Change of plans

Well, I was planning on dragging my boyfriend looking at window treatments this weekend, but that plan got left in the dust.

Thursday evening after laying down for a nap my boyfriend suggessted we take the dogs for a walk. He even had the dogs already in their harnesses. I'm still groggy when he says "I was thinking about taking the dogs for a walk, their already harnessed." I say okay and roll out of bed, change into some clothes better suited for walking the dogs since I was still in my clothes from work.

I head out to the kitchen area, grab some baggies just to be safe and he hands me a leash and says "why don't you put this on AJ". Now you have to understand something. AJ is our puppy Golden Retriever. Okay, not really a puppy but he sure thinks he is and acts like it. As soon as he sees the harness he starts jumping up and down, you don't have to ask if he wants to go for a walk. So as soon as I go over with the leash, I'm more or less attacked.

I get him settled enough and grab the harness, go to attach the leash to his harness there is a ring attached to the harness with some string. "Why is there a ring attached to..." and while I'm trying to think of why there is a ring attached to AJ's harness and finish my sentence, my boyfriend jumps in with "because I'm asking you to marry me."

I freeze. I mean I literally can't move. My brain can not process what just happened. I wonder if I heard him correctly. It's not until he says "don't forget about AJ" that I snap out of it and run to him. I start hugging and kissing him. Then finally realize I should give him an answer and say "yes".

So, we are reworking the budget and thinking about when we would want to be married, who we want to invite; needless to say, window treatments were far from my mind.

The quiet before the storm

Since we basically just paid for a new furnace and air conditioning to be installed our wallets are still recovering. In this time is when we do a lot of thinking, research, and planning.

We know we will need soil to amend the front garden since it is just sand. As far as how much and what the cost will be...we haven't really looked at since the time to plant has passed until the weather gets cooler.

Planning other projects though, like the bathroom, involves looking at other bathrooms and bathroom remodels so we get an idea of what can be done and what we need to do. Our bathroom is small so some of these remodels we've seen are sooo not happening. Where the people get a large rain shower, jacuzi tub, his and her sinks, and toilet. Oh and let's throw in a television in the mirror and speakers so you can listen to the radio all over the bathroom. Yeah, won't be happening here. But, a rain shower could happen, probably won't because we wash the dogs in the tub and having a shower head that can be a hand shower comes in handy.

We are looking into window treatments, but we just started so I don't have much to report on this. As mentioned in previous posts we are going with curtains for the Living Room, right now we are trying to focus on the other rooms though since they don't have anything right now though and the Living Room currently has some virtical blinds that were left behind. Blinds is the way we are leaning, the problem is not all the rooms are finished or we don't know exactly what we are doing in there. The Dining Room/Kitchen window we should be able to pick a color for since that area is done except for the window treatments...and a few minor glitches like the outlet by the dining table doesn't work yet. The back doorwall we know we will be getting french doors so we can lock and unlock the door from the outside. The office is in the planning stages so that is one where we still aren't sure. Spare Bedroom...couldn't even tell you what we are doing in there right now. Currently it serves as storage. Our bedroom...is kind of blah, so I'm hoping to find some time to go back and look at it since putting the room together was kind of rushed.

It is possible we will have purchased window treatments before my next posting, but I make no promises. I am hoping to get a good bit of money set aside so we can do a slew of projects basically. I liked the constant flow of projects when we were getting the house to a livable condition before we moved in and I miss the excitement of finishing a project and the push to get things done in an evening.

Desiding on a Design for our Flower Bed

Playing around with doodles on graph paper may not be the most fun, but it does give a good idea of how each design will look. I haven't put plants in the designs yet but have come up with about 3 basic different designs and then expanded on two of them since I liked them but there was something still not right. In total I now have 6 different designs.

The first step in doing this was to figure out a scale for my drawings. I decided on one square equals one foot. I did this more due to the size of the paper and how many squares I had to deal with. The main flower bed I was playing with was the front one which is 33 feet long by 4 feet.

We took some walks around our neighborhood and looked at other peoples gardens and I learned my boyfriend likes what I refer to as the field look. This is where there are a bunch of large plants with smaller plants filling in the gaps and it looks like a wild field. A small wild field but a field.

Keeping this in mind I expanded the garden away from the house a little more than it already is so I could sneak in more plants and make it more like a field. Stay tuned to see what design we choose and how we put everything together.

