I have had an awesomely productive day thus far: fed PJ two square meals surrounding a trip to the Farmer's Market; finished Mother's Day gifts; many loads of laundry including folding & putting away, plus diaper stuffing & stacking, and more loads in the works; then took a break to sit on the carport enjoying the sudden sunshine and eat a snack while reading "French Kids Eat Everything" (this is a bit ironic since the French do NOT snack), and then swept the Maple schmutz off the carport and driveway...just in time for it to DOWNPOUR again (as I'm paying bills on the computer! PRODUCTIVITY!!), which has undoubtedly caused the Japanese Maple to shed more crap all over the carport and driveway again. So it was sunny and nice out for a grand total of about 45 minutes, I think.
Whatever, this is still a totally successful day! I even WROTE A BLOG POST, for goodness sake.
New discovery at the juice & smoothie place at the market: Ginger Hopper juice typically has carrot, apple, and ginger, but today I added beet and spinach to that, and it was DEEEElicious. PJ loved it too. That plus the book I'm reading makes me want to get beets and spinach to add to her frequent breakfast smoothies! Beet and carrot would probably be thick/rich enough to replace yogurt some mornings. Will experiment and report back.
Current harebrained scheme: eliminate snacking from our lives by focusing more on eating well at breakfast and lunch. Especially want to stop training PJ to snack all day. We'll see how my resolve holds out.
Time to get PJ up from her afternoon nap!
Showing posts with label house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label house. Show all posts
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Garden is planted!
Before we start in on the garden, observe my de-barked dog barking:
Isn't she cute? She still only does it in that part of the yard, when I'm not too close by. She was outside with me all day while I planted the rest of the garden, from about 10:00 AM until 3:00 or so, and she barked on and off for the first hour or so, then forgot about it for most of the day, then barked a few more times in the afternoon, then curled up in a ball and napped until I took her inside.
On to gardening! It took me all day Saturday, but the garden is now completely planted. Nothing left for me to do but water, weed, and wait...and maybe put up a fence if the bunnies get to be a nuisance. And hopefully harvest, you know, eventually.
Speaking of harvesting, one of the tomatoes has two flowers, one of the pepper plants has a few fruits starting to form, and we are going to need to use some basil every week if we want to keep it from flowering! In the slide show you can see the lemon basil I planted already had flowers, so I cut all those off, and we'll wait a bit to harvest from that one.
In other news, this was the week of the mail-order shopping deliveries: we got the slipcovers we ordered from Bemz for our Ikea Tullsta chairs; I got the sandals I ordered: Teva Women's Mandalyn Ola Wedge Flip Flop
, but I'm sending them back because they're too small; I got a replacement for my Nook because the page-turn button cracked on mine (it's a common problem), and I'm shipping the other one back; and I sold my copy of The Lost Symbol
on Amazon now that I and everyone who wanted to borrow it is done. That was my first time ever selling anything on Amazon, and it was pretty great! I priced it the cheapest of the "like new" used copies, and it sold in less than 24 hours! I have the shipping label printed and it's boxed up and ready to ship, so tomorrow after work I will be stopping at the post office to ship the book and return my sandals, and at UPS to ship back my cracked Nook. Then there will be no more major purchases for us for a while!
Hopefully by next weekend there will be one or two sprouts from the seeds I planted too - wildflowers, lavender, hyssop, sunflowers, leeks, spinach, and pole beans. The only thing with no edible properties are the wildflowers, but if those come up (the seed packet is 2 years old) I will cut them and have fresh flowers inside all the time.
So chapter 1 of our gardening adventure is over...hopefully some interesting and encouraging growth will be visible over the next few weeks!
Isn't she cute? She still only does it in that part of the yard, when I'm not too close by. She was outside with me all day while I planted the rest of the garden, from about 10:00 AM until 3:00 or so, and she barked on and off for the first hour or so, then forgot about it for most of the day, then barked a few more times in the afternoon, then curled up in a ball and napped until I took her inside.
On to gardening! It took me all day Saturday, but the garden is now completely planted. Nothing left for me to do but water, weed, and wait...and maybe put up a fence if the bunnies get to be a nuisance. And hopefully harvest, you know, eventually.
Speaking of harvesting, one of the tomatoes has two flowers, one of the pepper plants has a few fruits starting to form, and we are going to need to use some basil every week if we want to keep it from flowering! In the slide show you can see the lemon basil I planted already had flowers, so I cut all those off, and we'll wait a bit to harvest from that one.
In other news, this was the week of the mail-order shopping deliveries: we got the slipcovers we ordered from Bemz for our Ikea Tullsta chairs; I got the sandals I ordered: Teva Women's Mandalyn Ola Wedge Flip Flop
, but I'm sending them back because they're too small; I got a replacement for my Nook because the page-turn button cracked on mine (it's a common problem), and I'm shipping the other one back; and I sold my copy of The Lost Symbol on Amazon now that I and everyone who wanted to borrow it is done. That was my first time ever selling anything on Amazon, and it was pretty great! I priced it the cheapest of the "like new" used copies, and it sold in less than 24 hours! I have the shipping label printed and it's boxed up and ready to ship, so tomorrow after work I will be stopping at the post office to ship the book and return my sandals, and at UPS to ship back my cracked Nook. Then there will be no more major purchases for us for a while!Hopefully by next weekend there will be one or two sprouts from the seeds I planted too - wildflowers, lavender, hyssop, sunflowers, leeks, spinach, and pole beans. The only thing with no edible properties are the wildflowers, but if those come up (the seed packet is 2 years old) I will cut them and have fresh flowers inside all the time.
So chapter 1 of our gardening adventure is over...hopefully some interesting and encouraging growth will be visible over the next few weeks!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Gardening!
Yesterday and today, I planted our garden!
We plan to buy more plants this Tuesday to fill in the rest of the vast amount of space, but I bought what you see here on Friday evening with my mom and Han, and planted some Saturday morning and the rest Sunday afternoon.
Here's what we have so far:
4 tomatoes, all different varieties
1 Sweet golden bell pepper
1 Jalapeno pepper
2 chives: 1 plain, 1 garlic
1 Oriental cucumber that will have long, skinny fruit
1 yellow summer squash
1 zucchini, bush variety
6 basil: 3 sweet, 1 big-leaf, 1 Thai sweet, and 1 unknown from my indoor pot
2 cilantro, but the smaller one was eaten to the ground so maybe only 1 cilantro
We plan to get on Tuesday:
3 more basil to fill in that square
probably more cilantro
more herbs in general
4-6 more peppers including more bells in different colors and some chili peppers like the kind Paul uses in our green curry
4-8 more tomatoes to fill in that square and probably another square
1-2 pumpkin vines to take up space
a few varieties of beans
Paul's mom got us a rhubarb plant, so that will be cool next year (we will plant it now, but won't be able to harvest it until next year). If this year goes well, I also want to try asparagus next year, and maybe strawberries.
I also photographed the front of our house since the rosebushes are going crazy, the clematis has devoured our lamp post but isn't blooming yet, and you can see the Gladiolas Paul's mom gave me coming up around the base of the lamp post.
In the lower left are two Blue Rocket Lupin that my mom got as a gift and didn't have a place to plant - they look about identical to the day I planted them, but Mom tells me they will get big spikes of flowers eventually. I hope so!
I am so so excited about our garden, so hopefully that will motivate me to keep track of it on here so I can look back next year and have a record of what worked and what didn't! Any suggestions for what else to plant? Will you take some veggies from us if we have too much to handle in a few months?
We plan to buy more plants this Tuesday to fill in the rest of the vast amount of space, but I bought what you see here on Friday evening with my mom and Han, and planted some Saturday morning and the rest Sunday afternoon.
Here's what we have so far:
4 tomatoes, all different varieties
1 Sweet golden bell pepper
1 Jalapeno pepper
2 chives: 1 plain, 1 garlic
1 Oriental cucumber that will have long, skinny fruit
1 yellow summer squash
1 zucchini, bush variety
6 basil: 3 sweet, 1 big-leaf, 1 Thai sweet, and 1 unknown from my indoor pot
2 cilantro, but the smaller one was eaten to the ground so maybe only 1 cilantro
We plan to get on Tuesday:
3 more basil to fill in that square
probably more cilantro
more herbs in general
4-6 more peppers including more bells in different colors and some chili peppers like the kind Paul uses in our green curry
4-8 more tomatoes to fill in that square and probably another square
1-2 pumpkin vines to take up space
a few varieties of beans
Paul's mom got us a rhubarb plant, so that will be cool next year (we will plant it now, but won't be able to harvest it until next year). If this year goes well, I also want to try asparagus next year, and maybe strawberries.
I also photographed the front of our house since the rosebushes are going crazy, the clematis has devoured our lamp post but isn't blooming yet, and you can see the Gladiolas Paul's mom gave me coming up around the base of the lamp post.In the lower left are two Blue Rocket Lupin that my mom got as a gift and didn't have a place to plant - they look about identical to the day I planted them, but Mom tells me they will get big spikes of flowers eventually. I hope so!I am so so excited about our garden, so hopefully that will motivate me to keep track of it on here so I can look back next year and have a record of what worked and what didn't! Any suggestions for what else to plant? Will you take some veggies from us if we have too much to handle in a few months?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Snow day update
I totally fell off the blogging bandwagon. And the facebook bandwagon, even, since I mostly just update twitter and let that update facebook. But mainly it's just been so busy and only getting busier, and I don't even have enough time to do all the knitting and cooking and laundry and cleaning that I need/want to do, so blogging has fallen by the wayside.
