Rain does not help you build houses!

Well, we are at a standstill as far as visible progress goes…still nothing but stakes in the ground. It has been raining every day or night for the past two weeks. Which hopefully will help make this summer a little better and more bearable, but does not contribute anything productive to my house!

We have been working behind the scenes a bit though. This morning A met with a representative from the electric company we will be switching to, and they have started working through the process of arranging new poles and lines and getting easements across neighbors, etc. I don’t anticipate any problems there, but according to A we will have a couple of different options. I hope it goes well…we don’t want any neighbor disputes this early! Well, ever, but definitely not before we’re even there to dispute with.

We have posted our current home on Craigslist and I linked to it on Facebook trying to get the word out. I emailed the local paper last night with information to post our house there. It’s hard to sell by ourselves just because when you google houses for sale in the area it only pulls homes that are listed with a realtor. Which we would like to avoid if possible. We may have to look into that down the road if we don’t make any progress. I don’t want 2 houses at once!

In other news, A and I are really missing setting up a garden this year. It just wasn’t feasible with the house building (once we get going, I’m sure it will take a ton of our time since we are planning to do so much ourselves), and with us possibly moving at any time if we sell our house. We really enjoy that process of working the soil and planning the placement of the plants and what type of plants to even get! We feel a little lost now because that’s what we are typically doing this time of year and our new house hasn’t started taking up our time yet. We are hoping to get a couple of big fertilizer tubs from Grandma to plant a single tomato plant, and maybe a pepper plant in – that way they will be portable! But we just haven’t gotten that done yet.

Yesterday I (FINALLY!) finished my “house book”. Which is actually two books – I took two 3 inch 3-ring binders and organized all our house materials brochures and ideas and tips and phone numbers and forms and paint chips and all that stuff. They are pretty cool if I say so myself, and I think they will be helpful when it comes to actually choosing and purchasing materials. Everything is now in one place and is portable – we will just have to decide which book we need and take it with us! I’m anticipating the collection of information shrinking as we eliminate products and that eventually I’ll have it down to one book. Which will be a very nice memento of this very complicated process we are navigating!

Just a little blip on our way...

Our latest house experience was, unfortunately, not that great.

To have a construction account, you need to open a checking account to allow you to move money around when you need it from your loan and actually be able to pay various stores and vendors. So we did that and everything was hunky dory.

Or so we thought.

We got our checks for the new account in the mail this past weekend, and thought ‘oh, yay! Progress!’…only to find that our last name was spelled wrong on them despite the somewhat detailed chat we had about that particular spelling…

So we had to take them back in to have them destroyed and have new checks with the correct spelling ordered. Not a big deal, but fairly frustrating anyway.

A was disappointed when he brought them back in though, they were apparently quite helpful and he didn’t get to yell at anyone.

We also have gates now! So once the bank paperwork is completed, we do have an entrance for all the equipment and big trucks to use. Pretty exciting stuff in my book!

The Biggest Big-Time Project We Have Ever Done

Well, I know it has been awhile. Over a year… And A and I have a new venture!

 We are…building a house! It has been quite an adventure so far. We started out just browsing home plan books because we knew someday we would like to build and just enjoyed speculating and imagining what type of house we would like.

 Due to some other unforeseen events this past year, the house-building dream suddenly pushed itself into front and center! We found ourselves flung headfirst into getting materials estimates from various places (which takes longer than you’d think!) and sending our favorite plan off to someone for drawing and adjustments and additions to make it perfect.

 Now we have the plans, we have the spot (which is fabulous) and we have the loan paperwork into the bank. Now we are just waiting. And waiting. And waiting on the bank to finalize everything.

The suspense is just about to kill me. I want to buy stuff so bad it’s unbelievable. (And yes, I know, that attitude is liable to change fairly quickly after we have to start paying for all this stuff I want to buy…but for now, it’s fun.) I have been reading reviews and comparisons online like crazy – which countertops are better, which roofing material is better, what are the best ways to save money, etc.

But, before anything can be done, that bank must get its stuff together! Hopefully we will hear back within the next couple of weeks!

Oh my has it been busy around here!