Planning a garden

Well, this weekend we went plant shopping. Or I should probably say browsing.
We went to one of our local nurseries in the attempt to get som plant ideas. Something we decided to do to help choose plants for the yard and open discussion of where they would look best.

To keep the plants straight I took a picture of each with my phone and then emailed myself that picture with the name of the plant in the subject head. Which would have been great if those emails had actually gone through and my phone had a larger memory. As it stands I have only one remaining picture on my phone as it complained of having a full memory, and none of those emails went through. I thought this would have been better because there would have been no doubt behind what picture was what plant as what often happens when taking pictures by camera (which I had forgotten to grab before we left) and thought this was a good and even better idea. Guess that backfired. So, thankfully I was also keeping notes of how big each plant got, what kind of sun it liked be it full, partial, or shade, and other tidbits the tag may have given like if it was hardy or what moisture content it liked.

Now comes the hard part of going through my notes and finding picures online of each of the plants we looked at and thought would be good in our garden somewhere.

Something already planned that I'm also working on is finding more information about each of the plants. I said I took down what notes I could but let's face it; those little cards on the plant don't tell everything. So I'm sorting through information overload, and underload in some cases, trying to find if my two brown thumbs would be able to grow these plants.

One thing we are focusing on is perennials so that we aren't buying new plants each year. Hopefully this will help save some money each year.

We have air!

That's right, we have air. As in air conditioning! That is what happened Monday and we are really enjoying it. We can leave the house if we have to and not worry about our dogs boiling to death, or getting stuck in the basement where it's cool. Although we've discovered, even with the air, they still like their hidey holes in the basement and can be found there if and when you can't find them anywhere else.

In addition to the new air conditioning unit that sits in our backyard, we also had our furnace replaced. We felt the previous owners did not take very good care of it and felt it beginning to fade. Where this past winter it was basically always running even though we didn't have it set that high.

In our hallway, is a nice new wireless digital thermostat. That's right wireless. It communicates wirelessly with the furnace and air conditioning units. How cool!

Our dehumidifier has also gone silent. Becuase there is one downstairs hooked to the furnace. According to our silent dehumidifier, the humidity is pretty level at 40 - 45%.

We also were able to find a company to clean our the air ducts and they had a special offer going where we were able to have them cleaned for free. That's right free. Otherwise our sales person informed us it would have been around $300.

Overall we are very happy with our air conditioner and can't wait to see what the furnace can do in the winter. And very happy with the timing as it looks like in our area, temperatures are on the rise.

Recouping

It's hard coming back from a vacation and getting back into the groove of work and life. After getting back from our camping trip I've already taken one nap and could use another. Putting everything away and doing laundry from the trip, shopping for groceries that couldn't be bought for our return because they would have basically expired, and preparing for the return to work tomorrow. We are also making notes of things we missed this time as it was our first camping trip planned ourselves taken with a friend. Making note of things with the campground, like they have a spot to play horse shoes but the horse shoes galloped off, so we've made note to bring our own horse shoes if we want to play. We are also getting ready for something exciting happening tomorrow. Stay tuned to see what it is.

Choosing a cordless Weed Whacker

So recently we purchased a cordless weed whacker. I'm not talking about one that runs on gas, I mean one that runs on a battery. It was hard choosing but our budget helped limit some. Plus we wanted a good name. We ended up going with a Craftsman.

It was hard finding some at first, until we learned that the name they were going by in stores was line trimmer instead of weed whacker. Once we knew that we had no trouble searching out our options. We looked at Ryobi, known for their battery powered tools and my Dad loves his Ryobi tools, but they were on the upper end of our budget. Although we did like that we could get say a cordless drill by Ryobi and the batteries would be interchangable.

After looking at all the options we went with the Craftsman. It had a good name behind it, interchangable bettery should we purchase other cordless tools, and the right price for us. I've used it a few times now and I'm very happy with the choice.

When looking at any new tool it's important to do your research to see what is out there. What materials are the tools made from and what is the best. If you can't afford the best, what is next best. Read reviews with a grain of salt. 100 reviews on a product and 5 talk about poor shipping times...shipping times don't affect the products performance. And if of those 100 reviews there is one talking about an actual defect, like used it once and then a piece on it broke. Consider that that one person just got a bad apple. As hard as companies try to avoid these defects they do happen and they do get through. If the review goes on to say how the company then gave them the run around for a replacement then I'd be suspicious and probably avoid them. Basically you should get the product that best fits you, your use of it - maybe you prefer the thicker handle, the best materials, and the best price for your budget.

