite old, and they had her on a cannon, pulling her down through the main streets of Paris.”

Clara and Arnold came home from the war in 1919.

In September 1921, she was a delegate to the American Legion convention in Kansas City. Also in attendance was Arnold. They met and fell in love. They were married Nov. 22, 1922, lived through the Depression, and raised two children.

Arnold died July 30, 1971, four months after they recorded their memories. He was 78. Clara died June 27, 1984, at the age of 91. According to granddaughter Patricia Munson-Siter, they are buried side by side in the military section of Greenwood Memorial Park, in San Diego.

[poeticandvaguelysweet]

Prompt #147 - Long Distance

ANON: FaceTiming Owen and Claire and ANON: “actually … I just miss you”

idk

inspo

five-word prompts 

AO3

LONG DISTANCE

Face down on the boardroom’s large table, her phone buzzed. Claire glared at it with the familiar annoyance that came with the sudden reminder that she had forgotten to switch it off. It had to be Owen. Amongst countless other reasons why her phone would be making noises, the fact that she was two weeks into a settlement was enough of a reason that Owen was the only one lighting up her phone in the first thirty minutes of an 8am meeting.

Her phone buzzed a second time, quickly followed by a third several minutes later. When it sounded a fourth time, device rattling against wood obnoxiously, Claire pulled it into her lap. All eyes of the full room were on her as she sank into her chair, offering a quiet apology as she gripped her phone between her hands. ‘Mon mari’ she offered the group with a little shrug half hoping a few would laugh it off. Claire had never known the French for her sense of humour.

She avoided checking her messages for what felt like an eternity, allowing the meeting to get underway before she flipped the device in her hands and pressed softly on the home key. Four messages; all from Owen. The heat rushed to Claire’s cheeks almost immediately, the second she opened the texts. Instinctively she locked the screen, dropping the device to her lap to conceal what she had seen as Claire stared dumbly at the space in front of her. It took a second to recover, opening the message again to check that Owen in fact had sent words on how much he was missing her as he was climbing into bed; along with visual aid.

It was the image that made her cheeks burn red, Claire mentally cursing her pale skin as she felt the way her skin stung. It was tame in comparison to the things he had sent on other occasions, which was to say this wasn’t the first time Owen had sent her pictures of his erection. Clad in black boxer briefs Owen could still make her ache with want even when there was five-and-a-half-thousand miles between them. He lived for it, making her squirm without actually getting to see it. If Owen could live his whole life pushing her to the edge and letting her dangle from it; he would die happy. He hated it when she had to travel for work, in the same way little boys hated being denied ice-cream. There was no real anger, just a desperate longing growing in their minds and stomachs as they wandered past the ice-cream parlour.

He tried is best, at least, to have fun with it. Claire was never into the whole sending raunchy pictures back and fourth. She would play his games in text messages and phone calls, but he wasn’t getting a picture of her in her lingerie unless he took it himself. Where she saw the benefits of sending him such things, Claire preferred to enjoy it in person rather than overseas.

Owen had no control. Even though she was sure he was fast asleep in their bed back home in San Diego, the dog probably curled at his feet, Claire could practically feel his hot breath against her neck and hear his chuckle in her ear. He might as well have been in the same room, teasing her in front of all those people. She forced her best concentrated trying to keep her mind in the meetings she had planned for the whole day.

It wasn’t until she got home, breaking free into her hotel room, shoes kicked off buy the door that Claire relaxed. She barely undressed from her day before her phone was plugged in to charge, all while dialling Owen. He didn’t answer. Claire’s eyes flicked to the time, it was only a few minutes after 9am at home, Owen should have been awake. She called again. He picked up the second time, her screen changing from call waiting to her bedroom, familiar sheets and Owen - her husband - scrubbing his left hand over his face.

