Marriage with a Mortgage

Bathroom Facelift Part 2

2009-09-28T22:51:00.004-05:00

The painting is done!!!! So glad to have that behind us, and I don't plan on doing it ever again. Including the coat of primer, this is the fourth time in the past year we have painted the bathroom. I'm happy to announce we BOTH are very happy with the results and agree that we will not be changing the color again. Thank the Lord! There is still a bit of touch up work to be done but I'm going to wait a week or so to do that. Everytime I paint I start to notice places that need touch up and as soon as I do a few spots, a day or two later I notice some more. It's such a hassle to get the paint out and dirty another brush, so I'm going to wait a while until I hopefully find all the spots and then touch them up all at once.

If you look back to my post from last November you can see what the bathroom has looked like for the past 10 months. Those would be some "before" pictures.

http://marriagewithamortgage.blogspot.com/2008/11/fixture-eyes-on-these.html

After here are the after pictures!

View from the bedroom

I LOVE the look of the two mirrors and the sharpness of the black frames on the brown wall. It looks so modern and clean! The flash from the camera made some weird reflections so excuse those.

One thing we didn't plan for but probably should have thought of was the fact that the wall behind the mirror had never been primed or painted. When we took the mirror down there was bare drywall behind it and a tiny bit of water damage along the top of the vanity backsplash. This wasn't a huge issue but it did delay us a bit since we had to recaulk along the seam and

prime the wall.

One thing that is funny about the facelift so far is that all the nice new things make all the old things look SO MUCH worse! I always hated these faucets but now I can hardly stand to look at them! They look awful! In a few weeks we will have them replaced with something new and much prettier to match all the other pretties in the bathroom.

While I am liking the addition of the hardware, again, all the new additions are kind of making me want to paint the vanity. The color of the wood doesn't look great with the color of the walls now. I'm actually leaning towards a black maybe, something to match the mirrors. I'm still in awe over how much I love the mirrors so maybe that is having an influence on me. If we do paint the vanity, it wouldn't be for a while. I want to get the new faucets in and baseboards done before that happens. You can see on the right side of this picture what the bottom of the walls looks like. They need baseboards bad! That will probably be the next projcet we will tackle in a few weeks.

One of my favorite, super easy updating techniques is changing out the faceplates on the light switches and outlets. If you look at some of the pictures from earlier in the post, you can see that we put all new stainless faceplates on. While it's not really a huge change, I love the way they look, again just very clean and modern. I also love how cheap they are at Home Depot: $1.97- $2.97! Seriously!

Well that's all I have time for tonight. Wednesday night Aubrey gets into town and then Friday through Sunday we will be out at Zilker Park all day long enjoying the Austin City Limits Music Festival! It's the most wonderful time of the year! Check back after the weekend for some pictures from the festival!

Bathroom Facelift Part 1

2009-09-25T22:55:00.004-05:00

We've begun work on the bathroom, and by work I really mean just made decisions and bought some things. The actual "work" will begin tomorrow. Here's the skinny:

So we picked out the color Pure Earth from Behr, and much to my delight I was wrong about the samples and you can buy them at the store! So earlier this week I tried the color out in several spots in the bathroom and we really like the color.

I'm excited to see what the bathroom is going to look like with this totally new color. I like the contrast of the white towels against the brown color and the way the shower curtain looks next to it. The pictures never really show the color very well; it looks pretty gray in these shots but it's definitely a cocoa brown color.

We also decided to get rid of our mirror and replace it with two smaller mirrors in front of each sink. I don't have a problem with the big mirror, I just felt like since everything else in the bathroom was getting a face lift, it would look silly to have the standard mirror from the builder with no frame or any character. Getting a custom cut mirror and frame would cost more than we were willing to pay, so we found some mirrors tonight that we are going to go back and buy soon. We taped off the dimensions to give ourselves an idea of what it would look like and I think we will be happy with the change. It's still plenty of mirror space, but I think it will look a litle more elegant.

We also picked out some hardware to put on the vanity drawers and doors for another small update. The knobs will be for the drawers and the handles will be for the cabinets. I really wish we could get a whole new vanity but we really don't want to spend the money on it so these will have to do for now.

We're trying to pace ourselves and budget for some of these purchases so it will be a few weeks before we buy the new faucets, mirros and get the base boards done. Hopefully by the end of this weekend we will have at least finished the painting and put all the knobs! Check back in a few days for more photos!

If I Hurry I Can Still Make Cheyenne...

2009-09-23T14:21:00.005-05:00

This post is long overdue, but here it is! Mel beat me to blogging about our fun filled weekend in Cheyenne, but hey, she gets to work from home :) Labor Day Weekend I hopped on a plane and flew to Denver (the closest aiport to Cheyenne) to visit Mel, one of my BFFs, and her husband Matt. I have to say, there is not much going on in Wyoming, but we had a great time anyway. I think one of the nicest things about being with people who you've known for a long time is that it's like picking up right where you left off. It doesn't matter what the scenery is: college house, weddings all over the country, Austin or Cheyenne, you're going to have a good time. And while Cheyenne isn't a booming metropolis, I had a blast hanging out with an old friend. It was also really great to spend time with Matt because up until this trip, I had only spent time around him the weekend of their wedding and when we met for dinner one time for about 2 hours, which didn't total a lot of quality conversation time. Matt is a funny guy! AND also a very tolerant husband, since he had to put up with the two of us and our girly banter for the the weekend. One of the highlights of the weekend might have been beating Matt at one round of Wii Resort Swordfighting... that was awesome!

Here are a few other highlights:

We went to Target one evening and parked next to a car with not only a Texas license plate, but dealer plate frame that said it was from Abilene! I don't know how Mel noticed this, but she about lost it when she did, so we had to take a picture with it. We never found the people, but it made for a great picture.

After a day of shopping and lunching in Ft. Collins, CO we came home with some similar clothing... ok, well I had already bought the shirt at Old Navy in Austin and had brought it with me. Mel and I ran across them again while shopping and so the idea for this picture was born.

Ok, maybe the BEST part about the whole trip was that we went to Texas Roadhouse not once, but twice! This really was like old times! We used to love this place in college (I even worked there for a little while)! One time in college while Mel's dad was in town, he took the two of us out to dinner at Roadhouse and we ate so many baskets of rolls that he was embarassed of us. :)

On the day I flew out we stopped in Ft. Collins for the second time to get pedis on the way to the Denver Airport. I don't think Mel has seen this picture I took of her, so it's making it's Internet debut right now. Mel told the ladies at the nail place that her husband was part Japanese (which he is) and they were SO fascinated and asked a lot of questions. I was laughing in my head as she chatted with them the whole time we were there and I sat quietly and read my magazine and watched the tv. I guess that's the difference between us!

We also hung out with lots of their friends from church on several occasions through out the weekend, played a lot of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and other Wii games, went to see Julie and Julie (which I loved), walked around and ate lunch in downtown Denver, watched a lot of HGTV and got caught in a torrential downpour just to name a few other activities. On top of having a lot of fun with Mel, it was great to get out of town for a few days and not be in the office! Once in a while having a 4 day weekend is really nice! Thanks Mel and Matt for a great weekend!

Back to Square One

2009-09-16T22:57:00.004-05:00

Well we're back at it. As if picking out paint colors the first time around wasn't challenging enough, we're doing it again. I must be crazy. I thought I could come up with an easy solution, but of course that was foolish. Somehow I came up with the idea that we should paint our master bathroom the same tan-khaki color that is in our formal living/ dining room and upstairs hallway. I thought, "We like this color, it's safe, it's neutral, we're used to it, it will look fine." Since we had some of that color left over, I thought I'd try out a patch on the wall. Turns out I didn't like it at all in the bathroom. So I tried two other similar colors we had that I had tested when we were picking the color for the dining room in the first place. Didn't like those either.

So I narrowed it down to two hues that I thought would work: either a sage-y green gray or a soft brown cocoa-y mocha color.

After collecting about a billion color samples from Home Depot of any colors even close to either of these, I think I have decided on one.

It's called Pure Earth and it's in the Behr Premium line. We used Behr paint before and one of the things I liked was that you could order small samples online to try out. Unfortunatley, with the Premium paint you can't get samples online so I'm going to have to get the smallest quantity I can at the store and actually try it on the wall. I really hope I like it because I do not want to go through the back and forth of agonizing over paint colors again!

We've got another full weekend coming up, Aunt Pat and Uncle Sam are coming to town and will be stay with us for two nights. Maybe we can squeeze some trips to Home Depot in there somewhere!

Extreme Bedroom Makeover

2009-09-13T13:38:00.009-05:00

Ok, I don't know how "extreme" it was, but our bedroom did get a face lift this weekend. It happened just in time I'd say, since football season is in full swing now and we can never come to an agreement with what should be on the tv. I mentioned in my last post that we were going to make some changes in our bedroom, but I didn't know how much I would actually love it. I hardly want to leave the room now!

Here are a couple "before" shots of our bedroom:

When I planned the room, I knew I wanted to use this gold colored slip cover on the love seat and paint this wall white for juxtaposition. We wanted to place the tv so that we could watch from bed, but it made it impossible to watch tv from the love seat. At the time I was really opposed to puting the love seat in the middle of the room because I thought it would take up too much space. Since I had gone to the trouble of painting the wall white so that the love seat would look good there, I did not want to move it.

Fast forward a year. After living in the house for 12 months and getting a better feel for the space, we started to think we needed more "liveable" space. I love that we had a big formal living/ dining room because it's come in handy several times when entertaining BUT on a daily basis, it's not really liveable space for us. I really like that we have guest rooms (someday kids rooms, but don't read too much into that, especially you Mom) since we have family and friends coming to town all the time, but again not really practical space for our everyday lives. We started to think it would be nice to have another "living area where we could watch tv, read, etc. so we decided it was time to tweak the layout our room.

So here is what we did:

moved the loveseat off the wall and into the middle of the room
ditched the coffee table and got a storage ottoman that can double as a coffee table
hung a 32" flat screen tv on the wall
moved the bookshelf that used to support the old tv
changed around a few other decorations, mirror, pictures, etc.

Hanging the tv was quite an adventure since it seemed like our wall had no studs! We were really baffled for about an hour as to how our wall was actually standing since we could not find a stud anywhere. We were using a studfinder but turns out, those things can be a little misleading sometimes. Eventually we resorted to the old hammer and nail method, which you would think would have helped us find the stud....

... about 20 holes later, we found it! Good thing we have plenty of spackle and left over paint! We'll be needing to do a lot of touch up before we move out someday! For now, the tv is covering all these holes.

So here are the pictures of our new improved room, one taken from every corner of the room!

And a few close ups of the new and improved sitting area:

I am really loving the new layout and am not bothered at all by the love seat being in the middle of the room. There is still plenty of space between the foot of the bed and the back of the loveseat to walk through. When we first looked at the house I remember loving how big the master bedroom was but having no idea how we would use all the space. I think we've finally figured it out! Here is my view from bed now:

Another exciting change that won't be in full effect until Friday is we signed up for AT&T U-verse and are ditching our old Time Warner Cable. If you haven't heard of it or don't live in a place where it's available, it's AT&T's cable, internet and phone service that they offer. The cable service has a lot of cool features that are not available with Time Warner Cable. For example, we will be able to play back DVRd shows on any tv in the house. That means that Andrew can be watching football downstairs and I can be watching last week's episode of What Not to Wear on the DVR upstairs. Even guests who are staying in the guest room can watch shows from the DVR on the tv in there. We can also record 4 shows at one time on the DVR, which won't always be necessary, but will be handy on Thursdays when it seems like EVERY show we like to watch comes on tv. There are other cool features like setting the DVR from my iPhone, NFL network comes standard, $100 cash back, and free installation! All in all, we will pay 5 dollars more a month than we paid with Time Warner, but it definitely seems worth it. Also for the first 6 months we get $30 off the cost. The installation will take place on Friday and I seriously can't wait.

We have plans over the next month or so to really finish our master bathroom that has kind of been hanging in limbo for a while. After we did the tiling we never finished the baseboards and have lived with it that way for a year. We also haven't been that thrilled with the paint in there, partially because we don't love the color in there and partially because I did a really crappy paint job. We also want to install new faucets and put some hardware on the cabinets and drawers like we did in the guest bathroom. None of these things are too time consuming so if we pace ourselves over a few weekends, we could easily have the bathroom done in a month or so. We took a long break from house projects over the spring and summer and now I feel refreshed and ready to take on a few more things. There are a lot of little projects that we just need to wrap up and get out of the way. I'll update about the bathroom as we go.

I need to blog a little bit about my trip to Cheyenne to visit Mel as well as the arrival of Baby Adley, our friend's Jaime and George's little girl. Those posts will come soon so check back. For now I'm headed upstairs to enjoy my new tv!

Catching Up

2009-08-29T23:45:00.006-05:00

I promised I would be better about getting back into posting and then I let it slide again. Here are a few highlights from the past month:

The last weekend of July was a busy one for us. We attended the wedding of a coworker/ college classmate on Friday the 27th, the on Saturday the 28th I helped host a baby shower for Jaime, our old neighbor. Then that evening we went to see the Rocketboys play a show at Stubbs. It was a fun weekend but I was glad when Sunday rolled around and I could catch up on some sleep!
On August 6th we celebreated our fourth wedding anniversary. Andrew did a very sweet thing and surprised me at work with some delicious chocolate covered fruit.

The funny part of this story is that before he went to Edible Arrangements and bought these, he attempted to make chocolate covered fruit at home by himself. The few strawberries he was able to make tasted delicious, but he burned a lot of the chocolate and had some problems with the technique. It was very sweet of him to do this and I feel bad it didn't turn out as well as he had hoped. As a result, we had a TON of fruit to eat that week. :) We celebrated that evening by eating dinner at Kobe Steakhouse, a Japanese hibachi style restaurant where the prepare the food at your table. I feel like these four years have flown by and gone so fast, but at the same time I can hardly remember life before we were married.

The weekend of the 22nd was a busy one for us again. Our friends Ellen and Jeff reserved a party barge for a big group of people to go out on Lake Travis and celebrate Jeff's birthday. It was really fun!! We were on the boat for 4 hours but I wished it could have been all day. The water felt great and we had a blast hanging out. After the boat party we went home for a few hours to rest and get cleaned up and then we were off to a barbecue at Andrew's boss's house. Both parties had been in the works for several months so we were glad that neither one interfered with the other despite being on the same day.

August 27th marked one year of homeownership for us. It was funny to actually go back and read my blog posts from the few days leading up to the closing. I remember how gung ho we were to get to work and start all our projects on the house. Now the thought of all that work makes me so tired I need a nap. We "celebrated" this milestone by driving down to San Antonio to see Andrew's dad. He was in town for work so we made the trek down to have dinner with him.

Right now we are working on some fun projects in our room. Nothing major, just rearranging furniture and maybe adding a few new things. We have this big master bedroom but the way we had the furniture arrnaged made it hard to really utilize the space. Hopefully now we will have a more practical sitting area where we can relax, watch tv or read a book. We are planning to get a new tv for a our room, a big ottoman to go with the love seat, probably a floor lamp, maybe a vanity table, etc. Once it's all put together I'll get pictures up on here. I'm exciting about making it happen because it will give me a place to hang out when Andrew is playing his video games on the tv downstairs!

Next weekend (Labor Day weekend) I am going to visit Mel in Cheyenne! I am sooo excited to see her and see their house and all the work they have been doing! I'm also excited to get the heck out of here for a few days and not have to work! A four day weekend will be awesome! Maybe if you're lucky I will actually post some pictures from the trip!

How Many is Too Many?

2009-08-02T20:39:00.006-05:00

The other day I was flipping through the channels when I stopped for a few minutes on the TLC show "18 Kids and Counting." I don't normally watch this show but am familiar with the Duggar family and their famous 18 children since they have received a lot of media attention. Andrew paused for a second as he walked by the tv and said "Those people have got to be the most selfish people on earth." I laughed and said something like, "Really? I think they are the EXACT opposite of selfish!" I mean, I imagine someone who has birthed and nurtured 18 children would be quite selfless, but after a little deeper reflection, I understand where Andrew was coming from.

