Holiday Update

It's the Thursday before Christmas ... and life has been hectic!

John's been on break from school, so he's been looking for projects to complete around the house.  Meanwhile, I'm still working and then I volunteered us to dog-sit over my vacation break, so I invited that family over for dinner tonight so that their dog can meet Honey and get used to us before actually being left here for several days.

So, John decided yesterday afternoon was the perfect time to rip out the pantry and re-do it.

I got home from work yesterday and the entire contents of my pantry were strewn all over my kitchen cabinets (John reassured me that we'd get a pizza so I didn't have to try and cook).  He'd torn out all the shelves in the pantry and did some dry-wall repair in there. 

Tip:  Did you know that Lowe's will cut your wood for you?  Seriously - John bought this long strip of wood to use for shelves in our new pantry, and Lowe's cut that long strip down to the exact sizes we needed for the shelves.  Normally it costs $0.25 per cut, but they didn't charge us for it.  So much easier than trying to do it outselves!

So ... last night we went to Lowes and wandered around a bit, then picked up our pizza.  After dinner, John started sanding the dry wall down and then painted the first coat of white in the pantry.  I started going through all the food from the pantry and getting rid of stuff that was either expired or I knew that we'd never use (most likely because we'd had it for over a year). 

Biggest surprise of the night?  Finding 10 cans of black beans - an ingredient I only use in 1 recipe that I make maybe 2-3 times a year.

Grossest surprise of the night?  Finding an unopened container of balsamic vinaigrette dressing that looked like things were growing in it.  Surprisingly, it was not past the expiration date.  We threw it out anyway.

So now John is painting a second coat in the pantry and trying to install the shelves before we have company tonight.  I'm making a lamb roast with steamed vegetables and rolls.  My guests are bringing dessert and a tiny dog that will probably get into a fight or something with Honey.

Yay!

Project Garden Makeover!

Before it gets much closer to winter, I'd better post these pictures of my front garden!  Considering the day is cool and wet and dreary, it's nice to remember the absolutely gorgeous weather here!

I can't really explain why this was so high on our priority list, but both John and I agreed that we wanted to plant the flower bed in the front.  Maybe we wanted to make the house look ours; or maybe we were just taking advantage of the rare lovely weather.  It's only nice here maybe 5 weeks out of the year - we need to spend all the time outside that we can when it's nice!

Here are some BEFORE pictures:

Confession - this is after I dug everything up.  I'd forgotten to get a true
BEFORE picture.  It didn't look much better, though.

Yay, front of my house!

John and I spent about 2 hours in Lowes, wandering around the gardening section.  Neither one of us had any experience doing this, so we were reading all the plant labels, and finally tracked someone down to talk to us.  This is what we ended up buying:

Mums!  Honestly, not our first choice, but we liked the colors, and they
were on sale. 

Apparently these are called "Dusty Miller"  We thought they looked cool -
especially next to the colors of the mums.

We also bought a honeysuckle climbing vine - but I guess I didn't take a picture of it.

Next:  THE PROCESS!

I broke up the dirt, and John decided that all the bricks surrounding the bed needed to be raised.  So, we re-sized the bed, and raised each of the bricks by a few inches.  While John was doing that, I was pulling all the weeds out of the bed.  I may have gotten a bit carried away with it (John says I'm too much of a perfectionist), but the end result looked nice, I think!

Totally ready for planting!

John was so right about raising the stones.  It looks so much better!

And so, we began planting - by far the most fun part of the afternoon (and the quickest)!

John's parents had given us a large box of bulbs (both orchid and lily), so we planted those along the back of the bed, close to the house.  We then placed a medium sized trellis to the right of the window, and planted the honeysuckle vine so that it would climb the trellis.  (That is a total experiment on our part.  If it grows out of control, or attracts bees or something, we'll tear it out.  We don't want to deal with bees that close to the front door.)

Next, we placed a few rows of the Dusty Miller, and planted the mums in the very front.

Ready to see?

Doesn't it look nice?  The Dusty Miller is supposed to grow taller than the
Mums, which is why they're toward the back.  You can't see the bulbs.

Yay!  Project, successful!

All in all, this project took us about 4.5 hours (including the time in the store), and cost us about $80-$100 (we had to buy all the tools, and the soil).  We're hoping that they last through the winter, and we can enjoy them this spring.  We're not expecting anything to grow this summer.  100+degrees does not equal a good garden!

We Bought a House - Part Three

So, where were we?

We put an offer on the house the first week in May, with a closing date of May 24th - which just happened to be our 4th wedding anniversary!  Obviously it was meant to be!

