Slacking on the Yard Work

So I have been kind of lazy lately in my blog posting.  I just don’t feel like we have been all that exciting though.  We were slackers on the outside projects this weekend, so I have nothing new to post other than a picture of the giant mess we have going on right now… Andrew assures me it will look good when it is done.  I just smile and nod along and say “ok honey”.  I know it will look amazing, but it sure doesn’t right now. 

We did get a project done in the bathroom this weekend, so I was super pumped about that.  Remember the UGLY lights in the bathroom before (sorry for anyone that likes them, but they were messing with my vibe for the bathroom), we now have new ones in.  Check them out!  The first picture are the old ones and the second shows the pretty new ones!  I must give all the credit to Andrew for doing this for me... if it's electric I'm not touching it!   

  

Also, I have been really annoyed with the craptastic paint job the house had.  There were white paint drips all over the woodwork in the bathroom, and in the rest of the house for that matter.  I read last week on some home improvement and renovation blogs that goof off works great for that and doesn’t take the finish off the woodwork!  The goof off worked amazing and I was able to get all the trim cleaned and re-do the painting around the door in the bathroom.  What I did not know was that the goof off was going to eat through the rubber glove I had on to clean with, take off my nail polish and probably a layer of skin on my fingers.  Andrew wasn’t too impressed with that one, but it’s done now and I love it.  I was sick of standing in the bathroom in the morning drying my hair and making evil eyes at the paint on the doorframe.  I had a thought when I observed the destructive power of goof off… do you think it would take off the acrylic nails I used to have done for prom in high-school because those things hurt like a mother to take off and killed my nails?  Not something I am going to experiment with, just a thought! 

As I write this, I am looking up a home remedy for polishing the brass hardware on the doors.  I'm sure they are gorgeous under all the grime.  More to come on that....

Andrew and I also did a little shopping this past weekend, which is another reason we didn't get anything done in the yard.  Here is my favorite purchase!  

I told Andrew he now has to learn to make margaritas and daiquiri’s yumm!

  

With that, I will leave you probably for the week.  I have been working with my wedding coordinator helping her with flowers for her weddings this year.  I call it my fun job and it is absolutely amazing!  I love playing with flowers.  You can check out her blog and some of the work I have done http://weddingsiniowa.blogspot.com/

Andrew and I will be helping out all day on Saturday at a wedding in Ames.  It looks like it should be nice out and keep your fingers crossed it stays that way because we have an outdoor wedding we are decorating.  

A Girl's Gotta Shop...

I know I haven’t posted all week and I really have no excuse because this week has been rather sane as weeks go.  Andrew has been busting his hump in the yard this week, but I’m not showing his work until we have a finished product to show.  I hope to be able to show you guys the finished side yard project on Monday or Tuesday, but we will see how things play out this weekend.  We were planning to work outside on Sunday, but I’m not sure how I feel about melting in the 90 degree weather.  Andrew, however, did military training in the desert… he’ll be fine!

So, since I don’t have photos of the house to show, I’ll show you my early birthday presents to myself!  I decided to go shopping on Tuesday night.  Here is some of my loot…

I’m totally digging the maxi dresses lately.  They are way comfortable to wear at work.  I bought my first three this week and wore one to work on Thursday.  I don’t have a picture of that one, but here are a couple of others I bought.  The one with the funky shoulder strap thing looks different in real life, I swear.  I’m pretty excited to debut that one at a graduation party tomorrow.  The other one I may have to wear to my birthday festivities this weekend! 

I also bought some pretty sweet sandals at DSW.  I love that place and I had a $5 off card.  I have been looking for some flat brown sandals that had some visual interest. 

N
ow, you should all know about my love of purses.  I have actually reined it in the past couple of years.  I have tried to save up and buy better quality purses less often.  I love my leather, so all of my purses right now are leather, nothing beats it! 

That’s it for now.  I hope you all have a great holiday weekend!  I should be back next week with some backyard pictures if all goes according to plan.

Sprucing Up the Bathroom and a Few Other Projects

We had great intentions of doing a ton outside this weekend, but I think we fell short in that department.  We did get rid of a ton of random yard trash we inherited with the house at the city SCRUB even this weekend, so that was nice.  We have some semblance of a garage that we might be able to bring some order to now.  We also got a couple of railroad ties dug up and the cement slab broken up outside our side door.  We are going to pave that whole area in along with the walkway from the gate to the deck with the same kind of stone, so the cement was just breaking up our flow.  Plus, now we can use all the cement at the rock base for a walkway, so we are pretty happy about not having to buy a ton of rock for that project.  Yay for recycling!  Here is the mess we have going on right now though…

   

While Andrew was out killing the cement slab with a sledge hammer, I was inside the peacefulness of our bathroom.  I decided the white was too much, I couldn’t take it and the sterile hospital environment had to go.