‘About time,’ She huffed at him playfully, sighing to her self softly as the familiarity of home washed over her. She did miss it, as much as she missed him, despite his ridiculous antics. Owen grunted, still rubbing sleep from his eyes as he shifted in their bed, trying to get comfortable and trying to wake up.

‘Hey, darlin’,’ He drawled, full blown grin cracking across his cheeks despite the tired sound of his words.  

Claire clicked her tongue, head shaking as she took in the sight of him. Of course he was still asleep when he called her, of course he just woke casually, a little grumpy, shirtless and undoubtedly warm in their bed. Sure, he might have been a little lonely but she was annoyed that he was home when she couldn’t be. That he could work her up with the slightest of messages and an image to follow and leave her aching to be home all day. ‘Oh you do not get to “hey, darlin’” me.’ She laughed, watching as the man acted sheepish, blinking innocent eyes at her through their FaceTime. ‘What were you doing, sending me pictures in the middle of a meeting?’ She asked, receiving Owen’s low ‘well …’ before she told him not to bother answering.

‘That shower head not treating you well?’ He chuckled, teasing her as her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes grew murderous. If she could, Claire would have killed him.

‘You’re intolerable.’ She huffed, trying to ignore the easy warmth that filled her at the simple sight and sound of her husband.

Owen hummed, agreeing with her teasingly. ‘Actually … I just miss you.’ He spat all his words out at once almost too quietly like the first time he told her he loved her, accidentally and yet barely there. Owen wasn’t the type for feelings Karen liked to tease. Where Claire knew she was well loved, the man she married didn’t go out of his way to profess - with words - whatever he was thinking; beyond sex. Admitting to missing her was huge. She knew he didn’t like her going away for long periods of time, mostly because he was jealous, because he wanted to take her to Paris, not her employers several times a year. ‘I mean, it was kind of fun at first, a few days to myself. But, I’m bored as shit, Claire and I hate to admit it but living in this house without you isn’t fun.’ She heard the rattle of the dog’s collar, clearly sitting at the end of the bed, her head turning at her master’s words as if to question his honesty.

‘Four more days,’ her voice softened. ‘Then you’ll be wishing I was gone again.’ Owen hummed, voice low, noncommittal. He was distracted already, his thoughts gone from the conversation. ‘But maybe not. I had revenge on my mind during lunch, managed to wander into Bordelle …’ She trailed off, eyes not watching him completely as she played coy knowing all too well that Owen’s interest would spark at the name of the lingerie brand.

He grunted, body twitching as his eyes grew dark. ‘Do I get a sneak peak?’ He asked eagerly, practically bolting up in their bed, his focus completely on the small device in his hands. Claire hummed, slim finger tapping her chin as she teased him before the hand trailed to the buttons of her blouse and Owen learnt teasing her at work would always end well for him.

[samuelmmarcus]

California Home Renovation

  Happy 2020, my wonderful friends! I have been working a little less than I usually do and I feel better about everything in my life. Sometimes all we need to do is take a break to feel ourselves again… and have our creative side get back to its full potential!

It’s really great to start this week with this inspiring California home renovation by Spaces Renewed (previously featured here). This was a total reno, inside and out, and the interiors were beautifully staged for sale, and although the staging company (Everything Creative Designs) wasn’t able to provide the resources for the furniture and decor, I will be doing my best to find the items or similar options so you still can get this look!

Here, the talented builder and designer Beth Booth, along with her equally talented husband, Marshall, share the details on this incredible project:

  “We did this project for an investor and the goal was to make this home as appealing as possible to a wide range of buyers. We did this by not only addressing the cosmetics of the home, but also fundamentally changing the floor plan. We took overly large redundant space and made distinct, usable and versatile space. For example, the existing master bedroom and bathroom and media room took over the entire upstairs. By repurposing that area, we created a generous master bedroom and bathroom suite, a library, a media room, a game room, and a great sized laundry and craft room. These changes not only make the feel of the home totally different, but also give the investor the best return on investment regarding real estate comps. We took this 8800 square foot dark, closed off gut job and turned it into an inspired coastal style full renovation that any family would love to call home.”