Various drama abounded throughout the month ... after approving and entering into the contract, the seller became angry at her realtor for "letting her sell so low".  I worked on projects at work that required 60+ hours a week for two weeks, as well as tried to pack up the house and clean it and get ready to move!

John spent the month working his summer job, which changed from 20 hours a week afternoons to 50 hours a week days and weekends, as well as juggling finances to deal with the last minute costs of moving and the down payment.

But the biggest headache/project, was figuring out the flooring for the house.  Because they were not allowed to sell the house without flooring, the contract stipulated that we would receive $5000 to get flooring installed.  After much discussion with the banks, and countless hours at Lowes (we got to know the guys in the flooring department really  well.  They're awesome, by the way!), we decided to have laminate installed throughout the house, with carpet in the bedrooms.  There was a very cheap linoleum already in the bathrooms, so we'd leave that as is, and at a later date install tile.

The problem all came down to timing.  We couldn't get the money to pay for everything until the closing - but Lowe's couldn't order the laminate that we needed until they were paid.  The flooring had to be installed within a week of the closing, but Lowe's delivery time was about 2-3 weeks.  It wasn't happening.

John brought up the idea of Lumber Liquidators for the laminate; they had a store that he passed on the way to work.  We went over there, and they were happy to work with us.  We ended up putting all the laminate on a credit card, and then getting re-imbursed by the bank at the closing.  

We had also received permission to install the flooring ourselves - saving on the installation costs, and allowing us to get a higher quality flooring.  Between the carpet from Lowe's and the laminate from Lumber Liquidators, we spent the entire $5000.  

We closed late afternoon on Thursday, May 24th.  John wasn't able to get off work, so I went to the closing by myself, armed with my cell phone and my in-laws phone number.  (John's parents love working with real estate, and have bought and sold numerous houses.  They were super helpful giving advice throughout the whole process!).  I even called John's mom at one point during the closing because I got confused, and she was able to explain things to me much better than the lawyer.

So, we got the best anniversary gift ever!  A new house!

And immediately went to work.  We had a deadline to get the flooring in!

We spent Thursday and Friday evenings cleaning and sealing the floors throughout the house.  John's dad came to visit for a few hours on Saturday, and he showed us how to install the laminate.  My brother came for a few days to help us, and we spent the next 5 days working like crazy to get the laminate installed.  Lowe's came and installed the carpeting about half-way through the process.  

Ready for some pictures? 

Doesn't the laminate look nice?  Throughout most of the house, John did all the cutting with the saw, and I did most all the actual placement and installation.  My brother helped for a few days, and John did some installation in the trickiest parts.

We chose "Blacksburg Barn Board" as our laminate.  It's gorgeous!

The hardest part, I think was getting started.  We didn't really know what we were doing at first, and the fireplace tiles were interesting to work around.

Looking into the dining room.

We set up the table saw in the front bedroom instead of the garage to save the air conditioner.  It was already 90+ degrees outside - we saw no reason to air condition the garage!

We still had a long way to go.  You can see my brother in the top left.

Here is a shot after about the third night of hard work.  It's a bit hard to see, but the corner on the left goes into the Master Bedroom, and is a triangular shaped nook.  That plus the doorway made cutting the pieces to size a bit tricky.  I was so proud of John when he figured it out!

We're making progress!

Most evenings we brought Honey with us.  Since we were working like crazy, we hated the thought of her being home alone in the evenings as well as the days.  Plus, this gave her a chance to get used to the new house.  Of course, she wasn't too sure about the whole thing.

With no furniture, there's no place for me to hide from the loud table saw.
Except outside, but I don't want to go there in case you leave me.

She wasn't quite sure what to make of all this.  Whenever we stayed late working and she got tired (SHE got tired, lol), she'd go hide in a closet where it was dark and take a nap.  Several nights I had to go find her so we could go home.

Can we go home now?  It's bedtime.

It took John forever to figure out the closets.  I'm still not sure why, but for some reason it was complicated.  The fact that this was our 4th night of hard work and we were exhausted didn't help, I'm sure.

Almost there!  You can see the carpet has been installed by now, too!

With the carpet, we also purchased a new fridge and dishwasher at Lowe's.  John wanted to buy me a new stove instead of a new dishwasher, but I refused.  I can learn how to cook on an old stove as long as it works.  But I want a good dishwasher - the one in the other house had been annoying me since we got it.

Thankfully, he agreed.  And after a great deal of bleach and elbow grease, the old stove works just fine.

We left the linoleum by the garage door and laundry room, and will tile that later.  

I had to include this shot.  This was just after we'd put the last piece of laminate in.  It was 1 am, and we were so exhausted we could hardly drive home.  We still needed to do all the thresholds and put the baseboards back up.  And clean and actually move.  But the floor was in!