Here is the before...

Here is the after....

You might also notice that the trim on the window looks a little different.  Well, right now it looks like poo, but we are working on it friends.  I thought it would be a great idea to strip the paint off and expose the beautiful wood.  Of course, this is easier said than done.  Now, I have done a lot of reading about stripping paint from wood and from what I gathered, this was going to be a very noxious process.  Not wanting to exfixiate my entire family including myself, my oh so smart husband found a citrus scented stripper.  Granted, after a while the smell of oranges got to be a bit much, but it was better than chemical smell any day of the week.  We are down to the point when were need to hand sand it and then seal it up again.  At the end of the day Andrew said “you know if the wood is too bad, we may just have to replace it.” To this comment, he received an evil glare accompanied by me insisting there is no way I was going through all that effort to turn around and replace the wood, so we would just have to make it work.  I will have to do an updated post when we get that little project finished. 

For now, that is the update I have for you all.  Tonight, we get to work on matching up the switches in our circuit box to what they actually turn on and off because they aren’t labled correctly.  This should be a fun project!  Andrew will also be putting up new lights on the wall in the bathroom, so I will post a picture when those are done, they are going to look lovely!

Love in Boston

I don’t really have much to post for you guys on the house stuff.  I have been cleaning, but I don’t really think that warrants a post.  I have kind of run out of steam with the unpacking.  I think that is mainly due to me being down to the boxes of “I’m not really sure what is in here and it looks like a hodge podge, so I’m just not going to touch it”.  Those boxes are currently sitting on the front porch and have been since moving day. 

 

So instead of house talk, I am going to share our photos from Boston!  This was our working honeymoon.  Andrew and I both presented papers at the Popular Culture Association conference in April, we went out there for that and decided to make an extended trip of it.  I think he and I travel pretty well together, but he wasn’t very happy when I woke him up at 3:30 to be at the airport at 5:00 AM.  Luckily, his mom is always amazing and takes us to the airport when we leave at crazy early hours.  I can’t help that these are the cheaper flights people. 

 

So here is Andrew protesting being up that early…

 

 

We got to Boston around 2:00 that afternoon and caught the T to our hotel.  I thought it was going to be a pain in the butt to do public transportation to the hotel while hauling our bag (not that I was actually hauling the bag, this is what I bring Andrew with me for), but it wasn’t that bad.  We caught the T before rush hour, which was good because our hotel was pretty much on one of the main stretches in Boston.  We got there and all I wanted to do was sleep and find something to eat.  We checked out a seafood restaurant because who doesn’t go to the east coast without eating fish?  It was amazing!  If you are ever out east and come across Legal Seafood it is amazing, and you MUST eat there! 

 

We were in Boston for a total of 6 days and during that time we were all over the place.  We took the T to the harbor and saw the sailboats, went out to Bunker Hill and climbed up the almost 300 stairs to the lookout tower (while climbing these, I might have made a few threats to Andrew), saw the U.S.S. Constitution, took a water shuttle taxi thing, J that is a technical term folks, did some shopping (who gave Filene’s basement permission to close before I got out there), took a trip out to Harvard and spent several night eating some amazing pizza from the grocery store next to the hotel and watching red box movies on my laptop (man was I glad Andrew talked me in to taking it with us). 

 

So, without further ado, here are the photos from our trip:

This is from the top of the lookout tower at Bunker Hill

Looking down Bunker Hill

Yes, we climbed that tower.... I wasn't happy about either

The USS Constitution

Sailboats!

Oh yeah, the day we left Boston was the day the Boston Marathon was being run, so it was a little busy in town and this was a block away from our hotel.  This is the finish line for the marathon.

 

 

I probably wont be on to post again for a couple of days now.  Tomorrow night I get to go work my awesome 2^nd job, doing design work for wedding flowers.  I am working with my amazing wedding coordinator helping with wedding flowers.  I have to say, this job is pretty much amazing!

 

Saturday and Sunday I think we will be busting our humps on the walkway and other flower bed on the side of the house in the backyard, so you know I will post pictures of that when we are all done to show off our hard work. 