I've been thinking this over in my head for several days now and have been wondering what other people think about this topic. First off, if you've not familar with the Duggar family you can visit their website here: http://duggarfamily.com/ or for a slightly more objective article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duggar_family. Now I don't want to make this all about criticizing this particular family because by all accounts they do seem to be very caring, faithful, people. However, I am going to share a few thoughts about this particular lifestyle and am curious to hear feedback from others.

Let me back up to Andrew's comments. Andrew looks at a lot of things from a more scientific perspective than I do. Right now the world's population is estimated at 6.7 billion people. Humans are reproducing at an alarming rate: in 1939 the population was approximately 2.3 billion (70 years ago, 1/3 the population) with a possible 72 million killed in World War II alone, not to mention other wars, famines, epidemics, etc. (Read more here) While we may not see it in our cozy homes in comfortable suburbs, we have an overpopulation crisis on our hands. If things continue as they are, forty years from now we're looking at a world population of 11 billion people. Wow.

Worldwide issues related to overpopulation include: famine, lack of fresh water, disease, proper healthcare, education, shelter... the list goes on. Here in the U.S. where healthcare is such a hot button issue, the unemployment rate continues to rise, and a college education becomes more and more expensive can we really justify having 18 children? How many is too many?

Andrew tends to be pretty conservative when it comes to answering that question. He says two children is enough for one couple, the exact number to replace the parents. I'm not quite sure where I fall. I definitely don't want 18 kids, but I may want more than 2. Hopefully there will be room for negotiations one day.

The Duggar family is associated with a movement called Quiverfull, where families have as many children as God allows them to have. Here is an explanation taken directly from their website about their decision to have as many children as possible:

"Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar married July 21st, 1984. At that time, they chose to use the birth control pill. They thought, “We don’t want children right now. We can’t afford them. We want children in our timing, when we’re ready.” Four years later they decided to have their first child. Then, Michelle went back on the pill, but she conceived and had a miscarriage. At that point they talked with a Christian medical doctor and read the fine print in the contraceptives package. They found that while taking the pill you can get pregnant and then miscarry. They were grieved! They were Christians! They were pro-life! They realized that their selfish actions had taken the life of their child. They prayed and asked God to forgive them, and to teach them to love children like He loves children. They asked God to bless them with as many children as He saw fit in His timing. Right after that Michelle got pregnant with twins! To date they have been blessed with 17 children, (10 boys and 7 girls) Joshua (& wife Anna), Jana & John-David (twins), Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah & Jeremiah (twins), Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer (and #18 due in January 2009!). "

Like I mentioned before, I think raising 18 children would require a parent to be selfless and focus on their children rather than themselves. But is wanting 18 children selfish? Can you be selfish in your selflessness? I would be remiss is I didn't mention the Octo-Mom that has also received a lot of attention from the media. Obviously I don't know her personally but I think it's safe to say that she might have a few screws loose. I'm sure she loves her children and wants the best for them in some way, but is she really in a position to support 14 children as a single parent on government assistance? I think in this case wanting to have children (or at least continuing to) was selfish of her.

I understand for couples that have fertility issues that IVF can be a wonderful thing and an answer to many prayers. I can't begin to judge because that is a situation I have never been faced with and pray that I never will be. I understand that many women want the experience of being pregnant, creating life with their spouse and carrying their own child. With IVF of course comes the chance of multiples (again, the famous Gosselin family) but I honestly can say I don't fault families for using IVF, despite the fact that it could result in six babies. Of course there is the ethical issue of whether doctors should allow someone such as the Octo-Mom to have 6 eggs implanted... but I digress. Most couples who are using IVF are hoping for just ONE baby, which is very different from 15 pregnancies producing 18 children. For families such as the Duggars, who can quite obviously reproduce without complications, love children, and want to grow their family, maybe at some point they should consider adoption. I understand wanting to have a large family, and if that is what you want, why not adopt? And in case you were wondering, I asked Andrew his thoughts on families adopting several kids and how many would be "ok": as many as they want, he says.

I'm going to wrap up now because I've said a lot, but I really am curious to hear everyone's thoughts about this. This is quite a switch from my normal posts about painting bathrooms and installing ceiling fans, but I've been thinking about this a lot and wonder what other opinions are out there. Give me your feedback!

One Year Later....

2009-07-31T10:03:00.003-05:00

A year ago this week negotiations were underway for our house and a year ago today we were officially under contract. I can hardly believe how quickly the time has flown by! What a year! This time one year ago we had no idea what we were getting into or how much work we were committing to! One year later, we're not nearly done with all the project that I thought we would have completed, but we've learned a lot, worked a lot, and enjoyed our house A LOT! What a blessing it's been to host numerous parties, accomodate lots of over night guests and cook meals for friends and family!

I could make a LONG list of things I still want to do, some easy and cheap, some more involved and a lot more expensive. There is never really a finishing point when it comes to homeownership because as soon as you finish one project you'll always think of another to start. I'll save that list for another post.

It's funny that we have several friends in the Austin area who are in the proccess of house shopping, inspecting, closing and moving right around the time of our "anniversary." It's an exciting time and I can't wait till they are all settled in their new homes and I get to see their nests!

We have a busy weekend coming up: a wedding tonight of a coworker/ ACU friend. Tomorrow I am helping Marika with Jaime's baby shower so I have lots of grocery shopping and food prep to do before 1pm. Then tomorrow night we are going to see The Rocketboys, our friend Mitch's band, play at Stubbs. Never a dull moment!

Back By Popular Demand

2009-07-29T09:11:00.002-05:00

I have been getting harassed from all angles over the past few months about my lack of blogging. I'm not sure what happened, but I can't figure out how I used to be so motivated! I'm going to try and slowly get back into the swing of things. I blame part of the lack of blogging to my newest internet addiction, Twitter. If you REALLY want to know what I'm up to, check me out on there, http://twitter.com/katrinalkincaid. Also, for now our home computer is shot, so that is going to limit my posting and especially my pictures. Hopefully we will have that up and running again soon, but for now my internet usage is limited to work, iPhone, and Andrew's work laptop which he brings home a few nights a week.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T20:08:00.004-05:00

From our family to yours! Hope you had a great Easter! We enjoyed a feast!!

Mmmm! Ham bone!!

I have lots of blogging to catch up on! I will be back soon I promise!

Solicitation For a Good Cause

2009-03-29T13:12:00.003-05:00

One of our friends, Alex Schaefer, is spending two years in Kenya working with the Peace Corps. The work he is doing is very worthwhile and making a big impact in the village of Mbumbuni where he is living. One of his biggest projects is working with the the local primary and secondary schools and encouraging the students to dream big, set goals, and problem solve. Because of the poverty in Mbumbuni, the school cannot afford books for the library. The library, literally, is an empty room. Alex has taken it upon himself to raise funds and transport books to Kenya for the school's library.

You can read about all his work on his blog here:

http://www.aosinafrica.blogspot.com

If you feel so inclined, please visit the Wings of the Dawn website and make a donation for Alex's project.

http://www.wingsofthedawn.org/NdulukuLibraryKenya.html

Home Improvements

2009-03-22T22:03:00.008-05:00

I'm running out of time tonight so I will try to be brief (yeah right). In between everything else we have found time to do some things around the house. Mainly we did some yard work and completely unpacked and decorated the second guest room. And installed a new toilet. Here it all is:

The second guest room had been a catch all for everything we weren't sure what to do with over the past 6 months. It had furniture but there were boxes and bags and junked stacked up everywhere and the closet was so overflowing you couldn't close the door. Here are a few before pictures.

Ugly brass ceiling fan

Closet o'crap

After! This room inherited some of our Virginia Tech paraphernalia.

The closet where you can actually hang clothes and shut the door!

Less obtrusive ceiling fan

I spent MANY hours going through boxes and boxes of mostly junk that we have been lugging around from house to house. I don't know why I am such a pack rat, but the past week has been great for purging. We also donated tons to Goodwill; lots of clothes, shoes, an old tv, a lamp, and a million old VHS tapes. I threw away things that I probably should have thrown away ten years ago but couldn't let go of. It feels go to have downsized and eliminated clutter as well as free up a lot of closet space.

Here is a short play by play of annoying yard work. The previous owner decided it would be great to put a post in the middle of the yard to hang a wind chime on. WHAT? Anyway, in case there was ever an earth quake or an elephant that wanted to hang from the post, they dug a two foot hole and filed it with cement to support the post.

I really thought Andrew might break his back trying to get this thing out of the ground. I was no help at all, so I just took pictures.

Hole to China

After a trip to Home Depot, we filled it in with some dirt and grass seed. Thanks previous owners for that awesome idea!

We also did a lot of raking and general clean up around the yard, and spread grass seed in a lot of bare spots. I didn't take pictures of this because it was not exciting (as opposed to all the really exciting pictures that I take).

One of my house plants died. We gave up on each other.

So I replaced it with a lovely fern. Hopefully we will have a more fruitful relationship.

And last but certainly not least, we got a new toilet! All this came about because the toilet in our downstairs bathroom was SO AWFUL! It was always having problems flushing and nearly overflowing and I was so fed up with it. After a run in with the toilet today, I just about lost it and decided it was time for the thing to go. Next week we have a bulky trash pick up which is great for us because we have LOTS to get rid of. Bulky pickups are a perfect opportunity to get rid of large items (like a toilet) because what else do you do with an old toilet?? With the bulky pickup looming and more company coming to town in three days, I decided this was the time for a new toilet. If we didn't do it now, we'd have no way to get rid of the old one until the next pickup in 6 months. So did I ever mention that I love the City of Austin?!? A while back I talked about the free toilet program that they have, but today I realized its even better than I thought. Previously, we submitted an application for a free toilet and about a week and a half later received a voucher in the mail. You would then take the voucher to a designated retailer who gives you a free High Efficiency Toilet (HET) for you to install. Today after doing some online investigating, I realized they also have a HET Rebate Program which allows you to pick our your model and retailer. All we had to do is go to Home Depot, pick out a HET model from an approved list, pay for it, and now mail in our reciept and application, and in a few weeks we will get a rebate check for the full amount. This cuts out the wait time for the voucher, although you do still have to wait for the rebate check. Anyway, I figured we could install the new toilet some time in the next few days. I went out for a little while to run some errands and when I came back, Andrew was already half way done with the installation! He is so great! I LOVE THE NEW TOILET! This is another dorky homeowner moment, but seriously, who knew it could be so exciting! Other than the fact that it will save us money on our water bill, and is ultimately free, my favorite part is that it doesn't have the nasty tacky wooden seat! YAY!!!

I did not succeed in being brief. Time to take out the trash and head to bed! Thanks for reading!

SXSW & Friends in Town

2009-03-22T21:03:00.009-05:00

For those of you who haven't heard of South by Southwest (SXSW) it is a big film, music and interactive festival that takes place in Austin every year. A lot of what goes on is for people in the industries- premieres, panel discussions, record deals, artist showcases, etc.- but there are some things open to the general public so we took advantage of many of the free events. Along with SXSW came some out of town visitors, so we've had some company at the house over the past week and a half.

First, Dan came to town for the film portion of the festival. Dan writes for an awesome website called Pajiba so he was at SXSW with press credentials and got to see and do some pretty awesome things. Most notibly, he got to meet and interview Seth Rogen who, strangely enough, is his doppleganger (or Dan is his).

They first came face to face on the red carpet at the premiere of "Observe and Report," Rogen's new film that is about to come out. You can read about it here.

Later he got a one on one interview and took a real picture together. I'm still trying to get over my jealousy. And here is a shot of Dan with someone slightly less famous, who apparently likes to make weird faces.

And since we were out on St. Patty's day, I felt compelled to take a picture of the green lights strung across the streets of downtown.

This past Thurdsay evening, we headed downtown to Auditorium Shores, a big park in Austin where there was a free concert series going on for 3 nights as a part of SXSW. We saw Cold War Kids play and a little bit of M. Ward's show. Here are a few shots from that.

Friday night we went to see The Rockeyboys play a free show at a Wine Bar on S. Congress. One of our friends, Mitch Holt, is in the band and we try to see them play as often as we can. We had a great time hanging out with Mitch and his girlfriend Lindy before the show, and then the four of us went to dinner at Guero's after the show, since it was right next door. I've been trying to eat at Guero's since we moved to Austin a year and a half ago, but have always been thwarted somehow. It was a great meal and I definitely would like to go back. The highlight of the night for Andrew by far, was that this trendy, upscale wine bar also served Schlitz in a fancy glass. What more could you ask for?

Saturday night's activity was- wait, you guessed it- another free concert. Explosions in the Sky played at Auditorium Shores, the very last act of the SXSW festival. Aubrey, who is also a bridesmaid in Lindsey's upcoming wedding, arrived in Austin just in time to enjoy the show. Aubrey, Lindsey, Marika and I hung out downtown and had a fun little girls evening. At the end of the show there was an awesome fireworks display (get it, explosions in the sky...) that lasterd forever. It was longer and more elaborate than any Fourth of July display that I had ever seen. Also, I had some old, old family friends come to town so their kids could go to the Explosions in the Sky concert so we had a house full of Cukrowskis and friends. Ken and Karen Cukrowski have known me since I was three, and I have known their girls since they were born, so it is crazy to see them as sophomores and juniors in high school with boyfriends. Ken didn't come for the whirlwind trip from Abilene, but Karen came with Katie and Krista and both their boyfriends. It was fun to hang out with all of them even though the trip was short. I was dumb and didn't snap and pictures while they were here :( I guess there are plenty of other pictures for you to look at :)

Catching Up

2009-03-22T20:56:00.002-05:00

I haven't had a good long post in a while, but honestly, we have been busy and I haven't had much time. This week will be even busier coming up, but it's going to lots of fun. Lindsey's wedding is THIS FRIDAY, and if you haven't been keeping up with my blog over the last several months, I am the "MOH" along with her sister. I'm about to go into full on wedding mode this week so don't expect any posts after this for the rest of the week. I'm sure I will have lots of pictures and news from the wedding to blog about afterwards.

I'm going to do a couple of posts here in the next few minutes just to divide everything up. Read away!

I Think I'll Keep Him

2009-03-16T22:51:00.001-05:00

I had kind of a crappy day today and when Andrew came home from work he brought me a surprise! Isn't he sweet???

65 is the new 21....

2009-03-11T20:42:00.002-05:00

Last weekend was "Aunt Pat's" birthday and boy did we celebrate! Sam and Pat drove in from Arkansas to spend the weekend with "Cousin Chip" and the rest of us, and to celebrate the birthday right. I was not going to reveal her true age in this post but then I realized all the pictures with the cake would have given it away anyway. Besides, she's got nothing to be ashamed of, she makes 65 look good!

Basically we ate the entire weekend. Here is the run down:

Friday night: Dinner at the Salt Lick Barbecue in Driftwood. It's in Texas Monthly as one of the best in the state and they aren't lying. You can eat yourself silly there.

Saturday night: Dinner at Chip's house. Delicious appetizers, grilled steaks with sauteed onions and mushrooms, grilled squash and asparagus, loaded baked potatoes, garlic bread, and red velvet cake for dessert.

Sunday brunch: UNBELIEVABLE brunch at Moonshine, my favorite restaurant in town. We have eaten dinner there on several occasions and had always heard the brunch was fabulous, but now we can attest to that. The variety and quantity of food was so great, no human could eat a portion of each thing and live to tell about it. The mimosas aren't bad either! That champagne will sneak up on you! We left the restaurant and I couldn't even stay awake for the car ride home between the food and mimosas.

In between eating there was time for a few other activities, but not many. We did take a trip out to the TDS game ranch so Uncle Sam and Chip's friends Gum and Molly could see the animals. It's always fun to bring new people out there and see their reactions to the animals and hand feeding a giraffe.

Here is the weekend in pictures!