This weekend is my first ever rummage sale. I'm rather excited about it. That's probably because I've never had a rummage sale before...

Anyway, that means my little bitty house is full to bursting with stuff to sell! My mom hosted The Great Purge of 2011 at her house, so she had a lot of stuff, plus my Grandma and mother-in-law are contributing to the little box of stuff I would have had on my own. You know. If you don't count the books. I have plenty of them for sale.

This weekend we mowed our jungle...ahem. I mean we mowed our yard. And then A let me use the tiller for the garden by myself - we both laughed at that. I'm not the fastest study on that we'll just say. (It ran away with me a little bit...literally.) But now my sugar snap peas and green onions are planted, so hopefully they will grow! I have been wanting peas ever since last year's garden, but we didn't get them planted in time.

My two sisters are both graduating the next two weekends - one from high school, one from college. I feel old. And then there will be a graduation party. I'm kind of excited about this, because I won't be the center of attention and can just sit and visit unobtrusively. I hope there's cake.

I think A and I are going to watch a movie tonight. We were loaned 3 of them, so we'd better get started!

And maybe I can convince him that it's really a good idea to get rid of stuff...maybe we can find some more rummage before Friday.

I feel so much better!

My clothesline is full of clean clothes, my entire house is clean, and my husband is gone to the store to get ice cream so we can sit and be lazy and watch a movie tonight. Does it get much better?

The clothesline bit was quite a struggle today. We had hung the lines with a tensioner to hold the line tight on all three - only to find out when I hung sheets out that the tensioners we bought were not going to work. At. All. They stripped the plastic coating off the clothesline wires. After about an hour of fighting with the stupid things, we ended up using a mixture of the wire we had bought and the cloth line we had bought for temporary use right after we got married. It seems to be working now, thank goodness! I love line-dried clothes. My house smells wonderfully fresh now.

In future events, I'm going to be having my first rummage sale. Well, I guess it's not just my rummage sale - I'm participating in the annual city-wide sale. Which is good, because then it won't be such a big deal that I don't have a TON of stuff to sell. A lot of books, and a few odds and ends and that's about it. Good thing my mom, grandma, and mother-in-law are going to donate some items to my sale! It won't look so bare then. I'm rather excited about the whole thing. I bought 3 packs of 315 pricing stickers. (I wanted to be sure not to run out...)

Yoshi is enjoying the warm weather...and the fact that that means we can take him on nice long walks through town. He LOVES walking and sniffing everything in sight. The other dogs that bark at him have no effect on his confidence, whether they are the same size as he is or not. He just wants to play with everyone. (He thinks he is a chihuahua-sized pup, I think.)

That's about it! I managed to save a couple bananas that have gone over a little, so I think I'll go mix up some banana bread really quick.

Organization Central!

Since I have tomorrow off (Yahoo!) I have plans to get some deep cleaning done around here. Hopefully...

...the last pile of papers has fallen off the top of the desk.
...today is the last day I will see the stack of leftover college notebooks sitting on the floor next to the desk.
...all the shredding will get done, and all the filing, too. Too many piles of paper!

And hopefully I don't get halfway through any project and get tired of it! That tends to happen to me a lot...

Anyway, yesterday A and I finally (2 weeks later!) hauled off the old couch and chair to Grandma's house for storing. Our office is ours again! Before, we were walking around the couch and chair to get into the pantry, to the computer, or whatever. Basically anything you wanted to do in the office required some preplanning of the best route to get there. Come to think of it, maybe that accounts for some of the many paper piles...

I also took Yoshi for a walk (a short one). I figured he needed it as much as I did, since he hasn't really been able to get out of his pen except to have another horrible (in his eyes) bath. We moved a lot slower than we usually do because his feet still bother him a little (hence him staying in his pen and out of the wet snow - we are trying to avoid wet dog outside at all costs so he can get better), but he seemed to really enjoy seeing some different scenery. Lots of sniffing going on for sure.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Next Bidder!

Won't be me. But I am going to an auction tomorrow. Apparently, A doesn't think I can hold still or something (he's probably right) so he is NOT letting me hold the paper to bid with. Hopefully, though, I can get a clock or something cool like that. It should be cold - so I'm going to wear every type of warm clothing I can get my hands on!