Christmas was lovely, except fot the part where Juno escaped from my parents' house and Paul had to chase her through the snow along the Conodoguinet creek for an hour in the cold rain. But we got her back, and at the moment she is grugingly sleeping in her bed, which I have positioned at my feet by the couch in the living room in the ongoing attempt to make her like us and hopefully eventually work our way up to voluntary snuggling.
We've continued to incrementally spruce up our house, with the biggest improvement being the basement: a few days after Christmas, Paul spent the evening moving boxes into the back and stacking them neatly, and a few weeks later he installed a shelf, so now we have a clean, huge room down there with our big, comfy couch and a TV. We haven't used the TV yet, but this Saturday we are picking up an elliptical machine we are buying from our friends Kelly and Luke, and I am dropping my YMCA membership (having lost my gym buddy in favor of her neighborhood's free exercize room), so hopefully I will be using that room and that TV multiple times each week starting Saturday!
Today has been a lazy day of me working from home while Paul enjoys a rare day to relax - the snow is piled up to our windows, and we haven't ventured out to shovel the driveway and uncover Paul's car yet. I finally got a new HP laptop at work, so I've been enjoying working from the couch in my pj's. Paul did do a little more than just relax, though, and has a pork roast in the oven for our dinner, which is filling the house with tantalizing smells. Tonight we plan to enjoy a slow dinner in front of the TV, watching a show on PBS that sounds interesting.
I've been getting into my stride at my new job (that isn't so new any more - it's been over a year now), while Paul is starting to wind down at his job in anticipation of going back to school full time this fall. He's been taking classes, this semester is pre-calc, but it's time to speed things up! Since the store will be closing or possibly changing hands this Spring, and with my employment feeling secure, there isn't going to be a better time for him to do it. I like to daydream of that day a few years down the road when he's graduated and found his career calling, allowing me to transition into a stay-at-home-mom/wife role, but until then I'm really looking forward to having a house-husband (at least a part-time one) once he's in school and not working. The few months between jobs when he moved down to VA with me, and again when we moved back to PA, were stressful because he was looking for work, but also really cool to have him home waiting for me with dinner made most evenings when I got home. This time around, it's all planned, so I'm really looking forward to it! I feel really lucky to have a job I like that also earns us enough to let Paul go back to school and not worry about work for a few years.
In the day-to-day-life department, I've been continuing to get together with a bunch of girlfriends almost every Monday evening, something we all look forward to every week. We switch houses every week, and one of the bunch just bought a new townhome right across from another, so soon we'll have a new location to enjoy. The spouses of all the girls sometimes get together, mainly during Monday Night Football season, and then we all get together on the occasional Friday or Saturday for parties that are always a blast.
We also continue to make the trip down to Northern Virginia pretty frequently to see the friends we made when we lived down there, most recently for the Super Bowl, and we always have a great time with them. My friend Jeneane and I just got together a few weeks ago in DC to see an author we both love, and who she introduced me to, followed by dinner; a couple months before that, we were down for Sarah and Ginny's wedding, which was beautiful and sweet.
I am, of course, still singing in choir at church every Sunday, with rehearsals every Thursday evening, but I dropped Bell Choir in order to have one evening a week at home with Paul. My mom and I don't see each other as often now that we don't have Wednesday evenings at bells, so we need to work on fixing that! I've also added one more church activity: I am extremely excited to be a member of the call committee that will be spending the next 18-24 (or more!) months calling a new senior pastor for TLC. Since I grew up at this church and now plan to raise my kids there too, I am so excited to get to help with the process.
Along with all that excitement, the list of things I want us to do in and around the house only grows! This spring, I want to sell the small Japanese Maple in the sunniest corner of our back yard so that I can put in a vegetable & herb garden, and I'm hoping we can also install a patio ourselves using supplies from a local home surplus store. The same surplus store has cheap laminate flooring we're hoping to install in the basement to replace the awesomely 70's orange carpet currently down there, and we're still deciding what to do with the fake wood paneling down there - we might save some money by just painting over it, but I would love to replace it with drywall, because I have a vision of painting the far wall with chalkboard paint in anticipation of using it as a playroom for our kids, and I think being able to draw on the wall would be so much fun. But speaking of our basement, we still need to contract someone to install a radon mitigation system, since our radon readings are pretty far above the safe limit, and that's something we definitely want to deal with before we have little ones in the house!
We still haven't scraped the glue off the walls in the second bathroom, which is partly because I can't imagine spending time re-painting in there until we can also afford to replace the hideous vanity. But the vanity is installed from wall to wall, so if we take it out, we end up needing to either uninstall all the tile and re-drywall, or patch up the tile, both of which sound equally difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. And come to that, I hate the wallpaper in our main bathroom more every day; plus, we want to cut down the mirror to be just over the vanity so that we can install some more storage over the toilet, but the wallpaper doesn't extend to behind the mirror, so once we take it down we'll be exposing something like naked plaster (which I'm hoping is at least sealed or something).
We exposed the original wood floors in our dining and living rooms last year pretty soon after we moved in, and we haven't regretted that for a minute, but we're still deciding whether to do the same in the rest of the house. But that would entail purchasing more area rugs, so we're not doing it yet, plus there's the additional question of refinishing the floors: there are a lot of ugly spots that need to be sanded down anyway, and I would really love to just go the whole way and re-stain the entire house a much darker color on the floors - the original color is very yellow wood.
And of course on top of all that is the looming possibility of offspring in the not-too-distant future, so that will mean either speeding up or putting on indefinite hold all these other renovations, and hopefully converting the second bedroom into a nursery with at least some fun painting and decorating to make it unique. My cousin accidentally introduced me to a DIY home improvement blog just before we moved, and I've continued to be obsessed with it, even though I know I'll never have the time to do all the ideas I have in my head for our own house. But, for example, I have a bunch more panels of the white Ikea curtain panels I bought for the whole house but only used in a few rooms, so I hope I'll eventually hang them in the second bedroom once I'm turning it into a nursery, and maybe I'll dye them a different color to match whatever color scheme I decide on for the nursery. I tried to talk Paul into doing away with the folding doors on our closets in favor of fabric panels, but since he didn't go for it, maybe I'll do it in the second bedroom/nursery instead!
Another big project I need to do is organize my pictures - it's been months, since the last time I posted on this blog in fact, since I downloaded them from my camera, and even longer than that since I shared any with anyone. I'm really hoping we can get a amatuer-quality digital SLR once I'm expecting, but if I'm going to ask for that, I need to get a lot better about keeping up with organizing and sharing my photos! My cousin and friend Kelly do such a great job posting pics of their bambinos on their blogs; our extended family will be living a lot closer to us than theirs do to them, but even so, I want to be as diligent with the updates as they are, just to have the record for myself years down the road! One thing I need to do is get better about picking the small handful of good photos out of the boatload I always take with a digital camera.
I'm a few weeks away from finally finishing the cardigan I started knitting for Kelly's beautiful babe last June, just in time to start knitting something for my friend Mindy, who is expecting in early May. In the interim, I've made a little bit of jewelry for Christmas presents, and crocheted a cover for the e-reader Paul got me for Christmas. I never have enough time to knit as much as I'd like to! The cover for my e-reader came out so well that I'd love to post the pattern and the item itself for sale on Etsy, but if someone actually bought one, I don't know if I'd have time to finish it in a reasonable amount of time! But I'll never be motivated to finish another one unless I know someone's going to buy it. I really should just bit the bullet, make another one in a different color, use the opportunity to solidify the pattern, and then post it for sale on Etsy.
I've never posted anything for sale on there before, and I'd love to try it; I'd post jewelry, but I'd never stand out from the thousands and thousands of others with the same thing. I searched for other e-reader covers, and found a bunch, but not tons, and none of them crocheted, so if I could do this, I'd really have something unique that I think I could sell, especially as they continue to catch on. I could even post links to my Etsy posting on the e-reader message boards I casually follow, and drum up business that way! What would I do if I actually got multiple orders right away? I could never finish a bunch in time to satisfy more than one or two people. Well, I suppose I shouldn't worry about that problem before I've even posted anything!
I haven't completely given up my little dreamlet of an idea to run a craft business some day, and I feel like getting a modest Etsy store running would be a decent first step in that direction. If I could get a few sales of the e-reader covers, maybe I'd be motivated to add a few more items like craft kits. And if I crochet that second cover and no one buys it, the worst that happens is that I have two covers for my own e-reader. Right?
Well there's a huge update for a snow day after two months of blog neglect. More for my benefit than anything - a wish list for myself, perhaps, to check back in on when I need motivation.
Christmas was lovely, except fot the part where Juno escaped from my parents' house and Paul had to chase her through the snow along the Conodoguinet creek for an hour in the cold rain. But we got her back, and at the moment she is grugingly sleeping in her bed, which I have positioned at my feet by the couch in the living room in the ongoing attempt to make her like us and hopefully eventually work our way up to voluntary snuggling.