Cleaned out the Gutters

When there is a fully grown tree that drops the helicopter seeds as we like to call them, it becomes a pain trying to keep the gutteres clean. Especially when the gutters are not attached to the house correctly and have warped. There are some places on our gutters where I have a difficult time getting my hand in and out because they have become so narrow.

I get on the roof at least twice each spring and at least twice each fall. I almost can't wait to get new siding because we will get new gutters at the same time and probably the leaf guard so that the gutters won't get all clogged with the helicopters and leaves.

That Lamp Post Has Got to Go!

Well, last Saturday my parents were kind enough to come over and help remove the lamp post that didn't work from the yard. My Dad then took the wire that went to the house and added an outside outlet. Now when the holidays come we can put up lights if we so desire.

It was not easy removing the lamp post. The bottom was so rusted, that when trying to wiggle the post to see if we could get it loose or needed to dig a little deeper, the post just snapped off. Since we are considering planting a tree in that spot, we dug further to remove the concrete the post had been set in. This was the hard part as it was down a ways and the dumb thing weighed a ton. But I'm happy to say that with the help of my Mom, we dug down far enough that she was able to get under it with a shovel and free it. I then hauled the thing out of the hole.

With the lamp post gone, you can see from the photo I'm very happy it is now gone. Disposal of the lamp post was easy too. We stuck it out at the curb, and one of the trash collectors grabbed it like less then an hour after we put it out there. The concrete monster it was stuck in, and part of it still is stuck in, is another story. We've tried bashing it with a hammer, but that is slow going. I think we will invest in a sledge hammer to break it up a little quicker.

Time to Clean Up the Garden

I've been kind of ignoring the garden, and now it's biting me in the butt. I've been avoiding working in the garden because of the roots from the tree on the side of our house for one. The roots are all over the garden and each year, digging holes for plants has been next to impossible. This goes for removing weeds as their roots weave in with the roots from the tree, so they have a good grip and almost never come when pulling the weed. Second, would be I still don't really know what I'm doing. My thumb has not gotten any greener. You may remember I posted about trying to grow some veggies from seed. The Broccoli was the only thing that came up...and then a few days later they were dead.

Putting it off has bitten me in the butt though because the weeds have taken over. Now there are more weeds to pull than plants that are to remain in the garden. I've managed to get through most, but there are still lots left. I'm hoping before this next week is over to have the weeds cleaned out and some plants in the ground so the garden doesn't look so empty. I'm trying to find some plants that aren't done over and over. I want to be different, and I'm tired of looking at the same plants throughout the neighborhood. Basically everyone has an evergreen bush and trimmed to look so perfect and manacured. One, I don't have that kind of time, and two, it makes me sick to see people mold nature to look like that. It reminds me of society and it's expectations for people to look a certain way, act a certain way, and think and believe certain things.

Don't Forget to Take Care of Yourself

Don't forget to take care of yourself. If you get injured, or sick, then it's not going to be easy and may not be possible for you to take care of your home or others. So when you are getting stressed at work, go for a walk. Getting stressed at home, go spend some time in the garden; don't pull weeds unless they really start to bug you, just get lost in the beauty of the plants.

When we let things stress us out and don't deal with them, we may become psychologically sick. The brain just will not function anymore because it's on overdrive all the time. Or you could become anxious all the time, or the opposite, you could become depressed. All these things will effect not only you, but others around you and what you do. You could slow down in what you do because your thinking about what is stressing you. It may not be in the forefront of your mind but it's there.

Letting stress get to us can also open us to getting sick because our immune system is effected. If you get sick, you will feel like crap and just wish for the cold or whatever to go away.

The quality of what you do is also effected. If your head is worrying about something else, it's not focused on the task at hand which allows for mistakes. Depending on the task, the mistake may not be anything too major. But even if you're just preparing dinner, you could burn yourself or cut off a finger.

So, remember to take care of yourself, and take some time to unwind.

