Oh my goodness...

...I can't believe Christmas is just right around the corner. We have been trying to get ready around here, but it just seems so much closer to Thanksgiving than it did last year...

The other day was rather interesting. A was home, not able to work because of the very very cold weather, and called me around 9 on Monday morning. The carbon monoxide detector was going off very loudly and persistently. Our furnace was going crazy apparently, and the flames looked like they could shoot out the front of the furnace any minute. So we had some furnace guys come and look at it - they said there is a hole in the burner. Great. My grandpa also came and looked at it (as he used to be a heating/air man himself), and he and A sucked a whole bunch of acid water out of the furnace, which was getting backed up instead of draining properly. Great. (Anyone remember our furnace troubles last year? What the heck. I thought we were done with this for awhile!) Anyway, even though Grandpa said the furnace would be able to last through the winter, no problem, we have decided to get a new furnace anyway. We are just done with having problems with this thing. So now we are in the process of trying to schedule a furnace installation around all the Christmas festivities we have planned also.



Our tree is up, our decorations are up, our cards have NOT been sent. Whoops. We are behind on that big time! Hopefully we will get them out this week so they can get to people BEFORE Christmas. You know, like they are supposed to.


We had my mom take some pictures of us and Yoshi to put in Christmas cards...here are a few we had to choose from.

(This is Yoshi's grumpy face...)

As you can see, it is not the easiest thing in the world to coordinate a very large, hyper, happy dog and two people who are trying to smile at the camera and control the dog at the same time. But all in all, it went better than expected. We did end up getting one that is pretty good (I think) to use. And we had a good time to boot!

Hopefully I will manage to be on here again before Christmas...but until then, enjoy your Christmas music! (I know I am!)

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!

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!

Productive weekend!

This weekend was pretty darn fantastic! For the most part anyway.

Saturday A and I woke up bright and early to go to the city rummage/garage sales and we did wonderfully! There were about 40 sales throughout the city (which is only about 600 people total) and we hit only about 6 of them, but we bought the following:

2 books
A glass casserole dish with lid (one of those older round ones that work really good, you know?)
A green glass jar with lock-down lid
A quilt rack
Some ribbon for wrapping gifts
An old bowl (with print on it—I’m planning on using it as a catch-all kind of thing)
A small shelf with cubby hole kind of shelves to hang on the wall
Around 8 shirts for A
Around 4 pairs of jeans/pants for A
A sweater for me
A Christmas wall hanging
A jean jacket for A
An army jacket for A (for hunting he says)
A toolbox
A push mower

Minus the toolbox, which was $150, and the lawnmower, which was free (more on that in a minute), we spent around $20 all told. Pretty darn good if you ask me!

Anyway the lawnmower was free if we could pull it out of the shed, which A promptly proceeded to do. (He can’t resist anything free.) That afternoon we took it out to his dad’s, along with our riding mower (also free, but from a different source) which needed to be worked on because it wouldn’t start. They had the riding mower fixed in about a half-hour and the push mower started in about 10 minutes! A little more work and A was able to bring it home yesterday, and apparently it works great! So it’s definitely better than what we had before, which was nothing but a weed eater. Exciting!

That evening we did a big grocery run and now we have lots of food, too and that’s always nice. We rearranged the pantry, and put all our canned goods in the old cabinet that we moved out of the kitchen when we bought the new cabinet at the surplus store. So now everything is spread out a bit more, and is much easier to see what we have. I had no idea we had so many darn cans of tomatoes! I think I must buy some every grocery trip! I think we have about 8 cans of petite diced tomatoes…Crazy.
Then we are to Sunday. A majorly productive day in our household. We had 1 load of laundry done before we went to church, then came back and started laundry again (we were super behind on it) and by the end of the day we had done 7 loads total. All while mowing the grass (which takes about 4 hours, because we have almost a whole acre and then have tons of trees and had not mowed in TOO long and the grass was about 7 inches tall!), weed eating (that was A, I refuse to learn), cleaning the whole house, which was terrible, breaking a window in a vehicle with a rock and going to have my car brakes worked on, only to find out that we had left it a smidge too long and have to now have something else worked on that I don’t know how to spell. Then I went home and painted my toenails and emptied out my email box…which had 100 exactly. Good grief. A went to his parents to put his new toolbox in the other truck so he could drive it today instead of the one with the busted window.