  California Home Renovation

This was a total gut and reno of a 8800 sf home in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Architectural Details

The architecture, interior design, and build were done by Spaces Renewed.

Windows and front door are Jeld-Wen.

Foyer

The vibe of this home is a cool neutral pallet that still feels warm and inviting. The organic elements throughout bring texture and layered warmth. With all of this homes charm and down to earth appeal, there is still an elegance and presence that a home this size commands. I think the interior design choices, furnishings and floor plan changes accomplish all of these lofty goals.”

The interior paint color (most rooms) is “Dunn Edwards Cloud”.

Foyer Lighting: Capital Lighting Axis – Others: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Living Room

The foyer leads to an open living room. This space is perfect for entertaining because it feels connected to the kitchen, dining area and it opens to an extensive balcony.

Artwork: Available through staging company.

Side Table: Wayfair.

Poufs: Wayfair.

Fireplace

The fireplace features a geometric tile and it’s flanked by a pair of sleek French doors.

Denim & Hemp Rug: here – Other Rugs on Sale: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Coffee Tables for Every Style: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here & here (best seller).

Fireplace Tile: here – similar – Other Beautiful Tiles: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Wood Frame Accent Chairs: here (very similar), here, here & here.

Room Layout

The living room also features a handy wet bar with sitting area.

Metal Wine Rack: here – similar.

Counterstools: here – similar.

Bar

This bar offers plenty of counter and storage space! Custom cabinets are painted in Benjamin Moore “Chelsea Gray”.

Floating Shelves: Custom by builder – similar: here & here.

Bar Pendants: Mitzi – Hudson Valley.

Faucet: Delta.

T-shaped Island

Painted in “Chelsea Gray by Benjamin Moore”, a T-shaped island is perfect to create distinctive eating and food-prep areas.

Island, Bar, Kitchen Hood: San Diego Custom Cabinets “Chelsea Gray by Benjamin Moore”.

Kitchen Island Dimensions 105”x36” Island 45”x80” T-shaped Seating.

Kitchen Island Pendants: Capital Lighting.

Kitchen Hood: Custom – similar here.

Counterstools: Wayfair – Other Popular Choices: here, here, here, here, here, here & here.

Perimeter Cabinets & Backsplash

Kitchen Perimeter Cabinet: Paint Grade Maple, Artesia door style, San Diego Custom Cabinets “Showroom White”.

Kitchen Cabinet Details (wood type, cabinet style) Paint Grade Maple, Artesia door style.

Kitchen Backsplash: Ottimo #MR12 Madrid Marengo – similar here & here.

Pot Filler: Delta.

Countertop

Countertop is Daltile Carrara Veil Quartz – beautiful and practical!

Prep Faucet: Delta Trinsic Single Hole Bar Faucet.

Kitchen Faucet: Delta Trinsic Pro Pull Out Spray Kitchen Faucet (chrome).

Kitchen Sink: Kohler.

Cabinet Hardware: TopKnobs Pulls & TopKnobs Marion Knob.

Breakfast Room Lighting: Park Harbor Drum Style Chandelier.

Family Room

The Family Room features two-story ceilings and an inspiring color scheme.

Coffee Table: Joss & Main.

Sofa: here – similar.

Inspired by this Look:

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Hardwood Flooring

How stunning is this double staircase foyer?! The renovation was impeccably done! Hardwood flooring throughout the house is Galleher Reward Shores Euro Oak Aruba – similar here.

Trim Paint Color

Trim/Doors throughout: “Benjamin Moore Brilliant White OC-150”

Upper Landing

This flex area is currently being used as a home office but it could be also used as a tv room or library.

Get this Look: Spindle Chairs, Side Table, Rug, Desk, Desk Chair, Bookcase & Artwork – similar.

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is very spacious and it opens to a private balcony surrounded by trees.

Dresser: Wayfair.