 

Hope everyone has a good Friday and a happy weekend, sounds like it is supposed to be a nice one!

Cooking and Decorating Up a Storm

This past week I have been crazy busy with decorating and cooking.  My new curtains that I ordered from JC Penny came in last week, so I was excited to get those and our blinds up.  The blinds aren't what I want long term, but they will do for now.  I think we paid less than $3.00/blind, so they are great temporary fix.  I can't decide if I like the curtains better behind the tieback or not.  What do you think?

or

Since our Easter decorations came down (we didn't have a ton up to begin with because of moving), I felt like something was needed on the front door.  I stopped in at Michaels last week and found a whole aisle of unpainted wood decorations.  I couldn't decide, so I had to get several.  I came to the conclusion as I was painting these at 11:00 PM last week, these projects are the reason I never get to sleep before midnight.  



For Mother's Day, we had my parents over to the house for dinner so they could see the progress we made in the yard over the weekend and so we could celebrate my wonderful mother!  I made one of my favorite desserts, Gooey Cake.  This is a recipe from a family friend and one I like to make a lot in the summer time.  Here is the Gooey Cake part of the way gone... I didn't think to take one prior to the enjoyment of the gooey deliciousness.  I can post the recipe later.  It consists of a cake with mandarin oranges and a Carmel topping poured on after it cooks. 

And here is the best way to eat it with vanilla ice cream and coolwhip!

Tonight, just for Andrew, as if we didn't have enough sweets sitting around the house, I decided to make one of his favorites....



Banana Bread!!

That is it for my post tonight.  Enjoy my adventures in cooking!  

Let the Backyard Makeover Begin...

This weekend we decided to start with the backyard makeover.  We knew we only had one day to work this weekend, so we wanted to tackle something we could finish.  I wanted to finish the whole side, but we didn’t have the time.  We realized part of the way in that we forgot to get really good before photos, but here is what we can show you from before…

And here is the after!  I have such a wonderful husband who moves tons of bricks because I say it will look great when it is done!  We are so happy with how it turned out and know the rest of the yard will look great when it is finished! 

We are going to finish the border along the fence that we started on this side.  To finish out the side, we are going to put down a path from the deck step out to the side gate.  To finish, we are planning to landscape on both sides of the path and have nothing but flowers.  I am SUPER excited to see how it looks when it is finished.  The project we are looking forward to the most is our secret.  We aren’t sure if we are going to get to it this year, but next year at the latest. 

Something that Andrew wanted to try was a compost pile.  Originally, we were going to do a full on compost pile behind our garage, but then Andrew found this great compost mixer from Home Depot for $100 and we got it shipped for free with a deal from Home Depot for free shipping. 

We don’t have our first batch of compost yet, I think it is “cooking” right now.  Andrew has really taken charge of the composting job; I just have to remember to keep things from the kitchen to put in there. 

More of My Favorite Things... Wine

So today I decided to post about one of my other favorite things in life… wine!  Andrew and I are pretty avid wine drinkers.  We generally have a bottle or two or three around the house.  In fact, between our parents, probably our two favorite gifts most recently are the wine fridge Andrew’s parents bought us for Christmas last year and the wine rack my parents found for us at a craft show.  They are both great because now we have a place to store wine both cold and room temperature as well as a place to store the wine glasses. 

 

Now, I used to not be a wine fan at all.  In fact, I thought it had the taste of grape juice run through a dirty old shoe.  All it took to change that was a little trip to Italy.  When I was there with my college several years ago, we visited a winery and tried several different kinds of wine.  This was also when I was introduced to Prosecco.  I would be lost if I hadn’t found Prosecco!  I will always have fond memories of sitting on the side of the Duomo in Florence sipping Prosecco with a couple of other ladies.  Ahh the days!

 

Now, I have expanded my wine horizons a little and drawn Andrew into the wine world too.  He used to, and probably still would, drink jegger… blech.  Just the smell of that junk is more than enough for me.  We have been to several wine events.  We took my parents to a wine tasting even in November last year and last summer, Andrew and I went to Winefest downtown and the Sips in the City event.  If you are at all interested in wine and finding some more wines you enjoy, this is one of the best places to do it. Between these two events, we have discovered a lot of really great wine.  I also figure in the end, we have probably saved ourselves from buying several bottles of wine that we would have taken one sip of an not wanted to finish. 

 

Here are a couple of our favorites. 