We've continued to incrementally spruce up our house, with the biggest improvement being the basement: a few days after Christmas, Paul spent the evening moving boxes into the back and stacking them neatly, and a few weeks later he installed a shelf, so now we have a clean, huge room down there with our big, comfy couch and a TV. We haven't used the TV yet, but this Saturday we are picking up an elliptical machine we are buying from our friends Kelly and Luke, and I am dropping my YMCA membership (having lost my gym buddy in favor of her neighborhood's free exercize room), so hopefully I will be using that room and that TV multiple times each week starting Saturday!
Today has been a lazy day of me working from home while Paul enjoys a rare day to relax - the snow is piled up to our windows, and we haven't ventured out to shovel the driveway and uncover Paul's car yet. I finally got a new HP laptop at work, so I've been enjoying working from the couch in my pj's. Paul did do a little more than just relax, though, and has a pork roast in the oven for our dinner, which is filling the house with tantalizing smells. Tonight we plan to enjoy a slow dinner in front of the TV, watching a show on PBS that sounds interesting.
I've been getting into my stride at my new job (that isn't so new any more - it's been over a year now), while Paul is starting to wind down at his job in anticipation of going back to school full time this fall. He's been taking classes, this semester is pre-calc, but it's time to speed things up! Since the store will be closing or possibly changing hands this Spring, and with my employment feeling secure, there isn't going to be a better time for him to do it. I like to daydream of that day a few years down the road when he's graduated and found his career calling, allowing me to transition into a stay-at-home-mom/wife role, but until then I'm really looking forward to having a house-husband (at least a part-time one) once he's in school and not working. The few months between jobs when he moved down to VA with me, and again when we moved back to PA, were stressful because he was looking for work, but also really cool to have him home waiting for me with dinner made most evenings when I got home. This time around, it's all planned, so I'm really looking forward to it! I feel really lucky to have a job I like that also earns us enough to let Paul go back to school and not worry about work for a few years.
In the day-to-day-life department, I've been continuing to get together with a bunch of girlfriends almost every Monday evening, something we all look forward to every week. We switch houses every week, and one of the bunch just bought a new townhome right across from another, so soon we'll have a new location to enjoy. The spouses of all the girls sometimes get together, mainly during Monday Night Football season, and then we all get together on the occasional Friday or Saturday for parties that are always a blast.
We also continue to make the trip down to Northern Virginia pretty frequently to see the friends we made when we lived down there, most recently for the Super Bowl, and we always have a great time with them. My friend Jeneane and I just got together a few weeks ago in DC to see an author we both love, and who she introduced me to, followed by dinner; a couple months before that, we were down for Sarah and Ginny's wedding, which was beautiful and sweet.
I am, of course, still singing in choir at church every Sunday, with rehearsals every Thursday evening, but I dropped Bell Choir in order to have one evening a week at home with Paul. My mom and I don't see each other as often now that we don't have Wednesday evenings at bells, so we need to work on fixing that! I've also added one more church activity: I am extremely excited to be a member of the call committee that will be spending the next 18-24 (or more!) months calling a new senior pastor for TLC. Since I grew up at this church and now plan to raise my kids there too, I am so excited to get to help with the process.
Along with all that excitement, the list of things I want us to do in and around the house only grows! This spring, I want to sell the small Japanese Maple in the sunniest corner of our back yard so that I can put in a vegetable & herb garden, and I'm hoping we can also install a patio ourselves using supplies from a local home surplus store. The same surplus store has cheap laminate flooring we're hoping to install in the basement to replace the awesomely 70's orange carpet currently down there, and we're still deciding what to do with the fake wood paneling down there - we might save some money by just painting over it, but I would love to replace it with drywall, because I have a vision of painting the far wall with chalkboard paint in anticipation of using it as a playroom for our kids, and I think being able to draw on the wall would be so much fun. But speaking of our basement, we still need to contract someone to install a radon mitigation system, since our radon readings are pretty far above the safe limit, and that's something we definitely want to deal with before we have little ones in the house!
We still haven't scraped the glue off the walls in the second bathroom, which is partly because I can't imagine spending time re-painting in there until we can also afford to replace the hideous vanity. But the vanity is installed from wall to wall, so if we take it out, we end up needing to either uninstall all the tile and re-drywall, or patch up the tile, both of which sound equally difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. And come to that, I hate the wallpaper in our main bathroom more every day; plus, we want to cut down the mirror to be just over the vanity so that we can install some more storage over the toilet, but the wallpaper doesn't extend to behind the mirror, so once we take it down we'll be exposing something like naked plaster (which I'm hoping is at least sealed or something).
We exposed the original wood floors in our dining and living rooms last year pretty soon after we moved in, and we haven't regretted that for a minute, but we're still deciding whether to do the same in the rest of the house. But that would entail purchasing more area rugs, so we're not doing it yet, plus there's the additional question of refinishing the floors: there are a lot of ugly spots that need to be sanded down anyway, and I would really love to just go the whole way and re-stain the entire house a much darker color on the floors - the original color is very yellow wood.
And of course on top of all that is the looming possibility of offspring in the not-too-distant future, so that will mean either speeding up or putting on indefinite hold all these other renovations, and hopefully converting the second bedroom into a nursery with at least some fun painting and decorating to make it unique. My cousin accidentally introduced me to a DIY home improvement blog just before we moved, and I've continued to be obsessed with it, even though I know I'll never have the time to do all the ideas I have in my head for our own house. But, for example, I have a bunch more panels of the white Ikea curtain panels I bought for the whole house but only used in a few rooms, so I hope I'll eventually hang them in the second bedroom once I'm turning it into a nursery, and maybe I'll dye them a different color to match whatever color scheme I decide on for the nursery. I tried to talk Paul into doing away with the folding doors on our closets in favor of fabric panels, but since he didn't go for it, maybe I'll do it in the second bedroom/nursery instead!
Another big project I need to do is organize my pictures - it's been months, since the last time I posted on this blog in fact, since I downloaded them from my camera, and even longer than that since I shared any with anyone. I'm really hoping we can get a amatuer-quality digital SLR once I'm expecting, but if I'm going to ask for that, I need to get a lot better about keeping up with organizing and sharing my photos! My cousin and friend Kelly do such a great job posting pics of their bambinos on their blogs; our extended family will be living a lot closer to us than theirs do to them, but even so, I want to be as diligent with the updates as they are, just to have the record for myself years down the road! One thing I need to do is get better about picking the small handful of good photos out of the boatload I always take with a digital camera.
I'm a few weeks away from finally finishing the cardigan I started knitting for Kelly's beautiful babe last June, just in time to start knitting something for my friend Mindy, who is expecting in early May. In the interim, I've made a little bit of jewelry for Christmas presents, and crocheted a cover for the e-reader Paul got me for Christmas. I never have enough time to knit as much as I'd like to! The cover for my e-reader came out so well that I'd love to post the pattern and the item itself for sale on Etsy, but if someone actually bought one, I don't know if I'd have time to finish it in a reasonable amount of time! But I'll never be motivated to finish another one unless I know someone's going to buy it. I really should just bit the bullet, make another one in a different color, use the opportunity to solidify the pattern, and then post it for sale on Etsy.
I've never posted anything for sale on there before, and I'd love to try it; I'd post jewelry, but I'd never stand out from the thousands and thousands of others with the same thing. I searched for other e-reader covers, and found a bunch, but not tons, and none of them crocheted, so if I could do this, I'd really have something unique that I think I could sell, especially as they continue to catch on. I could even post links to my Etsy posting on the e-reader message boards I casually follow, and drum up business that way! What would I do if I actually got multiple orders right away? I could never finish a bunch in time to satisfy more than one or two people. Well, I suppose I shouldn't worry about that problem before I've even posted anything!
I haven't completely given up my little dreamlet of an idea to run a craft business some day, and I feel like getting a modest Etsy store running would be a decent first step in that direction. If I could get a few sales of the e-reader covers, maybe I'd be motivated to add a few more items like craft kits. And if I crochet that second cover and no one buys it, the worst that happens is that I have two covers for my own e-reader. Right?
Well there's a huge update for a snow day after two months of blog neglect. More for my benefit than anything - a wish list for myself, perhaps, to check back in on when I need motivation.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Home update
We got the carpet! It's brighter than in the pic in the previous post; in-our-living-room pic coming soon.
The TV stand is scheduled to be delivered on Wednesday, no word yet on the painting, but that's OK because I can't hang it until we also have...
this piano that we're getting on Saturday from friends near Philly!
In other exciting house-related news, today we officially applied for a
specific Italian Greyhound (as opposed to just applying to an agency for one in the future):
She's 5 years old and has lived in a kennel at a breeder thus far, having puppies. She sounds great for us because 5 years is about when IGs mellow out, she's used to sleeping in her kennel, she's healthy (which is why they used her to breed) so no expensive health problems, and she's already micro-chipped which means we don't have to worry about re-licensing her every year. In addition, of course, to all the other reasons we want an IG in the first place. Oh, also, I love the grey and white coloring. So, yay!!