We both slept good last night. Can you say tired? I can. But our house looks good now!

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!

Wonderful Weekend Review

Wasn’t this weekend fabulous? I think it was anyway.

Saturday, A and I went to his grandparents’ house to help them spread a load of gravel on their driveway. I helped weed the flower bed…there was a worm. It grossed me out. But I got sent home with two big bunches of hostas (I’m not really sure how to spell that, but they are pretty leafy flower things), and we got those planted at my house that evening. Whew! Hard work!

Yesterday, went to church, then ate some scrumptious leftovers of Wonton Sausage Cups we made Friday night. Delicious! I’ll post the recipe.

After sausage cups came Yoshi’s first bath! He was very good, and only shook twice. Now he looks twice as big as he did before because his fur is so darn fluffy! If I had a camera hookup here I would post a picture, but alas, you will have to wait. We did a superfast housecleaning after that, because A’s parents were coming around 2. His dad helped A put some sheet metal around our falling apart shed, so it will be more sturdy and weather-proof. His mom helped me weed beggar lice plants from under my grapevines (I know, super cool, right? I can’t wait to get grapes! We found out we have a fruit tree, too and its blooming! It smells fantastic and is so pretty! I think its an apple tree, but I really have no idea. Anyway.) and his sister played with Yoshi.

I made tacos for supper and they were delicious, too. (Good food weekend for sure.) Gardening does a really good job of making you hungry apparently. It worked for me anyway.

After his family left, A got set to weedeating, and I watered my hostas and new lilac bush (Yay!) and washed dishes and did laundry. We were both really tired. A’s hand was numb, too from weedeating, so next time he’ll have to split it up a little more I think. It still wasn’t 100% this morning, but it was better, so that’s good. We were both so tired last night we went to bed a half hour early or so, and I slept like a rock!

Hopefully we will be able to get some more projects done this week, because next weekend we are going shopping at the surplus store for floors! Wahoo!

Ant update, RECIPE, and a surprise!

The ants finally (FINALLY!) seem to be dying down. Literally. Or at least I think so. A informs me he saw another one on the bed yesterday, but I didn’t, so that’s good enough for me. I think we’ll put the food back in the pantry pretty soon…as soon as we get a free moment to do so…

We made the most wonderful recipe the other night! Penne with Tomatoes and Feta. Fabulous. Here goes the recipe (super simple, if we can do it):

Cook your noodles (we just did however many we wanted but the recipe called for 680 grams…and I have no idea how much that actually is). Put them in a pan (fairly large one) with 2 tablespoons (we added more because of our noodle abundance) of olive oil, 1 can of diced tomatoes drained (next time we’ll add more), and 2 cloves of diced garlic. We added a small can of black olives, drained. Very good addition. Heat it all together for about 5 minutes, mixing well. Add in ¼ cup Feta cheese (I believe we doubled that…good decision in my book) and some basil to taste, and let that cook for a minute or two until the cheese gets kind of melty. Serve!

A said he would eat it everyday. I won’t go that far, but it was delicious!

Also…I believe that we have a puppy, everyone! A little stray showed up at A’s parents’ last night, looking to be about 6 to 8 weeks old. He’s very friendly, but looks like he was dumped off. He is covered in ticks and has lost his fat puppy belly. But he stayed there overnight and today so if he hasn’t run off (and I don’t think he has…crossing my fingers!) we are bringing him home tonight. We would have gotten him yesterday but we had no pen. It will be built tonight and he will have a lovely house and actual, you know, food and water. He’ll be in heaven. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it! He’s black with a white belly and white toes, and looks to be a type of shepherd mix. No name yet, but we are thinking!

Recipe alert!! Right after my story...

We have ants again. I guess not again, they never really left, so I guess I should say we have ants in our PANTRY again (we took all the food out, so it's all good). But the bugman has come to assess and will be back tomorrow, so HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY they will be gone soon. Or at least manageable. This is really ridiculous.