Runnin Fool

2009-03-04T19:04:00.002-06:00

Last week I decided it was time for me to start running. I have been talking off and on about taking up running for a couple months now but last Monday on my way home from work I decided it was the day. My motivation was two fold: exercise for myself and exercise for Beamer. Austin is an extremely dog-friendly city and everywhere you look someone is eating at a restaurant with their dog, jogging with their dogs, hanging out in the park with their dog, etc. Those of you who know Beamer know that he is a bit of a spaz, but a really good natured dog. I'm kind of jealous of the people with normal dogs who can enjoy those activities with their canine friends. I thought if I could run with him it would be good bonding time for us and a good way to wear him out so he doesn't drive us crazy.

The first day didn't go so well. One mile was a bit of a lofty goal. I did discover, however, that one mile was just a tease for Beamer. I think he would glady run ten. The first day I ran the first half, walked the next quarter and made myself run the last quarter. On day three I actually completed a consecutive mile. This is week two and I have gotten into a decent workout routine. I'm walking a half mile warm up, running a full mile, and walking a half mile cool down. I still feel like I might die during the mile run, but it's getting a little better. I'm amazed at how much better I feel after walking a cool down than if I just stop after running. I also think doing 2 full miles wears Beamer out a little more.

I'm thinking about getting in shape to run a 5k in a few months. I wouldn't be running to be competitive, just running to do it. Having something like that in mind would give me some motivation when running on my own. I've been looking up races online to see what one I would actually want to do and can do based on my schedule over the next few months. I also need to give myself some time to actually get in shape to complete 3 miles. I think Beamer could run a 5k tonight.

I'll keep you posted on my progress!

All in a Weekend's Work: The New, Blue Bathroom

2009-03-01T19:07:00.008-06:00

The bathroom is done and I LOVE IT! Is it weird to want to spend all your time in the guest bathroom? Here is the run down of what we did:

Took down all the old wood fixtures (towel bar, towel ring, toilet paper holder), spackled the holes, and in some cases used joint compound.
Added knobs to the vanity drawers and cabinets, and the cabinet above the toilet.
Painted with Behr "Blue Fox" and I am SO happy with the color!
Installed new faucet, worlds better than the ugly old one.
Installed new light fixture.
Put up new brushed nickel fixtures and over the door towel rack.
Put on new brushed nickel face plates for the outlets and light switches.
Installed curtain rod and hung curtain.
Added new towels.
DONE!

This list is pretty concise, but it doesn't include all the roadblocks we encountered along the way. One thing we have learned, if anything, is never under estimate the amount of time it will take you to do a home improvement project. Also, when in a bind quick runs to Home Depot are usually necessary, even if you have already been twice that day. Even though we had a few hiccups, we still got the project done in one weekend and as far as I'm concerned, never have to do another thing to the guest bathroom as long as we live here.

One small side project Andrew worked on while I painted was changing the ceiling fan in one of the guest bedrooms. We bought the fixtures for the whole house before we even moved in but left a few unchanged when we ran out of steam. For the two guest bedrooms we bought pretty much the cheapest ceiling fans Home Depot sold, so we were interested to see how well they would actually perform. After getting it installed we can honestly say it is a great bargain!! They are about as plain as a fan can come, but they create a great breeze, give off good light, and don't wobble or make any noise. What more can you ask for in a $20 fan? I really hated the light on the old ceiling fan in this room because the glass cover had an etched criss cross pattern that cast weird shadows on the walls. It drove me crazy! The old fan was HUGE with shiny brass hardware and was really obtrusive. The new fan is smaller and neutral colored so it doesn't have to be the focal point in the room.

We did go over the $75 budget that I had in mind, mostly because we decided to change the faucet. If we hadn't changed the faucet we still would have come in around $100. The faucet was one of the cheaper models they carried, but one that we still liked. Again, I guess you should never underestimate the cost of a project. Several of the materials we already had so I'm not including those in this weekend's total. But all in all, I think the end result far exceeds the the cost involved. We didn't go over the top, but we made the room look really nice and ultimately added value to the home with just a few small upgrades.

I'm kicking myself because I didn't take any good "before" pictures of the whole room to compare for afterward. You can just trust me that it was pretty blah with very basic hardware. In fact, on one of our Home Depot trips I saw that they sell the whole set of oak fixtures that were previously in our bathroom for $10!! I obviously like a good bargain, but these looked so crappy you could tell they were worth $2 a piece. Sometimes it is worth it to pay a little extra. Enough blabbing, without further adieu, here are the pictures!!

And to think one week ago this bathroom was home to a turtle!!

Back to the House

2009-02-23T21:24:00.002-06:00

We've had a nice little vacation from house work for about a month but vacation is about to be over. Big plans for this weekend and I am excited to see the finished results! We are going to tackle the guest bathroom this weekend and it will look like a new room when we are done. The biggest job will be painting, but it won't be bad because it's not a very big room and about half the wall space is covered by the mirror, vanity, cabinet, shower and the window so really there isn't much surface area to cover. This bathroom will be even easier to paint than the powder room downstairs because there is less wall and the ceiling is much lower. A few months ago I was starting to hate painting but I'm actually looking forward to it this weekend. I've picked out the color and it is kind of a slate gray-blue. I currently have a yellow shower curtain and towels which I plan to keep, but I'm also going to get some white towels to alternate with the yellow. I think the color combination will look very cool.

We bought the light fixture for that bathroom way back in August when we bought ALL our fixtures so that's one thing we don't have to pay for now! After we paint we will get the light up and add some hardware to the cabinets. The cabinets and drawers don't have any handles or knobs and it annoys me. We bought a pack of knobs months ago and used two in the powder room and still have 8 left over, so again, we don't have to pay for those! I will want to get new towel bars and a towel ring for the bathroom so that will be a purchase I'll have to make. Fortunately the ones I've used in the other bathrooms were from Target, looked great in my opinion, and were really cheap so I will be buying those again!

I already have a white curtain for the window leftover from my curtain collection when we lived in Virginia. Score! One less purchase to avoid. I will be buying a few new white bath towels but I should be able to find some that are relatively inexpensive. I don't need many since I already have all the yellow ones, I just need some white to mix with them.

We do eventually want to replace the faucets in the all bathrooms, but I'm not sure if we will do this one now or wait. The faucet would definitely raise the cost of doing this room right now but it would look really nice to get rid of the old crappy one. The cheapest ones we can find that we like are around $80. If we don't do the faucet and you don't include the other supplies that we have already purchased months ago, I think this weekend we can get away with doing the room for under $75. The faucet would obviously double the cost. Either way, it's going to look really good when it's done and compared to our other projects, its going to be relatively easy.

We are going to have a rash of company over the next couple months so the guest bathroom will be getting lots of use! Only the best for our guests!!

Saying Goodbye

2009-02-22T20:49:00.003-06:00

Today we said goodbye to our turtle friend. Even though we liked the idea of putting a pond in the backyard, it seemed Mr. Turtle did not enjoy life in captivity. We tried feed him several different foods including turtle food from the pet store, but we never really confirmed that he ate while we had him. If we wanted to do a turtle pond at some point it would probably be good to buy a turtle from the pet store where they are bred for captivity. Andrew, unprompted, said he is still not opposed to the idea of doing a pond in the backyard. We have been wanting to do some kind of landscaping and still think a pond might be fun, maybe a little later on.

We released him in a little creek that feeds into Town Lake. The hike and bike trail goes over the creek by a footbridge and last summer we always used to notice how many turtles hung out there in the shallow water. Today we only spotted two other turtles, but its still kind of early in the season. We are sure he will be happy there and make lots of turtle friends.

Carrying him to his new home

Down under the bridge where we released him

Saying our last good bye

Andrew had to hold on to me so I didn't fall down the slope as I let Mr. Turtle go...

... and just like that he was gone!

He swam around happily for a minute and then came back up to the side to say farewell.

We went back up to the bridge to look down on him one last time... he looks happy!! So long Mr. Turtle!!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

2009-02-17T23:04:00.006-06:00

Well Mr. Turtle is still with us. Here are a few more pics from tonight. He has taken up residence in the bathtub until further notice. He was getting into trouble in all the other setups we tried.

We gave him a rock and put some food on it... I'm sure this porcelain bathtub is exactly like his natural habitat.

This is a pretty good close up and you can kind of see his "red ear." Its somewhat faded compared to a younger turtle, but you can see the red spot behind his eye, where he gets his name from.

This one I took just so you can see his crazy claws. They aren't sharp and they definitely couldn't pierce your skin, but they are really long and kind of scratchy and when he is upset he flails them around.

And a brief video of him swimming. Its kind of a lame video, but its hard to catch him in action and he can only swim so much in a bathtub.

I cooked him some salmon tonight and I think he actually ate some. I know, gourmet dinner for the turtle, sounds ridiculous right? Well I was making salmon tonight for dinner anyway so I just fried a tiny bit plain with no sauce and broke it up in to several small pieces. I didn't witness him eat anything, but it looked like some was gone. He did move some of the pieces around so maybe he just hid them well, but I'm pretty sure he ate at least one piece. I read online that they will eat cooked fish so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

We went to Home Depot tonight and started to look at small pond options. You can buy a hard plastic preformed pond which are pretty easy to install. They come in all different sizes. The one was are looking at is a 40 gallon pond. We have been reading up on the logistics of maintaining a pond, filtration, plants, etc.

We haven' t made up our minds %100 percent yet, but I think there's a good chance we might do this. The weather is supposed to be nice the next few days, the perfect weather for building a pond!

New Pet?

2009-02-16T21:55:00.007-06:00

I couldn't be outdone by all my friends. Since everyone seems to be getting dogs lately (see Mel and Chez) I had to do something to match up, and Lord knows we don't need another dog. Well one of my coworkers got to work this morning and announced he had rescued a turtle from the middle of the road on his way in, and it was hanging out in his car. We didn't waste any time in begging him to bring it in and pretty soon Mr. Turtle had made his home in a large cardboard box in my cubicle. I set up a desk lamp to shine on him (turtles like to bask, like they do on logs or rocks) and watched him for the rest of the day. I tried to do some internet research to figure out exactly what kind of turtle he was but I couldn't pick him out from the few I had narrowed down. I emailed two different reptile experts in the central Texas area whose information I found online. I sent them the following pictures and a brief description of the little guy. It wasn't long before I heard back from both, confirming that he was a r ed-eared slider.

Here is what Carl Franklin, Biological Curator of the Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center at UT had to say:

"The turtle in your photo is a mature/old male red eared slider. As they get old, the colors fade (including the red ear) and dark patches become more noticeable."

I brought him home with me and let him chill in the bathtub for a few hours since they are almost entirely aquatic and he had been out of the water for who knows how long. There are a few small ponds around my work but at a turtle's pace they are at least two day's journey from where he was rescued. Later on we decided to see if he wanted to crawl around in the grass and meet the dogs. He wanted to do neither. He totally retracted into his shell.

We figured we shouldn't torture him anymore so we brought him in and set up a little habitat with some shallow water and a lamp for some heat. He tried to escape several times (pictured below) but just kept sliding down the sides and we would laugh.

...Until he really escaped and fell onto the kitchen table. So we found a new habitat for him. We are confident he won't escape from this one since the sides are much taller and slanted. I knew this apple bobbing bucket would come in handy again one day!!

We aren't exactly sure what our long term plans are for Mr. Turtle but we want to be fair to him. We have considered setting up a little habitat for him the backyard but haven't worked out all the details of it yet. If we don't feel we are cut out for turtle ownership we will return him to a body of water soon. Stay tuned!!

Back From Hiatus

2009-02-15T20:53:00.014-06:00

Well I took a brief vacation from blogging the past few weeks. Part of that is due to the fact that we were actually on vacation. Then we returned from vacation and I was sick for about a week so I wasn't up for much of anything. After that, I guess it took me a while to get back into the swing for things, but I'm back in full force. So here is what we've been up to the past few weeks:

On Friday January 23 we got on a plane and flew to Washington DC. We were there Friday through Monday and of course packed all that we could into the short visit. We did get to see a lot of friends and spend time with Andrew's family, which was the goal. Here are a few pictures from our weekend in DC with some explanation.

I ran into these guys in the airport.

Have to have a picture of me and Aubrey every time we go back.

Andrew, his brother Brian, and their other friend Andrew, aka Whitey, being weird.

Shopping in Georgetown with my friend Michael. It was cold. But fun to see him!

Dinner at my most favorite restaurant Hana Tokyo!! It was so good!!

The morning we left to head to Connecticut, Andrew and I with his mom and brother.

Kincaids

On Monday the 26th we rented a car and drove to Connecticut to visit my family. We had not been to Connecticut since Christmas of last year, so the trip was long overdue. My parents have been to Austin to visit during the past year and my dad was here for a few days in September so we had at least seen them. We hadn't seen either of my sisters, brother in law, or niece and nephew in over a year and the kids have grown a lot! Wednesday was the day we had planned to go up to my sister's house for the day and take the kids to Chuck E Cheese for lunch. Mother Nature had another plan and decided to send the snow I was hoping to see. We barely made it to my sisters house and once we were there, we didn't dream of leaving for a while, so we ordered pizza in and watched Cars. We had a fun afternoon with the kids.

Driving on the highway to my sister's house!! Lots of snow!

My parent's house in Cheshire

My parents front yard, full of snow.

Logan is such a smiley kid! He also has A TON of hair!!

Samantha is so grown up now!!

Logan is a little wobbly when he walks but his big sister loves to lead him around and he loves to follow her!

Logan had fun playing with Uncle Andrew! Samantha was not a big fan of Uncle Andrew when she was this age!!

Andrew and I at my parent's house

During the visit we stopped by the new Cabela's that recently opened in East Hartford. We aren't really the outdoors man type, but we enjoyed shooting at stuff in the laser shooting range. Watch out for Load em Up Lois, she's pretty fast with a rifle!!

On Thursday that week we drove to Boston to spend time with some of my best friends in the world. We ate lunch on Thursday with my friend Bethany who I haven't seen in almost two years! She was my maid of honor in my wedding, and even though we hadn't seen each other in a long time, it was like nothing had changed. Seeing her made me miss her even more. We spent a few hours that afternoon just hanging out in the area where her and her husband live, seeing their neighborhood, workplaces, etc. Later in the evening we met up with Bethany, Steven, and my great friend Steve Holt to eat dinner at an awesome Boston seafood joint called "No Name." We had a great time all together, but wished Chrissy could have joined us! After dinner I had to say goodbye to Bethany and Steven and we headed home with Steve. Chrissy had a great dessert waiting for us by the time we got back to the house.

By this point in time, I had developed a pretty bad chest cold and had been coughing quite a bit. It had been coming on for several days but was really starting to hit in full force. I also was close to losing my voice, but when you are seeing friends you rarely get to see, you can't really help but talk. We stayed up way later than we should have, chatting and visiting with Steve and Chrissy. That night I was up coughing a lot and didn't sleep very well. I could barely talk in the morning but we had a few places left we had to visit before we left Boston. My parents lived in Boston in the late 70s through early 80s, and I was actually born there but only lived there for the first year of my life. My dad has a favorite pizza place in the North End that he always goes to whenever he is in Boston. We ate there once several years ago but the last time we were in Boston (August 07) we weren't able to because they have very limited hours, but were determined to eat there on this visit. Disclaimer: the next two pictures were taken a year and a half ago.

Chrissy took the day off from work so we could hang out for a few hours before we had to head home to Connecticut. We ate the most delicious pizza at Galleria Umberto for lunch. We weren't the only ones with that idea, since the line was backed up from the counter to the door. This isn't the kind of pizza place you would ever know about if you didn't already know its there, but the locals know its one of the best. And as if that wasn't already enough, its practically across the street from Mike's Pastry, a famous Boston spot where you feel like you died and went to dessert heaven as soon as you walk in the door. We got dessert to bring home to Connecticut, and a few things for us to enjoy. They have amazing cannolis there, the likes of which could never be imitated by a non Italian. Steve and Chrissy are always great hosts and so flexible with our visits, even when we show up in the middle of the week. We really enjoy the time we get to spend with them.