Finishing the Fireplace Hearth

So, when we were taking the grout off the hearth we liked how the water brought out the grains of the stone, but we didn't want the stone to be super dark. We tried several items on spare stone tiles and decided on Thompson's Watersealer. Some items we tried were butcher block oil, grout sealer, and polyurethane. We decided the butcher block oil and the polyurethane made the stones too dark, and the grout sealer wasn't doing anything; we gave that up after 12 layers and the stone still looked the same. I did test the watersealer, since we are applying this near the fireplace, to make sure it wouldn't catch fire. I held a lighter to the test stone for several minutes. It thankfully never caught, did go a little black but for the most part that wiped off. So now we have a nice looking hearth and just need to put the fireplace door back on.

Starting a Vegetable Garden

Well a few weeks ago I planted some seeds for 4 different kinds of lettuce (of which only 3 sprouted), onions, and spinach. They sprouted within a few days and you can even see from the picture some of them have really taken off. Now it's a matter of planning out where to put them in the yard exactly. We have an idea of where we want to put them, but don't know exactly how big we will make the garden.

I started the seeds with a few items from Meijer. I purchased some seed starting soil, a 72 cell tray for planting with a cover to keep the moisture in, and of course some seeds. From the seeds, I found some that should be planted in April but could be started 2-3 weeks early indoors and started with those. I had 8 which worked out well, and I put each seed in 9 cells. I then took some post-it labels and labeled what each 9 cell square was. I've kept them on our kitchen table so they can get sunlight and I see them everyday and am reminded to check the soil to see if they need some water.

Soon I will transplant them into larger pots and start some new seeds. I'm not ready to plant them in the ground yet as we could still have some frost which could kill the plants.

Home Expo

This weekend I went to a local Home Expo. There were a lot of different companies there for all kinds of different things, windows, doors, landscaping, duct cleaning, roofing... well it's impossible to list them all. I'm really glad I went since I was able to pick up several brochures for companies I could use to help us with our house in the future. Plus some of the companies had picutres like the landscaping companies, and while we're doing the landscaping ourselves, the pictures helped to give ideas of maybe what we would like our yard to look like.

Too much going on

I'm sorry I haven't been posting. I'm trying to get a second project going along side working on the house, plus I've been trying to get organized. I think I'm finally making a break-through there. Otherwise...sorry but there is nothing really to talk about as far as the house goes.

Not much going on

There isn't much going on right now. Last night my Dad and Mom came over, my Dad helped with the final caulking of the kitchen backsplash so water can't get behind it while my Mom played with our two dogs.

I'm still thinking about drapes, and such but I'm right now worried about starting any large projects since we are now planning to replace our furnace this Spring instead of just adding central air. We believe our furnace is near the end of it's life as for the last 1-2 mintues or so that it's on, it blows cold air instead of hot or even warm air. Due to this added expense I want to make sure there is enough money in the bank to do this.

I'm working on my drawing to help show some of the designs I'm pondering for some of the rooms, or even like the curtains for the Living Room to see maybe how they would look. I hadn't really considered drawing some of my ideas until I was going through some old papers for the house and found the drawing I did of how I was picturing the Family Room. It wasn't a super great drawing but it got the job done.

Maybe I'll share some of my doodles, if you will, in future posts.

Great Cleaning Product

This weekend we basically took easy since the work week was kind of hard to us. But I wanted to tell you about a great cleaning product. It's called Method. They make all kinds of cleaners, they make toilet bowl cleaner, all surface cleaner, cleaning wipes, dish detergent, laundry detergent, and even hand soap. They are natural cleaning products and come in a range of scents. My favorite being cucumber, they also have scents like grapefruit, lavendar, and clementine.

My parents use Tilex each spring to clean their outdoor plastic furniture, it's supposed to be white but they were getting it to like a light gray. The Tilex was not cutting all the dirt. I went and got the Method all purpose cleaner from my room (I was in high school at the time so I was still living at home) and on the table, which hadn't been touched yet, spritzed two or three times to cover the table, and then scrubbed a little. Suddenly there was a white table, not a gray table, a white table.

Another time my mother hung a grocery bag on the pantry door because it was wet, and the color ran from the bag onto the door. She tried Fantastic, but nothing happened. They tried another cleaner that I don't recall, and again nothing happened. I go get the Method all purpose cleaner and suddenly the spot is coming off. I am a little disappointed, as the spot did not fully come off, but it is a nice light blue now and no one really notices it.

