Well, hello there! I fell off the blogging wagon again. my apologies. February has been one of those packed months. My freelance jobs are picking up, the wedding planning is picking up, the house continues to get dirtier, the dog constantly requires more petting, the cat more cuddling and the Keith more snuggling. But alas, there are no more hours in my day! Sometimes I feel like I work just as hard on the weekends to do all the things I didn’t have time to do during the week. But it’s happy work, and I am truly enjoying life.

One of the new blogs I’m really enjoying these days is Frugan Living. This chick, who lives in faraway Manhattan, literally dumpster dives for almost everything she has, eats, sells, etc. I’m fascinated with her and her blog. She unearths perfectly sealed packages of one-day-expired cereals, pastas, cans of non-perishables, unopened gadgets, and more on a regular basis. She sifts through college dorm dumpsters for textbooks and then sells them on amazon. The packrat and junk collector within me is intrigued.

In college, I told roommates and friends tales of my “dumpster bike,” a rusty blue banana seat bike with clouds printed on it that my dad brought home for me from the dumpster. The handles were the bent back, crooked variety. I don’t know what they’re really called, but they weren’t straight. The bike was very similar to the photo I posted, except blue and a bit clunkier. But it didn’t matter. Dumpster bike was a fine bike that lasted another five or more years after it was cast-off. And because of it’s large frame, my cousin was able to stand on the back while holding onto my shoulders while we drove the short distance to my great Aunt Fanny Lee’s house. True story.

Anyhow, the amazing thing about Frugan Living’s dumpster dives is seeing photos of all this perfectly good stuff she saves from the landfill. We are a culture of wasters, and this truly brings it to light. These items could go to a homeless shelter, a non-profit food rescue organization…a million other places where it would be used and appreciated. 

Hmmm…

Could you please hurry and get here and grace me with your sweet smells, green grass and pretty flowers?

affectionately yours,

Amanda

So we had our first real snow/ice of the year. It fell upon the earth Thursday night and now on Sunday night it has mostly melted. Thank the Lord. I’m not really a snow person because I hate to be cold, and I seem to always be cold. The inclement weather was pretty for a day though, and it did get me out of work on Friday. Jackson loved it too. We took him on a walk, and he couldn’t contain his excitement. It was interesting trying to walk a dog that pulls so hard down iced and snowy hills. Thankfully, neither Keith nor myself had a wipeout. But there were a few close calls.

Saturday was spent in its entirety at home since the roads were so bad. We did venture out with friends Saturday night to get dinner, discovering when we arrived that the restaurant was closed. But don’t worry; we found dinner only a block away. Thank you, Japanese hibachi. Oh, and we saw Kris Allen’s folks there eating as well. I wouldn’t have recognized them, but my friends did. We tried not to stare. At least not to stare and be obvious.

Today by far was the most successful day of the weekend. After getting up late, we spent most of it finishing up the baseboards and quarter round in our house. Keith then put down a couple of the t-molds. I simply can’t express how excited I am to have the moldings down between the tile and wood. It just makes the floors, which have looked a bit unfinished for months, finally look complete. He did an awesome job, and I’m ecstatic. NO more dealing with the baseboards in the house. You just have no idea how many steps are involved in those. It’s insane! Anyhow, everyone have a happy week!

It’s not easy though when I wake up at 5 a.m. to discover that he’s somehow turned on the outside water faucet and it’s spewing water at full speed onto our patio. By the time Keith got out to turn it off, the water was already standing several inches deep on the patio. Ah, such is life with the new mutt…

In other news, I found this little gem at Drug Emporium the other day. It’s a goatee shaving template. Because everyone needs one of those, right? There was even a very informative instructional video playing demonstrating the power of the goatee template. According to the package, the template:

• creates the perfect goatee
• adjustable for any size face
• cuts goatee grooming time

There it is folks. Laugh yourselves silly.

But once we got to the vet it was a different story. He first refused to get out of the car, and made it quite impossible for me to get him out. He spread out all his legs and somehow seemed to make himself heavier. I did successfully heft him out of the back seat, but not without trouble. And then I couldn’t get my purse because he kept pulling back and I was afraid he would slip out of the harness. (subtle foreshadowing here…) I left my purse, took him in and they shut him in an exam room so that I could retrieve my purse and his shelter paperwork.

When we opened the door to the exam room, the nurse said, “whoops, looks like someone’s had an accident.” The poor nurse then proceeded to clean Jackson’s giant pile of poo and puddle of urine off the floor. It smelled nice in there for sure. The vet walked in and said, “wow, that’s a healthy stool.” I wanted to DIE! Seriously, please tell me someone else has been embarrassed by their dog at the vet!