Pictures soon, I swear.
UPDATE: We're officially approved to adopt the Italian Greyhound from Petfinder! She's getting spayed today (or maybe next Tuesday), and we will go pick her up as soon as she's recovered from the surgery! SO EXCITING!! I have to finish Ella's sweater before I can start knitting one for the new dog, but that's definitely next. Also, possible name (since we're re-naming her): Juno. As the Roman goddess of marriage and pregnancy, it fits with her first 5 years spent breeding. Also, it fits my criteria of not being a common human name (despite the recent movie). Thoughts?
The TV stand is scheduled to be delivered on Wednesday, no word yet on the painting, but that's OK because I can't hang it until we also have...
this piano that we're getting on Saturday from friends near Philly!
In other exciting house-related news, today we officially applied for a
specific Italian Greyhound (as opposed to just applying to an agency for one in the future):
She's 5 years old and has lived in a kennel at a breeder thus far, having puppies. She sounds great for us because 5 years is about when IGs mellow out, she's used to sleeping in her kennel, she's healthy (which is why they used her to breed) so no expensive health problems, and she's already micro-chipped which means we don't have to worry about re-licensing her every year. In addition, of course, to all the other reasons we want an IG in the first place. Oh, also, I love the grey and white coloring. So, yay!!
Pictures soon, I swear.
UPDATE: We're officially approved to adopt the Italian Greyhound from Petfinder! She's getting spayed today (or maybe next Tuesday), and we will go pick her up as soon as she's recovered from the surgery! SO EXCITING!! I have to finish Ella's sweater before I can start knitting one for the new dog, but that's definitely next. Also, possible name (since we're re-naming her): Juno. As the Roman goddess of marriage and pregnancy, it fits with her first 5 years spent breeding. Also, it fits my criteria of not being a common human name (despite the recent movie). Thoughts?
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Home! It's almost here.
On Monday, Paul and I finished the hardest parts of finishing the living room. The painting is done, the blinds are hung, and the curtain rod is still empty but ready to receive the curtains. The furniture is arranged. In a few days, I'm going to buy this 5'x8' rug to ground the sitting area:
and this TV stand:
so that our new TV can stop living on our coffee table:
(Side note: doesn't President Obama look great on our new TV? I thought so.)
and we can start LIVING in our living room!
Paul needs to hang our clock above the fireplace, and I need to hang photos (LOTS of photos) to warm up those white walls, but that will be a fun process. I have a great idea for a big, asymmetric photo collage on the wall inside the front door. Also might get this 23"x35" Klimt stretched canvas, "The Tree of Life," which also ties right in with the whole color scheme:
On Saturday, we're heading down to Virginia for our friends Sarah and Ginny's wedding shower, and on the way we're going to stop at the Woodbridge Ikea to get another floor lamp to match the one in the picture above. If we see a pair of end tables we like, we might get those too, if the price is right! The shower is at 3:00, somewhere down Rt. 95 below Woodbridge, but we're leaving in the morning so we have time to stop at Lebanese Taverna for lunch before heading to Ikea. Should be a really fun Saturday!
Also, I posted pics of my various favorite babies:
and this TV stand:
so that our new TV can stop living on our coffee table:
(Side note: doesn't President Obama look great on our new TV? I thought so.)
and we can start LIVING in our living room!
Paul needs to hang our clock above the fireplace, and I need to hang photos (LOTS of photos) to warm up those white walls, but that will be a fun process. I have a great idea for a big, asymmetric photo collage on the wall inside the front door. Also might get this 23"x35" Klimt stretched canvas, "The Tree of Life," which also ties right in with the whole color scheme:
On Saturday, we're heading down to Virginia for our friends Sarah and Ginny's wedding shower, and on the way we're going to stop at the Woodbridge Ikea to get another floor lamp to match the one in the picture above. If we see a pair of end tables we like, we might get those too, if the price is right! The shower is at 3:00, somewhere down Rt. 95 below Woodbridge, but we're leaving in the morning so we have time to stop at Lebanese Taverna for lunch before heading to Ikea. Should be a really fun Saturday!
Also, I posted pics of my various favorite babies:
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| Babies! |
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Dining Room Before & After
I can't believe it's taken me four days to post this, since I'm so excited about it!
Dining room in March before we moved in:
Dining room during wallpaper peeling, shortly after moving in at the end of May:
Dining room during painting in early and mid June:
Taking up the carpet after painting all trim but the baseboard, early August:
All finished!
Still to do in the dining room: Install the new white switch plate and outlet covers; put stuff into the curio cabinet (starting with the nice china I got from my Gommy); get a new chandelier; and hang some art on those walls! Today I got stuff at Michael's to help me do two out of four: the outlet covers are Paul's job, but I got some stands for the plates (instead of just stacking them all - I want to see them they're very simple and pretty!) and some poster mounting glue to fix the big Van Gogh that's all wrinkly in its cheapo frame--I think this will let me use the same cheapo frame but get the picture to stay all flat and nice permanently. Still haven't decided where to hang it, but I'm hoping once I can hold it up to a few places, there will be something obvious. Best guess right now is the wall between the kitchen entry and the pantry door, so I'll still need ideas for the wall to the left of the curio! Maybe some of my many unused landscape and nature photos. And no budget right now for a chandelier, but I think I know about what I want.
Also, thankfully you can't tell in the picture how badly the curtains need to be ironed. I'll do that soon...
We're planning to take up the carpet in the living room this Sunday!! Once that's done and I paint the trim in there, we'll officially be finished with the really big, necessary stuff. OMG.
I didn't continue cleaning the fridge tonight, and I'm OK with that.
Dining room in March before we moved in:
Dining room during wallpaper peeling, shortly after moving in at the end of May:
Dining room during painting in early and mid June:
Taking up the carpet after painting all trim but the baseboard, early August:
All finished!
Still to do in the dining room: Install the new white switch plate and outlet covers; put stuff into the curio cabinet (starting with the nice china I got from my Gommy); get a new chandelier; and hang some art on those walls! Today I got stuff at Michael's to help me do two out of four: the outlet covers are Paul's job, but I got some stands for the plates (instead of just stacking them all - I want to see them they're very simple and pretty!) and some poster mounting glue to fix the big Van Gogh that's all wrinkly in its cheapo frame--I think this will let me use the same cheapo frame but get the picture to stay all flat and nice permanently. Still haven't decided where to hang it, but I'm hoping once I can hold it up to a few places, there will be something obvious. Best guess right now is the wall between the kitchen entry and the pantry door, so I'll still need ideas for the wall to the left of the curio! Maybe some of my many unused landscape and nature photos. And no budget right now for a chandelier, but I think I know about what I want.
Also, thankfully you can't tell in the picture how badly the curtains need to be ironed. I'll do that soon...
We're planning to take up the carpet in the living room this Sunday!! Once that's done and I paint the trim in there, we'll officially be finished with the really big, necessary stuff. OMG.
I didn't continue cleaning the fridge tonight, and I'm OK with that.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Progress!
Saturday evening I cleaned up the second bedroom to ready it for its second-ever overnight guest, and Paul vacuumed the entire house. The second bedroom now looks rather austere, with one empty bookshelf, one little chest at the foot of the bed, one bedside table with one lamp, the bed, and no other furniture or decorations.
I did stick the narrow CD shelf in there (my Dad made it years ago) and stuck a bunch of old framed photos on it, so that was a slight improvement. It definitely needs a plant or two, a dresser, and some pictures on the walls, though. And a mirror.
Oh, and while I was cleaning? I put an old wash basket full of currently-dormant back packs, bags, and purses, and our aero bed and drying rack, IN THE CLOSET. Neatly. And now you can't see them when you walk into the room, but they're still there, in easy reach, beneath a shelf full of neatly-folded blankets, comforters, and sheets. I HAVE CLOSETS IN MY HOUSE.
Sunday afternoon and evening I cleaned up the carport: I tidied up all the gardening paraphernalia (and put it in our shed! I heart storage space SO MUCH), re-potted and/or cleaned off all the plants and brought most of them inside, and FINALLY did something with the 8 little herb seedlings that have been struggling along in their teensy little containers that should have been re-planted six weeks ago. I finally pitched the dead pepper plant from last year, and used its rather huge pot to hold all of the surviving baby herbs. They've all perked up a bit already, so I'm hoping now they'll finally start growing in earnest, and maybe by the end of Summer I'll at least have a handful of parsley and cilantro to supplement all my basil, chives, and rosemary. I also finally stopped by Highland Gardens and got some liquid plant food that's SO much easier to use than fertilizer sticks or pellets. Hopefully that will get everything looking perky and healthy, especially the aloe plants, which still look pretty pathetic almost a year after being separated from the monster mother plant.
Sunday night we also went to see the movie Up, and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It was so fun and whimsical, and totally sad and thoughtful and deep in some very adult ways, but still very happy and uplifting, especially the ending. The little vignette you hear about is the first 5 minutes of the movie, so you're crying 5 minutes in, but then only one other time might make you tear up.