We asked the former owners (yep, sure did! No fear here, haha!) if they had any problems with ants. And they said they hadn’t at all, more with spiders. We have only seen ONE spider since we moved in and it was dead. So I have decided I don’t believe them. There is no way the ants are this bad this close to us moving in and they didn’t have any problems. So there!

On a different note, last night we tried out a new recipe. It was very good-I think its definitely a keeper! I do think it needs full size taco shells though…we had to use toothpicks (lots of toothpicks) to hold them together so we could cook them. Its similar to the Taco Bell grilled stuft burrito (my absolute favorite!), but with a smidge of difference in fillings. I’ll let you know the ingredients to my best guess, but we adjusted them ourselves, so I’m sure you could make it however you please:

3 cups cooked chicken
1 ½ cups Monterey Jack cheese
½ tsp. black pepper
1 can black beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 16 oz. jar of salsa
1 red onion (we couldn’t find a good red one, so we used white. Tasty anyway!)
3 cups rice
Cilantro (we used dried but it called for fresh)
Tortillas! (get the big ones—trust me on this one)

You mix your corn and onion together in a (BIG) skillet and cook for a little bit before adding beans, salsa and rice. We just left that on the stove on medium while we dealt with the rest of it. Mix the chicken, pepper, and cheese in a bowl. Okay, now you’ve got all your filling.
Fill your tortilla with a bit of the rice/bean mixture and some chicken/cheese mixture and then top the filling with a smidge of cilantro. Fold up your tortilla into a burrito and coat lightly with cooking spray. Then put it into a skillet to cook until the tortilla gets nice and crispy (I would recommend not getting your skillet too hot…our burritos were a little black. But still yummy!), then devour with all sorts of intensity! Yum!

Since we used little shells, we didn’t fill up a ton of burritos. 3 for each of us was MORE than enough…I couldn’t even eat that much. So we have lots and lots of filling left over! Awesome!

(I got that recipe out of a magazine…can’t remember if it was Family Circle or Better Homes and Gardens though, or something else.)

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!

We have bookcases! And a healthy plant!

My books have a new home! Or well, some of them do. We bought 3 bookcases this past weekend (1 tall and 2 short), and even though they are black and don’t match my house AT ALL, it is nice to not have books strung out in bags and boxes across the floor. We had to rearrange our guestroom to make room for the bookcases, and I have to say I like it better now. Which really means nothing to you since you don’t know what it looks like. And I really can’t show you since I didn’t take a before picture. Whoops.

Does anyone know how often you should water seeds? I’ve kind of just been guessing, but without a plant to judge by I have no idea how well I’ve been guessing. And I really need help in the plant department. I mean, I almost killed my philodendron the other day.

Yeah, those plants that can’t be killed. I almost did it. I totally by accident discovered the problem (not enough water, when I thought I was drowning it!), and now it is fabulous.

But it almost died. I really feel for our garden. It looks to be a season of ups and downs for it. Literally.

Also, a friend from work will be doing the 30 Day Shred with me! (Well, we’ll be doing it separately. But together in spirit? Oh, you know what I mean.) I told her that I would stop giving her gifts for Farmville if she skipped out on me! I probably really wouldn’t, but it sounded good. And really it wouldn’t work out so well for me, because she could just stop helping me and then my horse stable would never get built. But I digress.

So tonight is the (new) first night of the 30 Day Shred. Hopefully I don’t die. Figuratively. (Or literally for that matter.)

Oh, the things I could do if I lived in a perfect world.

*Insert funeral march song*

Monday we are getting our taxes done. Yikes!

Actually, it probably won’t be too bad, because we bought a house this past year…and we all know what that means in terms of tax credits. Big smiles all around!

Anyway, A and I would like to feed the money from this tax credit back into our house to try and raise the value for when we sell in the future. So, before our stupendous grocery shopping trip, we stopped at Lowe’s to price some things, just to see where we were in terms of being able to do everything we like to do (you know, if we were rich and lived in a perfect world and all that).

What we would like to do is this:


*New countertops in the kitchen-this sounds all big and fancy, but we only have about 10 feet of counter top, counting the sink area, right now. And we’re looking at the cheap Formica stuff, so it will be better than our current counter, but not fabulous.