 

Stella Rosa Rosso- we were introduced to this lovely by a friend of our and have since hooked my parents on it as well.  We have the best luck finding it at Hy Vee and it usually runs between $12 and $14/ bottle

When we were at the wine event in November, we found out there is more than just one kind of Stella Rosa.  Stella Rosa Bianco is now my other favorite.  This one also runs about $12-14/bottle depending on if there is a sale going.  

At the November wine festival, we were also introduced to the Lindeman’s line of wine.  Now, if you ever want to see Andrew jump for joy and be your best friend forever, buy him some Lindeman’s Bin 46.  Lindeman’s in general is pretty cheap, running around $5-7/bottle, which is another reason we like it. We recently tried the moscato and really enjoyed that one as well. 

When we are feeling a little festive, we have come across a couple of sparkling wines that we like.  Martini& Rossi Asti Spumante is one of them that my parents served at their wedding reception dinner and I discovered my love for it at that point.  Another one we had at our wedding was Wycliff, which is actually a champagne, but we enjoy that one too.  We currently have a bottle sitting in our wine fridge.  I think we decided to pop that one open at our house warming party, not sure when that will be yet.  We have a few more improvements we would like to make.  We usually see these at Target and similar places for about $15/bottle, which isn't bad.  

I know I talked about my love of Prosecco, but to be honest I haven’t had a good one in a while.  Here is one I have had before and I enjoy.  Not my favorite, but it will do.  I haven't bought this one in a while, so I honestly can't remember how much it is.  

One of my other go to wines is Riesling.  Now, some people like the California wine and I say to each their own.  Personally, I have no desire to drink a California Riesling. The German Rieslings are the only way to go in my mind.  I don’t really have a go to brand, I kind of bounce around to whatever is on sale.  I have found more and more lately that this is something I really have to be in the mood for.  Now the Riesling I do find that I like is the edelweiss Riesling.  From talking with various sellers at the wine tasting events, this comes from a late harvest grape.  I love this flavor! 

The final wine I wanted to put on here is Vouvray, a French white wine.  I can usually find this one at the World Market for about $13/bottle. 

Well, that wraps up the tour of wines.  Now, you should all make a trip to the wine and spirits section at the grocery store right away! 

Stormy Sleepless Nights

Ok, so this weekend we took a break from the house repair.  Andrew and I have been saying since we started dating that we were going to go to Tulip Time and we finally did!  It was kind of warm and crazy crowded, but we still had a good time.  Of course, I got danish from Jarsma Bakery, so that might have had something to do with me having a good time.  They also had an outdoor market which also might have had something to do with it.  I did find my mom's Mother's Day gift while we were at Tulip Time, but I'm not going to ruin the surprise. 

I came home Friday night to find that my peony bush finally opened!  It is now full of beautiful white flowers :) My peonies put me in the mood for even more flowers so I might have made a stop at Goode's greenhouse today.  This is the first year I have had to think about shade flowers since every house my mom and I lived in was full sun over the entire yard.  With two mature trees covering a majority of our yard, we are working with all shade here.  As I was walking around the greenhouse today growing increasingly frustrated looking at all the sun and part sun plants, I saw in the corner of my eye one of my favorites... fuchsia!  Now I have a beautiful collection of flowers waiting to be planted.  I hope to get to those this week. 

Now to the real issue of this post.  Currently, Andrew and I are sitting here listening to the storm roll in and wondering if we are going to have another sleepless night with Buddy up panting in our faces. I have talked to coworkers who have the same issue with their adorable doggies.  Today we were even at the vet and I think we both contemplated buying a thunder shirt for Buddy.  Too many more nights like last night and I think we might break down and do it.  Does anyone else have this issue with their dog(s)?  Do you have any amazing solutions?  We would love to hear about them if you do!      

My Five Favorite Things

So, I thought I would take some time to show you my top five favorite things about the house.  This is a hard list because there are a lot of things, but here are the top 5:

1. The washer and dryer: I know these aren’t technically part of the house, but I love these bad boys.  They are amazing!  They are LG and so far I love everything about them!   

2. Built in shelf in the kitchen.  It is a great place to store my cookbooks!

3. Curio in the living room.  We hope to re-do this built in some day because once again, someone decided it was a good idea to paint wood.  Do you see a common theme yet with painting wood? 

4. The deck- our two tier deck just needs a little TLC and it will be ready for some amazing BBQ's

5. The attic space- this is where I spend most of my time.