Monday Paul finished converting the little coat closet in our dining room into a rather large, deep pantry closet complete with five adjustable shelves. I stopped at JoAnn Fabrics on the way home and got some thin, clear vinyl to use as over-sized shelf liner (cheaper than official shelf liner, which wouldn't even have been big enough to cover the two-foot-deep shelves), and then spent all evening stocking the shelves! There is room to spare with all of our food put away, and we now have only one remaining box full of spices, as they're the only thing we haven't decided where to put yet.
Tonight (Tuesday), we are going to move the dining room table into the living room and RIP UP THE CARPET in the dining room. It is going to be glorious. We will see the entire expanse of wood floor for the first time, and I can't wait! Hopefully that will go very smoothly and thus motivate us to get the living room carpet removed soon too! Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday I will be able to finish painting the baseboard & door trim in the dining room!! And/or I might haul some boxes up from the basement and fill the bookshelves in the office and bedroom with appropriate books. Actually, painting will probably wait until next week at this point, since I also have a bunch of clothing to re-organize and put away in the master bedroom.
Then Friday after work I hop on a plane and land in Raleigh, NC to meet Kelly M and visit Rachel! Maybe knowing I'm spending another unexpected weekend having fun with friends instead of working on our house is what's motivating me to get so much done this week so far. I hope it continues!
I did stick the narrow CD shelf in there (my Dad made it years ago) and stuck a bunch of old framed photos on it, so that was a slight improvement. It definitely needs a plant or two, a dresser, and some pictures on the walls, though. And a mirror.
Oh, and while I was cleaning? I put an old wash basket full of currently-dormant back packs, bags, and purses, and our aero bed and drying rack, IN THE CLOSET. Neatly. And now you can't see them when you walk into the room, but they're still there, in easy reach, beneath a shelf full of neatly-folded blankets, comforters, and sheets. I HAVE CLOSETS IN MY HOUSE.
Sunday afternoon and evening I cleaned up the carport: I tidied up all the gardening paraphernalia (and put it in our shed! I heart storage space SO MUCH), re-potted and/or cleaned off all the plants and brought most of them inside, and FINALLY did something with the 8 little herb seedlings that have been struggling along in their teensy little containers that should have been re-planted six weeks ago. I finally pitched the dead pepper plant from last year, and used its rather huge pot to hold all of the surviving baby herbs. They've all perked up a bit already, so I'm hoping now they'll finally start growing in earnest, and maybe by the end of Summer I'll at least have a handful of parsley and cilantro to supplement all my basil, chives, and rosemary. I also finally stopped by Highland Gardens and got some liquid plant food that's SO much easier to use than fertilizer sticks or pellets. Hopefully that will get everything looking perky and healthy, especially the aloe plants, which still look pretty pathetic almost a year after being separated from the monster mother plant.
Sunday night we also went to see the movie Up, and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It was so fun and whimsical, and totally sad and thoughtful and deep in some very adult ways, but still very happy and uplifting, especially the ending. The little vignette you hear about is the first 5 minutes of the movie, so you're crying 5 minutes in, but then only one other time might make you tear up.
Monday Paul finished converting the little coat closet in our dining room into a rather large, deep pantry closet complete with five adjustable shelves. I stopped at JoAnn Fabrics on the way home and got some thin, clear vinyl to use as over-sized shelf liner (cheaper than official shelf liner, which wouldn't even have been big enough to cover the two-foot-deep shelves), and then spent all evening stocking the shelves! There is room to spare with all of our food put away, and we now have only one remaining box full of spices, as they're the only thing we haven't decided where to put yet.
Tonight (Tuesday), we are going to move the dining room table into the living room and RIP UP THE CARPET in the dining room. It is going to be glorious. We will see the entire expanse of wood floor for the first time, and I can't wait! Hopefully that will go very smoothly and thus motivate us to get the living room carpet removed soon too! Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday I will be able to finish painting the baseboard & door trim in the dining room!! And/or I might haul some boxes up from the basement and fill the bookshelves in the office and bedroom with appropriate books. Actually, painting will probably wait until next week at this point, since I also have a bunch of clothing to re-organize and put away in the master bedroom.
Then Friday after work I hop on a plane and land in Raleigh, NC to meet Kelly M and visit Rachel! Maybe knowing I'm spending another unexpected weekend having fun with friends instead of working on our house is what's motivating me to get so much done this week so far. I hope it continues!
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Yummiest CSA food thus far
Yesterday we got a HUGE head of incredibly beautiful red leaf lettuce from Shared Earth Farm. It was delicious, just by itself.
I chopped up two entire cucumbers and two tiny onions, also from the CSA, sauteed two frozen tilapia filets with Gazebo Room Balsamic dressing, and plopped a filet each on top of the huge mountain of salad on our two plates. Add some crumbles of the raw-milk sharp cheddar we lucked out and got for free because someone didn't pick up their cheese share, and you have one incredibly delicious meal.
And just for fun, here's the not-really-a-tart I made for the 4th of July. I just slapped down some graham crackers, covered it with creamcheese mixed with sugar and vanilla extract, and topped it with blueberries, pitted and halved sweet cherries, and a few raspberries. I got tons of compliments, even though the graham crackers got all soggy - I guess you can't go wrong with creamcheese, sugar, and fresh fruit!
Can't help posting one more house pic, of the blinds I installed all by myself. Five windows total thus far, in all three bedrooms (i.e. two bedrooms and the office). Hopefully we'll get enough trim painted in the dining room tonight that I'll be able to hang blinds on that window next, and then I just need to decide what to do with the huge window in the living room...hmm...
I still haven't put up the curtains, as you can see. Soon.....
I chopped up two entire cucumbers and two tiny onions, also from the CSA, sauteed two frozen tilapia filets with Gazebo Room Balsamic dressing, and plopped a filet each on top of the huge mountain of salad on our two plates. Add some crumbles of the raw-milk sharp cheddar we lucked out and got for free because someone didn't pick up their cheese share, and you have one incredibly delicious meal.
And just for fun, here's the not-really-a-tart I made for the 4th of July. I just slapped down some graham crackers, covered it with creamcheese mixed with sugar and vanilla extract, and topped it with blueberries, pitted and halved sweet cherries, and a few raspberries. I got tons of compliments, even though the graham crackers got all soggy - I guess you can't go wrong with creamcheese, sugar, and fresh fruit!
Can't help posting one more house pic, of the blinds I installed all by myself. Five windows total thus far, in all three bedrooms (i.e. two bedrooms and the office). Hopefully we'll get enough trim painted in the dining room tonight that I'll be able to hang blinds on that window next, and then I just need to decide what to do with the huge window in the living room...hmm...
I still haven't put up the curtains, as you can see. Soon.....
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Pictures! Of the house!
I found my card reader, yay! It was hiding in my purse all along.
I also have a few before-and-after pics, but since the trim isn't painted yet and the carpet isn't lifted in the living and dining rooms, they're still technically before-and-during pics. The closest thing to an "after" pic is the bedroom, since I have painted the window trim, so in these views it looks like it's all finished!
Before:
During:
After:
I love the furniture! It was my grandparents' so it's all super solid and heavy. It will probably last forever. All we need now is to install the blinds and curtains I bought...might happen this weekend! Also, now that too-bright ugly floor lamp is gone and I have my old Ikea bedroom table lamp, which matches the room and the furniture so perfectly. I thought I had taken a picture of that, but I guess not.
And here's the living room before:
During:
and After, but with the trim not yet painted and the carpet still down, and no decorations or pictures on the walls yet:
The dining room is more obviously not finished until that chair rail (and window trim) is painted white so it really pops out and emphasizes the light grey and light greyish-brown, but even with just the wallpaper down it's a HUGE and drastic improvement:
Before:
During:
So there you have it. I have a few other pictures, but these are the main before-and-after-ish pics so far. What do you think?
In other news, we had our final apartment inspection yesterday, and we got our full security deposit back. The landlord had been weird about some things, so we were worried he was going to keep some of it, but he didn't, so yay! We are REALLY feeling like homeowners now. Our first bi-weekly mortgage payment was automatically debited from our account on Monday! Only 26 years to go... (actually we're hoping to up the bi-weekly amount and get it down to 20ish years...ZOMG)
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| From New House! |
I also have a few before-and-after pics, but since the trim isn't painted yet and the carpet isn't lifted in the living and dining rooms, they're still technically before-and-during pics. The closest thing to an "after" pic is the bedroom, since I have painted the window trim, so in these views it looks like it's all finished!
Before:
During:
After:
I love the furniture! It was my grandparents' so it's all super solid and heavy. It will probably last forever. All we need now is to install the blinds and curtains I bought...might happen this weekend! Also, now that too-bright ugly floor lamp is gone and I have my old Ikea bedroom table lamp, which matches the room and the furniture so perfectly. I thought I had taken a picture of that, but I guess not.
And here's the living room before:
During:
and After, but with the trim not yet painted and the carpet still down, and no decorations or pictures on the walls yet:
The dining room is more obviously not finished until that chair rail (and window trim) is painted white so it really pops out and emphasizes the light grey and light greyish-brown, but even with just the wallpaper down it's a HUGE and drastic improvement:
Before:
During:
So there you have it. I have a few other pictures, but these are the main before-and-after-ish pics so far. What do you think?