*New sink—these are surprisingly not as expensive as I thought they’d be; again, we’re just going for the lower end of the spectrum and not my dream kitchen sink—just a new one so there are no more nasty uncleanable dirt areas in it

*New kitchen sink faucet—this really isn’t even worth mentioning pricewise compared to everything else. The cheap ones we’re looking at that would suit our purpose are less than $50.

*New island in the kitchen—we want to add a thinner than normal island/cupboard area just for more storage and counter space, and with the countertops being as surprisingly cheap as they are, this is looking more and more like an option we may be able to accomplish

*Dishwasher—we do not have one and I want one. End of story. No, really, I think it will make our house slightly more saleable and will just be so much more handy than washing everything by hand.

*New tile floor in the bathroom—First, our bathroom is tiny and second, we are looking at $1 per square foot stick down tiles. Basically so that we can rid ourselves of the bare, gross concrete areas in there (because the previous owners switched out the showers and did not find it necessary to patch the bare floor that appeared when the new shower was not as wide as the old…but that’s another story altogether).

*New toilet—when we bought the house, a plastic Ziploc bag was keeping water in the tank from spraying out everywhere. That has since been remedied, but it’s still not in great shape. And without going into too much detail, A and I are both tall…and our toilet is not. At all. Enough said.

*Backyard fence—this one is very important to me. I want a fence around the backyard so we can get a puppy this spring and keep it safe from the highway. Plus, it would keep the neighbors dogs and chickens out of our yard. Which is not a big deal, but still. This is one thing we have not gotten a price on, and thinking about how much it will cost makes me cringe inside.

*Sidewalks and patio out front: our yard is a pool of watery mud and there is just no other way to describe it. We have a steep incline from the level of our yard to our vehicles, and no stairs to go down on. I have to hold A’s hand to keep from planting my behind in the deep and getting deeper mud. Lucky me, I married a concrete man, so a patio and sidewalks could be poured with the only cost being the concrete itself. No labor costs! And I would like to have it colored and stamped to be pretty, and apparently there may be some leftovers from other jobs that we may be able to use. So less cost there. All in all, this one is pretty much a necessity to make our house safe to visit and walk around.


Looking back on that, it is a pretty long list. I’m aware that we probably won’t be able to afford all of that with just this refund, but I’m confident that if we shop around and find good prices, we can accomplish quite a bit of it. Especially since most of the time we are not going for high dollar, top of the line redoes.

Just some better-than-what-we-have-now redoes.

I said, Brr! It's cold in here!

Well, this week has been full of excitement. (If that’s what you want to call it.)

Monday evening I got home and noticed it was colder than usual—which let to some investigation. Our house was 63 degrees and the furnace wouldn’t light! Great. It’s been awhile since we’ve had any household disasters, so I guess we were due.

Anyway, we ended up calling a heater guy (not sure what that would be called specifically), and A was on the phone with him for about an hour walking through possible solutions. No luck. So we picked up a tiny heater from A’s parents and moved it from room to room to try and warm up the area we were in. Yesterday A’s mom was in Lowe’s and picked us up a more heavy duty portable heater so it was a little warmer last night. And we have 10 layers on the bed (I counted!), so we are doing ok. The worst part is waking up in the morning to a freezing cold house because we’re too nervous to leave the heaters on while we sleep.

The heater guy ordered a part from Kansas which should come in today and be installed later this evening, so hopefully we will be warm again soon!!

Side note: There is a nationwide contest to win $50,000 for your local hospital and Y107 is currently in third place! If you haven’t already, you should register every email address you have (totally legal and within contest rules) and vote 10 times each day until February 5th! The money will go to MU Children’s Hospital in Columbia. Go to https://radiocares.childrensmiraclenetwork.org/Login.aspx or www.y107.com to register and vote! Not much time left now, and I think it would be really amazing if we beat out the major markets that are ahead of us!

Side note: Currently reading Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” and so far it is excellent! Very mysterious and suspenseful and a nice change from reading Jane Austen for so long.

Productivity is at an all-time high!

At least at our house.