So Friday afternoon after lunch we drove back to Connecticut with me hacking up my lungs the whole two hour drive back. As soon as we got back to Cheshire, we went to a walk in clinic so I could see a doctor. He told me I had bronchitis and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic which I was very glad to accept. This was to be our last night before we were heading home to Austin, and I was really starting to look forward to my own bed again. Being sick and not being at home is kind of miserable. We had a nice dinner with the ENTIRE family which was some kind of miracle that we all were there at the same time. Again, I couldn't talk too much because my voice was close to non existent, but I made the best of it. Here is a picture with almost all of us, Leigh Anne had not arrived yet and by the time she did there was no way the kids were going to sit still for another picture.

We got home Saturday afternoon and I was feeling pretty miserable. I had so much congestion in my head, nose and chest and no medicine seemed like it could help. My ears were so plugged up and I was in a lot of pain after the flight because I could not pop my ears. It was also kind of scary because it really impaired my hearing for several hours and that was an uneasy feeling. It took about 12 hours before my ears finally opened up and I was feeling pretty lousy for a while there. I'm really glad we came back Saturday afternoon because I had a day and a half to recover before I had to go back to work. I still didn't feel great on Monday, but I felt much better than I had a few days ago.

Well I've probably given more details than you really cared to hear but in case any of you were dying to know everything about our trip, now you know! I will get back to house stuff on here soon enough. We have lots going on coming up soon so check back!

Shower Time!

2009-01-20T20:37:00.009-06:00

Wow! What a crazy and great weekend! Saturday was the big day, I hosted Lindsey's bridal shower here at our house, along with the help of 5 other wonderful hostesses. Everything looked SO great and we really went all out with the blue and brown theme! Her sister Bethany and I are the maid/ matron of honor and we had so much fun emailing back and forth, planning, coming up with different ideas, shopping, picking things out, etc etc! We had a pretty good turn out (although a few who had rsvp'd did not show up) and Lindsey got some great gifts. So here are pictures, some I took, some I stole from Lindsey's mom since she got some better shots than I did!

These are blue and brown chocolates that I molded with a kit from Hobby Lobby! Really pretty easy to make and they are so cute!

The blue where white chocolate and in the shape of "bride" hearts.

And the milk chocolate hearts were the groom!

Lisa and Chêz chatting at the beginning.

Lisa's little girl Asia came and she LOVED Macy!

Mingling with guests.

The cake was my pride and joy. Lucy's did a great job with my requests and the design and it came out beautiful! I wished we didn't have to eat it!

I found pictures on the internet of the pattern I wanted them to do around the cake. It's a similar kind of damask pattern as Lindsey's wedding invitations.

The candy buffet! We had all kinds of blue, brown and white candy and guests made up their own little take home favor boxes! I also found really cute blue and brown printed tissue paper and I had no idea how I was actually going to use it, but it looked really cute on the buffet table!

All of the delicious food! The other hostesses did a great job helping with all the food!!

Another view of the table. Notice the blue and brown damask pattern plates and napkins that Bethany got! So cute!

I found this little plaque and since it was in Lindsey's colors I couldn't pass it up! We used it to decorate on the table! Of course all of us ACU girls were princesses!

Great drinks! Coffee punch, sweet tea, water and best of all margaritas!!

Blue hydrangeas!

All the hostesses! Couldn't have done it without these girls!

And all of us with Lindsey!!

Gift time!

Macy of course needed to be right in the middle of everything so she decided to curl up on Bethany's lap!

Watching Lindsey open gifts!

Goofball cutting the cake! I wish we could have kept it forever!

Enjoying cake and chatting with guests

Lindsey and her mom! What a great picture!!

ACU girls!

Me and Bethany, the MOH's!!

Marika... my full time consultant on all matters!

On Sunday afternoon Lindsey had another shower, but this time I got to attend as a guest. We played the game where you dress a "model" up in a dress made of toilet paper and the bride gets to choose her favorite design. I was of course volunteered so here are some pics of my couture dress!

What a fun weekend, but man, I was ready for some sleep when it was all over! The wedding is just about two months away! I am really excited for the week of the wedding but I'm already starting to wonder... what will I have to keep my imagination occupied after all the festivities are done and all the showers and parties are planned? I guess I will have to come up with more house projects!!

DONESKY!!

2009-01-14T22:52:00.005-06:00

Transitions and baseboards are DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check it out!!

Beautiful transitions from tile to wood!! Macy wanted to pose :)

Baseboards as far as the eye can see!!!

Ok, so there are a few places we haven't finished, but they are little and not really noticeable. We haven't done the baseboards around the fridge because we haven't really figured out how to do that. I'm guessing we'd have to pull the fridge out into the middle of the room so we can get back there, which mean's we'd probably have to unplug it. Really only a couple inches show around the fridge so we aren't in a huge hurry to do it, but eventually it will have to get done so it all looks uniform.

We also haven't put the transition down for the door to the half bath downstairs. There is still a gap there between the tile and wood, but its not extremley obvious. We started to cut the piece to go here but Andrew made a boo boo and cut it wrong so we had to scrap that. We need to go to Home Depot and buy one last lenght of the t-molding so we can finish this.

Also, now that we've put on all these shiny, new, baseboards they make the old trim look really dull. We used a brighter white than what was already in the house so at places where the baseboards meet a door frame (look at the third picture above) there is a definite contrast. Now I'm going to have to go back and repaint all the door frames, window sills, stair railings, etc. That will happen later on. We still need to caulk the baseboards and touch up the nail holes. I'm just glad to have them on all the walls!

We've really made huge progress in the past few weeks and the bridal shower this weekend has been a big motivator. I wish I could talk more about plans for the shower but I know Lindsey reads this and I can't give anything away! After the shower I will post lost of pics of everything! I am so excited about this weekend and am hoping everything goes well. One of the reasons I wanted a house so badly was so I could entertain and do things like this so I'm really glad to be able to host the shower for Lindsey!

Is it weird when....

2009-01-12T22:02:00.002-06:00

Is it weird when you are checking out at your local grocery store and the girl who always rings you up says, "I think you guys are the ones who always buy shallots?" I guess on the one hand it's nice that the employees remember you, but kind of weird that they remember you based on an obscure item in the produce section that they always have to look up the code for. I honestly didn't know what a shallot was until about 6 months ago when I got a cook book that calls for shallots in a lot or recipes. For those of you who don't know, its kind of like a cross between an onion and garlic, with a sweeter, milder taste than an onion. There wasn't much point to this post, I just thought it was a funny little anecdote about grocery shopping. I will post again soon with some real house info.

Night!

Ch-ch-changes

2009-01-06T21:27:00.006-06:00

Just because I haven't posted much lately, doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything! The baseboards are entirely finished in one room!! The remaining room is about half done and it is much smaller and doesn't have tricky angles so we should be able to knock the work out in one night. It feels so good to have the end in sight! Now I have to say, we still have to do the baseboards upstairs in our master bathroom, but they aren't as high of a priority right now. Since I am hosting a shower here at the house in ELEVEN (can't believe it!) days, getting the downstairs area done was top of the list. After the baseboards are done, we have to lay the transitions between the wood and tile and do a few touch up jobs here and there, but the downstairs is so close to DONE-SKY!

We've also been hard at work packing up the Christmas decorations and cleaning up after the holiday mess. Putting everything away is so much less fun than putting it up. The decorating is so fun and festive and then after New Years rolls around you just wish it would put itself away. Anyway, here are pics of the un-Christmafied house and the beautiful new baseboards in the formal living/ dining room!

And here is a runner I got for the walkway, which I love and is the perfect colors for the room! I'm thinking about going back and getting the larger matching rug to go under the dining table.

And here is the area rug we got for the family room. At first I was really enjoying the hardwood and didn't want to cover it up, but I finally gave in and decided it would be good to cover at least part of it.

This evening while hard at work packing up Christmas and cleaning, I decided to unpack my grandma's wedding china that my mom gave to me. My mom didn't really want to hold on to it anymore, and I wasn't about to let it get away so I claimed it. Unfortunately we didn't have anywhere to put it for a long time so it's been in boxes since we moved to Texas and even before that, in Connecticut at my parent's house. Well it's finally out of the box and I'm glad to report none of it was broken in the several moves. I love the antique look of it and think it's so great to have this! My grandparents were married on June 17, 1940 so the china is almost 70 years old.

One last recent addition, we got a dog bed that was supposed to be for Beamer but as you can see, Macy is more than happy to share it with him, or take over the whole thing for herself.

At least they can share nicely!!

Ringing in the New Year

2009-01-01T21:35:00.005-06:00

Happy 2009! 2008 was a great year and we have been so blessed in many ways! We had a great time last night with friends, some good Austin music, and good barbecue. We started out at a friend's party, then went downtown to Stubbs for dinner and a show. Black Joe Lewis put on a really fun show, and I even got to talk to him for a minute! Much to Andrew's chagrin, I gave "Black Joe" Andrew's beer (I was holding it and he hadn't began to drink it yet) and toasted with him to a happy new year. Joe had the beer on stage with him and was drinking it between songs; I was so proud! Andrew pointed out that since he was the entertainment, he was probably getting free drinks from the bar, but in my excitement of talking to him I wasn't really thinking that through. After the show we went back to the party for a little while. Anyway, here are some pictures from our evening!

When we parked downtown for the show, there was shattered glass on the ground in the parking spot in front of us. It was kind of ominous considering recent events. Everything turned out ok.

Here is Black Joe holding the beer I gave him!

And drinking the beer I gave him!

Self portrait right after we rang in the New Year!

Second try

The whole band from above

The guitarist used to be quite attractive but he grew out his hair and got some weird facial hair.

Back at the party with Steph and Windy.

I went in for the high ten and Laynie totally dissed me.

Wow guys.

Windy trying to teach Andrew to two-step.

All the girls wanted to dance with Andrew... its ok, I'm cool with it ;)

Christmas Movies

2008-12-28T14:38:00.002-06:00

In the past few days we have seen and abnormally high ratio of movies for us. It's not that we don't like watching movies but for some reason we're never able to as much as we'd like. Part of the problem is that when we rent a movie and I get all comfortable on the couch and ready to watch, I usually fall asleep in about 20 minutes. We try to get out and go to the movies but something always seems to come up that prevents us from going.

I decided weeks ago that on Christmas Day, I wanted to see Marley and Me and Andrew agreed. We got the book a few years back and started to read it, but never finished. I figured the movie would be cute even though I already knew most of the story. I don't want to give too much away on here, but there aren't any huge surprises in the movie and we all know how the circle of life works... needless to say, I cried like a baby. I cried from about half way through the movie until the end, then a little more in the car on the way home, and then when we got home and saw the dogs. Andrew might not be thrilled with me sharing this with the world, but he cried too. His quote was "I don't care how big your balls are, that movie will make you cry."

Twenty four hours later, on Friday evening we decided to watch The Dark Knight since Andrew had gotten in on DVD from my parents for Christmas. This is an example of a movie that Andrew really wanted to see when it was playing in the theater, but it never happened. I'm not sure why we never saw it but I'm probably partially to blame. I had taken a nap earlier in the afternoon on Friday so the odds were good I could stay awake for the whole movie. Andrew loved the movie which is good since it was his gift. I liked it but the whole comic book genre isn't really my thing, and this movie is especially dark. About 3/4 of the way through I was kind of ready for it to be over, and as I told Andrew, "ready to be happy again." In terms of action and cinematography it's a great flick, but I prefer something a little lighter for a Friday evening.

To get my mind off the doom and gloom from the previous movie and the reminder of the brevity of life from the evening before, I decided to put in MY Christmas gift DVD, Sleeping Beauty. This was one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid and I was pretty excited to have it on DVD now. I doubted Andrew would watch the whole movie but I needed to watch something happy for my own sake. He surprisingly stuck with it the whole time, and around 2 am Saturday morning, we finally called it a night.

Christmas Day

2008-12-25T22:13:00.007-06:00

My AWESOME new red leather Coach bag that Andrew gave me!! I had to pose.

And then my new fluffy bathrobe from my mom and dad. I had to pose again, of course with the bag still.

Macy enjoying one of her Christmas candy canes.

Andrew opening a gift from his parents.... we had no idea what it was going to be!

It's so cute! A Virginia Tech Christmas wreath! That is definitely going on display next year.

Here is Andrew opening Gears of War 2, a video game that he really wanted.

My sweet new Ugg house shoes from Andrew. So warm! I had to model again (with the robe... where is my bag??)

This was a multiple part gift for Andrew... all the necessary ingredients and the bar tool to make Black and Tans. A Black and Tan is a beer drink with a dark beer and a light beer layered in the same glass. The little silver turtle guy sitting on the glass helps you poor them so they stay separated. I think he was more excited about this than the video game.

Beamer happily poses with one of his Christmas/ birthday toys! Happy third birthday Beamer!

And the cooking begins.... Andrew helped peel and chop all the vegetables.

Here I am with our Christmas duck, proudly displaying the neck! Yum!

Gravy is simmering, vegetables are sauteing, potatoes are boiling...

Duck is in the oven!!

Here is our delicious duck!

Our beautiful Christmas dinner: roasted duck, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, crescent rolls and a great bottle of rosè from Marika and Richard, which was really supposed to be a house warming gift, but we wanted to save it for a special occasion! It was a great meal!!

The aftermath.

Macy was worn out from all the cooking so she found a clean laundry basket to take a nap on... thanks Macy.

We were blessed beyond what we could have imagined and had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve

2008-12-25T09:36:00.011-06:00

So far, Christmas in Austin has been great! Yesterday was a fun and beautiful day (sunny 74 degrees) and we enjoyed spending it together. We each had to go into work for a little while in the morning, but that didn't put too much of a damper on things. We met for lunch and drove out to Lockhart with some of my coworkers to eat barbecue at Kreuz Market, one of the top5 named by Texas Monthly. I had been before but Andrew had not and I knew he would love it.

After lunch we went back by my office and then headed over to TDS's exotic game ranch. We recently acquired two camels and I wanted Andrew to see them because they are some of the funniest animals I've ever seen up close. The following video was taken while I was driving the car along side the camel's pen. It's a little rough (hey, it's hard to drive and video at the same time) but you get the idea of how hilarious these creatures are. Please make sure to watch his lips while he runs, especially towards the end of the video where he starts to pick up speed.

Not quite as funny but still peculiar, here are some of our ostriches.

After that we headed home to enjoy the rest of the day work-free. It was so beautiful outside we decided to take the dogs for a walk and have some "family time". There is a large drainage field behind our neighborhood that is dry about 359 days of the year I'm predicting, and we thought it would be fun to let the dogs offleash and get a good run in. They loved it! Beamer ran himself ragged and smelled every square inch of the field. It was great to come home with two tired dogs!

Later in the evening we went to a beautiful candle light Christmas Eve service at University Christian Church. Our church, University Avenue Church of Christ, partners with UCC to do a lot of work in the community, and they have been doing this joint Christmas Eve service for many years now. The inside of the church was beautiful and the organ playing was great! Whenever we are in Austin for Christmas, we will definitely look forward to going to this service. After church we drove around and looked at Christmas lights in some neighborhoods near by. Some of these displays were unreal! I can't imagine how much the electric bill costs after the holiday season!

We finally headed back home since there was a pot roast waiting for us in the crock pot, although neither one of us was starving since we had such a huge lunch. I wanted to eat Christmas Eve dinner on our wedding china, so we got all the pieces out and served up our delicious dinner at 9:30, when we were finally hungry enough to eat again. Notice the candle light.

After dinner we unpacked Andrew's old Super Nintendo and settled in for the night with Super Mario Word! So fun!! The dogs participated in the Christmas fun by sporting their festive bandanas, gifts from "Grandma and Grandpa Keichline." All in all, it was a great Christmas Eve.

Today's activities are about to get underway so it's time to go! Hope everyone has a great Christmas!!

Fed Up with FedEx

2008-12-24T14:07:00.003-06:00

I will never ever ever ever ever do business with FedEx ever again. EVER.