Accent Wall

Master Bedroom Accent Wall Paint Color: “Dunn Edwards Wharf View DEC799”.

Nightstands: Wayfair.

Table Lamps: here – similar.

Bench: here – similar.

Bed: here & here – similar – Other Best Seller Beds: here & here.

Master Bathroom

The master bathroom features custom cabinets, a large shower and an inspiring layout. Notice the French doors on the right opening to the master closet.

Master Bath Cabinet: San Diego Custom Cabinets “Coastal Gray” stain.

Bathroom Faucet: Delta Trinsic.

Sconces: Kichler Parker Point Wall Sconce.

Shower Wall Tile: Daltile 12×24. Pan Tile: Marble Attaché Calacatta Hex 2×5.

Floor Tile

Master Tile Floor: Daltile Marble Attaché Calacatta MA87 24×24.

Chair: here.

Kid’s Bedroom

All bedrooms in this home feel spacious and bright.

Teepee: Joss & Main.

Fun Poufs: here, here & here.

Paint Color

Paint color is “Dunn Edwards Cloud”.

Great Beds for Kids Bedroom: here, here, here & here.

Affordable Nightstands: here, here, here, here, here & here.

Bathroom

Great choices on tiles! Faucet is Delta Ashlyn.

Games Room

Who wouldn’t love to have a fun space like this at home?! Wall Paint color is Dunn Edwards Sidewalk Chalk.

Laundry Room

The Laundry/Craft Room feature custom cabinets in “Dunn-Edwards Edge of Black”. Gorgeous!

Faucet: Delta Pull Out Spray Kitchen Faucet.

Acrylic Counterstools: here.

Wall Baskets: Kazi Goods – similar here & here.

Floor Tile: here – similar here.

Backyard

This home is perfect inside and out. What a dream pool and spa!

Arial View

The property is surrounded by mature Palm Trees.

Dream Home

Beach volleyball, anyone?! Yes, this home comes even with a beach volleyball court!

Dream Location

This home really deserved to be beautifully renovated by this talented builder. What a gorgeous place!

  Many thanks to the builder for sharing the details above!

Builder: Spaces Renewed (Instagram)

Furniture & Decor: Everything Creative Designs.

Photography: David Hebble Photography.

  Best Sales of the Month:

Thank you for shopping through Home Bunch. For your shopping convenience, this post may contain AFFILIATE LINKS to retailers where you can purchase the products (or similar) featured. I make a small commission if you use these links to make your purchase, at no extra cost to you, so thank you for your support. I would be happy to assist you if you have any questions or are looking for something in particular. Feel free to contact me and always make sure to check dimensions before ordering. Happy shopping!

  Wayfair: Up to 75% OFF on Furniture and Decor!!!

  Serena & Lily: Enjoy 30 to 70% OFF on Sale Styles!

  Joss & Main: End-of-Decade Dash Sale!

  Pottery Barn: Buy More, Save More Sale + Free Shipping.

  West Elm: End of Season Sale – Up to 75% Off.

  Anthropologie: Extra 40% off Sale Items!

  Nordstrom: Save Up to 50% Off!

Posts of the Week:

California Home Interior Design Ideas.

Cape Cod Lake House Interior Design Ideas.

Simple Ideas for a New-Construction Home.

California Modern Farmhouse for Sale.

Two-toned Grey and White Kitchen Renovation.

Before & After Kitchen Renovation.

Open and Airy Townhouse Design.

New California Mid-century Modern.

Modern English Country Home Design.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: Interior Design.

French Country Style Home Design.

Builder’s Home.

2020 Kitchen Design Ideas.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: Modern Farmhouse.

Black & White Modern Farmhouse.

Neutral Home.

Small Lot Modern Farmhouse.

Dark Cedar Shaker Exterior.

Follow me on Instagram: @HomeBunch

You can follow my pins here: Pinterest/HomeBunch

See more Inspiring Interior Design Ideas in my Archives.