The cookbook is being printed! Finally! I managed to get all the materials and they broke down to be about $0.89 apiece. A bargain, if you ask me. (My mama taught me right!) I'm ready for the project to be done - I feel like it has been going on forever, even though it has just been since October. Late October, at that.

So lots of fun stuff going on!

Christmas jigs and some projects

Well, I hope everyone had a fantabulous Thanksgiving. I know I did! (Although I'm a bit turkied out...)

Now on to Christmas! I have Christmas music going everywhere I run a radio. I just love that stuff. We put up the Christmas tree while listening to Charlie Brown Christmas and then Celtic Christmas music (how's that for variety?). The Celtic stuff would just grab us and we felt the need to dance a jig! (As if we really know how to do that...but I bet you wish you had seen that, huh?)

The cookbook at work is finally FINALLY wrapping up. I have bought supplies and am just in the process of proofreading and doublechecking and finishing up the details. It's going to come out cost-wise to be about .89 a book. I am just that cost-efficient.

And on one last note, I will leave you. I have seen the first installment of the Harry Potter 7 movie. Awesome! I have now started rereading the series for about the 10th time. And it is still funny and wonderful.

Catching up

Sorry I left you all hanging for awhile...my changes did not come about, sadly. I had applied for a new job, which would have been a wonderful change. I got an interview that went extremely well, but I was not chosen for the position.

So I'm still where I was before, career-wise...

I have a big-time project that I have been working on for about a month now though, and that has broken up the monotony very well. My office is putting together a cookbook! And I happen to be the editor. *takes a bow* Thank you, thank you.

I took it upon myself when it was suggested that a compilation of all the wonderful recipes we make there would be awesome to start the whole project and my boss is totally supportive of the idea. I should have it done be Christmas so I can start cooking wonderful things! And I don't think the whole thing will look too shabby on my resume either...

A and I have been having a blast with Yoshi. He is almost one (the best we can figure, his birthday is in January), and he is hilarious. All. The. Time. He likes to chase his tail, and to pretend that his feet are attacking him. Which means that he has to roll around on the ground like a crazy thing and try to catch his feet, which are very slippery, apparently. He is VERY good at playing tug-o-war now, too. He's stronger than me, that's for sure. (You try tugging against a 100 pound dog who is NOT a fat 100 pound dog and see how you do!) We love him dearly.

We saw a test in a magazine that would let us test his DNA...which would mean that we could figure out what kind of dog he really is! Awesome! Downside - it costs $60. So we are still thinking long and hard about that one.

A and I planted more bulbs this afternoon before he headed back to his parents to do more deer-hunting. Springtime will be lovely around here if they come up!

Tata!

We went to Menard's. Now Menard's is coming to us.

In all the excitement for posting pictures last time, I forgot and left out the most interesting part!

Remember how I said we brought home an AWFULLY lot of boxes for cabinets on Thursday?

Well, we were right, our instincts were correct, and it was all true.

We brought home just a couple too many boxes...like, let’s say, well, exactly DOUBLE what we were supposed to have.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, when I finalized the cabinet order, we switched one type of cabinet from a slotted cabinet to a pullout (for cookie sheets-it’s a wonderful thing). No big deal, they switched our money over to the new order and everything was good for moving ahead.

Except that Menard’s apparently forgot to cancel the first order of cabinets.

So both orders came in, we picked both of them up, and all the fork lift guys and the guy checking our trailer on the way out, let us take both orders home. Nobody caught the slip.

And when we were putting up cabinets, we had inadvertently opened some duplicate cabinets a couple times before we realized what was going on. So in some cases, where a board didn’t look quite right, I got to just choose the prettier one!

The whole situation was really a little bit crazy. When I went to Menard’s on my lunch hour Monday morning, they were in a bit of disbelief themselves, that even though we got checked over that much, we had been sent home with a double order. They asked that we bring them back and mark through the boxes what we had used (since we had probably opened several from both orders). I asked them (politely, of course!) if we could have someone come out and pick them up (keep in mind, we live an hour away from the store, and we had to borrow a trailer to bring these things home in the first place). I got a call back that night saying they would be able to send a truck out to our house and when worked best for us?