In other news, we had our final apartment inspection yesterday, and we got our full security deposit back. The landlord had been weird about some things, so we were worried he was going to keep some of it, but he didn't, so yay! We are REALLY feeling like homeowners now. Our first bi-weekly mortgage payment was automatically debited from our account on Monday! Only 26 years to go... (actually we're hoping to up the bi-weekly amount and get it down to 20ish years...ZOMG)
Monday, June 22, 2009
Cooking in the kitchen
It's not 100% there yet (Paul still has to hook up water to the fridge, re-install the dishwasher, and make everything pretty again), but we have the bookcase out of the kitchen, the extra cabinets hung, and everything is put away enough that I am looking forward to cooking dinner at home every night this week!!
We've had a few meals at the new house, but with the kitchen overrun with moving paraphenalia, tools, and painting supplies, it hasn't been easy to maneuver for actual food preparation. But no more! This week, we will use 100% of the CSA food, and it will be yummy and healthy and money-saving.
It's a good thing, too, because next week starts Whip It Up 2009, and with all the new stuff we'll be cooking to utilize our CSA veggies, it would be a shame to not participate! The latest recipe posted on Shared Earth Farm's recipe site is Kohlrabi Cakes, so I'm wondering if we'll be getting some kohlrabi tonight. If so, I hope we also get enough spring onions for the recipe! Hannah's home alone this week, so maybe if there's not enough spring onions once we divide them, she'll come over for dinner so we can combine forces, because those Kohlrabi Cakes sound pretty yummy!!
In other news, we slept in our new (to us) queen-sized bed in our master bedroom for the first time last night!! It was pretty sweet. Slightly marred by the fact that Paul had to stay up late to finish his extra credit, so all we could do after that was fall into bed and curse the alarm clock at 7:00 this morning for not letting us have a full night's sleep. BUT it's all OK, because I think the graphing and everything really clicked for Paul, and I always enjoy seeing that lightbulb go on, even when I haven't been the one to flip the switch. I think I provided some much-needed moral support. And BONUS: I got to re-learn the Unit Circle. Math is fun!!
Still taking lots of pictures, and still don't have the stuff to actually get any off of my camera and onto here. But next weekend is IT for the apartment, we want to finish moving out the last of the little junk, clean, and then I will have no excuse to avoid posting all the pictures. Soon! In the mean time, why don't you just stop by and visit? Seeing things in person is always better anyway. And I can feed you strawberries!
We've had a few meals at the new house, but with the kitchen overrun with moving paraphenalia, tools, and painting supplies, it hasn't been easy to maneuver for actual food preparation. But no more! This week, we will use 100% of the CSA food, and it will be yummy and healthy and money-saving.
It's a good thing, too, because next week starts Whip It Up 2009, and with all the new stuff we'll be cooking to utilize our CSA veggies, it would be a shame to not participate! The latest recipe posted on Shared Earth Farm's recipe site is Kohlrabi Cakes, so I'm wondering if we'll be getting some kohlrabi tonight. If so, I hope we also get enough spring onions for the recipe! Hannah's home alone this week, so maybe if there's not enough spring onions once we divide them, she'll come over for dinner so we can combine forces, because those Kohlrabi Cakes sound pretty yummy!!
In other news, we slept in our new (to us) queen-sized bed in our master bedroom for the first time last night!! It was pretty sweet. Slightly marred by the fact that Paul had to stay up late to finish his extra credit, so all we could do after that was fall into bed and curse the alarm clock at 7:00 this morning for not letting us have a full night's sleep. BUT it's all OK, because I think the graphing and everything really clicked for Paul, and I always enjoy seeing that lightbulb go on, even when I haven't been the one to flip the switch. I think I provided some much-needed moral support. And BONUS: I got to re-learn the Unit Circle. Math is fun!!
Still taking lots of pictures, and still don't have the stuff to actually get any off of my camera and onto here. But next weekend is IT for the apartment, we want to finish moving out the last of the little junk, clean, and then I will have no excuse to avoid posting all the pictures. Soon! In the mean time, why don't you just stop by and visit? Seeing things in person is always better anyway. And I can feed you strawberries!
Monday, June 08, 2009
Paint
Still no pictures, sorry folks. I do have a lot to post. Soon...now that we have passed the big painting weekend, Paul and I are going to still be working really hard (there's still a lot to finish), but we won't be pulling the same late nights and feeling stressed.
Friday night we stayed up way to late to finish scraping, washing, and masking everything we wanted to have ready for Saturday. Kelly & Reed got there at 9:00 as promised, followed by the Virginia crew around noon, and they were all amazing - everyone worked together to mask off and paint the master bedroom, living room, and prime the bare plaster in the dining room.
Oh, and I successfully rid us of the big, heavy, green bird bath in our side yard - another freecycle success story! Someone picked it up on Saturday morning.
What I just summed up in one sentence actually took us the entire day, but we rewarded ourselves with a lovely picnic all evening and into the night - it was so much fun. There was lots of yummy food, thanks to my mom making a couple of salads, and Kelly helping me throw together some sloppy joe for the crock pot, and one huge trip to the grocery store on Friday for various chips, dips, and veggies. We all started out in the back yard on the camp chairs everyone brought along, and later moved into the car port where it was less buggy. Paul and Chris stocked the old fridge in the shed with lots of beer, and I tried my hand at sangria for the first time - it turned out really well! As a bonus, I was able to use a bottle of wine that I had never opened because I knew it wasn't going to be very good. Well, when you add brandy, cointreau, orange juice, lemon juice, and gingerale, it doesn't matter if your bottle of red wine isn't super delish on its own. Yum! I'm going to make that again very soon.
Sunday we took the remaining two Virginians to breakfast, then stopped by Lowe's for some additional supplies. With the expert paint sprayers having already headed back to VA, we decided we weren't talented enough to try spraying on our own, and opted to roll instead. Paul and I had seen a friend of ours using a paint roller with a tube that sucks the paint out of the can and feeds the roller automatically, and we were surprised and delighted to find it at Lowe's for only $25!! So we grabbed that and a few of the special roller covers (same thing as usual but with holes in the tube so the paint can come out from inside), and headed home to keep painting.
Hannah came over, we put the first coat on the dining room, and painted the one wall in the living room. Then we went for smoothies. After that we put a second coat on the dining room and one living room walls, and our friends headed home. Paul and I put a second coat on most of the bedroom, but ran out of paint, so we plan to finish that tonight and touch up a few places in the living room. Then we'll peel lots of masking tape, paint the bottom half of the dining room, and I'll get started on the trim later this week. I'll save the baseboard trim, though, until Paul gets the carpets ripped up to expose that lovely wood floor! Otherwise the paint won't cover all of the trim - even now you can see a previous layer of paint if you look closely by the carpet line.
*whew* what a weekend. But it feels good to know that our house is really on the road to becoming our home! We have to be out of our apartment by the end of June, and I think my goal of actually getting our house mostly set up by the end of June is do-able. I can already tell that we are going to be SO happy here! The little party we had on Saturday night was so wonderful and comfortable and happy. Knowing that I OWN the place where we were able to gather comfortably, and so I'll be able to have lots more parties like that in the near future! I love the little community of friends we have in this area. I'm so happy right now. Aaaaaah...
Friday night we stayed up way to late to finish scraping, washing, and masking everything we wanted to have ready for Saturday. Kelly & Reed got there at 9:00 as promised, followed by the Virginia crew around noon, and they were all amazing - everyone worked together to mask off and paint the master bedroom, living room, and prime the bare plaster in the dining room.
Oh, and I successfully rid us of the big, heavy, green bird bath in our side yard - another freecycle success story! Someone picked it up on Saturday morning.
What I just summed up in one sentence actually took us the entire day, but we rewarded ourselves with a lovely picnic all evening and into the night - it was so much fun. There was lots of yummy food, thanks to my mom making a couple of salads, and Kelly helping me throw together some sloppy joe for the crock pot, and one huge trip to the grocery store on Friday for various chips, dips, and veggies. We all started out in the back yard on the camp chairs everyone brought along, and later moved into the car port where it was less buggy. Paul and Chris stocked the old fridge in the shed with lots of beer, and I tried my hand at sangria for the first time - it turned out really well! As a bonus, I was able to use a bottle of wine that I had never opened because I knew it wasn't going to be very good. Well, when you add brandy, cointreau, orange juice, lemon juice, and gingerale, it doesn't matter if your bottle of red wine isn't super delish on its own. Yum! I'm going to make that again very soon.
Sunday we took the remaining two Virginians to breakfast, then stopped by Lowe's for some additional supplies. With the expert paint sprayers having already headed back to VA, we decided we weren't talented enough to try spraying on our own, and opted to roll instead. Paul and I had seen a friend of ours using a paint roller with a tube that sucks the paint out of the can and feeds the roller automatically, and we were surprised and delighted to find it at Lowe's for only $25!! So we grabbed that and a few of the special roller covers (same thing as usual but with holes in the tube so the paint can come out from inside), and headed home to keep painting.