Let me just say now that this weekend was one of the most productive I’ve had in QUITE a while…

Friday of course, I got to stay home with A (New Year’s Day!) and we just went crazy cleaning and organizing and arranging. Our house looked much better afterwards (not so cluttered with stuff and more livable), but we had not accomplished a single thing off my list.

Did I mention I started out this weekend with a list? Well, I did. I was super excited to have 3 whole days with no major events or shopping or trips planned so I made a list of everything that I would like to get accomplished by today (Monday—end of weekend, *sigh*). It was pretty extensive. At least 9 things long. (Which really isn’t that much, I know. But they were all time-consuming projects!)

Yeah, and Friday we didn’t get a single item checked off the list. Which may have had a little something to do with us taking a pretty good-sized break after lunch to play some Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. Very entertaining, not very productive. But then A’s dad came over and they put down the wooden trim strip thingy between our kitchen and living room to make the divider between the laminate and linoleum look good. And it looks pretty darn awesome, let me tell you! (I’m really just excited that we don’t have raw-edged laminate in our house anymore. So that may be part of it.) Anywho.

I also finally (FINALLY!) downloaded all the pictures from A and my cameras. Which doesn’t sound that exciting. Until you figure in that these pictures included bridesmaids dress pictures, house shopping pictures (of the house we purchased of course), house fixing-up-in-progress pictures (ya know, paint and all that), Christmas pictures, and HONEYMOON pictures (800 and some honeymoon pictures, to be exact). It took me 2 HOURS to get all those onto the computer. And until I get them burned onto a CD and backed up, I’m still not deleting them from the cameras. So they may be on there for 6 months or so. But hopefully not. My goal is to pick out all our favorite pictures from the honeymoon and turn them into a hardcover photobook at www.kodakgallery.com (Mom found these online, and they look fabulous!). I’m excited to get started on that!

Saturday I went with Mom, H, and M prom dress and grocery shopping. It was very fun! Brought back lots of memories of when I shopped for prom dresses….

Yesterday, A and I whooped up on my list. We got at least 3 or 4 things knocked off it. Which is a lot when you consider that we cleaned off our office desk (not the office, just the DESK) and it took about 2 hours. Yeah, it was pretty packed with junk. But we had fun shredding the junk! And it looks fantastic now!

We printed some coupons offline, and organized our little coupon filer thingy, so we are prepared for grocery shopping next weekend. A first for us, that’s for sure! (I mean being prepared, not shopping. )

Now, the rest of my list will have to be accomplished in the evenings when I get home from work….but I think we can do it!

A bit of this and a bit of that

Here we are again (been a little while, hasn’t it?). Christmas is over, and I hope everyone’s was fantastic! Mine was filled with fun, family and lots of good times, a quilt rack, a clothesline, and some other awesome games, books, and clothes. Excellent Christmas all around.

And now we’re getting ready for the new year. Everyone’s making resolutions, many of which will be excellent in theory, but will never make it past the first week or two. I generally prefer not to make resolutions…I think it’s important to change yourself for the better whenever possible—not just when the calendar flips. If the opportunity for expanding your horizons, or getting in shape, or just making your life better comes along, I think its important to take that opportunity when it comes along, not wait a week until January 1st to make such great dreams and opportunities reality. But that’s just me.

Here’s an update on some recent events:

--The freezer is at our house (hooray!) and despite some initial setbacks (you know, like a plug-in that will actually work with it) we are almost set to go. We still have to clean the inside with baking soda and level it up, but then we should be able to plug it in, get things nice and cold, and take off with filling it up!

--Pretty sure the whole photography thing will just be a passing fancy. I’ll snag any information I can, of course, when it comes my way, but I don’t have the drive it would require to actually make anything of it at this point. Maybe someday…

--A and I are starting to make some VERY tentative plans for what we will do with our tax credit when we get that back. We need fences, a dishwasher, sidewalks or SOMETHING outside, and just some random other things that aren’t absolutely necessary but would be nice to have. I think we’re probably going to invest a lot of it back into our house to try and raise the value (and so we can get a puppy! Thus, the need for fences.) instead of save all of it. We could get more good out of it that way, and make some improvements we would not otherwise be making—money and all that being required.