“Dear God,

If I am wrong, right me. If I am lost, guide me. If I start to give-up, keep me going.

Lead me in Light and Love”.

Have a wonderful day, my friends and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

with Love,

Luciane from HomeBunch.com

from Home https://www.homebunch.com/california-home-renovation/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[topfygad]

30 Things to Do in Oceanside, California

If you’ve never been to Oceanside on a visit to San Diego, make it a must-see this year. This coastal city, affectionately dubbed O’side by residents, is one of only 14 designated California Cultural Districts in the state. Easy to get to, it’s the last stop on a Coaster ride from downtown San Diego to North County.

Once thought of primarily as a military town with Camp Pendleton on its northern edge, it’s come into its own with a burgeoning culinary and art scene that includes new restaurants, wineries, and breweries, plus emerging cultural, artistic, and tourist attractions. The many things to do in Oceanside won’t disappoint.

Hit the Oceanside Beach

It’s SoCal, after all, so the beach usually tops everyone’s must-do list. Oceanside has plenty of choices with nine public beaches. Perhaps the most popular Oceanside beach is Pier View South on the south side of Oceanside Pier. It’s adjacent to Pier View North. It’s also a short walk down The Strand to Tyson Street Beach and Wisconsin Street Beach.

Harbor Beach, adjacent to Oceanside Harbor, is the largest beach in Oceanside and is equally popular. Both beaches are lifeguard protected and have numerous amenities. Paid parking lots fill up fast. The blocks surrounding the pier have paid parking, but a street parking is free a couple of short blocks away (if you can find space).

Walk, Drive, or Pedal The Strand

The Strand is a 1.5-mile-long street that runs parallel to the Oceanside shoreline from Breakwater Way on the northern end to Wisconsin Avenue on the southern end.

All summer, you’ll see cars crawling along The Strand as people check out the waves and the crowded beach scene. Cars share the one-way, single-lane street with pedestrians, dog walkers, bicyclists, and surreys.

Dine on the Oceanside Pier

Historic Oceanside Pier is the largest wooden pier on the West Coast. It’s a two-minute walk from downtown and a four-minute walk from the Coaster station.

This neighborhood icon provides visitors with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and is a favored spot to watch whale migrations and frolicking dolphins. Ruby’s Diner, a Swing Era inspired eatery, sits at the end of the pier serving classic American fare including hamburgers with fries, sandwiches, soups, salads, milkshakes, and fabulous views.

Fishing is allowed on the pier, and there is a bait shop at the pier’s halfway point. You can get great photos of the coastline from the end of the pier.

Make It a Family Day at Tyson Street Beach and Park

Tyson Street Park includes Tyson Beach. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see Lifeguard Tower 5 on the beach. You can access the park via The Strand, which runs between the grassy park and the sandy beach. Another access point is at the top of the hill at Pacific Street.

There is a colorful multi-level stairway leading from the metered parking above to the park. You’ll find picnic tables with benches, a public telephone, restroom and shower facilities, an expansive grassy area for lounging, a children’s playground, and of course beach access across The Strand. The beach between the flags is marked for swimming only, no surfing.

Channel Your Inner Hodad at The California Surf Museum

Whether you’re a seasoned surfer or a dedicated hodad, you know that enthusiasm for surf history and surfing, in general, is peaking. The California Surf Museum is an international repository for surf history, presenting all aspects of the surf lifestyle and culture to the public.

Be awed by surfboards, surfing equipment, bios of surf greats, surf art, memorabilia, photos, videos, magazines, and all things surf related on your visit to one of the best things to do in Oceanside.

Experience Regional Art at Oceanside Museum of Art

Oceanside Museum of Art is located blocks from the beach on Pier View Way with views of the ocean and Oceanside Pier.

This fine arts museum presents regional and international exhibitions of contemporary art designed to surprise and engage visitors. You can expect landscape paintings, art quilts, architectural glass, studio furniture, neon sculptures, and other examples of fine art that represent community culture.