They almost created a Christmas nightmare and the sad thing is, no one in the company seemed to really care. I sent a package home to Connecticut with Christmas presents in it for most of my family members. The package arrived in the local facility in Connecticut on Thursday the 18th but never made it to my parents house. These people are the kings of excuses and I spoke to someone on the phone at the facility in Connecticut, a regional center in Atlanta, the corporate office in Memphis and some other facility in Florida. Regardless of my best efforts, my dad still had to drive to the facility to pick up the box this morning after 6 days of non-delivery. I had to wake up at 4:45 am to call the facility and tell them NOT to put the box on a truck again because I had no faith in their ability to deliver it, and that my dad would come pick it up. And after a week and half of tracking the package, 6 days of broken promises, lies, getting the run around, and then ultimately relieving them of the responsibility of actually delivering anything, they won't refund my money. I'm pretty sure I spent more time and effort on the phone to make sure this thing would get delivered than any FedEx employee. It's unbelievable that customer service this terrible can actually exist.

I'm thankful my family was able to get their Christmas presents finally. This isn't going to ruin my Christmas and I'm not going to dwell on it, but FedEx will never see a penny of my money again! Thank goodness for a crisis averted!

Christmas Fun

2008-12-22T22:08:00.009-06:00

One of the fun Christmas activities to do in Austin is the Trail of Lights in Zilker Park. The Trail is a walk through display of lights, music, cut outs, etc. that attracts 400,000 people a year. This was our second year to visit the Trail with Lindsey and Jake, so I guess it's becoming an Austin Christmas tradition for the four of us to go together. Of course Sunday night was one of the coldest of the year, with temperatures in the 30s and windchills in the 20s! That didn't stop us from having a great time. Here are some pictures:

This is a cool shot of part of the Trail with the Austin skyline in the background.

Pretty trees

Crazy tunnel made of lights that you walk through.

Some kind of Candy Land like display.

Umm.... Santa on a spaceship?

Trying to stay warm.

The giant tree made of lights.

When you stand inside the tree and look up the lights create a spiral like effect. It's an Austin tradition for little kids (and little kids at heart) to stand inside the tree and spin while looking upwards. I tried to do it on camera to give you the effect but its harder to do while filming than you might think. Here is a piece of Austin Christmas from our city to yours:

Andrew's impression of what you look like after spinning.

Andrew has been working a lot the past few weekends, and this one was no exception. While he was gone Sunday afternoon I spent several hours baking Christmas goodies for us to bring to our offices and some to give to friends. We have enjoyed a few ourselves but are trying not to overload. Some of my creations:

Hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season!

Seriously, Be Jealous

2008-12-21T21:13:00.003-06:00

Volume: 13.954 G
Price/ G: $0.499
Total: $6.96

Yes, that's right, gas for 50 cents a gallon. Seven dollars to fill up the car.

For those of you not from around here, Randall's is one of the major grocery store chains in the area. They have a gas rewards program as part of their frequent-customer-type program so that you can earn points towards gas when you purchase groceries. Only some of the locations have gas pumps and the one nearest to our house does not, so we had never redeemed any of our gas points. The other night we were near a Randall's that has gas so we decided to fill up and finally use some of our points. It was a Christmas miracle.

Good Morning (Part 2)

2008-12-17T22:01:00.007-06:00

So now for the full story....

A little before 5am we were asleep in bed when the horn on Andrew's car started going off. It sounded like someone hit the panic button on the remote but that explanation didn't make any sense. Since we were woken up out of a deep sleep, neither one of us was thinking too well. Andrew fumbled around to find his keys but had no luck. After maybe 60 or 90 seconds (that felt like an hour while I was sure the whole neighborhood was cursing us) the horn stopped. Andrew said he thought he had left the keys downstairs and maybe the dog had hit them somehow. This was not a good enough explanation for me. After processing the whole thing and waking up a little more, I commented that I thought I heard a car drive by/ away and thought I saw tail lights through the window. Andrew seemed content to go back to bed and fell back asleep pretty quick. I laid there for a few minutes still feeling very unsure of what had just happened. I got out of bed and peaked through the curtains to look down at the car in the driveway. It was pitch black outside so of course I couldn't see a thing. I got back in bed but only got a little doze in because I kept thinking about the car and how I was sure someone had done something to it.

My alarm went off around 6:30 and I got up to shower. The whole time I was getting ready I just kept thinking how sure I was someone was responsible for the horn going off. After I got out of the bathroom I voiced my concerns to Andrew again. Now it was light out, so again I looked out the window down at the car and saw the smashed window. I knew it!! Andrew gave the police a call and they said they'd be out soon. We went outside to check it out but didn't want to touch anything since I guess it was a "crime scene." We saw the hood was popped and wondered if they had taken anything out, but waited till the police came to open it. A neighbor that we are friendly with came over on his way to work and commiserated with us. His family has lived in the neighborhood for 3 years and he said they've never seen anything like that. The police arrived after waiting for about an hour (thanks Austin PD) and fingerprinted everything. I guess its good they did that, but honestly, we have no hope of ever knowing who did it. While they were dusting, another neighbor from a few houses down that we had never met before came by and said her elderly father is in town visiting and thought he saw something over at our house while he was up in the night. She told the police officer that they could come by her house after they were done and talk to her father. We never got the scoop on what her father had to say, but she said she would come over sometime to talk to us and formally introduce herself.

After the police left, we cleaned up the car and the driveway and I headed off to work. Andrew unfortunately had to drive around town with no driver's side window, and of course its the coldest week of the year. During his lunch break he was able to get the window repaired, but since our deductible is higher, this expense was out of pocket. So for Christmas we got a lovely new car window.

When I got home from work I wasted no time in beginning to clean out the garage. If you read a few weeks back, I cleaned out the garage so we could fit one car in. The ironic thing is, since we have been working on the baseboards the past few nights, we had the project table, saw and some other things spread out in the garage, so both cars were parked in the driveway last night. I guess they didn't care about getting my cheap Hyundai. Here's the new and improved parking situation.

I did have some good blogging material from our house adventures last night, but I have blogged enough for today. I guess that will have to wait for another night. I guess tomorrow we can resume our baseboard work, but we're going to have clean up after ourselves every night so that we can park in the garage at night. Hopefully the paranoia won't last too long!!!

Good Morning

2008-12-17T09:37:00.002-06:00

This is what we woke up to this morning....

I don't have time to elaborate since I'm already late for work, so you'll get the full story later. They didn't steal anything they just smashed in the window and popped the hood.

Happy Holidays!

It's a Christmas Miracle!!!

2008-12-15T22:26:00.005-06:00

WE HAVE BASEBOARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have begun working on the baseboards over the past several days, so here is our progress in pictures:

We've only begun to scratch the surface but at least we're off to a start. We still need to touch up where the nail holes are and caulk along the edges, but so far I think they look great! I really thought we might never have baseboards! I love them!

It's really not that hard to do so now that we got the ball rolling and we know what we're doing, it shouldn't be too hard to continue on. Once the baseboards are done and the transitions between the wood and tile are done, most of our "big" projects will be behind us. It's a good feeling!

Ten days till Christmas!!!!

Let it SNOW!!!!!!!!!

2008-12-09T23:01:00.004-06:00

I posted too soon! Check it out!

Beamer couldn't care less and Macy couldn't wait to get inside!

Let it Hail?

2008-12-09T21:41:00.003-06:00

Well the temperature in Austin dropped to the mid 30s tonight with wind gusts up to 25 miles per hour. Add a little precipitation and you get... hail. We've been listening to the wind all night long and as homeowners, have been a little concerned a few times when a large gust sounds like it's going to knock the house over. The rain started a few hours ago and then later came the hail. I had to peak out the door to take a picture. The first picture I took out the back door when the hail first started. The next one I took about 3 minutes later! It came fast but didn't last or get much bigger. I wish I could say it was snow but we'll take what we can get. Happy Holidays!!

Christmasing

2008-12-07T22:04:00.007-06:00

Friday night we went to Andrew's work Christmas party and Saturday night we went to mine. We had a cocktail hour at our house on Saturday night before the TDS party with a good turn out Here are pictures from all the festivities.

Andrew's company rented Hummer limos to transport everyone for the party. It was fun/ ridiculous to ride in them.

Peeps inside the hummer. The floor of the limo lit up multi-color like a disco dance floor.

Us in the limo, a little blurry but still cute.

The CFO of Asuragen and the General Counsel getting down at the party.

Andrew and one of his coworkers/ friend Crystal, being goofy.

Party at our house... Steph wearing her husband's pimp hat.

Most of the girls plus Jay.

And of course the guys circle round the television while football was on.

The "professional" picture we had taken at the party (I scanned it in.)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

2008-12-07T20:17:00.011-06:00

Do you see the similarity? I hope you do... the one on the left is the one who tried to steal Christmas this year.

This morning Andrew and I were lying in bed asleep when he heard a loud CRASH. I could only imagine the worst but was hoping for the best. Macy was in the bedroom with us but Beamer was downstairs somewhere so we could only assume he was responsible for whatever had happpened. Andrew opened the bedroom door and looked downstairs to see Beamer standing next to the fallen Christmas tree. I couldnt bring myself to get out of bed and look at it so I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to share. I'm imagining it looked something like this....

Andrew went downstairs to start to clean up but I was too distraught to do anything. After about 20 minutes he called upstairs and asked if I could come help. By that time he was holding the tree upright but had not secured it yet. We got it stable and standing again and then began sorting through the mess. A lot of ornaments were on the ground but many were not broken. Some, however, were completely shattered to smithereens.

There are several that are not broken badly and can be glued back together. I'm suprised and very thankful for how many were not even harmed. I think at the most we lost 10 ornaments but I can't say for sure since some where beyond recognition by the time I got to them. Here are a few that I am very sad that were broken.

Last year Andrew's mom gave us matching doggy ornaments for Beamer and Macy. Of course the one that says "Beamer" is just fine and the Macy one was destroyed. I want to kill him.

Every year Andrew's mom has give him (and me too since we have been married) an ornament from the White House. This one is from 2000. You can't tell it in this picture but the blue inside part is completely unattached from the metal frame and there is really no way to reattach it. I love all these White House ornaments so I was pretty sad to loose one.

This is an ornament my mom put our wedding picture in and it is special to us. The glass is cracked down the middle, but might be able to be glued together although the crack will still remain.

It's hard to say for sure what happened, but my best guess is that Beamer was trying to drink the water out of the tree stand. I had been up a few hours earlier to let the dogs go outside and he was rattling his bowl for water then, so I filled it up then, but I'm sure he finished that and then went looking for more. I am not happy with him.

After we cleaned up the mess, got the tree standing, and sorted through what was salvageable, I didn't have the emotional energy to deal with redecorating the tree or fixing the lights. This is how we left it for now with about half the ornaments piled on the coffee table waiting to be rehung.

Later on I started referring to Beamer as the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas and was able to laugh about it a little. Andrew told him he was a triple-decker sauerkraut toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce. I'm trying to have a sense of humor about it and I'm sure in a few years when we unpack the ornaments at the beginning of the season we will laugh about it and remember the story. Right now I'm still pretty angry.

FOR SALE:
One Brittany Spaniel, male, 3 years old. Comes neutered and is current on all vaccinations. Price negotiable.

Decking The Halls

2008-12-04T21:55:00.007-06:00

Well we got our tree on Monday night and got it up, but it wasn't until Tuesday that we began decorating. Most of the house is decorated now, and from the street we look pretty Christmas-y. Check it out:

Andrew putting the angel on the tree.

In progress... well at least we got the lights up.

I'm so festive.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

Not a great picture but an idea of the view from the street.

Front door with the tree just inside the window.

The finished tree!!

This is a sneak preview of what you will see on our Christmas card (if you haven't gotten it already.)

Well we have Andrew's work Christmas party tomorrow night and mine on Saturday so we will be full of holiday cheer this weekend. On Saturday we are having all my friends from work over before the party for a "cocktail hour" so I have to get the house in tip top shape for that. It should be a fun weekend but we won't be getting any work done on the house! My biggest wish for Christmas would be to wake up on Christmas morning and have beautiful baseboards through out the house. A girl can dream!

Happy Holidays!!

Walking in Memphis

2008-12-01T22:25:00.005-06:00

Although this was part of our Thanksgiving weekend, our day trip to Memphis gets its own post. On Saturday we decided to drive to Memphis, about two hours away from Searcy, to do the tour of Graceland and eat some world famous barbecue. Andrew has always wanted to go to Graceland for some reason and loves the song Walking in Memphis. We've talked about visiting Graceland in the past but never had a good reason to be in Memphis before. Also, if you know us very well, you know that a two hour car drive is not too far for us to drive to eat good barbecue. All in all, this was the formula for a perfect day trip. My aunt has a Garmin GPS she let us borrow for the drive, and we loved playing with it. About 30 minutes into the trip Andrew exclaimed, "This thing is awesome."

Driving into Memphis just before you cross over the bridge on the Arkansas side, you drive through West Memphis, AR. My parents lived in West Memphis when they were first newly weds, while my dad was doing graduate work at UT Memphis. My oldest sister was born during the time they were living there, and it's a place that they reminisce about from time to time. I caught a snapshot of West Memphis that I'm sure they will appreciate.

Our first stop was at The Rendezvous, a world famous barbecue joint located in a back alley and down a flight of stairs in downtown Memphis. It had the perfect atmosphere for what it was and we enjoyed a great lunch. Andrew tried to hide his excitement, but he had a gleam in his eyes like a kid waiting to open his Christmas presents, waiting for the ribs to come after we ordered. This place was first recommended to us by my good friend Steve Holt, and everyone we talked to after him also sang its praises. It did not disappoint.

Then it was on to Graceland, our main reason for being in Memphis. I thought it would be cool but I expected it to be kind of cheesy- for some reason I was thinking of something reminiscent of Dollywood in Gatlinburg, TN. It was quite different. We were both pleasantly surprised at how interesting the tour was and really enjoyed it. We went on the tour of the mansion and other buildings on the grounds of Graceland and then paid a little extra to see some of the other exhibits. The additional exhibits included a museum of Elvis's car and motorcycle collection, a display of many of Elvis's jumpsuits and stage costumes, and two of his private jets. I totally looked like a tourist cause I was taking pictures at every opportunity, and three days ago I could have cared less about Elvis. I've only included the highlights in the slideshow, but don't worry I took more!

So here are some interesting facts you may not have known about Elvis (yes I'm a nerd):

One of Elvis's favorite drinks was Diet Dr. Pepper. He also liked Lime Gatorade. He didn't much care for the taste of alcohol.
Elvis's favorite car out of his whole collection was the pink Cadillac. It was his mother's favorite and he often referred to it as "Gladys' car."
Elvis had a twin brother Jesse Garon Presley who was born stillborn.
Elvis loved the sport of racquetball so much, he had a building built on the grounds of Graceland with a racquetball court and a lounge with a glass wall, where spectators could watch matches.
Elvis had three televisions built into the wall of his lounge in the basement of Graceland. He got this idea because he heard that President Lyndon Johnson had three tvs to keep up with the broadcasts of all the major news networks. This might not seem as impressive today, but in the 60's that was pretty extravagant!

Elvis loved spontaneous trips on his private jet the Lisa Marie. Once when his daughter Lisa was young and he realized she had never seen snow, they flew to Colorado, played in the snow for a few minutes, then turned around and went home to Memphis. Lisa also celebrated her ninth birthday in the air at the enormous conference table aboard the luxurious jet.

Ok that's enough Elvis nerd-dom. If you ever get the chance to visit Graceland, its definitely a fun time!

Thanksgiving Highlights

2008-12-01T22:05:00.003-06:00

We spent Thanksgiving for the second year in a row in Searcy with much of the Keichline side of my family. Both of my dad's siblings live in Searcy as well as several of my cousins, their spouses, and children (my second cousins). Searcy isn't a big town and there isn't a whole lot to do which makes it perfect for relaxing. We spent most of the long weekend watching tv, napping, eating, and playing Mexican Train (a great dominoes game for those who don't know). My Aunt Pat is a great cook and loves to spoil us and feed us, so we soak up as much of it as we can while we're there. We really enjoy going to Searcy, but after the 11 hour car ride with two dogs, delayed by traffic on I-35, coming home Sunday night, we both agreed we wished it was a lot closer. Here are a few photos from the weekend!