Hannah came over, we put the first coat on the dining room, and painted the one wall in the living room. Then we went for smoothies. After that we put a second coat on the dining room and one living room walls, and our friends headed home. Paul and I put a second coat on most of the bedroom, but ran out of paint, so we plan to finish that tonight and touch up a few places in the living room. Then we'll peel lots of masking tape, paint the bottom half of the dining room, and I'll get started on the trim later this week. I'll save the baseboard trim, though, until Paul gets the carpets ripped up to expose that lovely wood floor! Otherwise the paint won't cover all of the trim - even now you can see a previous layer of paint if you look closely by the carpet line.
*whew* what a weekend. But it feels good to know that our house is really on the road to becoming our home! We have to be out of our apartment by the end of June, and I think my goal of actually getting our house mostly set up by the end of June is do-able. I can already tell that we are going to be SO happy here! The little party we had on Saturday night was so wonderful and comfortable and happy. Knowing that I OWN the place where we were able to gather comfortably, and so I'll be able to have lots more parties like that in the near future! I love the little community of friends we have in this area. I'm so happy right now. Aaaaaah...
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
House Tidbits
Sorry all, I have lots of picture on my camera but no way to get them onto the computer at the moment. Priority for now is washing walls and painting trim so we're ready for this weekend's big paintfest!
The living room boarder is now 100% removed, as of about 9:30 last night. Paul and I started on the dining room walls, removing big glops of glue using vinegar water and plastic scrapers, but there's still quite a way to go - two passes of vineger water + scraping followed up with a sponge still leaves some definite rough glue patches on the otherwise smooth plaster, so we're not sure what our next step should be.
In other painting plans, I've decided to spend this evening cleaning the trim in the master bedroom and living room so that I can mask and paint the trim tomorrow, starting in the master bedroom. That way, I won't have to mask anything but around the windows, because if I get paint on the walls it will just get covered up with the wall paint on Saturday. I think this is going to save a lot of time and masking tape. So tonight before going home to clean, a trip to Lowe's is in order.
I also plan to make potato kale soup for dinner, since we got a pound of kale in our first CSA share yesterday, and it's already looking wilty in the fridge. We brought over most of the kitchen utensils on Sunday, and I put them all away, so all I need to grab from the apartment is a few spices and some olive oil, potatoes, and chicken broth. Should be a relatively easy meal for the first cooked in our new kitchen! Then carrot cake for dessert, and maybe a mojito to use up the mint, also from the CSA. Add Rum, sugar, and limes to the get-from-apartment list!
We've decided to put away our Linens N' Things dishes that chip when you look at them wrong, and recruit the Farberware sets that Paul's Aunt Nancy got for us, but that we hadn't opened yet. I tested out our little apartment-sized dishwasher by loading it with all those dishes, plus some Cascade powder, and discovered that the dishwasher doesn't do a good job of rinsing anything in the very back. I could use liquid detergent instead, but then I worry that it still wouldn't be rinsed, but I wouldn't be able to tell they way I can when I see the white remains of the Cascade powder. I guess for now I'll just try to not load the back, and give a quick rinse in the sink to anything that needs it. Anyone else have experience with inefficient apartment dishwashers?
Yesterday I brought over all my plants from the apartment, and tonight I will get to use some of my basil, which is good because it needs to be pinched off so it can keep getting more bushy. Even more exciting, Paul mowed the lawn yesterday evening! It was great. We have a lawnmower! While he did that, I pulled out the old, dead growth left hiding the new growth in a mystery plant in front of our lamp post, and it looks much nicer now. There's a spot that needs a plant right at the corner between the lamp post and the driveway, where I plan to put one of the plants from the random garden patch that we're going to remove from the side yard.
Then I went to dead-head the spent roses from my three awesome rosebushes, and discovered that they have a pretty hard-core infestation of aphids. I read online today that the aphids don't really hurt the roses, they just look unattractive, so we'll see. I could mostly cure that problem by hosing the roses down, but that's not good for them in the spring when they're blooming profusely, PLUS I think they also have black spot, which means I should keep the roses as dry as possible, and hosing them down would spread the black spot problem and make it worse. So I'm not sure what to do! One site mentioned baking soda and water, so I might try that, and also just thinning out the roses so there's better airflow and they can stay drier so the black spot can't keep spreading. Boo for fungus. It's making the blooms die more quickly, and just look sickly in general. But luckily they still look great from a distance!
I feel dead tired at the end of each day, and washing walls etc. is still not any fun, but so far I'm enthusiastic enough about OUR HOUSE that it's all been happy work. And I think after this coming weekend, we'll feel really satisfied and richly rewarded for our work. Then the only major job before really moving in and settling down will be lifting the carpet and tack strips to expose the wood floors! And, of course, getting some polyurethane down on the wood, but we might wait a while before doing that.
I will eventually post pictures...I'm taking lots of them!
The living room boarder is now 100% removed, as of about 9:30 last night. Paul and I started on the dining room walls, removing big glops of glue using vinegar water and plastic scrapers, but there's still quite a way to go - two passes of vineger water + scraping followed up with a sponge still leaves some definite rough glue patches on the otherwise smooth plaster, so we're not sure what our next step should be.
In other painting plans, I've decided to spend this evening cleaning the trim in the master bedroom and living room so that I can mask and paint the trim tomorrow, starting in the master bedroom. That way, I won't have to mask anything but around the windows, because if I get paint on the walls it will just get covered up with the wall paint on Saturday. I think this is going to save a lot of time and masking tape. So tonight before going home to clean, a trip to Lowe's is in order.
I also plan to make potato kale soup for dinner, since we got a pound of kale in our first CSA share yesterday, and it's already looking wilty in the fridge. We brought over most of the kitchen utensils on Sunday, and I put them all away, so all I need to grab from the apartment is a few spices and some olive oil, potatoes, and chicken broth. Should be a relatively easy meal for the first cooked in our new kitchen! Then carrot cake for dessert, and maybe a mojito to use up the mint, also from the CSA. Add Rum, sugar, and limes to the get-from-apartment list!
We've decided to put away our Linens N' Things dishes that chip when you look at them wrong, and recruit the Farberware sets that Paul's Aunt Nancy got for us, but that we hadn't opened yet. I tested out our little apartment-sized dishwasher by loading it with all those dishes, plus some Cascade powder, and discovered that the dishwasher doesn't do a good job of rinsing anything in the very back. I could use liquid detergent instead, but then I worry that it still wouldn't be rinsed, but I wouldn't be able to tell they way I can when I see the white remains of the Cascade powder. I guess for now I'll just try to not load the back, and give a quick rinse in the sink to anything that needs it. Anyone else have experience with inefficient apartment dishwashers?
Yesterday I brought over all my plants from the apartment, and tonight I will get to use some of my basil, which is good because it needs to be pinched off so it can keep getting more bushy. Even more exciting, Paul mowed the lawn yesterday evening! It was great. We have a lawnmower! While he did that, I pulled out the old, dead growth left hiding the new growth in a mystery plant in front of our lamp post, and it looks much nicer now. There's a spot that needs a plant right at the corner between the lamp post and the driveway, where I plan to put one of the plants from the random garden patch that we're going to remove from the side yard.
Then I went to dead-head the spent roses from my three awesome rosebushes, and discovered that they have a pretty hard-core infestation of aphids. I read online today that the aphids don't really hurt the roses, they just look unattractive, so we'll see. I could mostly cure that problem by hosing the roses down, but that's not good for them in the spring when they're blooming profusely, PLUS I think they also have black spot, which means I should keep the roses as dry as possible, and hosing them down would spread the black spot problem and make it worse. So I'm not sure what to do! One site mentioned baking soda and water, so I might try that, and also just thinning out the roses so there's better airflow and they can stay drier so the black spot can't keep spreading. Boo for fungus. It's making the blooms die more quickly, and just look sickly in general. But luckily they still look great from a distance!
I feel dead tired at the end of each day, and washing walls etc. is still not any fun, but so far I'm enthusiastic enough about OUR HOUSE that it's all been happy work. And I think after this coming weekend, we'll feel really satisfied and richly rewarded for our work. Then the only major job before really moving in and settling down will be lifting the carpet and tack strips to expose the wood floors! And, of course, getting some polyurethane down on the wood, but we might wait a while before doing that.
I will eventually post pictures...I'm taking lots of them!
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Haven't had time
Sorry I haven't delivered on the video of the inside of our house. I haven't had time to edit it down to an internet-friendly size yet. In the mean time, here are a few pictures of the outside:
Yesterday I got most of the way done with the basement, altho it still looks like a mess. But now that I'm so far in, I'm more enthusiastic to keep going - it makes the moving seem more real.
Paul went to the gym after work, so I had a little longer to keep working. Since I had off all week but we didn't do anything vacation-y, we decided to go out to dinner last night, and to kick the evening off right, Paul brought home three yellow roses for me! He had them sitting on the kitchen table in my favorite vase when I came up from the basement.
He also got me a new faceplate and mouse pad for my iBook, which is getting up there in years for a notebook computer, and has been having keyboard quirks for quite a while now. For instance, the Q key is overly sensitive: both times I've used it in this paragraph, it's typed two. The zero key is the same way. And then last week the mouse button stopped working reliably. What Paul bought won't replace the keyboard, but it will replace everything else visible, and it will give us a chance to pull of the keyboard and clean it, so hopefully it will solve all the problems. The only other thing that might be a problem soon is the optical drive, but that doesn't even matter - I rarely use it, and if I needed to get information off of this computer I can always use the USB ports and our external hard drive, and transfer it to Paul's computer if I needed to burn a disc.