Kids will appreciate the interactive nature of the museum.

Take a Self-Guided Mural Tour

You can learn a lot about a community through their public art, particularly their street art. Oceanside, which is a state-recognized cultural district, has several vibrant murals throughout the city that pop off walls to grab your attention.

See all two dozen of them on a self-guided tour that follows a carefully designed map from your smartphone. Drive or bike the route and soak in the Oceanside vibe.

Explore Oceanside Harbor Village

One of Oceanside’s favorite waterfronts is picturesque Oceanside Harbor Village. You’ll find a collection of nautical-inspired souvenir, gift, and apparel boutique shops, and casual to upscale waterfront dining.

Popular things to do in Oceanside here include renting paddleboards and kayaks for a cruise around the harbor, joining a sport fishing excursion, or simply fishing from the harbor pier.

A wide sidewalk with occasional benches encircles the harbor for seal-watching or a relaxing sunset stroll. Paid parking lots are conveniently located all around the harbor, and a free lot is on the east end through a tunnel.

Taste the Wines of Orfila Vineyards & Winery

SoCal wineries have established themselves as a competitive California wine force, and Orfila Vineyards & Winery in Escondido is among them. The vineyard has been a San Pasqual Valley wine producer for 25 years, but they just opened their new tasting room in Oceanside in 2019.

Known for French and Italian varietals, guests can choose from the winery’s standard six tastings, or the expanded eight tastings, plus glass. A menu of small plates is available. They also host music, art, comedy, trivia, and other events, so check their schedule to see what’s on tap during your visit.

Hit the Links at Oceanside Municipal Golf Course

If you’re ready for some golfing in Oceanside, the Oceanside Municipal Golf Course in the San Luis Rey Valley is the place. This 18-hole public course overlooks the valley’s scenic hillsides and native habitat.

The course has a grass practice range, two well-manicured putting greens, a grill for light bites, and a bar for post-round relaxation. The course hosts annual qualifying matches for the PGA Farmers Insurance Open held at Torrey Pines.

Take a Selfie on Waverider Helicopter Tours

Here’s a new attraction to Oceanside that’s a perfect fit for ‘adventure selfie culture.’ Impress your friends with an Instagram photo of your feet dangling from a helicopter high above the Oceanside Pier and the Pacific Ocean. You can do that and more aboard Waverider Helicopter Tours.

Rides go from ten minutes to 75 minutes for up to three passengers at a time. Get a bird’s-eye view of Coastal California from Laguna Beach to downtown San Diego and inland to wine country. Ask for the Ultimate Selfie Package.

Learn California Mission History at Mission San Luis Rey

Dubbed the King of Missions, Mission San Luis Rey is the largest mission in California. The extraordinary architecture at The Mission includes hand-painted colorful murals, hand-carved wood doors, original hand-hammered copper baptismal font, and numerous Baroque and Classical updates.

The architectural beauty alone is worth a visit. Self-guided and docent-led tours are available. There is also a museum and gift shop on-site.

Surf the Waves with Sumo Surf Tubes

UP Sports Oceanside Surf Shop has added a newcomer to its range of water sports equipment — sumo surf tubes.

You can rent these wacky looking red-and-gold inflatable surf suits and hit Oceanside’s famously consistent waves for the entire day for only $25. You can even rent them by the week at discounted rates. If standing on a surfboard isn’t your thing, enjoy the thrill of the wave anyway with a sumo surf suit.

Attend an Event at Junior Seau Oceanside Pier Amphitheatre

The Junior Seau Oceanside Pier Amphitheatre, located next to the Oceanside Pier on Pier View South Beach, has been a local landmark since its original construction in 1919.

The famous amphitheater has hosted everything from the annual Samoan Cultural Celebration to live sunset jazz performances to sustainability festivals. The versatile venue hosts numerous cultural and community events year-round, but particularly in the summer, so check the schedule.