The doggies in the car on the long drive... they weren't so happy about it.

Macy's face cracks me up in this picture!

Andrew with my second cousin Mason.

My Aunt Fran with my second cousin Morgan (her grandson).

My cousin Vance with his son Landan being a goofball.

Rub a Dub Dub

2008-11-25T22:23:00.003-06:00

Since we are descending on a gracious host for the weekend with our two dogs, we figured we'd at least bring clean dogs.

They, of course, hated the experience but have recovered just fine!

Permit Parking Only

2008-11-24T21:24:00.003-06:00

Andrew had to go back in to work for a little while this evening after dinner so this was my "project" when he was gone.

I planned to have my car parked in the garage when he got home so he would be confused when he pulled in the driveway, but he got home about 3 minutes too early. I was hoping he'd call on the way home like he usually does, and give me some warning, but I heard him pull in the driveway just as I was finishing sweeping out the garage. Ah well. He was still surprised.

I had somewhat of a lazy weekend but Andrew had to work on Saturday for about 6 hours and went in again on Sunday for about an hour and a half. Thankfully it is a short week and then we get to enjoy Thanksgiving in Searcy, Arkansas with most of my extended family. We head out Wednesday morning with the dogs piled into the car and will return Sunday night. We always have a good time with my family in Searcy, so we are looking forward to a relaxing and fun weekend.

If I don't post again, have a great Thanksgiving!

Fixture Eyes on These!

2008-11-17T22:58:00.004-06:00

The painting is done and the fixtures are up! I love the way it looks all together and I'm so glad to be done!

Now if only we could have baseboards!!!

Back At It

2008-11-16T00:51:00.004-06:00

After a few weeks off from house projects, we spent yet another Saturday making purchases at Home Depot and working on the house. Most of what we did today was painting, but Andrew did take some time to rip out the baseboards in the kitchen (we just never got around to it before) so we can put in the new ones and they will be uniform throughout the first floor.

We finished painting the exterior trim of the front door. The door project seems to be one that is never ending but getting the trim painted was a big step. We still need to paint the exterior of the door to match the rest of the house, and then the outside will be done. The previous owner left several cans of paint in the garage, most of which we have been able to match up with the places they were used. The paint we used today for the trim was one of the ones left by them and we were thankful to have it, not only because it was free, but because we knew it would match the rest of the trim. We haven't found any paint that looks like the exterior paint color, though, so we aren't sure what to use for the door so that it will match. Hopefully by next weekend we can get that figured out so we can paint the door. Then we just need to finish up on the inside of the door! Will it ever end???

Wet paint!!!

All done!

After we got the door finished, we moved inside to the master bathroom. This room has been in limbo since we moved in because of paint issues. I wanted the bathroom to be a slightly lighter shade of yellow/ gold than the master bedroom. I picked out a color, but only had time to do one coat before we moved in and needed to start using the bathroom. The color wasn't exactly what I had in mind but I kept telling myself once I put on another coat it would look better. Since the paint wasn't done, we hadn't put up any of the towel bars or toilet paper holder so we have been making due without for the past 2 months. Well I finally figured enough was enough and made a decision about the paint so we could move forward. I decided I didn't love the color in the bathroom and wanted to go ahead and do the same color as in the bedroom. We bought another gallon of paint at Home Depot and got to work on it. We didn't get the whole bathroom finished tonight, but it's pretty close. We finally called it quits so it would have enough time to dry before tomorrow morning when we would need to shower. We only have about an hours worth of work left to do, so we can finish up tomorrow. Then we can put up all the fixtures that I bought two months ago and the room will actually be done!!

In progress...

It feels good to be crossing projects off the list and get a little closer to being DONE! And I'm sure by the time we've finished everything on the list I will have thought up a whole new list. I know, it never ends!

Happy Birthday Logan!!

2008-11-14T10:00:00.004-06:00

Today is my nephew Logan's 1st birthday! Tomorrow there will be a birthday party for him and I wish we could be there to celebrate with everyone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the gift we sent will make it there in time! I've only gotten to see him once, last year at Christmas, so I'm sure when we see him in January he will be such a big boy! Here are some pics of the cutie over the past year.

Logan in the hospital, minutes after birth!

Still in the hospital, slightly older. This is one of my favorite pictures of him.

Christmas time in Connecticut, meeting Logan for the first time.

He's getting bigger!!

He looks so much like my dad! Here he is around Halloween this year.

Happy Birthday Logan! I can't wait to see you in January!! Save me some cake!

Christmas Came Early!

2008-11-13T23:09:00.005-06:00

About a month ago my mom asked if there were any items from Target that we wanted for Christmas, things that she could order online and have shipped directly to us since mailing gift can get complicated. The only thing other than household items or toiletries that we really wanted was two nightstand that we had seen on the website that we liked. Since we moved in about two months ago, we have been making due with no nightstand since I banished the old, hand-me-down, mis-matching ones from the new house. Not only did they look terrible with the wood color of the bed, they didn't even match each other. I have been getting by with a wooden bar stool and Andrew has been putting his clock and other items in a pile on the floor. We had seen the ones we liked on Target.com but for Target they were kind of on the higher end of furniture pieces, and we hadn't resolved ourselves to suck it up and pay for two. When my mom called and told me she would go ahead and buy us both(!) for Christmas/ a house warming gift, I was really excited! They were on sale at the time and had an offer for free shipping, so she wanted to go ahead and order them then. We got them in the mail the day we left for our Virginia trip so I wasn't able to open them or take a look at them. Last night and tonight I worked on putting them together (while Andrew watched tv...) and I love the way they look!

I'm so glad to have nighstands now! These were the final pieces we needed to make our bedroom complete. They are a pretty close match to the color wood of the bed and have a similar style. I'm glad Christmas came early this year! Thanks Mom and Dad!

The Good List

2008-11-12T22:06:00.010-06:00

Usually coming back from vacation is a bit of a let down, but I have to say this week has been full of goodness! Here is a list of some of what is going down:

Free dinner (Monday night) at Fogo De Chao, thanks to TDS! If you've never been to Fogo or a similar style Brazilian steakhouse, you don't know what you're missing. It's a meat lovers dream!

Free dinner tomorrow night, again thanks to TDS! This time it's Rudy's BBQ at our pavilion, but I can't complain!

Brushfire Records released a Christmas album yesterday with several of my favorite artists. I picked it up today and have been loving it so far! Mason Jennings, my most favorite musician in the whole world sings "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Check it out here:

http://www.ilike.com/artist/Jack+Johnson

My most FAVORITE restaurant ever, Freebirds, is opening a location in South Austin! Sure, there is one about 15 minutes from us in one direction, and another about 20 the other way.... but this one will be like five minutes from our house!!! I think I'm going to be able lower my Freebirds eating frequency average to 7 days or less. We drove by the new location tonight and I had to take a picture!!

Friday night we are going to see one of our favorite Austin bands, Ghostland Observatory, at Stubbs and we can't wait! Ghostland always puts on a fantastic show and you can't help but have a great time. Here we are the last time we saw Ghostland... obviously having a good time!!

Thanks for tuning in to Best Week Ever!!!

Aaaaand We're Back!

2008-11-09T22:44:00.006-06:00

We are back home in Austin after a great visit to Virginia. You've probably already looked at the extensive slide show, so you have a pretty good idea of what we were up to. I'll elaborate a little more.

On Tuesday night I told Andrew I had a surprise for him after work on Wednesday and I needed to see if he could get off a little early. He thought it wouldn't be a problem, and confirmed on Wednesday morning that he could leave by 4:30. During the day he tried to guess at what it was we would be doing. He checked concert schedules here in Austin, looked at movie theaters, etc. to try and figure out what the surprise was, but he couldn't come up with anything. I left work early on Wednesday afternoon, ran home, packed our bags, and waited for him to arrive. As you saw in the pictures, the dogs helped deliver the surprise (super cheesy, I know but it was the best I could come up with). Unfortunately when Andrew pulled in the driveway and the dogs ran to the door to greet him (as planned) the envelope got ripped off Macy's collar and fell on the ground. Andrew saw Beamer's note which said "Open Me Last" and was confused about what was going on until he saw the other note lying on the ground, "Open Me First". It took a few minutes for him to process it all when he opened the football tickets and plane tickets, so I said, "We're going to Virginia!!" To which he replied, "GREAT! When??" Me, "RIGHT NOW!!"

Since our bags were packed and we had about an hour and a half till our flight was leaving, we skidaddled out of the house pretty quick to get to the airport. All of our travel went very smoothly, for which we are thankful for. We got in late Wednesday night and spent that night with Andrew's parents in Arlington. Thursday morning we drove to Blacksburg, VA where Virginia Tech is located, about a 4 hour drive from Arlington. We had a great time in Blacksburg and loved watching the Hokies' win against Maryland. Friday morning we headed back up to Arlington and spent the rest of the weekend visiting friends. All in all it was a great trip, but as always, too short. We got back to the house tonight a little before 9 and were very glad to see the puppies, who were equally glad to see us.

Below are two short videos from the Tech game:

Touchdown Hokies!!!! Unfortunately the lady standing in front of me jumped up in excitement, but the video still came out pretty good.

Tech just made it over the line for a touchdown in this video, then the play was reviewed, but thankfully the call remained. The refereeing in this game was interesting for sure, but it ended up ok in the end.

What a great weekend!

News From the East Coast

2008-11-08T13:33:00.002-06:00

Well for those of you who didn't already know, which I can't imagine is anyone since the whole world knew, I surprised Andrew and planned a trip to Virginia. We are in Arlington right now at his parents house, and are enjoying time with friends and family. On Thursday night we were in Blacksburg watching the Virginia Tech Hokies stomp on Maryland!! We had a great time in Blacksburg and being in the stadium for a Thursday night game was everything Andrew had always said it would be. I wish the trip could have been longer, but we are packing everything we can into the short time that we have. We leave tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 to head back to Austin. When we get back home I will post pictures and give the full description of how I pulled off the surprise. For now I will just tell you Andrew was shocked and had absolutely NO IDEA that any of the planning had been going on. It's been a great trip. Check back soon for photos!!

Election Day Memories

2008-11-04T13:10:00.008-06:00

I would have typed out this story myself, but Melanie did such a good job of retelling it, I figured I'd just copy and paste hers.

In Melanie's words:

Circa 2003, my college roommate Katrina and I were discussing politics (me, a Republican and she, a Democrat) and looking back to the 2000 election, in which George W. Bush won after weeks of uncertainty and hanging chads. The night the news stations let us know he'd won the presidency, a soft snow had started to fall (kind of a big deal for the heat and dryness of West Texas).

Me, wistfully: I remember being in the dorms when they finally announced that Bush had won. I was laughing and dancing around my room, when I looked out the window and saw the snow. I thought to myself, "It's snowing, George Bush is president, and all's right with the world."

Katrina, deadpan: Really? I remember thinking, "George Bush is president and hell just froze over."

**************************************************************************

Now I need to add a few personal thoughts. In the fall of 2000 I was a freshman at ACU, still experiecing some culture shock as a result of transplanting from Connecticut to West Texas. I had voted by absentee ballot in Connecticut, and was proud of the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, our own Joe Lieberman (before he deflected). Being in a land of Bush-lovers was like being in a foreign country. Add screaming southern girls who had never seen snow before, who thought that 2 flakes melting in the air was the most exciting thing since... the last Republican president, to the equation and my hell had, in fact, just frozen over.

Halloweening

2008-11-02T16:18:00.004-06:00

Our Halloween set up, welcoming Trick or Treaters.

Obama and Kool Aid Man! We got lots of compliments on the Obama pumpkin!!

My favorite trick or treater of all!! Baby Kade stopped by to show us his fisherman costume. We couldn't get him to hold the pole or wear his hat for a picture, but he still looks pretty cute!

Andrew in his gorilla suit... he means business!! Macy was confused!

Later on at the party, Baby Kade is hanging out with his mom, the Homecoming Queen, and dad as a housewife... I think that was what Ryan was supposed to be!

Riana the Homecoming Queen

End of the night in San Marcos with Jaime, the white trash bride, and Marika as Brittney Spears!!

Joe the Plumber

2008-10-30T22:11:00.003-05:00

Here's a little anecdote about home ownership, a true story that happened to us a few nights ago.

I was cooking dinner and throwing the food waste into the sink with the disposal as I was going. I had thrown some remains of an onion in the disposal earlier, and then later washed off a fresh head of lettuce and ripped off the outer leaves. I pushed all the scraps down the drain, turned the water on and then flipped the switch for the disposal. I knew the disposal was on because I could hear it running but it didn't look like it was breaking anything up. The water that was running was not going down the drain, but slowly filling up in the sink. I turned the disposal off to let the water drain for a minute. When I turned it back on, the disposal sprayed green-lettuce-pulp-water up out of the sink and lightly misted the kitchen. I yelled "OH LORD!" and Andrew yelled from the family room, "ARE YOU OK?" He hadn't been paying attention to what was going on and I guess he thought I was hurt. He came over to asses the situation while I wiped down the fridge, counter, floor, and other surfaces where the green-lettuce-pulp-water had landed. We decided to hold a large plastic mixing bowl a little above the drain so water could still get down but spray would not come out. After a few rounds of trying that, the sink was full of green-lettuce-pulp-water and nothing was going down. All I could think to say to Andrew was, "Welcome to home ownership!" and we both laughed. At this point I considered taking a picture because I was already thinking the situation would make for great blog fodder, but I decided I'd spare you all the view of the green pulp. Although it was pretty humorous, I started wondering what we were going to do to fix the problem. We know a good electrician but we don't have a plumber (where is Joe when you need him?), we certainly didn't know how to fix a garbage disposal ourselves, and for the first time in our adult lives, we didn't have a landlord we could call. It was up to us to fix this, and most likely would have to shell out a lot of cash in the process. This was the first major "malfunction" we encountered since owning the house, other than ones we created ourselves during various improvement projects. I started to get nervous.

Luckily, Andrew remembered we had an unopened bottle of liquid plumber so we poured most of that down the sink and let it sit for a few minutes. The next time we turned the disposal on everything went down just fine and the water drained. Crisis averted. No phone call to Joe.

Welcome to home ownership.

Pumpkin Carving!

2008-10-28T23:27:00.004-05:00

Tonight we carved our jack-o' lanterns for Halloween. I have to admit we both used patterns we found on the internet, but I think we executed them pretty well. I told Andrew I was going to put the pictures up on the blog and have a vote on which one wins. Check out the photos!

So cast your votes! Are you for Barack or the Kool Aid Man??? Are you a "Yes We Can" or an "Oh Yeah!"? Don't be shy, let us know!

Disclaimer: No political affiliations will be assumed ;)

Brrrr!!!!

2008-10-28T07:36:00.005-05:00

A cold front came through over night and it got chilly here in Austin! When we woke up this morning it was 64 degrees in the house! Andrew had to figure out how to get the heat started in the house for the first time! Don't worry, it will be in the mid 70s by this afternoon, and back in the 80s again in just a few days!

Fun Weekend With Friends

2008-10-27T21:19:00.006-05:00

So last weekend (October 18th) we made the treacherous trek up I-35 to Dallas for my friend Catherine's wedding. My dear friend Melanie was in town for the occasion, so not only was it wonderful to see Catherine get married, but it was great to be reunited with friends. For some reason I totally skipped over this event on my blog, so I'm rewinding a little to post pictures. Enjoy!

Brian & Catherine Wick!

The fab four, we must always take a picture!

ACU Girls! Go Wildcats!

Cake cutting at the reception

Andrew busting a move on Lindsey

Me and Mel, having to say good bye again :(

Fewer and Far Between...