--Our house is starting to look like a home, instead of just a place where we live! We have pictures on the walls, and are starting to get curtains and things like that around. I have to say, it’s probably about time. (We put that off awhile so we could get our feet under us, but it’s wonderful now!) Now, if only I could manage to get that last bit of stuff from Mom and Dad’s so that I would be officially COMPLETELY moved out… 

--New Year’s Plans? Probably the same as always, though it’s not set in stone yet. We usually go to the church get-together, and then to A’s parents’ house to play canasta. Hopefully my luck runs a little better than last time….last time I played canasta I lost horribly!


And…that’s all I can think of for now. Feel free to let me know your New Year’s (or what the heck, Christmas!) traditions! I love hearing how everyone celebrates holidays…

Toodles!

Woohoo! Woohoo!

I am so darn excited my toes are tingling! And it’s kind of silly really…

A has gone to pick up a mini deep freezer to put in our laundry room. Now, to most people this probably wouldn’t be quite as big a reason for celebration as it is at our house…

You see, I grew up in a household where monthly shopping trips were the rule—at least for as long as I can remember. After the payday at the end of the month, my mom and one of we three kids would head off on the “monthly shopping trip” where food enough was purchased to last throughout the whole month. So that’s how I learned to grocery shop—I stockpile, and buy a lot of something that is on sale, because hey, it can be frozen and used later.

Except as things stand now in A and I’s little house, it can’t. We only have a refrigerator freezer, which doesn’t very well lend itself to stockpiling. At all! And it has been a struggle for us to try and shop for just a couple of weeks at a time because we are both of the ‘stockpile’ mentality (his mom didn’t monthly shop, but they DEFINITELY bought a lot of stuff on sale and stockpiled!).

You may be wondering, “Well, why don’t those silly people just put in a deep freezer? Then their problems would be solved!”
And I would agree with that line of thinking except for the teensy little fact that we just don’t have the space for one. Even if we smushed everything together as much as possible, we just have no way of squeezing one in—most especially in our laundry room, which is the most logical place for a freezer. (We have about a 4 foot width to work with because the washer and dryer take up most of one wall.)

And Saturday when we went on our little grocery shopping trip to good ‘ol Walmart, we found it. IT. The perfect one! It is a cute little 7 cubic foot freezer! Just perfect for our little laundry room. But we wanted to make sure it would fit before we shelled out that kind of money (and because it wouldn’t have fit in the car anyway), so we wrote down the dimensions for measuring.

Today, A got off work early, so he is going to measure up the space and make sure it will fit and if it does (which I’m assuming it will because he hasn’t let me know otherwise and that was a couple hours ago) we will have a deep freezer! Our days of trying not to buy too much food will be over and we can buy more than 2 frozen pizzas and 1 loaf of bread at a time!

Woohoo!!!

Grr...that was just about all she could say.

Oh my, I was so mad last night! I got home after a fairly frustrating day completely and totally ready to eat some chili. It’s one of my absolute favorite comfort foods. And what do you know? The stupid beans were crunchy! Not done at all. Grr. So we are eating chili tonight instead.

Last night we had chicken patties that were only a little burnt and vegetables with Velveeta cheese….or should I say Velveeta soup with vegetables? We kind of went a little overboard on the cheese…but it was yummy! Not chili, but still ok…

And when I tried to print coupons from online, they wouldn’t print! I have no idea what went wrong. I will try again tonight. Grr.

I’m at least probably going to be off half the day tomorrow, which is always good. I have to update my driver’s license (yeah, still haven’t done that) and go shopping for A since its about the only time I’ll be able to go without him.

And to top it all off, I caught A’s cold so I can’t breathe well today. Grr Grr!

Sorry it’s such a downer today. Just too much being frustrated the last couple of days…maybe it will be better and I can get some laundry done tonight. And print my coupons.

Right after I eat my big bowl of chili.

Some of this and some of that...

Today has been a rather crazy day. Actually, it hasn’t…now that I think of it. Just feels like it has been crazy. (Probably because both A and I were running late this morning so that made us feel rushed so we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off to make it on time so that made my entire day feel crazy! Did you get that all in one breath?)

Today is also my mama’s birthday! She is of course, the best mom in the entire whole world. Or at least, that’s what I think! (Happy Birthday, Mom!)