Learn Natural History at Buena Vista Audubon Society Nature Center

Located on Oceanside’s southern end, the Buena Vista Audubon Society Nature Center is the perfect place to spend a few hours with the kids learning about local natural history and the importance of conservation efforts by everyone.

The nature center provides opportunities to explore the lagoon and birdlife, native plants, and endangered species at the lagoon in an interactive and informative environment.

Get Your Adrenaline Pumping at GoJump Oceanside

For the adrenaline junkies of the group, GoJump Oceanside has just the thrill you’re looking for. It’s SoCal’s only tandem sky-dive experience with Pacific Ocean views.

You and your instructor step off the custom-built Sky-dive Aircraft at 13,000 feet within a mile of the Oceanside shoreline and take in full ocean views during the entire free fall. You’ll find the Sky-dive Center on Oceanside’s northern end at 480 Airport Road off the 76.

Join a Whale Watching Excursion

Whale watching is a classic SoCal experience, and there’s no better place to catch a whale watching excursion than Oceanside Harbor. The best time to go is from December to April when gray whales are migrating to breeding grounds off Baja, Mexico, and passing by the San Diego/Oceanside coastline.

Tours go year-round though, because there are always other spectacular marine mammals around, including sea lions, dolphins, and blue whales. Head to Helgren’s at Oceanside Harbor for experienced captains, and licensed boats with up-to-date equipment. 

Book a Whale Watching Tour

Fish from Oceanside Harbor Fishing Pier

If you’re the laid back type fisherman who likes to catch a good bass, jacksmelt, croaker or perch without a whole lot of effort or fanfare, the Oceanside Harbor fishing pier is your spot. It’s set in idyllic surroundings where the view is beautiful and always changing.

There are plenty of nearby amenities, including restrooms and places to eat. Street parking is free.

Step Back in Time at Heritage Park Village and Museum

Walking through Heritage Park Village and Museum is like walking through downtown Oceanside at the turn of the century.

The buildings assembled in this heritage village are original structures like Oceanside’s first General Store, Portola Inn, Libby School, Blacksmith Shop & Livery Stable, The Blade Newspaper, a doctor’s office, and the city jail. You can visit the charming historic park Wednesdays through Sundays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Guided tours are available on weekends.

Explore the Local Art Scene at First Friday Oceanside ArtWalk

First Friday Oceanside ArtWalk is a self-guided art walk along Artist Alley in Oceanside. It’s the first Friday of every month from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Visitors will see all kinds of art by local artists. Pop-up art galleries include custom jewelry, painting and portraiture, glasswork, woodwork, live music, dance performances, and poetry among other artistic expressions. Find Artist Alley a half-block east of Coast Highway between Mission Avenue and Pier View Way.

Join the Fun at Thursday Sunset Market

Oceanside’s Thursday Sunset Market goes beyond your typical farmers’ market. If that’s all you’re looking for, no problem, just come earlier in the day. After dark, it grows into a hot spot of eating, shopping, and entertainment in a festival-style atmosphere.

The market features live music, foods from around the world, an arts and crafts fair, and a farmers’ market all rolled into one.

Cruise The Strand with Wheel Fun Surreys

Wheel Fun Rentals is located beachside at the Oceanside Pier. It’s the perfect spot to grab a wheeled rental to cruise up and down The Strand alongside the beautiful, blue Pacific Ocean.

Though they rent an array of sports equipment, including bikes, specialty bikes, standup paddleboards, and more, colorful surreys provide the most family fun.

Go Deep Sea Fishing

Deep sea fishing excursions leave from Oceanside Harbor daily. You can join half-day, full-day, multiday, twilight, and nighttime fishing excursions with Helgren’s Sportfishing and Whale Watching Center.

They’ve been guiding fishing trips for over 40 years, know all the best spots, and what fish to expect where and when. Their boats are USCG licensed and equipped with state-of-the-art navigation, safety, fish-finding, and communication equipment.