Also yesterday the yarn I ordered came in the mail! It's so soft. I got a rich, dark brown for the body, and a lovely, muted green for the trim. I'm going to make a cardigan, so the green will be at the edges of the sleeves as well as around the bottom and up the front and for the neckline. So exciting! And before too long, I will get to meet Baby Prep and hold her and have a picture of her wearing the sweater I made. That will be so amazing.
Today we're headed to Salvation Army this morning to make a big drop-off of lots of old clothing, a few blankets, and more than ten pairs of my old shoes. That means I can officially buy a pair of cute sandals this afternoon if I see anything good! And I have Paul's express permission, because I've met his one criteria for buying shoes: get rid of a pair that I already have. So actually, by his requirement, I could theoretically buy ten pairs of shoes today...but I won't. Maybe two pairs if there are cute sandals AND cute ballet flats.
After Salvo and smoothies from the Lemoyne Farmer's Market, we head down to Gettysburg to Kelly's in-laws for a breakfast party for the first day of trout season. Since we're not coming home afterwards we won't be trying to catch any trout, but it will still be fun. I can't wait to see her belly!
Then in the afternoon we will head over to the Gettysburg Outlets, where I will look for some khaki pants, cardigans, and those cute sandals to show off my newly-painted toenails. Then before 5:00 my parents will meet us in the parking lot and we'll hop in with them to head down to Frederick, MD for dinner and to see David Sedaris! Should be a really fun day. Hannah and her friend Carl will be there too, but she's driving separately so she can go pick Carl up from the Northernmost Metro station, since he lives in DC.
Tomorrow afternoon: more basement cleaning, and hopefully getting close to finishing my first trial-run sweater. And maybe trying out the salmon with rice salad I was thinking about last week.
Yesterday I got most of the way done with the basement, altho it still looks like a mess. But now that I'm so far in, I'm more enthusiastic to keep going - it makes the moving seem more real.
Paul went to the gym after work, so I had a little longer to keep working. Since I had off all week but we didn't do anything vacation-y, we decided to go out to dinner last night, and to kick the evening off right, Paul brought home three yellow roses for me! He had them sitting on the kitchen table in my favorite vase when I came up from the basement.
He also got me a new faceplate and mouse pad for my iBook, which is getting up there in years for a notebook computer, and has been having keyboard quirks for quite a while now. For instance, the Q key is overly sensitive: both times I've used it in this paragraph, it's typed two. The zero key is the same way. And then last week the mouse button stopped working reliably. What Paul bought won't replace the keyboard, but it will replace everything else visible, and it will give us a chance to pull of the keyboard and clean it, so hopefully it will solve all the problems. The only other thing that might be a problem soon is the optical drive, but that doesn't even matter - I rarely use it, and if I needed to get information off of this computer I can always use the USB ports and our external hard drive, and transfer it to Paul's computer if I needed to burn a disc.
Also yesterday the yarn I ordered came in the mail! It's so soft. I got a rich, dark brown for the body, and a lovely, muted green for the trim. I'm going to make a cardigan, so the green will be at the edges of the sleeves as well as around the bottom and up the front and for the neckline. So exciting! And before too long, I will get to meet Baby Prep and hold her and have a picture of her wearing the sweater I made. That will be so amazing.
Today we're headed to Salvation Army this morning to make a big drop-off of lots of old clothing, a few blankets, and more than ten pairs of my old shoes. That means I can officially buy a pair of cute sandals this afternoon if I see anything good! And I have Paul's express permission, because I've met his one criteria for buying shoes: get rid of a pair that I already have. So actually, by his requirement, I could theoretically buy ten pairs of shoes today...but I won't. Maybe two pairs if there are cute sandals AND cute ballet flats.
After Salvo and smoothies from the Lemoyne Farmer's Market, we head down to Gettysburg to Kelly's in-laws for a breakfast party for the first day of trout season. Since we're not coming home afterwards we won't be trying to catch any trout, but it will still be fun. I can't wait to see her belly!
Then in the afternoon we will head over to the Gettysburg Outlets, where I will look for some khaki pants, cardigans, and those cute sandals to show off my newly-painted toenails. Then before 5:00 my parents will meet us in the parking lot and we'll hop in with them to head down to Frederick, MD for dinner and to see David Sedaris! Should be a really fun day. Hannah and her friend Carl will be there too, but she's driving separately so she can go pick Carl up from the Northernmost Metro station, since he lives in DC.
Tomorrow afternoon: more basement cleaning, and hopefully getting close to finishing my first trial-run sweater. And maybe trying out the salmon with rice salad I was thinking about last week.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Inspected
The home inspection went very well, and we really liked the guy that did it. He's in business for himself, and also is an electrician and does a lot of other home repair. He did a great job.
We'll be asking the current owner to install GFI plugs in the kitchen and bathrooms to make our home compliant for the FHA assessment, and there is also a secondary electrical panel in the basement that has a major recall and needs to be replaced.
The only other issue is radon. We're going to have to shell out around $800 for a mitigation system, so I've been reading up about it online. We're going to ask the current owner to share the cost with us, so hopefully that will help.
Other than that, the home inspector said our house was "immaculate" and was really impressed! He even gave us some good tips for stripping the wallpaper. So we're feeling happier than ever about our new home!
I've been continuing to think about what colors to paint, and have even been reading some design blogs, like this one that my cousin Katy recommended.
I took some pictures of the outside and a video tour of the inside, so I'll post those this evening hopefully. I think the video might be too long to post all at once, so I have to figure out how to split it up. But once it's up, I'm open to any and all decorating suggestions! I just want to get rid of the wallpaper!!
We'll be asking the current owner to install GFI plugs in the kitchen and bathrooms to make our home compliant for the FHA assessment, and there is also a secondary electrical panel in the basement that has a major recall and needs to be replaced.
The only other issue is radon. We're going to have to shell out around $800 for a mitigation system, so I've been reading up about it online. We're going to ask the current owner to share the cost with us, so hopefully that will help.
Other than that, the home inspector said our house was "immaculate" and was really impressed! He even gave us some good tips for stripping the wallpaper. So we're feeling happier than ever about our new home!
I've been continuing to think about what colors to paint, and have even been reading some design blogs, like this one that my cousin Katy recommended.
I took some pictures of the outside and a video tour of the inside, so I'll post those this evening hopefully. I think the video might be too long to post all at once, so I have to figure out how to split it up. But once it's up, I'm open to any and all decorating suggestions! I just want to get rid of the wallpaper!!
Monday, March 16, 2009
ACCEPTED!!
SHE ACCEPTED OUR OFFER!!! She didn't even counter, so Paul and I are paying exactly what she paid for the house a couple of years ago...she even gave us the 1-year home warranty we asked for! The only thing she didn't accept was the closing date of April 30, she wants to wait until May 29 (the last weekday of the month is when you typically close). Which is fine with us! What's another month? We own a house!!
So you want to see pictures? I don't want to advertise the address, but it's in Shiremanstown, and I saved all the pics to my computer so I can post them. I'll post more after the home inspection, during which I think I'll be able to take a bunch of my own.
If you click on an image you can see it a little bigger.
The is also a third bedroom; the master bedroom has a half bath (no shower) and his & hers closets, plus my grandfather is giving us his nice bedroom suite with queen bed (YAY!!!); and the basement is half finished, with the other half going to laundry room and Paul's future man cave. There's even a separate room for Paul's man cave that also has a cedar-lined closet - isn't that cool? So we can keep some of our nice clothing down there and it won't get moths or anything! And the unfinished room where we'll put the washer and dryer will also have tons of space for an ironing board and plenty of storage. I am thinking up BUNCHES of other ideas already! WOW.
OMG WE OWN A HOUSE. FOR REALZ. SRSLY. As of May 29...woo hoo!!
Remember - I gave up facebook for Lent, so if you want the address, or to comment, either do it on blogger or e-mail me or call me! peacelovemath [at] gmail [dot] com
So you want to see pictures? I don't want to advertise the address, but it's in Shiremanstown, and I saved all the pics to my computer so I can post them. I'll post more after the home inspection, during which I think I'll be able to take a bunch of my own.
If you click on an image you can see it a little bigger.
The is also a third bedroom; the master bedroom has a half bath (no shower) and his & hers closets, plus my grandfather is giving us his nice bedroom suite with queen bed (YAY!!!); and the basement is half finished, with the other half going to laundry room and Paul's future man cave. There's even a separate room for Paul's man cave that also has a cedar-lined closet - isn't that cool? So we can keep some of our nice clothing down there and it won't get moths or anything! And the unfinished room where we'll put the washer and dryer will also have tons of space for an ironing board and plenty of storage. I am thinking up BUNCHES of other ideas already! WOW.
OMG WE OWN A HOUSE. FOR REALZ. SRSLY. As of May 29...woo hoo!!
Remember - I gave up facebook for Lent, so if you want the address, or to comment, either do it on blogger or e-mail me or call me! peacelovemath [at] gmail [dot] com
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