So the exam went along ok. Jackson kept jumping on the vet, who seemed to have a short fuse for jumping. It probably didn’t help that he kept jumping and putting his big paws all over the countertops, almost knocking over specimens of some sort in the process. Needless to say, he was a bit out of control. I finally calmed him down enough to hear the entire spill about heart worms, which was just terrible. Even thiough Jackson tested negative for heartworms in November, it takes six months for them to incubate and show up on a test. So…if he was stung by an infected mosquito in in July or August, it wouldn’t show on the test. Basically, just because he tested negative in November doesn’t mean he’s actually negative. We’ll start the heartworm preventative, but we’ll have to have him tested again in July to make sure. Great.

So after paying $130 for the visit, plus the preventative, I gathered my dog and started the dreaded trip back to the car. I knew this would be rough. I had the keys in my car door and was just going to toss my purse in the front seat, scoop him up and put him in the car. However,when I tried to get the door open, he backed his head out of the harness before I could stop him. He then just stepped out of the harness and bolted…thankfully not toward the highway. There are some houses behind the vet’s office, and he made a run for those. I took off after him, and let me tell you, he was running as hard as he could. It was like a bad movie, and I’m sure the people who saw me tear through their yard following my crazy dog got a great kick out of it. I kept saying, “Jackson, Jackson, Jackson, Jaaaccckkksssooon! He would not stop for anything. And just like in the movies, I crouched down to get him to come to me, he sped past, I tried to reach out and grab him and I fell flat on my face. FLAT on my face. I decided to just lay there and act like I was crying, and to be honest, I wasn’t far from it. This got his attention, and he got close enough that I could grab him. I carried this heavy, 53-pound dog back to the car, and I swear we were a pretty good distance away. Once we got near the car, he started squirming. But I managed to man-handle him into the vehicle, where I sat and panted for 20 minutes. Keith is taking him on the next vet trip. For today, and maybe even for the weekend, I am done with him. He can sit in the backyard and howl.

Found these fantastic chairs at The Salvation Army months ago (pre-house purchasing) and passed them up. Now I’m lamenting their exclusion from my scantly-furnished bedroom. I could have bought them for $50, reupholstered them and sat and read in them for years to come, perhaps the rest of my life. Oh well. Surely there are other chairs like these floating around out there somewhere, right? Ok, that’s all for today. I just wanted to share my regret over having not bought them. No more whining. Good day.

My apologies for the small image. I almost exclusively take photos with my iPhone now. It’s just so freakin’ convenient. We got the dog! Yay! We got him last Thursday, and our good friend Bill gave us a dogloo and some food and water bowls. This played a big part in our decision to get him. Do you know how much Dogloos cost?? Anyhow, he is amazing and I love love love him. I like to hug him and squeeze him and kiss him on his face and talk to him like he’s a baby. He has the best temperament on the planet, he loves kids, he likes to cuddle and he likes to play. And he’s so stinkin’ cute. Seriously. We took him on 2-hour walks both Saturday and Sunday, but today since it’s a work day, he’s yet to go on his walk. So…he chewed through our water hose. And I’m sure he did something else, but the backyard is dark and I can’t tell. Keith is adamant about him being a strictly outside dog, but I’m just not so sure this is possible. When we get the back yard cleaned (and less muddy), we’re going to experiment with him inside in small doses.

He and Lola met, but it wasn’t such a great moment. He stuck his nose through the door, wagging his tale, she walked to the door and sniffed at him. She hissed, he growled, calamity could have ensued. But we closed the door. We’ll give them a do-over in about a week. For now, he stares through the window at her and she sits in the window and taunts him. Hopefully he won’t harbour any ill feelings. That Lola…she’s a little hard around the edges.

Anyhow, praying for and thinking about my cousin Amy who is in Dallas this week for egg monitoring and retrieval (IVF). This is me sending her some baby vibes! I am so hopeful for her!

If you’ve ever built/remodeled a home before, this tool might look familiar. Personally, I had never seen or used one of these until yesterday when Keith and I decided to get started on caulking our base boards. Working on this project was not without its challenges and roadblocks. Let me just say that it was a lesson in teamwork and communication. It was a true test of our relationship. But we were victorious and much stronger for the experience. No seriously, it [the caulking, which sounds incredibly strange to me] was a bit rocky at first, but once we got going, we worked like a well-oiled machine. I found that the little tool I bought to smooth the caulk out actually kind of sucked, and my index finger was much more useful. After most of the afternoon, we’d caulked all the baseboards in the house except our bedroom, and I had filled nail holes on all of the baseboards except the kitchen and the guestroom. Because I love to make a good long list, I’m about to bullet every single thing we have left to do in the house. Consider yourself warned, and ENJOY or not.