So the Menard’s truck is headed to our lovely abode tomorrow morning. I will again have my sunroom open (so you can walk in it!) and the second order will be going back where it belongs!

Before before, before, and AFTER!

Well, I've been gone awhile but I've got something good now to make you feel better about the whole thing. Because I know you all missed me so much...


This weekend was a busy one for us, starting with Thursday night. Thursday after work I met A at Menard's to pick up our new cabinets! Wahoo! We loaded up four pallets of boxes (that's right, I said four and the boxes were double stacked) which seemed like an awful lot for our 10 foot current kitchen plus the 7 or so feet of top cabinets we were adding. But more on that a little later.

Friday began the installation! Our parents came to help, and in about 2 hours the top cabinets were ripped out and the new cabinets on top were installed! It was fantastic! Then Saturday was spent taking out the bottom cabinets, figuring out the crazy plumbing that is in our house (because, you know, when has anything in our house been completed correctly?), and installing the new cabinets on bottom along with my new countertop and new deep (8 inch!) kitchen sink. Can I just say my kitchen looks amazing right now? And that's even without the new floor that we will eventually be putting in, when we can get up the gumption.

By now, your chants of "pic-tures, pic-tures, pic-tures" have become distracting, so I guess I will oblige.

This is what I like to call the "before before" picture. This is the kitchen we bought (and this is how the entire house was decorated, if that gives you a better idea of what we've been dealing with).

This is what color we painted it. Lovely sunny yellow kind of outdoes the border above in my opinion. But I digress. Do you see the cabinets in these pictures? This is what I had before. Note the missing cabinet pull on the top cabinet and keep in mind that the sink had apparently leaked for QUITE a while since the mold was unbelievable. And they smelled like icky mold, too.

Now, can I get a drumroll, please! Enter the new lovely oak cabinets! That smell nice and new and have not a trace of mold at all! Not to mention the incredible storage I have now, compared with before. (Please ignore the mess on my countertop. I promise that it doesn't always look that way. At least most of the time.)

Look at all these cabinets! My kitchen actually looks like a kitchen now!

You may have noticed the cinder blocks stacked on each end of the counter. Here's a close up for you.

This is what happens when the counter top is stored on its short end instead of its long sides. You get a bowed countertop, and must resort to any and all heavy objects laying around in your yard to weight it down so it will be level and the glue will stick. After a week of this, hopefully your countertop will be flat again. We really hope so, anyway. If it doesn't work for you, DON'T BLAME ME.

I'm in love with my kitchen now. I actually like putting dishes away! Wonder how long I can keep that up...

TaTa!

Blogging? What's that?

Oh yeah...sorry I've been kind of absent from posting. Summer came, and with it came oodles and oodles of stuff to do.

Work is so crazy busy right now (which I like because the days absolutely fly by) that my normal "think of blog ideas" time is gone! I'll try to be a bit more regular (because let's face it, my life is just that interesting! heehee) with posting but until about July or so I may be pretty sporadic. I'll give it the ole best shot, though!

So let's try and get back up to date...

Our garden is doing fantastic! At least to me - it's our first garden together and we have very limited space - it is so COOL. We have 17 cherry tomato plants that we grew from seeds (I really truly though some of them would die off) and 4 regular tomato plants (with baby tomatoes already!). We also have one eggplant plant, which we are fighting bugs off of pretty heavily, and 7 bell pepper plants. Then we planted a row of beans (which we surprisingly successful as well...I hope we like the taste!), a row of green onions (I know, kind of late for these, but whatever), and a row of cilantro. We have 3 tiny squash plants coming up, along with Italian salad blend and parsley (which may or may not grow since we soaked the seeds for 3 days instead of the recommended overnight). All that is packed into a 16 by 16 foot square! Needless to say, I have been wishing my size 11s were just a tad smaller...

Yoshi is about 6 times the size he was when we found him, and he is hilarious. He's gangly, and clumsy, and enthusiastic and sweet. And much less bite-y than before, which is a huge relief. Especially to my fingers. He has discovered that dirt clods are tons of fun to shake around really hard.