Hooray!!  I think we went to Sonic on the way home to get some celebratory milkshakes!

And finally:  some finished shots:

Looking toward the front door, with Honey

The front door, all finished

Looking toward the kitchen and eating area.

Even with just the floors done, the house was so much nicer!  Next up:  We're finally moving in!!

Epic long post detailing the best weekend ever!

What is it, Monday already?

So, this weekend was probably one of the best weekends we've had in a long time!  For me, it kinda started on Thursday.

For some reason known only to her, Honey decided to stay up all night on Wednesday barking.  John slept through it, thankfully, but she kept me up far too late.  So ... I called in to work the next morning and took Thursday off.  I spent the morning in my pajamas and did laundry and finished sewing Honey a pillow for her bed.  (Why?  I don't know.  She certainly didn't deserve it after keeping me up all night!  Still, it's soooo nice to have one more project checked off the list!)

I'll post pictures soon - Right now is an overall summary of the weekend.

So ... Friday came, and John had another test.  I went back to work, and spent the entire day working on a project that I've only just now mostly finished.  I made enough project on Friday to be almost giddy by the time 5 pm came around.  John was pleased with how his test went, and did not want to have a quiet evening at home.  So, we decided on a fun evening out.

First we drove over to Fred's to pick up some cheap pillows.  Pillow stuffing is expensive, but we bought four good-sized pillows at Fred's for $10.  Perfect for ripping apart and re-using the stuffing in a dog bed.

After that we made our way over to Chick-fil-A for dinner, and went to the movies!  We hadn't been to see a movie in months and months - I think the last one we saw was "Up" ... or maybe "Star Trek".  Whichever one came out more recently. (Edit:  Apparently they both came out in 2009.)

Even though I would have happily seen "Hotel Transylvania", John talked me into seeing the new movie "Argo".  Neither one of us knew much about it, but we'd seen the advertisement on tv about it, and read a few reviews about how good it was supposed to be.

It. Was. Amazing.  For the first time in my life I went to a movie where people actually applauded when it was over.  I will say that it's rated "R" for a reason - it's not a movie for kids.  But it's rated that way primarily for language and some violence - no gore or sex.  The acting was very well done, and the editing kept things interesting.  Definitely an amazing thriller, and worth the price of the tickets!

After the movie, we went to Target and bought a new tablecloth for the Dining Room (is it sad that that makes me super excited?) and then went to Cold Stone and got ice cream before heading home.

Saturday, we slept in, and then headed out for brunch at a new local restaurant.  It's only about two blocks from our house, and they opened close to three months ago.  John ordered their Shrimp & Grits, while I ordered a salad - not a very good "brunch" dish, but it was what I was feeling like.  The food was perfect - John's grits definitely tasted home-made, not processed; while my salad was the freshest I've had in forever.  John told me yesterday that that's his new favorite restaurant!

Since the weather was positively perfect (70-75 degrees F), we decided to spend the day working outside.  The flower bed in teh front of the house needed some love, and since neither one of us had any experience whatsoever with gardening, we decided to visit a few gardening shops and get some advice.

The first place we went had only herbs, veggies, and mums, and the workers there were distinctly unhelpful.  The second place ended up being a planter store, not a gardening store at all!  We finally gave up on the local business aspect and just went to Lowes.  After all, we only had the one day to get the flower bed taken care of!  We couldn't spend it all visiting shops!

After about an hour wandering the Lowes garden session, and a (very) brief consultation with one of the workers there, we bought some flowers, plants, garden soil, and tools, and headed home.  We started working in the 11x4 flower bed about 2:30 pm - and finished about 5:30 pm.  Not bad!  I then trimmed some bushes while John mowed the grass.  We were going to clean the house later that evening, but by the time 7:30 came around we were so sore we could hardly move!  I think we were in bed by 8:30 pm!

I have pictures of the gardening project too - that'll receive it's own post soon!

We spent Sunday recovering from Saturday - we didn't think we'd worked that hard, but both John and I are still so sore we can hardly move!  Still, we went to both the morning and the evening service at church, and after church last night went over to a building/business dedication.  The man that John has worked with for the past 2 years before he started school in August wanted to dedicate his building to the Lord, so most of the church went over there after the evening service to fellowship, eat, and pray.  It was fun - and we didn't get home until about 10:30 pm.

John's Bible study is at our house tonight - so we ended up frantically cleaning house until about 11:30 pm last night to make it presentable.  It still needs a little bit of work, but hopefully John can do some of that while I cook dinner.

And now ... life back to normal!  Only with a really cute front flower bed!  Yay!!