2008-10-26T20:04:00.005-05:00

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been updating as frequently on here as I once was. This weekend was the first "lazy" weekend we have had in months and it was great! We watched a lot of tv, napped on the couch, and caught up on some much needed relaxation. Andrew did a little bit of work on the front door, which more than I can say for myself. He needed to use filler in between the wood trim and the stone around the door since there were gaps around. Then he caulked around it and had to let it dry for several hours. Tomorrow we should be able to prime it after work. Then we'll eventualy get it painted to match the other trim on the house. Here is what it looks like right now.

We also stopped by a friend's Halloween party on Saturday night where there were about a million little kids running around in costumes. I'm pretty sure we were the only people there without kids so it was a little overwhelming but we still had a good time. Other than the Halloween party and church this morning, we have barely left the house all weekend!

On another note, for everyone reading this on the East Coast, our weather in Austin is finally starting to get "cooler." We had one or two nights where the temperature dipped as low as the high 40s, but the days are still pretty warm. I think on Saturday the high was 87, but for the next week the highs are in the low 80s, high 70s. The evenings are very pleasant though, and we have enjoyed taking the dogs on walks around our new neighborhood. Since we're slowing down with work on the house, we're finally being good dog owners again and taking the dogs out and exploring our neighborhood some more. There is an open field on the next block over, so one of these days we will probably experiment with letting Beamer run around there. In between walks, the dogs have been pretty good at lazing around with us the past few days.

I never put pictures up on here from my friend Catherine's wedding that we went to last weekend in Dallas. We had a great time and got to see some friends that we hadn't seen in a while. We also got to spend a few hours on Sunday morning visiting with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Dallas. Maybe over the next few days I will post some pics from the wedding.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Honey Do List

2008-10-22T19:24:00.004-05:00

All of the unfinished projects that we have keep running through my mind and I wonder where we will ever find the time to do them all. The house is definitely liveable, but there are so many loose ends to tie up on so many different projects.

Here are some examples:

There are no transitions between the tile in the kitchen and the wood floor in the family room and formal dining, just a gap where you can see the cement floor underneath. We bought one piece of the t-mold transition that we will use to see how it looks, but we need to buy several more feet, and set some time aside to glue them down. This is what it will look like:

I've mentioned on here several times that we haven't done the baseboards yet, and if you've wondered what it looks like, here is what I'm talking about:

Again there is a gap where the wood ends and the wall begins, not to mention the lack of paint along the floor where the baseboards will go. To do the baseboards on the whole first floor will be a pretty big project, so eventually we will need to bite the bullet and do it. Here is a picture of the one sample piece of baseboard we bought and what it will look like:

So those are just two examples but since we are on the subject, here is the longer list:

Finish baseboards
Finish wood transitions in kitchen, powder room and downstairs coat closet
Prime and paint exterior trim on the front door
Touch up around front door on the inside
Touch up green paint in family room & kitchen
Change ceiling fan/ light fixture in both guest rooms
Change light fixture in guest bathroom
Change all towel bars & fixtures in guest bath
Hang valance on guest bathroom window
Finish unpacking and decorating second guest room
Put a second coat of paint on master bathroom
Put up all fixtures in master bathroom
Install baseboards in master bathroom
Touch up paint in master bedroom

Then there are several outdoor projects we need to work on like raking, weeding, mowing, and trimming some branches.

And then sometime down the road I'd like to paint both guest rooms and the guest bathroom, but those projects aren't so urgent. I'd also really like to put a new door on the backdoor out to the deck, like a single french door or something with a window so you can see out to the backdoor and also let more light in. That is not urgent either but its on my long-term to do list.

I'm sure I've left a few things off that I will remember later on because that list seems way to short! Eventually we will have the list whittled down, but until then, any volunteers??? ;)

Mending Fences

2008-10-21T20:12:00.009-05:00

One of the tasks we have been putting off for some time now is fixing the gap along the bottom of our fence in the backyard. For some unexplainable reason, the fence doesn't go all the way to the ground on one side of the yard. There is a large drainage ditch on the other side of the fence, so maybe that has something to do with it, maybe it was for run off purposes, but we haven't really figured it out. In some places the gap is as large as a foot in a half. That is definitely enough space for Macy to walk comfortably underneath, and enough for Beamer to slide under.

Up until recently, Beamer just liked to peak around under the fence and look out to the other side. Luckily they haven't tried too much to get out, but recently Beamer figured out how easy it was to get under the fence and became really interested. Once he gets out he doesn't try to run away, I think he is mostly fascinated with the fact that he can go under the fence. Here is the view we have been getting of Beamer lately:

And just so you could get the full effect, I took a short video of Beamer's David Copperfield act, with Macy as his assistant.

Unfortunately I didn't catch these all on the same video, so here is Beamer trying to get back into the yard while his little sister terrorizes him.

Obviously if this continued it would be a problem, so tonight Andrew went about cutting some wire fencing and stapling it to the wood fence. Here is the play by play:

The fence isn't entirely "mended" yet; there are still a few more feet of wire fencing to be added. The wire is surprisingly sturdy, though, and even if Beamer could bend it, it would be quite uncomfortable for him to try and squeeze under it. I don't think we will have any more disappearing acts from now on.

And one more video, just because it's funny and a glimpse into our everday life with the doggies. Macy loves to dart around the yard and chase Beamer and bite all over him, and he loves to ignore her. It's love.

House Photo Update!!

2008-10-20T17:39:00.004-05:00

Some photos of the guest rooms and guest bathroom to tide you over till I do a real update! Maybe later tonight! Enjoy for now!

Hey Good Lookin'... Whatcha Got Cookin?

2008-10-12T20:44:00.010-05:00

The new oven has arrived!!! I have several pictures to update you on so I put them in a short slideshow.

The new oven arrived yesterday around 10 am and I spent about a good hour reading through the manual because I had no idea how to use it! It's really quite smart for an appliance! Andrew was the first to really "use" it, he heated up some soup on the stove top yesterday afternoon. I baked in it for the first time today, and so far I think it's great! I'm really amazed at how quickly it can preheat and how it has so many different settings to turn on and off automatically when you program it. You can basically cook an entire meal without even being home. I wish LG would come up with a robot that removed you dish from the fridge and put it in the oven...

It also has an interesting feature called the "Sabbath Feature." I guess GE was the first to introduce this feature and then other manufacturers followed suit. You can read more about it here if you're interested. I wasn't aware of this, but from what I can tell, strict interpretation of the Torah and Kosher Jewish traditions prohibit anyone from "lighting a fire" during the sabbath. In modern times this extends to turning on an oven, which would make it difficult to prepare a meal. Star-K, a kosher certifying agency has approved this technology, so I guess it's a big relief to Jews who observe kosher laws. It's cool that ovens are so smart, but I'm glad to be a gentile!!

Moving on, I pretty much have finished unpacking and arranging our master bedroom. We still don't have nighstands (I am using a wooden barstool and Andrew is using the floor) but other than that, everything is done. The over all look of our room is a French Country motif with toile pattern through out and several fleur de lis. I've had the toile for a while now but I really wanted to extend the French Country theme beyond that, so I found a few fleur de lis accents to use around the room. You can see all of these things highlighted in the slideshow. I can't say I've ever been to France, but I thank the French for their decorating inspiration! The master bathroom still needs a second coat of paint which I might get around to this week. We have not put up any of our towel bars or fixtures since we were waiting to finish painting. We have been using over the door hooks for our towels, so it will be nice to eventually have real racks for our towels!

Last night we attended an engagement party for Lindsey and Jake so it feels like my matron of honor duties are officially starting. It's fun to get to be apart of all of these events with them and I can't wait till we host our bridesmaid/ college friends shower in January! I already had made a few purchases in preparation but I can't divulge on here since I know Lindsey reads this!

Today we had some friends over for my work friend Riana's birthday. This was the first "big" function we've had at our new place and I think it went pretty well! It got off to a slow start since most everyone was late, but we kind of expected that. We grilled burgers & hot dogs for 11 people and had a lot of other munchy items. I baked a German Chocolate cake for the occasion, which was the first thing I made in the new oven! Riana's baby, Kade, just turned 1 a few weeks ago and he is adorable! He is such an easy going and fun baby and they are lucky to be able to bring him to so many places. I hope someday our kids are as easy as Baby Kade. We all had fun and most importantly Riana had a good time. We have lots of left overs, but that is never a problem for us! Since we started early, everyone was gone before 8 and we were done cleaning and doing dishes by 8:45. That is a good party!

One other small house update is a new light fixture that Andrew put up. This one hangs over the entry way at the front door. We now have all the light fixtures on the first floor replaced, and they look great and very updated. You can see the picture of it in the slideshow.

It's been a fun weekend full of friends, food, home improvement, and most importantly for Andrew, football. Congrats to all the Texas fans reading! Andrew and the dogs are now pooped, as you can see from the last pictures in the slideshow.

Thanks for checking in!

It's All Good in the Hood

2008-10-08T21:11:00.006-05:00

Well we've had some microwave woes the past few days but there is a happy ending. This past weekend when we ordered our oven we also purchased an over the range microwave to match. I was really excited about getting an over the range model because it frees up so much counter space. Also you may have figured this out by now, but I'm kind of obsessed with everything matching, so the idea of having all matching LG stainless appliances was heaven to me. Well my bubble was burst yesterday morning. We had scheduled the electrician to come install the new microwave for us on Tuesday and I went to work while Andrew stayed at the house with Jimmy the electrician. Jimmy had said it would take about an hour so when Andrew called me around 9:30 I was anxious to hear how things went. Bad news- it ain't happening. After removing the vent hood and looking at the options, an over the range model really wouldn't work for our space. If we were doing a complete remodel and putting in new cabinets it would be a different story, but as is it would require a lot of work to put that microwave in and still wouldn't look that great. Sigh. Figure out plan B.

It didn't take me long to get on Homedepot.com at work and start looking at vent hoods. Since the old oven and hood were an off white, we couldn't keep the old hood with the new stainless oven. I was sad to discover that LG doesn't sell hoods, so my dreams of having everything the same brand were over. I found several stainless options that looked pretty good so by mid afternoon I had called Jimmy back and scheduled him to come over again in the morning to install the new hood. After work yesterday we went to Home Depot and bought our new hood. Again, this is a total nerdy homeowner moment. I can't say that I've ever paid any attention to hoods at anyone's house that I have ever been to, yet when it came to picking out mine it had to perfect. It's amazing how you can be so opinionated over something you never thought about before. We found a hood that I was happy with and since it was significantly cheaper than the microwave we were returning, we got some credit back.

This morning Jimmy came over and installed the hood. I could only stick around for a few minutes before having to leave for work, but Andrew called me when it was done and he was on his way to work, and this time it went very smoothly. He said it looked good, but kind of funny with the current white oven. I admit my totally nerdiness, but it kills me to have to be at work all day while there is something new at the house that I can't see. I thought about it all day long, and even when Andrew called me at lunchtime from home I asked him again "So how does the hood look?" When the clock hit 5 I was so excited to go home and see the new hood. So here are the pics! I'm sure this isn't as exciting for everyone else as it is for me so just humor me.

I'm really happy with the hood and have come to terms with the fact that I will have to have a microwave on the counter. So it's all good. I also have to give our electrician a plug (no pun intended) because he is awesome! We've had him do several things for us over the past 2 months and we would never use anyone else. His prices are great and he is extremely friendly and helpful. He always seems to be available whenever we need him and he always remembers us when we call, so if you're in Austin and need a great electrician I'll give you Jimmy's info!

The only other news I have is that I put up the last two pineapple valances in the family room. They look pretty much like what the others look like, but it wouldn't be right if I didn't put up a picture.

I haven't done any work around the house tonight and it's been great! I was actually really tired so I took a nap for a while, but woke up to watch Project Runway. If you remember a while back I mentioned that I was playing a game with a bunch of people from home based on Project Runway (think fantasy football for girls). Well my last remaining designer was elimintated tonight but I wasn't too upset. It was between him and one girl that I really wanted to go on, so I was happy for her. I pretty much had no chance of winning at this point anyway, since there were people with a lot more points than me and who still had designers in, so I wasn't too sad to see him go. This show is so addicting!

I can't believe tomorrow is Thursday already... this week is really flying by for me, which is a good thing! We have a lot going on this weekend, and since the house is getting closer to done, there isn't as much work to be done so we can live a little.

Have a good night!!

Pineapples Up!

2008-10-06T22:52:00.005-05:00

This will be a quick one, but at least I have a few photos to share! I tried not to overwork myself tonight because I wanted to enjoy this evening, but I couldn't help doing a few things. I had a great dinner with a small group of ladies from church, and will begin going to a small bible study with these ladies every Monday night. It is a very informal time of sharing, eating and visiting, so I am looking forward to these weekly meetings already after the first.

When I got home I decided I'd put up a few of the pineapple valances, since I've had them in my possession for a week now and have only put up one. I've been dying to see how they look in the rest of the house. I put up one on the window in the breakfast area and one over the kitchen sink and I am loving them! They add such a cute touch to the house! Tomorrow night I will put up the remaining two in the family room. The first floor is so close to being done!!

The other thing that I kind of alluded to but never actually acknowledged on here is that the wood floors are OFFICIALLY done!! The small remaining square of concrete at the bottom of the stairs was covered this weekend, and we have NO MORE FLOORING TO DO!!! I am so happy with how the wood turned out and still kind of in disbelief that we did all this ourselves. If anyone was every considering doing wood floors themselves or paying for installation I would HIGHLY recommend doing it yourself! Installation is a racket!!! If you can do it yourself and make it look this good I can't imagine every paying thousands of dollars to have someone else do it! Sheesh! Won't it look great with actual baseboards?!?! ;)

Well that's all for tonight! Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!

2008-10-05T22:44:00.004-05:00

Well we definitely had a busy but productive weekend! Friday night we made a trip out to the Salt Lick in Driftwood for some delicious barbecue and birthday celebrating in honor of my friend Eric from work/ ACU. There was a huge group of people there for the festivities, but us work people mostly stuck together. Since it's "family syle" it's basically all you can eat, and we ate a lot. We also brought some leftovers home with us because you can never have too much barbecue.

Saturday I did a bunch of shopping/ errands while Andrew watched some football in the morning. In the afternoon we made trips to Lowe's and Home Depot because we haven't bought out either store yet so there still continues to be things that I need. I bought a bunch of house plants which kind of makes me feel like an old lady, but at the same time I really like having them around the house and I think they make it feel more homey. The one I was most excited about was my tree I really wanted and I LOVE! I am such a nerd. But anyway, now we have a tree next to the dining table and I'm going to treat this thing like my baby and hopefully it will live a long and healthy life. There are pictures of all the plants in the slideshow below.

The other thing we bought (ordered) at Home Depot is a new oven!!!! I AM SO EXCITED!! We planned to eventually replace the oven but thought we would wait till next year to do it. The current oven is really old, I'm guessing it's original to the house so like 15 years old. It needed to be calibrated because the temperature was off by like 50 degrees, which obviously makes a big difference when you're cooking. Andrew was going to do some research and attempt to do this by himself, but since we have been busy with other things it hasn't happened yet. All the cooking that I have done has been stove top since the oven isn't really operating up to par. Anyway, I was really just wanting to get a new oven since the old one looks like its from the colonial era and works like it too. Well last week Andrew returned all the left over wood from the floors to Home Depot and they credited him 400 dollars which we did not expect! We are also about to get back our security deposit and pet deposit from the duplex which will be a pretty good chunk of change. Basically we had some cash coming our way that we had not expected to have, so I took it as a sign that we were meant to buy a new oven. It took a little convincing, but eventually Andrew saw the sign also and we took the plunge and ordered it. It's going to be delivered new weekend in all it's shiny stainless steel glory, and I cannot wait!! It's a LG gas oven, so it will match our LG fridge. Here it is!!