We redid the bathroom! New floor and new toilet (2 3/4 inches taller than before! Which is a lot when you and your husband are both 5'11" and the previous one was only 14 inches off the ground...). I love love love the new floor. It looks so much cleaner and nicer. And it feels better on bare feet. *Sigh* I just love my bathroom now.

Friday our kitchen cabinets are due to come in, if we read the receipt right. I'm very excited about this, too! It's one of the last big "redo" projects we have left, before we can REALLY enjoy our home! As much as I love the new bathroom, the kitchen is going to be 10 billion times better... (insert a small squeal of excitement here, please)

Well, that's about it for now! I'm extremely enjoying the warm weather outside. We have a lot of trimming and sprucing up and GARDENING to do, so its nice to finally be able to do it. Now if only I could get the freckles on my arms to even out for the wedding I'm in on July 31st....

Catch-up day!

Yesterday was definitely a catch-up day for all the stuff we didn’t manage to get done over the weekend.

Saturday we went to A’s great-aunt’s 80th birthday party in St. Peters. We had a good time, but the only thing we had energy enough for when we got home was washing the dog. (Really we didn’t have enough energy for that either, but he was really dirty.) That evening we went to my parents and got my bicycle! Now that we both have bikes hopefully I won’ t end up being the one running to keep up with the dog who is running to keep up with the bicycle…

Sunday, we went to church. At 1:30 we had to be playing in the Community Band at a nursing home, so we had to leave for that around 12:30. Came home, changed shirts, and jumped back in the truck to go grocery shopping. (We bought groceries, stepladders and a new toilet. Now maybe we can get to redoing the bathroom!) Came home, showed Yoshi his new wading pool, which he was less than thrilled with at the time, and then jumped back in the truck to go get the tiller from A’s parents to finish tilling our garden. Came home without the tiller and went to bed!

Needless to say, my house did not get cleaned and there was a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink because we hadn’t had time to wash them.

So that’s why last night was catch-up night. A mowed the grass, while I dug weeds out of the garden. I also trimmed the apple tree, did 3 loads of laundry and spent some time with Yoshi so he wouldn’t feel too lonely. Then we went inside and washed up the dishes, ate a bowl of cereal, changed the sheets (I love clean sheets) and went to bed.

But at least there was less dirt around than when we had started!

Invention from all forums

The sun is shining! I can’t believe it. Hopefully we will be able to mow some grass tonight. And maybe Yoshi’s pond will recede a bit so I can actually feed him in the morning without being splashed foot to waist in mud. Good thing he’s not taller.

We are now in the process of trying to figure out how to work the crazy plumbing through the new cabinets when they come. It was not done correctly at all the first time around, and the floor is concrete so there’s no moving it now without way more work and hassle than we are currently prepared to deal with. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Last night, we had another cooking invention that turned out acceptably, if a little strange. I came up with it on the spur of the moment so I’m actually surprised it turned out as well as it did. Here it is, so if you think you’re brave enough, you might try it:

Cook some bow tie (or any kind, bow tie is what I had in my spaghetti container thingy) pasta and mix it with the sauce. The sauce stuff is a mixture of thawed ready-to-eat frozen shrimp, a jar of Ragu Alfredo sauce, some dried basil and lemon pepper salt and the juice from one lemon. We heated that up a little, added the pasta and heated it all until it was hot. It was pretty tasty, but a little strange. Probably would make it again with a few minor adjustments.

Now if only I could come up with a cookie recipe to take to the birthday party this weekend…

Mission Accomplished!

Well we did it! Ordered the cabinets. Finally.

Menard’s was a mad house. I mean, seriously, a mad house. You had to rush around to grab what you wanted before it went out of stock. Luckily, we managed to snag the 99 cent tarps we had decided to get and a dishwasher that was on sale. I’m so excited to get our cabinets in just because I’m excited about cabinets, but also because I’m excited to get the dishwasher installed! Wahoo!

My cabinets will be cool. I’ll have one that is specifically for cookie sheets and one that has a pot and pan pullout thingy. Awesomeness. We’re already planning organization and the right order to demolish the old ones in. Because we have to install our new flooring before the cabinets. But you already knew that, I’m sure.