Then recently at work, I went to ask a co-worker something and they had to look at some things on the computer to answer the question. She had some difficulty as a few months prior another co-worker was pointing something out using an open pen and marked the screen. We got to talking and she told me she had tried all the cleaners the office provided but nothing worked. The next day I brought in the Method all purpose cleaner, and once again, made what shouldn't be there dissapear. My co-worker was so surprised at how easily I took the mark of the computer monitor she started asking all kinds of questions about the cleaner I used.

I can not express how in love with this product and company I am. I dare you to try one of their products and hate it. But I can already tell you, you won't succeed at the dare. You'll love the product too much.

Check them out - http://www.methodhome.com/shop/home-cleaning. You can probably also find at least a few of their products at your local grocery store such as Meijer, as well as Lowes and Target.

what to do...

This week we really didn't do any projects, but I have been thinking about others. For instance, what to do for window treatments. In our Living Room, currently we have vertical blinds, but with two curious and protective Golden Retrievers that like looking out the window this is a little frustrating for us. Each time we want to open the blinds we have to fix almost each blind. We don't want vertical blinds because the window is so large, and the dogs would probably destroy them, same with most shades. So we've decided on curtains. However, we have not found any that we like in the stores so I've decided I would make some...now what to make.

Once upon a time, we thought about an off white with a thick band of a red on the bottom. The off white would go with the color of the walls and ceiling, the red is because that seems to be the accent color for the room and it would help hide the doggy dirt when they stick their wet noses through so they can see outside. Now I'm thinking about a light grey with the red band at the bottom. The only thing stopping me is the height the band would have to be, I'm worried it will be overwhelming even though I could probably get away with only a foot maybe foot and a half high band.

Another thing we are playing with, is giving the stones on our hearth a wet look. While wiping the grout we agreed we both liked the slightly wet look to the stones, it also darkened them up without making them too dark. However, I'm starting to think we need something other than just sealer. Before knowing that the grout did not need to be sealed we bought sealer. Then we read the premixed grout and found it does not need to be sealed so I've been testing the sealer on a scrap piece of stone. Over 10 layers of sealer on only half the stone, we still can't see a difference between the two halves and are not getting the look we want. So now I think it's time for some research to see what other options we may have to get that wet look.

On a side note, I've just purchased a tripod. So now I can take pictures of me actually working on things without worrying about reminding or asking someone else to take the picture or even having someone else around... knowing how much I work when I have the house all to myself.

Hearth is in and backsplash is up

This weekend has been busy! My Dad came over and brought his tile saw. We were finally able to get the hearth and backsplash in. There is just some finishing to be done. Yesterday we put the drywall on the frame for the hearth. Why drywall instead of cement board? Well...I oopsed when we did the ceiling for the Family Room and we purchased too many sheets of drywall. What we got though was fire rated so we used that.

Next while my Dad set up the tile saw I got busy laying out tile and chose the best looking ones for the full tiles that would be used, and the better areas of others for the partial tiles. Then my Dad got busy cutting tiles, and I started laying down the adhesive. I was taking so long at putting down the adhesive that as soon as he could, my Dad would lay down a tile. He stopped and had me put in a few just for a photo opp.

This morning he came back, since it was cold yesterday, the water in the tile saw was freezing so we stopped before we started on the backsplash. My Dad did the tile cutting, I backbuttered and put them on the wall. While we did that my boyfriend worked on grouting the hearth. So it is now done and tomorrow we will grout the kitchen.

Getting Ready To Tile, Fingers Crossed

Well, fingers crossed, this weekend we will hopefully be doing the tile for our hearth and backsplash for our kitchen. We have our fingers crossed and eyes shut tight hoping and wishing it comes true...finally!

Too much to do, it's important to keep organized

Sometimes I feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew. I have multiple hobbies and many of them aren't touched often because of my lack of time or no space to work on them. It's surprising to many people because I'm very organized at school or at work, basically outside the home I'm orgainized but at home, kind of ironically I'm rather like a slob. I get lazy and just plop things down somewhere close to where they should be instead of actually putting them away. Above you can see what the office used to look like. I've been working on finding a place for everything and putting everything in it's place. Once I'm finished I'm hoping to have a little more time for the things I would like to do instead of spending my free time looking for things I need, and things I have to do.