Watch the Paul Mitchell NEON Supergirl Pro

There’s a surfing competition of one sort or another nearly all summer thanks to the great waves off of the Oceanside coastline. The biggest annual event is the all-female Paul Mitchell NEON Supergirl Pro, where top female surfers from around the world come to compete and share the surf lifestyle.

You’ll see more than 150 top female pro athletes from surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding. The wildly popular event includes sustainability organizations, surf industry village, seminars, fashion, yoga, pro autographs, free Paul Mitchell hairstyling, music, and food, plus the planet’s best female surfing.

Experience Your First Grunion Run

If you’ve never experienced a SoCal ‘Grunion Run,’ here’s how it’s done. First, a grunion run is when thousands of little silvery fish ride the waves onto the beach at night to spawn. To experience it, you’ll need to time your visit with the most likely beaches on three- to four-day intervals occurring just after high tide following a full or new moon.

If that seems like too much calculating, you can also grab a Grunion Run schedule from the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife. Kids love this, so don’t miss out.

Ride O’side Scooters

If you’re looking for an eco-friendly activity that’s tons of fun, electric Model Fat Tire Scooters may fill the bill. The fat tires make them easy for anyone to balance on, and they’re so low to the ground you can either sit or stand while making your way around town.

The scooters are approved for bike lanes and trails and reach speeds of up to 20 mph. Rent at Ride O’side and stop by the Oceanside Welcome Center and grab a pocket map of routes and sightseeing opportunities. (Please scooter with care.)

Indulge in Authentic Japanese Fare at Ramen MENMA

Fresh on the culinary scene from Tokyo, Japan, four-time Michelin Bib Gourmand Master Chef Ryuichiro Shinagawa, recently opened Ramen MENMA on Mission Boulevard just off Coast Highway. You can expect authentic Japanese gourmet ramen handcrafted from natural ingredients — no artificial seasonings or chemicals.

Ramen dishes come in standard, deluxe, and mega portions; hot and cold dishes; and vegan options. The restaurant has a long list of Japanese-inspired appetizers, plus wine, beer, and saki. You can top off your meal with mochi ice cream in four flavors.

Take a Culinary Journey at Exhale

Exhale is a newcomer to the Oceanside culinary scene and has taken the city by storm. With a unique fusion of white oak wood-fired, grilled, and smoked Mexican dishes, this culinary journey is a must. Their signature handmade blue corn tortillas from Oaxaca sourced masa provide the canvas for Chef Daniel’s creative cuisine.

The modern, chic restaurant has an urban vibe with garage-door-style windows, stainless steel finishes, a black and gray color palette, edgy street-style art, and casual outdoor dining. You can expect dishes like smoked brisket tacos with mole Oaxaca, peanuts, queso blanco, grilled spring onions, and grasshopper crema.

Find a Table

Grab Dinner with a View Hello Betty Fish House

Does it get any better than seafood with an ocean view? Hello Betty Fish House is an Oceanside favorite serving fish tacos, peel and eat shrimp, grilled fish platters, steamed mussels, Baja ceviche, and so much more.

The two-level restaurant with a beachy vibe is at the corner of Mission Avenue and Meyers Street, a block from the Oceanside Pier and South Pier Beach. The restaurant has Happy Hour on the rooftop deck Monday through Friday, brunch Saturdays and Sundays, Taco Tuesdays, and premier sunset views every day.

Find a Table

Experience History at The Fin Hotel

The Fin Hotel is a 27-room boutique hotel on Oceanside Boulevard that’s within walking distance of downtown, the beach, and the Coaster. The historic hotel was built in 1927 and was all the rage with LA celebrities in the 1930s and 1940s.

After a long period of decline, it was recently renovated in 2018. Guests can expect tastefully reclaimed historic charm combined with modern amenities — simultaneously elegant and straightforward.

Book an Oceanside Hotel

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