Anyway. I’m tired of rain. It has rained for a week straight and I’ve had enough. Our yard is a soppy jungle and poor Yoshi’s pen resembles a pond in some areas. Yuck. We’re supposed to get some sunshine this week so hopefully we’ll dry out some, soon!

I shopped for a friend’s shower and wedding today, and I’m glad to have that out of the way. I’d tell you what I got her, but I’m not 100% sure she doesn’t read here. I know she’ll like it though.

We also did some junk cleanup around the house this weekend, which was probably prompted by our having to stay inside. We almost overheated the shredder and threw away a ton of old sale ads and newspapers and all the cabinet books we had from our research. And we caught up the laundry. I always love when that happens.

Hope everyone’s weekend was at least a little less soggy than ours!

Can we ever have a project just go smoothly from start to finish?

Well, this week has been a whirlwind. Work is so busy the days just fly by, which is very nice, and then all week we have been pricing and debating about cabinets for the kitchen.

We’ve decided to go with Menard’s because even though they probably weren’t the best quality of all the places we priced, they were definitely the cheapest. And they will still be better than the ones we have now, which had shelves held up with sticks (yes, sticks) when we moved in. I’m pretty excited, but we are running into some minor snags (which, given our recent history, is no surprise).

Snag #1: Our kitchen is small. Super small. Miniscule, when compared to some kitchens. We have 10 feet of counter space, as it stands now, alongside a 72 inch wall where the stove and refrigerator sit, side by side. Smallness means limited options. Which is fine and totally doable, but requires some creativity on our part. Especially because of:

Snag #2: Our kitchen plumbing is stupid. Which is saying something, because it’s not like there’s a lot of it. Only the sink hook up. Our faucets turn backwards, and the plumbing runs throughout our cabinets, requiring holes drilled in the partitions between cabinets. I would really like to avoid this with new cabinets, but I don’t think that will be possible. Which leads me to:

Snag #3: Our kitchen sink and window are a strange distance from the corner of the kitchen. Meaning to get the bottom corner cabinet I would like to have would push the sink base about 5 or 6 inches over. Which means the sink would no longer be centered with the window. Which was about the only thing in our kitchen that was done properly. (Because we found out it’s not usually for the stove and refrigerator to be side by side likes ours are.) I would really really like to avoid putting the sink offcenter.

We have to make our final decision by Sunday, only because that’s when the fantastic sale (netting us a free sink base!) will end. We thought we were basically done yesterday evening, and just needed to do some final little measurments to make sure everything would fit. But the more I think about it, the more I am really not happy about pushing the sink off center (I think it will look funny), and now we are both sitting around thinking about rearranging stuff completely. The lady helping us will probably be extremely relieved when we finally do get done and get out of her hair!

Wish me luck! I think we’ll need it!

Everything but the kitchen sink...oh well, let's throw that in, too.

Well this weekend was pretty darn fantabulous. And expensive. VERY expensive, at least in my book.

We went shopping (on Saturday instead of Sunday, because the surplus place is not open on Sundays. Glad we checked on that ahead of time! Thank you MOM! Anyway.). And we bought a truckload of stuff! Literally.

First, at the surplus store (well, really first we went to McD’s and had a yummy breakfast, but first after that. Actually we went to Wal-Mart after breakfast to get dog stuff and I used my Christmas money to buy a Wii Fit Plus. Love it!) we wandered around looking at stuff for about 2 hours. They had just about everything you might think of finding there. Cabinets, plumbing supplies, more cabinets, desks, carpet squares, vinyl tiles, ceramic tile, windows, countertops and I’m sure a ton of other stuff we completely missed or didn’t care to look at. We ended up buying a really nice tall cabinet (over 6 feet tall) for $120. It’s finished with only a few very minor scuffs, and very sturdy. Oh yeah, and did I mention its about twice as big as the portable Wal-Mart cabinet we had been using and it still fits nicely in the same space? It is fantastic. We can fit all sorts of appliances in there and actually see what we have when we open the doors.