A and I have set a deadline for our thank-you’s…this weekend! We are on the downhill slope for getting those done, and I think we just needed the extra PUSH of a deadline to get us to buckle down and just do them! (I’m super excited to get them done so I feel free to move on to Christmas cards! Yay for Christmas!)

We also get our first houseguest this weekend (which I’m pretty positive you already know because I think I may have told you once or 5 times…but I’m telling ya again!)! Hopefully my sister M does not mind sleeping amongst boxes…because although we have completely uncovered the bed in the spare room, there are still some boxes waiting to be unpacked. But we are definitely getting somewhere in that department!

I think 75% of my family had breakfast for supper the other night. Just a random thought. I love breakfast food for supper. MMM!

And now that’s probably enough rambling…for now anyway! 

Finally got some stuff done!! I just love nice weather.

This weekend was fantastic-ly busy!! I got a lot accomplished and yet it feels like not very much…so I’ll tell you what I did and you can decide for yourself!

Saturday:

Woke up fairly early (really don’t know how that happened, but I’m okay with it) and did 4 loads of laundry, cleaned in the bathroom, balanced the checkbook (finally!! Took entirely too long—an hour and a half! It was in pretty bad shape, I’m ashamed to say), got my hair cut (again, way too long since this happened—at LEAST 4 months—my hair sighed in relief!), made a trip to the bank and the post office and managed to kill a few monsters on the computer, too. All before lunchtime! Then in the afternoon A was home from working on a truck, so we cleaned out the shed (lots of junk in there still from the previous owners) and planted the rest of my bulbs. If all those bulbs come up in spring, we will have one of the most colorful houses around! Then I unearthed an old quilt I had started many eons ago (probably 10 years!) and worked on that a little.

Sunday:

Went to church, dropped the junk from the shed off at A’s parents house (might be some usable stuff in there and as long as I don’t have it I really don’t care where it goes!), went and played with the band (local community band) at a veteran’s home in honor of Veteran’s day, went grocery shopping in an hour and a half (whew! We were flying through Walmart! But we got a Christmas tree! Yay!), and then went to my parent’s house for my sister M’s 17th birthday celebration (side note: when did she get so big? This is crazy!) since her actual b-day is full of all kinds of practices for her. Finished out the day by going home and putting away all the groceries we had bought and went to bed!

I’m out of breath just thinking about all that again!! But I think we got quite a bit done that was sitting around for far too long. And I feel better!

Results are in!

I know you all were wondering and holding your breath anxiously for it…so here it is! The grand total of trick or treaters at my house this weekend was….

13!

Blow the trumpets, sound the horns, I at least got enough to need more than 2 hands to count! **APPLAUSE**

Thank you, thank you. Actually, even though we had enough candy to feed about 10 or 15 times that many kids, we were pretty pleased with our turnout, seeing as how we’re outside of the high traffic areas by quite a bit, and it was our first time, and you know. All that stuff.

The ants are still there! But dwindling rapidly. I’m on my way on my lunch break today to buy some Home Defense bug spray. That stuff is fantastic by the way. When we first discovered the ants, I made an emergency run to the parents house (I may have told you this already, but just in case) for bug spray. Because they. Were. Everywhere! And we proceeded to spray every edge in the pantry to inhibit ants (and let me tell you, those things die fast with this spray!). Then we set Terro around to have them take it back to their colony and kill themselves. But, since we sprayed all that bug spray around, the ants seem to just come get the Terro and die before they can take it back! So we’re going to spray all around the house inside and out to keep the ants from coming in!

I’m also going to invest in some lovely hanging folders for our file cabinet, so that my efforts to take charge and reorganize (or rather, GET organized) can continue. Yay for folders and labels!

Tonight my workouts officially begin, and actually I’m kind of excited about this. Even though if you ask me that in a couple of days after the soreness has kicked it will most likely be a different story…I’ll let you know how that goes. SparkPeople is seeming to be great motivation because when you go surfing around their site, it’s absolutely nothing but encouragement and ideas and help for knowledgeless people like me. Great stuff!

This week our organization project is to clean off our desk and file all our stuff. And at some point I WILL balance my checkbook.