• paint, cut and nail quarter-round for baseboards; caulk
• paint over filled nail holes on baseboards; touch up where wall meets baseboards
• clean and seal gutters
• reseal windows and doors
• adjust water pressure
• repaint living room and kitchen ceilings
• paint, cut and nail crown molding for kitchen and master bedroom; caulk
• clean the remainder of the blinds
• get a new garage door opener; clean garage so that we can actually park there
• paint all the trim in ivory lace
• strip and paint cabinets and kitchen drawers ivory lace
• replace kitchen countertops
• redo both bathrooms: remove popcorn, replace master vinyl, paint
• find out what’s stuck in the guest bathtub drain and remove it. Yuck! Bringing back memories of my college days living with three other girls and having to dig hair out of the shower drain.
• replace all brass door knobs and hinges
• work on back yard so that it drains better
• get t-molds down on floors

Ok, I think that’s pretty comprehensive. It’s not that much I don’t guess, but it just seems to take forever to get it all done. And who wants to work on it when could be as low as 6 degrees on Thursday? I just want to curl up on the couch and nap…or hibernate.

Also, some more news. I am working on the wedding planning. (gasp!) I actually made some calls today and have made some decisions. However, Keith and I are still debating some of the details so I won’t release the plans just yet. It’s about time, I suppose. Although I didn’t actually make any new year’s “resolutions,” I do have the intention to procrastinate less and handle stuff more head-on. So here’s to that. We’ll see how it goes.

We spent the night at the new home of our good friends’, Terry & Kailey. We woke up and made a huge breakfast with eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, hash browns and sausage. Close friends and Terry and Kailey’s family were there, and it was very nice. It was quite unlike years past when there were no kids in the equation, but nice still. Then Keith and I came home where I took a nap to the sounds of football on t.v. in the background. Seriously, I love to nap to football. There’s nothing like it. We then went hiking up Pinnacle’s east summit. The last portion of it is pure rock climbing, and it really got our heart rates up. And the view was gorgeous! We came home and made our black-eyed peas, red chard and cornbread. It was all delish and the perfect end to a great day. The swiss chard was great. Here’s the recipe. We skipped the kalamata olives. Here’s to a prosperous and healthy new year!

When we looked at the home, there were a couple things, all cosmetic, that we wanted to change. The kitchen was blood red, and that would not do. There was carpet pretty much throughout, which also wouldn’t do. But other than that, we were purchasing a house that we considered “move-in ready.” HA! It’s amazing after you sign the papers and the house is yours, what you really want to do to it. First up, remove the popcorn ceilings, also known as “blown on” and “cottage cheese” ceilings. We’ll both admit that when we looked at the house, the textured ceiling was an eyesore, but it certainly wasn’t a deal breaker. We agreed to look past it, and concluded that potential buyers (five or so years down the road) would also look past it. But once the keys were in our hands, we decided to take on the task of scraping that stuff off. We’d start with the laundry room, and if that was easy enough, conquer the entire house. We closed on the house on October 10…we scraped the ceiling down for at least two weeks. Luckily, our lease at the apartment allowed us to stay until the end of October and we were able to work on the house, get dust in our eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, and then seek shelter at our clean (sort of), popcorn-free apartment. We moved in to a semi-finished house on Halloween. All of the popcorn ceiling was gone at least, and that was quite an accomplishment. We ended up replacing almost all of the floors in the house: laminate with tile, vinyl with tile, some carpet with hard wood and some carpet with new carpet. We decided to re-paint all of the rooms, replace all the baseboards (just need to caulk), repaint all the trim in the house an off-white (still not done). We’re basically finished with everything; it’s just those finishing details that seem to be the hardest to wrap up. Anyhow, I’ll post some pics either tomorrow or later this week so you can see just what we did.

In other news, here’s one of the coolest things I found this holiday. This is a really crappy image, but it’s a five-year journal, with approximately two-inch tall entry spaces for each day. For each day, you turn to the next page, so that the following year’s entry is directly under the previous year for that particular day. So you end up with an entire page of December 29 entries for five years, and an entire page of January 1 entries for five years, etc. It is so awesome. I had a diary like this when I was a kid, and I loved it. This is not too much of a commitment, so it’s perfect for me. I can write a couple sentences for each day, and that’s it. I’m finding lately that life is getting away from me. I want to hold on to memories that I sometimes forget. It’s those minute details about the day that make them so special. Visited with my cousin Amy today. She sent me home with a jar of pear preserves made from her pear tree, the tree that was once my grandparents’. I first saw the journal on Fred Flare’s web site, but it’s cheaper, of course, on Amazon. I will be back tomorrow, hopefully with photos from the house. Ciao!