They didn’t have any vinyl tile we liked (we’re going to redo the linoleum left in the kitchen and bathroom) so we headed off to Lowe’s. And bought a new faucet, very shiny and tall, so we can fit big pots under it without spilling everywhere. We also bought a new sink and kitchen and bathroom tiles! A also used his Christmas money to buy a big tool set that is very nice (at least to my EXTREMELY untrained eye).

Here’s our sink:

It’s about 2 inches deeper than our current sink, which will be fantastic. And very very useful methinks.

Here’s the tile we chose for the bathroom:


It’s called “chalk” and for some reason I really like that name. We wanted to get away from the pure white that is there now (because I don’t care how clean you are, it never stays white. Right?) but still keep it nice and light and bright.

Here's the kitchen tile:

This is “fieldstone”. Again, we wanted to stay away from bright white and wanted something a little different than the bathroom that would still look good next to our laminate wood flooring. I rather like it.

Now we’re looking at cabinets to see if that is a feasible option for us and planning out the patio and sidewalk we are going to pour to make our house just a smidge more accessible from our driveway!

I just love tax refunds.

Shopping trip!

This weekend is a big weekend. I mean BIG. Or at least Big.

In addition to the bugman coming again (yay!) and it being the weekend of my sister’s junior prom (which is just crazy, in my opinion)….

…it is the first time we will go shopping for house update stuff. With actual money to buy stuff. Ah-mazing! I know.

I am having A get a color swatch of concrete sometime (and actually, I’m not sure you’d technically call it a swatch…it’s a thingy that shows what color and patterns they can stamp the concrete I think) and Saturday we are going to measure up a storm so we have an idea of how much of everything we will need. Then Sunday afternoon comes the big event! We are going to a surplus store to see what kind of goodies they have, and we may stop at Lowe’s, too.

You just never know about us.

I want to get a new pair of workout shoes, too. And maybe spend my Christmas money (yes, I still have it!).

Regardless, I am excited!

We made it!

I just want to say that I am SO glad Friday finally made it.

Last night, our furnace was acting up again. Great. But this morning it seemed fine, so maybe it was just letting us know it had a bad day or something, I have no idea. But we’ve pretty much decided that we’re going to have to do some research and get a new one put in before next winter. Which isn’t surprising at all considering the thing is as old as…well, me. And hasn’t been taken care of well at all, so its really amazing it has lasted this long.

But anyway. We’ve been watching our little seed pots diligently, and still no plants. We may be just a little impatient, seeing as how we only planted them about 5 days ago. Or maybe it was 2 weeks. Heck, I don’t know. Hasn’t been that long, let’s just leave it at that.

I’m on Day 4 of my 30 Day Shred tonight, and so far, so good. We’ve both (me and my workout partner) kept up with it so that’s very good. Considering I’m usually terrible about keeping up an exercise program once I get started.

We’ve finished going back and forth with our photographer about our wedding photo book (the last part of our package) proofs, and it has been sent to the printer’s. I’m very excited to see the finished product, because the proofs look fantastic!

We also managed to (finally!) get our wedding announcement in the paper this week, so I’m feeling like a tiny celebrity. Well, maybe not, but it’s fun to have your picture there nonetheless.

This weekend will be myriad birthday celebrations and lots of birthday cake! Have a great weekend!

Puppy Plans

I think I’ve probably told you that we’re (A and I) wanting to get a puppy this spring. And part of the obstacles to that have been fencing (we have none and need some). We originally wanted to put up an actual fence around the yard, because of other dogs (the neighbor’s) and the chickens (the same neighbor’s) that randomly wander around our yard. We didn’t think it would be a good idea if those mixed.

However.

Fencing is expensive and less than aesthetically pleasing if you want it to be effective and keeping animals in (or out). So we’re now thinking it would probably be more cost effective to get a shock collar fence. The neighbor dogs are very friendly, and the chickens deal with those dogs just fine, so they’d probably be fine with a puppy.

We hopefully (probably) will be able to afford the fencing with our tax refund (hello housing credit!) so now we’re getting ready to start researching breeds. We’re going to get a dog from the pound, but I’d like to have an idea of what characteristics different breeds have, so if a dog has a mix of certain breeds we can better estimate its personality and SIZE (read: how much it will eat!).

Regardless of the type of fencing or dog or anything though, I am very excited!