Over the course of Saturday and Sunday (today) we got some things hanging on the walls so it's starting to look like a real house. I got up the curtains on one window and the formal sitting area is looking really cute now. We also painted the trim for the door frame and nailed it up with the nail gun. Andrew put in a few nails at an angle, effectively nailing the door shut which was hilarious/ infuriating. He had a better attitude about it than me. He was going to attempt to saw his way out but quickly realized that would tear up the new door we have worked to so hard to get in and finish. He stopped that plan pretty quick. My plan was to yank the door open, which worked and only caused a tiny bit of damage but no one will ever notice... anyway, we have a door with a frame and we can walk in and out of it so we're all happy.

It's after 11 so I should think about heading to bed. Hope everyone had a great weekend! Enjoy the pictures!

Decluttering with Deregulating

2008-10-03T12:27:00.009-05:00

Last night we watched most of the vice presidential debate while doing work around the house. I didn't get to see every minute of it, but I heard most of it. My goal for the evening was to "declutter" the house, but the word I kept hearing over and over again on the tv was "deregulate." Anyway, I made it my mission to get rid of all the boxes that were lingering on the first floor of the house and make the area start to feel more liveable.

When we moved from Virgina to Austin, we knew we were going to be renting a place smaller than what would fit all our stuff. This was one of the reasons why I was always ready to buy and get in a bigger place, so that half our belongings wouldn't have to be in boxes anymore. Last night I unpacked all our wedding china and crystal, most of which I hadn't even looked at in over year. I love our china, so it was fun to unpack it and see it again after so long! We also have some other serving pieces, etc. that we got as wedding gifts that I had totally forgotten about but was so happy to see again! Unpacking these boxes was like opening presents all over again! I also have to give a lot of credit to the movers and the people who packed all of our stuff in Virginia because not a single piece of china, crystal or stemware was broken!

After I got all these boxes unpacked, the formal living/ dining room really started to look like a place you might want to live/ eat! I also put together a few tables I had ordered from Target, two matching console tables, one to be used as a sofa table and the other as a side table along the wall, and a matching coffee table. I'm really happy with how these look considering they are from Target. Also pictured above is an antique china cabinet that belonged to Andrew's great great grandmother (I can't remember exactly how many greats) that was give to us by one of his aunts. Now that we have a real house I am planning to refinish it and restain it to match the other pieces and put some glass in the door, and make it look beautiful! I think it's neat that we have this piece and I really want to make it look good and continue to use it for a long time. Right now it is housing all our crystal stemware that was haphazardly put away in there however we could make it fit. Hopefully I'll get around to refinishing it in the next few weeks and then I'll arrange its contents a little nicer.

And lastly, the family room... with NO BOXES!! Also, the latest addition is the pineapple pillows, but hopefully soon we will have the pineapple valances up! I am really loving this room and it only needs a few more touches before it is really done. I also am picking up a shelf for all our dvds/ video games today from Best Buy so I am excited to have some storage in this room. That is my one complaint about this room... there aren't any built-ins or anything, and not a lot of room for big book shelves, so there's really no storage space. I was really excited when I found this dvd holder on Best Buy's website because it doesn't take up alot of space but it will hold 144 dvds, AND it's espresso wood with silver accents, so it TOTALLY matches everything else in the room! Yeah I know, I get excited about the little things.

Once we get some stuff hanging on the walls and all the window treatments up the first floor will mostly be done (in terms of decorating). We still need to finish the baseboards. Then it's on to upstairs, which means attacking our bedroom. Our bedroom has all the furniture arranged where we want it, but there is clothes and junk EVERYWHERE. I really need to sort through and take some clothes over to Goodwill because I don't wear half of this stuff anymore! One of the guests rooms is pretty much done, it had to be since Aubrey was staying with us last weekend during the festival. The last room that will get done is the second guest room, hopefully in the next couple weeks.

Well that is pretty much all for now. Oh yeah, one more thing. We paid our FIRST mortage payment on October 1, so now this blog title is infact, true. We have officially entered the world of adulthood and will be forever indebted to Wells Fargo from now until eternity... or the next 30 years.

Thanks for reading!

October

2008-10-01T21:41:00.008-05:00

Well I'm finally doing a real "update" and based on the feedback I've gotten, it has been much anticipated. I can't say we have done a whole lot on the house because we have been back in the full swing of things this week. Monday night our friends Ellen and Jeff came by for a little while and we mostly just hung out around the house and watched tv. It was the first night we really could enjoy living in the house without having to work on some project, clean, or prepare for the arrival of guests. We watched some tv that we had DVRed and mostly relaxed. It was a nice evening. It was a good opportunity to really test out the new furniture in the family room, and we definitely like it! It is great for relaxing and watching tv!

Tuesday (last night) we had a delicious (almost) free dinner thanks to Lindsey and Jake! They had a gift certificate to a restaurant called Mirabelle that was expiring on 9/30/08 and really needed to get used! Since they couldn't take advantage of it they offered it to us, and we gladly accepted. I had a delicious pomegranite glazed duck breast and Andrew had a pork chop with red onion jam. We also ordered a bottle of Connundrum, which was a bottle of wine that was given to us as a wedding gift, but we haven't tasted since. It was just as good as we remembered it. We came home after dinner full and sleepy, but stayed awake long enough to catch up on one more DVRed show.

Today was the birthday of my friend Crystal, from work, so after work we went over to another friend's house for drinks and to hang out in honor of the birthday girl. Crystal has twins who are about 6 months old and very, very cute. Riana (the hostest) has a baby who just turned 1 last week, so between the three of them there was no shortage of little ones. Andrew had fun hanging out with all the husbands, and all us girls had a great time as usual. After we left, we did a quick run to the grocery store and then came home and cooked our first dinner in the new house! We have been living here for a week and half but have mostly been existing on mac & cheese, cereal, sandwiches, or fast food. I made a delectable dinner if I do say so myself and right now Andrew is working on the dishes. Since he really doesn't know his way around the kitchen yet, it's taking him a little longer than normal to figure out where to put everything away. Here is a shot of him hard at work.

The one room in the entire house that is pretty much done is the powder room downstairs. I do want to get a little plant to put on the stand in there, but other than that, the room is done. We just got all the curtains and pillows and accesoried from Country Curtains in the mail the other day, but the only room where I have hung any window treatments is in the powder room. Here is what it looks like! I love it!

The wood floors have been completed for the most part with the exception of about a 2.5' x 3.5' area in front of the stairs. It would only take us about an hour to finish this, but we just haven't found time for it in the past week. I think by this weekend it should be completed, and I will be so GLAD to have the project done and behind us! Then we can get the baseboards done and things will really start to look finished. Here is all that is left:

And lastly, a shot of the doggies enjoying the new furniture. I think they might even like it more than we do. Macy especially loves it because she can get up on the top and perch up on the cushion and look around the whole room. Or she can just take a nap up there. Either way, she likes it and its great for all four of us to relax on.

ACL Festival 2008

2008-09-29T21:00:00.010-05:00

Festival highlights with family, good friends, and good music!!!

Me with my cousins Chip and Vance.

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant were fantastic!!

Marika and I having a blast!

Andrew and "Cousin Vance" showing off those (white) guns

Band of Horses, awesome show!!

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters!!

Mason Jennings, my all time favorite musician!

My mom's dress for the 70s, vintage hippie!!!

Xavier Rudd, one of my favorite shows of the festival!!!

Aubs and Lindsey!

Andrew and Jake hanging out

Enjoying Day 1 of the festival

We wished Kyle was here but it was great having the three of us together!!

It was a crazy weekend but incredibly fun! ACL is always a great time of year and one of the things that I love most about Austin. Aubrey came to town for the festival, so three of the original group of four were together for the Festival. This was the seventh ACL, but only my fifth. I'm proud to say I attended the very first, but sad that I missed two years while living in Virginia. I have to say, this year was better than last in my opinion and maybe one of my favorites of all the ones I've attended. Here is the (long) list of shows I was able to see, whether it was the entire set or mid-run across the park.

Friday:
What Made Milwaukee Famous
Vampire Weekend
Delta Spirit
Bobby Bare Jr.
Hot Chip
Slightly Stoopid
N.E.R.D.
Ryan Bingham
G. Love & Special Sauce
Alejandro Escavado
Donavan Frankenreiter

Saturday:
The Old 97s
The Fratellis
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
MGMT
Mason Jennings
John Fogerty
Yonder Mountain String Band
The Black Keyes
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Beck

Sunday:
Belleville Outfit
The Kills
Mike Farris
Xavier Rudd
Silversun Pickups
Blues Traveler
Okkervil River
The Raconteurs
Gnarls Barkley
Band of Horses
Foo Fighters

The house has been neglected for several days since we had friends in town and spent 12 hours a day at the festival. One of the other weekend highlights other than the great music was spending time with our good friends Steve and Chrissy Holt who were in town from Boston. They made the drive down from Round Rock on Friday morning and we had a great breakfast and had several hours to visit before we headed out to the park. It was so good to see them! They are great friends and we are so glad that geographically we always end up in cities where we can see each other. We have been to visit them twice in Boston and always have a great time. I will start posting pictures of the house again in the next few days. It is starting to feel like home little by little. Check back soon for house updates!!

Pictures Pictures

2008-09-21T22:33:00.005-05:00

Not a whole lot of time to write and still much to do! Last night (Saturday) was our first night in the house, but it doesn't really like home yet, mostly it feels like a diaster zone. I think we need some help from FEMA. Here are some pictures of the progress so far at the new house, and packing up at the duplex. Big thanks for Chêz for helping us pack and helping me keep my sanity for a few hours! Also, our movers were awesome and accomplished in 2 hours what it would have taken us 2 day to do! Its midnight now as I'm writing this and of course I have work in the morning and another long day ahead so it's time for me to sign off! Night!

Last Night

2008-09-20T00:33:00.003-05:00

Tonight is our last night in the duplex. While obviously we are excited about being in the new house, leaving the duplex is kind of bittersweet. This was our first home in Austin, which marked a new chapter in our lives. We found this duplex on a "house hunting" visit to Austin before we moved, and as soon as we looked at it we knew we had to have it. I have really enjoyed living here, I like the street, of course I like the neighbors, the yard was great, and I'm going to miss it a little. It's going to be weird to come over to see the neighbors and see someone else living here.

We picked up the moving truck this evening and loaded and unloaded one BIG truck load. I feel good about the progress so far, although there is a lot of packing to do still. I keep telling people and I have convinced myself that this won't be too hard since the packing doesn't need to be too elaborate. The movers are coming from 12-3 to move all the big stuff for us, and I think after that the rest will seem insignificant. My goal is to have everything out of the duplex and over at the new house by tomorrow night. It may not look good... but it will all be there. That way we can spend as much time Sunday as we need to clean the duplex and get it looking how it should so we can get back our security deposit!!

My car is running just fine now, all it needed was a jump. It took about 30 seconds to hook up the jumped cables and get it started, so I was glad that crisis was averted. The last thing we need right now is expensive car repairs and/ or to be short a vehicle!

We aren't able to get our cable hooked up at the new house until Thursday so after Sunday I will be without internet at home:( :( :( I will still have internet at work and will be able to post some, but I won't be able to post pictures from work. I'm kind of sad about this since I've kind of gotten in the habit of writing on here all the time. Next weekend is going to be another busy weekend for us, Aubrey gets in Thursday evening and then we have 3 days of Austin City Limits Music Festival!!! This is the best time of year as far as I'm concerned and I can't wait to take it all in and not think about the house!! It's going to be a great festival this year because the line up is awesome!

Ok, well I need to get some shut eye before our long day tomorrow! Think of me and my aching back!

If it's not one thing, it's another...

2008-09-19T09:25:00.005-05:00

Well, last night was an interesting night for sure! Andrew's dad got to town around 7 o'clock and pretty soon after that we headed out to dinner. We ate at the Treehouse Italian Grill and sat outside on the patio under the huge Live Oak. It was a really nice, cool evening and the food was great as always. After dinner we went over to the new house to give him the tour. He couldn't stick around too long since he had to drive back to San Antonio, and we wanted to get a little bit of work done, so we said good bye and he went on his way. We decided not to get involved with a big project since it was already late and we were tired. I got started on a little bit of touch up paint in the master bathroom, and Andrew hung the new vanity lighting. The master bath definitely needs a second coat of paint, which you can't tell from this picture. The paint looks thin in a lot of places and it drives me nuts to look at it. It looks like the second coat will have to get done after we move in. We are at the point where we really have to prioritze, and getting packed and moved is top of the list!

So after we got the new light up, we decided it was time to go home. When we got out to the car, we found out my battery was dead! Great!!!! We have a charger thing that you can plug in to your cigarette lighter and it is supposed to charge your battery after 15-45 minutes. Well we gave it a shot but after 15 minutes the car still wouldn't start and we were getting tired. I called Marika (it's handy having friends who are nocturnal) to see if she was at work or if she could come pick us up. Luckily she was not working and on her way home from a friend's house. Marika to the rescue! She swung by and picked us up on the way home! That still didn't solve the problem of my dead car, but at 12:30 we really didn't want to deal with it, we just wanted to go to bed. I sent out text messages to several of my co-workers who live near us to see if someone could give me a ride in the morning. I didn't hear back anything at that time of night, but this morning at 7:15 I got a message back from Jay. Jay to the rescue (again)! Seriously Jay wins the most helpful friend of the year award after helping out with several house projects and letting us borrow a ton of tools.

So now we need to figure out what to do about my car. Hopefully when we go back over to the house after work it will start, or we can jump it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's nothing more than the battery. We are planning to pick up the moving truck at 7 this evening and begin the moving process. Lots to do!!!!

The Saga of the Door

2008-09-17T23:23:00.010-05:00

The soon to be new front door.

Andrew began riping the trim off the inside and outside of the door to remove the old door. There were spaces where you could see daylight through.

Then our old front door sat in the front yard.....

And then we had no front door. It was around this time Andrew measured the new door and found out it was mislabeled, and in fact, too small for the opening. So then we had no front door for a long time while he went to Home Depot. Of course they didn't have the same one in the right size, so we had to make a spur of the moment decision and get whatever we could find that would fit. Of course it was more expensive.

Jay came over to help hang the door. Here are the boys hard at work. Notice their matching shoes.

It closes like a real door!

Here is the patch up job we had to do overnight since the trim was not completed and there were still a lot of gaps.

And this is what the new door looks like from the outside. Not completely done, but looking sharp. It needs to be painted to match the exterior and we will put some kind of covering over the window so people can't look right in to the house from the street. I am really happy we got brushed nickel door fixtures!

THE END!

2008-09-17T23:23:00.002-05:00

I wish I had time to write more the past few days, because there has been a lot going on and a lot to report on. Unfortunately we've been going to bed after 1 am every night and waking up the next morning to work 8-5 and then working at the house from 5:30-12:30. That's pretty much been life lately. I will be so glad when this is over!!!! I hit a wall tonight and really thought I might have a melt down. I mean literally crying while up on the ladder painting the bathroom. I'm afraid I'm going to resent the house after all this work!!

I have a lot of pictures to post, but those of you who also use Blogger know that it takes FOREVER to upload them and I just don't have the time. Andrew is still at the house working but I came home early because I really need to get more sleep tonight than I have been. I will be in bed before midnight, and I can't wait! Tomorrow night we are having dinner with Andrew's dad, who is in San Antonio this week for work. He will drive up to eat dinner with us and see the house. Hopefully we will still have time to get some work done because there is still so much to do I can't even think about it without wanting to cry again. I'm not really sure how I'm going to survive the next four days but I guess I will do it somehow. I will be so glad when everything is out of the duplex and into the new house, even if its a crazy mess, I will just be so happy to have it all behind me. Time for bed!!!

Crunch Time

2008-09-16T08:50:00.002-05:00

It's getting down to the nitty gritty and moving day is just 4 days away. Last night we rented a U Haul cargo van to begin moving some stuff, and to pick up some large items from Home Depot. Tonight Andrew and our friend Jay are hanging a new front door on the house. I think it's going to be a pretty big project and I imagine they will be up late. There is a lot of packing and organizing to do in the next few days, and not much time to do it in. Work is really getting in the way of my personal life! That's all I have time to write for now, hopefully I will find some time in the next few days to update. If not, just know that I'm really busy! I will be glad when this is all over!